My Boyhood | Page 6

food for himself so as to avoid all needless expenses. The first night
would usually find him in Steel's tavern in Greene County, half way to
Catskill. The next afternoon would find him at his journey's end and by
night unloaded at the steamboat wharf, his groceries and other
purchases made, and ready for an early start homeward in the morning.
On the fourth night we would be on the lookout for his return. Mother
would be sitting, sewing by the light of her tallow dip, with one ear
bent toward the road. She usually caught the sound of his wagon first.
"There comes your father," she would say, and Hiram or Wilson would
quickly get and light the old tin lantern and stand ready on the
stonework to receive him and help put out the team. By the time he was

in the house his supper would be on the table--a cold pork stew, I
remember, used to delight him on such occasions, and a cup of green
tea. After supper his pipe, and the story of his trip told, with a list of
family purchases, and then to bed. In a few days the second trip would
be made. As his boys grew old enough he gave each of them in turn a
trip with him to Catskill. It was a great event in the life of each of us.
When it came my turn I was probably eleven or twelve years old and
the coming event loomed big on my horizon. I was actually to see my
first steamboat, the Hudson River, and maybe the steam cars. For
several days in advance I hunted the woods for game to stock the
provision box so as to keep down the expense. I killed my first
partridge and probably a wild pigeon or two and gray squirrels. Perched
high on that springboard beside Father, my feet hardly touching the
tops of the firkins, at the rate of about two miles an hour over rough
roads in chilly November weather, I made my first considerable
journey into the world. I crossed the Catskill Mountains and got that
surprising panoramic view of the land beyond from the top. At Cairo,
where it seems we passed the second night, I disgraced myself in the
morning, when Father, after praising me to some bystanders, told me to
get up in the wagon and drive the load out in the road. In my earnest
effort to do so I ran foul of one side of the big door, and came near
smashing things. Father was humiliated and I was dreadfully mortified.
With the wonders of Catskill I was duly impressed, but one of my most
vivid remembrances is a passage at arms (verbal) at the steamboat
between Father and old Dowie. The latter had questioned the
correctness of the weight of the empty firkin which was to be deducted
as tare from the total weight. Hot words followed. Father said, "Strip it,
strip it." Dowie said, "I will," and in a moment there stood on the scales
the naked firkin of butter, sweating drops of salt water. Which won, I
do not know. I remember only that peace soon reigned and Dowie
continued to buy our butter.
One other incident of that trip still sticks in my mind. I was walking
along a street just at dusk, when I saw a drove of cattle coming. The
drover, seeing me, called out, "Here, boy, turn those cows up that
street!" This was in my line, I was at home with cows, and I turned the
drove up in fine style. As the man came along he said, "Well done,"
and placed six big copper cents in my hand. Never was my palm more

unexpectedly and more agreeably tickled. The feel of it is with me yet!
At an earlier date than that of the accident in the old stone school house,
my head, and my body, too, got some severe bruises. One summer day
when I could not have been more than three years old, my sister Jane
and I were playing in the big attic chamber and amusing ourselves by
lying across the vinegar keg and pushing it about the room with our
feet. We came to the top of the steep stairway that ended against the
chamber door, a foot or more above the kitchen floor, and I suppose we
thought it would be fun to take the stairway on the keg. At the brink of
that stairway my memory becomes a blank and when I find myself
again I am lying on the bed in the "back-bedroom" and the smell of
camphor is rank in the room. How it fared with Jane I do not recall; the
injury was probably not serious with either