The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

The Story of My Boyhood and
Youth, by John

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by John Muir
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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