The Complete Writings, vol 4 | Page 7

think I should like to live the life over again; I should
almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a
great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It
is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand, --he who
leads the school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and
there is so much to take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything.
Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is sent to the
neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is not exactly cruel,
but be wants to see if he can hit 'em. No other living thing can go so
slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless he
happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase
to it like a deer; and it is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a
great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you
have to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a
great power of helping each other to do nothing; and they are so
innocent about it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could,"
says the boy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he
has been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no
effect on the boy.
Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a
hill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could any
boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture
there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine,
roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to eat or to
smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climb
a tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try if I
could see the steeple of the village church. It became very important
sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in the midst of my

investigations the tin horn would blow a great blast from the farmhouse,
which would send a cold chill down my back in the hottest days. I
knew what it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at all
like the sweet note that called us to dinner from the hay-field. It said,
"Why on earth does n't that boy come home? It is almost dark, and the
cows ain't milked!" And that was the time the cows had to start into a
brisk pace and make up for lost time. I wonder if any boy ever drove
the cows home late, who did not say that the cows were at the very
farther end of the pasture, and that "Old Brindle" was hidden in the
woods, and he couldn't find her for ever so long! The brindle cow is the
boy's scapegoat, many a time.
No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy does;
and his best ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing is of course one
sort. The excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and the
anticipation of great luck! These are pure pleasures, enjoyed because
they are rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any time care but little for it.
Tramping all day through bush and brier, fighting flies and mosquitoes,
and branches that tangle the line, and snags that break the hook, and
returning home late and hungry, with wet feet and a string of speckled
trout on a willow twig, and having the family crowd out at the kitchen
door to look at 'em, and say, "Pretty well done for you, bub; did you
catch that big one yourself?" --this is also pure happiness, the like of
which the boy will never have again, not if he comes to be selectman
and deacon and to "keep store."
But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in spring and
fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, in a neighboring town,
maybe, to drive thither the young cattle and colts, and to bring them
back again. It was a wild and rocky upland where our great pasture was,
many miles from home, the road to it running by a brawling river, and
up a dashing brook-side among great hills. What a day's adventure it
was! It was like a journey to Europe. The night before, I could scarcely
sleep for