The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, by John

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Title: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
Author: John Muir

Release Date: May 9, 2006 [eBook #18359]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
by
JOHN MUIR
With Illustrations from Sketches by the Author

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1912 and 1913, by the Atlantic Monthly Company Copyright, 1913, by John Muir All Rights Reserved Including the Right to Reproduce This Book or Parts Thereof in Any Form Published March 1913 Fourteenth Impression The Riverside Press Cambridge �� Massachusetts Printed in the U.S.A.

Contents
I. A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND 1
Earliest Recollections--The "Dandy Doctor" Terror--Deeds of Daring--The Savagery of Boys--School and Fighting--Birds'-nesting.
II. A NEW WORLD 51
Stories of America--Glorious News--Crossing the Atlantic--The New Home--A Baptism in Nature--New Birds--The Adventures of Watch--Scotch Correction--Marauding Indians.
III. LIFE ON A WISCONSIN FARM 90
Humanity in Oxen--Jack, the Pony--Learning to Ride--Nob and Nell--Snakes--Mosquitoes and their Kin--Fish and Fishing--Considering the Lilies--Learning to Swim--A Narrow Escape from Drowning and a Victory--Accidents to Animals.
IV. A PARADISE OF BIRDS 137
Bird Favorites--The Prairie Chickens--Water-Fowl--A Loon on the Defensive--Passenger Pigeons.
V. YOUNG HUNTERS 168
American Head-Hunters--Deer--A Resurrected Woodpecker--Muskrats--Foxes and Badgers--A Pet Coon--Bathing--Squirrels--Gophers--A Burglarious Shrike.
VI. THE PLOUGHBOY 199
The Crops--Doing Chores--The Sights and Sounds of Winter--Road-making--The Spirit-rapping Craze--Tuberculosis among the Settlers--A Cruel Brother--The Rights of the Indians--Put to the Plough at the Age of Twelve--In the Harvest-Field--Over-Industry among the Settlers--Running the Breaking-Plough--Digging a Well--Choke-Damp--Lining Bees.
VII. KNOWLEDGE AND INVENTIONS 240
Hungry for Knowledge--Borrowing Books--Paternal Opposition--Snatched Moments--Early Rising proves a Way out of Difficulties--The Cellar Workshop--Inventions--An Early-Rising Machine--Novel Clocks--Hygrometers, etc.--A Neighbor's Advice.
VIII. THE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSITY 262
Leaving Home--Creating a Sensation in Pardeeville--A Ride on a Locomotive--At the State Fair in Madison--Employment in a Machine-Shop at Prairie du Chien--Back to Madison--Entering the University--Teaching School--First Lesson in Botany--More Inventions--The University of the Wilderness.
INDEX 289

Illustrations
JOHN MUIR Frontispiece
MUIR'S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW 62
OUR FIRST WISCONSIN HOME 100
CLOCK WITH HAND RISING AND SETTING WITH THE SUN, INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 132
BAROMETER INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 164
COMBINED THERMOMETER, HYGROMETER, BAROMETER, AND PYROMETER, INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 196
THE HICKORY HILL HOUSE, BUILT IN 1857 230
THERMOMETER INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 258
SELF-SETTING SAWMILL. MODEL BUILT IN CELLAR. INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR IN HIS BOYHOOD 258
MY DESK, MADE AND USED AT THE WISCONSIN STATE UNIVERSITY 284

The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
I
A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND
Earliest Recollections--The "Dandy Doctor" Terror--Deeds of Daring--The Savagery of Boys--School and Fighting--Birds'-nesting.
When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation. With red-blooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. We never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six years old I ran away to the seashore or the fields almost every Saturday, and every day in the school vacations except Sundays, though solemnly warned that I must play at home in the garden and back yard, lest I should learn to think bad thoughts and say bad words. All in vain. In spite of the sure sore punishments that followed like shadows, the natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious course as invincible and unstoppable as stars.
My earliest recollections of the country were gained on short walks with my grandfather when I was perhaps not