One day he saw a man in a wagon. The wagon was going without a horse. Also he visited a shoemaker named Boardman who lived near his home and whom he knew well; a swarthy little man, with black beard, black beady eyes, who both worked and chewed tobacco furiously. There he learned every detail of making pegged and sewed shoes; he saw them built from beginning to end. He would spend hours with this shoemaker who made shoes every day, while the farmers made shoes only in winter. The man liked to have him around; and once in a while he would suspend work, and, to amuse the child, would extinguish the life of a fly on the opposite wall with an unerring squirt of tobacco juice. Louis danced with joy. What a wonderful man to spit like that. He tried to spit that way himself—falling ignominiously. The man told him he must spit hard between his teeth; and Louis did spit hard between his teeth; without avail. Then the Boardman man would catch flies with his hand and eat them, or pretend to eat them. Louis believed he really ate them. Then the shoemaker would return to his furious work, and Louis in admiration would wander on. The neighbors said this man Boardman was a lowdown sport who stayed sober and worked hard only to get money to bet on the races—whatever that meant. But thus far Louis had made no social distinctions. It did delight him, though, at a certain season, to see Boardman, all dressed up and flashy, jump into his surrey behind a nervous high-stepping steed, start away with a prancing rush and disappear down the Stoneham Road lost in a trailing cloud of dust. For a long time after this event Boardman would not be seen thereabouts.
Also he would visit Farmer Hopkins to watch him break a fallow field with his monstrous team of oxen, swaying and heaving heavily against the yoke, with low-bending heads and foaming mouths, as the man, with one booted foot in the furrow, guided the plowshare as it turned up the beautiful black soil of the bottom land, while the man said, “gee-haw”; “haw”; “haw-gee.” Many such trips he made, always starting from his secret domain. Evenings he would tease Julia to tell him Irish fairy tales. How lovely, how beautiful they were, with fairies, elves, gnomes and a great company, weaving spells of enchantment in the moonlight. He lived them all. Julia was a robust Irish peasant who remained with the family for nine long years. Fiery was her hair; brilliant her white perfect teeth of which same she was very proud. And had she a temper? Sure! She had a temper that came and went like a storm. She was not long since come to America. Many evenings her Irish women friends called and they talked Irish together. He had never heard anything so sweet, so fluid, except the rivulet. He could listen by the hour; and Julia taught him a few words.
All was running smoothly. It had not in the least occurred to him that all this time he had been a truant. No one had said anything for a whole month; or asked any questions.
Then came the crash! Teacher had written. Little was said at home. He was simply sent back to school. Here he languished in misery. But help soon came as suddenly as the crash. His father had opened a summer school in Newburyport. Grandma had written to Mama; Mama had told it to Father; Father decided that the grandparents were too soft; they had let his child grow up like a weed; they had pampered him outrageously; it was high time his son was brought to him, that he might establish in him a sense of respect, order, discipline, obedience. So Mama took the train to South Reading. She spent a few days there visiting her parents. She looked at her son with a sadness he could not understand, but she found it not in her heart to chide. The day of their departure arrived. With many a sob he had said goodbye to all. They were driven to the depot. Mother and son boarded the train for Newburyport. The engine puffed—the train sped on its way. Came to an end the daydreaming of a child.
V
Newburyport
The train now well under way for Newburyport, our poet, he of the dream-life, crawled forth from his cave of gloom and began to take notice. Soon he was all notice and no gloom. His prior and only trip in a railway train was now over two years back in ancient history, which signified oblivion. Hence all was now new and novel. He began at once, at the very beginning of the beginning, that intolerable, interminable series of questions which all children ask and no mother can for long stand the strain of answering. He did his mother the wholly unsolicited and unwelcome honor of assuming as a finality that she knew the names of every farmer along the route, that she knew why the trees went by so fast, why the telegraph wires rose and fell and rose again; that she was personally
