“Oh, ’Liphalet, do go ’long: I scarcely know whether you air a man or a child, sometimes.”
“There’s One that says, ‘Except you become as a little child’—”
“ ’Liphalet, will you go ’long home?”
“I’spect I’d better be gittin’ along.—Goodbye, Freddie; be a good boy, an’ some day I’ll take you up to my house an’ let you ride old Bess around.—Goodbye, Miss Hester.” And as he passed out to his buggy he whistled tenderly something that was whistled when he was a boy.
Chapter VI
The life of one boy is much like that of another. They all have their joys and their griefs, their triumphs and their failures, their loves and their hates, their friends and their foes, much as men have them in that maturer life of which the days of youth are an epitome. It would be rather an uninteresting task, and an entirely thankless one, to follow in detail the career of Frederick Brent as he grew from childhood to youth. But in order to understand certain traits that developed in his character, it will be necessary to note some, at least, of the circumstances that influenced his early life.
While Miss Prime grew to care for him in her own unemotional way, she had her own notions of how a boy should be trained, and those notions seemed to embody the repression of every natural impulse. She reasoned thus: “Human beings are by nature evil: evil must be crushed: ergo, everything natural must be crushed.” In pursuance of this principle, she followed out a deliberate course of restriction, which, had it not been for the combating influence of Eliphalet Hodges, would have dwarfed the mental powers of the boy and cramped his soul beyond endurance. When he came of an age to play marbles, he was forbidden to play, because it was, to Miss Hester’s mind, a species of gambling. Swimming was too dangerous to be for a moment considered. Fishing, without necessity, was wanton cruelty. Flying kites was foolishness and a waste of time.
The boy had shown an aptitude at his lessons that had created in his guardian’s mind some ambition for him, and she held him down to his books with rigid assiduity. He was naturally studious, but the feeling that he was being driven made his tasks repellent, although he performed them without outward sign of rebellion, while he fumed within.
His greatest relaxations were his trips to and from his old friend Hodges. If Miss Prime crushed him, this gentle soul comforted him and smoothed out his ruffled feelings. It was this influence that kept him from despair. Away from his guardian, he was as if a chain that galled his flesh had been removed. And yet he could not hate Miss Hester, for it was constantly impressed upon him that all was being done for his good, and the word “duty” was burned like a fiery cross upon his heart and brain.
There is a bit of the pagan in every natural boy, and to give him too much to reverence taxes his powers until they are worn and impotent by the time he reaches manhood. Under Miss Hester’s tutelage too many things became sacred to Fred Brent. It was wicked to cough in church, as it was a sacrilege to play with a hymnbook. His training was the apotheosis of the nonessential. But, after all, there is no rebel like Nature. She is an iconoclast.
When he was less than ten years old, an incident occurred that will in a measure indicate the manner of his treatment. Miss Prime’s prescription for making a good boy was two parts punishment, two parts admonition, and six parts prayer. Accordingly, as the watchful and sympathetic neighbours said, “she an’ that pore child fairly lived in church.”
It was one class-meeting night, and, as usual, the boy and his guardian were sitting side by side at church. It was the habit of some of the congregation to bring their outside controversies into the classroom under the guise of testimonies or exhortations, and there to air their views where their opponents could not answer them. One such was Daniel Hastings. The trait had so developed in him that whenever he rose to speak, the question ran around, “I wonder who Dan’l’s a-goin’ to rake over the coals now.” On this day he had been having a tilt with his old-time enemy, Thomas Donaldson, over the advent into Dexter of a young homeopathic doctor. With characteristic stubbornness, Dan’l had held that there was no good in any but the old-school medical men, and he sneered at the idea of anybody’s being cured with sugar, as he contemptuously termed the pellets and powders affected by the new school. Thomas, who was considered something of a wit and who sustained his reputation by the perpetration of certain timeworn puns, had replied that other hogs were sugar-cured, and why not Dan’l? This had turned the laugh on Hastings, and he went home from the corner grocery, where the men were congregated, in high dudgeon.
Still smarting with the memory of his defeat, when he rose to speak that evening, he cast a glance full of unfriendly significance at his opponent and launched into a fiery exhortation on true religion. “Some folks’ religion,” he said, “is like sugar, all sweetness and no power; but I want my religion like I want my medicine: I want it strong, an’ I want it bitter, so’s I’ll know I’ve got it.” In Fred Brent the sense of humour had not been entirely crushed, and the expression was too much for his gravity. He bowed his head and covered his mouth with his hand. He made no sound, but
