Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year

IF I WERE A BOY

By Washington Gladden

If I were a boy again, and knew what I know now, I
would not be quite so positive in my opinions as I
used to be. Boys generally think that they are very certain
about many things. A boy of fifteen is a great deal
more sure of what he thinks he knows than most men of 5
fifty. You ask the boy a question and he will answer you
right off, up and down; he knows all about it. Ask a man
of large experience and ripe wisdom the same question,
and he will say, "Well, there is much to be said about it.
I am inclined on the whole to think so and so, but other 10
intelligent men think otherwise."

When I was eight years old, I traveled from central
Massachusetts to western New York, crossing the river at
Albany and going by canal from Schenectady to Syracuse.
On the canal boat, a kindly gentleman was talking to me 15
one day, and I remarked that I had crossed the Connecticut
River at Albany. How I got it into my head that it was
the Connecticut River I do not know, for I knew my
geography very well then, but in some unaccountable way
I had it fixed in my mind that the river at Albany was the 20
Connecticut, and I called it so.

"Why," said the gentleman, "that is the Hudson River."

"Oh, no, sir!" I replied politely, but firmly. "You're
mistaken. That is the Connecticut River."

The gentleman smiled and said no more. I was not 25
much in the habit, I think, of contradicting my elders;
but in this matter I was perfectly sure that I was right and
so I thought it my duty to correct the gentleman's geography.
I felt rather sorry for him that he should be so
ignorant. One day, after I reached home, I was looking
over my route on the map, and lo! there was Albany standing 5
on the Hudson River, a hundred miles from the Connecticut.

Then I did not feel so sorry for the gentleman's ignorance
as I did for my own. I never told anybody that story
until I wrote it down on these pages the other day; but I
have thought of it a thousand times and always with a 10
blush for my boldness. Nor was it the only time that I
was perfectly sure of things that really were not so. It is
hard for a boy to learn that he may be mistaken; but unless
he is a fool, he learns it after a while. The sooner he finds
it out, the better for him. 15

If I were a boy, I would not think that I and the boys of
my times were an exception to the general rule—a new
kind of boys, unlike all who have lived before, having
different feelings and different ways. To be honest, I
must own that I used to think so myself. I was quite inclined 20
to reject the counsel of my elders by saying to myself,
"That may have been well enough for boys thirty or
fifty years ago, but it isn't the thing for me and my set of
boys." Of course that was nonsense. The boys of one
generation are not very different from the boys of any 25
other generation.

If we say that boyhood lasts fifteen or sixteen years, I
have known three generations of boys, some of them city
boys and some of them country boys, and they are all
substantially alike—so nearly alike that the old rules of 30
industry and patience and perseverance and self-control
are as applicable to one generation as to another. The
fact is, that what your fathers and teachers have found by
experience to be good for boys will be good for you; and
what their experience has taught them is bad for boys will
be bad for you. You are just boys, nothing more nor less.

THE LESSON OF THE WATER MILL

By Sarah Doudney

A MOTTO OF OXFORD

SAILING AND FAILING

By Hamilton W. Mabie

There are two kinds of men in the world: those who
sail and those who drift; those who choose the ports
to which they will go and skillfully and boldly shape their
course across the seas, with the wind or against it, and those
who let winds and tides carry them where they will. The 5
men who sail, in due time arrive; those who drift, often
cover greater distances but they never make port.

The men who sail know where they want to go and
what they want to do; they do not wait on luck or fortune
or favorable currents; they depend on themselves and 10
expect no help from circumstances. Success of the real
kind is always in the man who wins it, not in conditions.
No man becomes great by accident; great things are never
done by chance; a man gets what he pays for it, in character,
in work, and in energy. A boy would better put 15
luck out of his mind if he means to accomplish anything.
There are few really fine things which he cannot get if he
is willing to pay the price.

Keep ahead of your work, and your work will push your
fortunes for you. Our employers do not decide whether we 20
shall stay where we are or go on and up; we decide that
matter ourselves. We can drift along, doing our work
fairly well; or we can set our faces to the front and do our
work so well that we cannot be kept back. In this way we
make or mar our own fortunes. Success or failure is not 25
chosen for us; we choose for ourselves.

USE AND ABUSE OF TIME

By Archer Brown

Time is the stuff life is made of, says Benjamin Franklin.
Every man has exactly the same amount of
it in a year. One improves it and reaps great results.
Another wastes it and reaps failure. The first class, they
call lucky; the second, unfortunate. 5

To use time aright, have a system. Shape everything
to it. Divide the twenty-four hours between work, recreation,
sleep, and mental culture according to a scheme
that suits your judgment and circumstances. Then make
things go that way. The scheme will quickly go to pieces 10
unless backed by persistent purpose.

When you work, work. Put the whole mind and heart
in it. Know nothing else. Do everything the very best.
Distance everybody about you. This will not be hard, for
the other fellows are not trying much. Master details and15
difficulties. Be always ready for the next step up. If a
bookkeeper, be an expert. If a machinist, know more than
the boss. If an office boy, surprise the employer by model
work. If in school, go to the head and stay there. All this
is easy when the habit of conquering takes possession. 20

It is wholesome in this connection to read what men
have accomplished who have once learned the art of redeeming
time. Study the causes of the success of Benjamin
Franklin, of Lincoln, of McKinley, of Sir Michael
Faraday, of Agassiz, of Edison. Learn the might of minutes. 25
"Every day is a little life, and our whole life is a
day repeated. Those that dare lose a day are dangerously
prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate." Emerson
says, "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

Sound and wholesome recreation is important in our
scheme; but in this age of athletic frenzy the danger of 5
neglect on that line is not excessive. The real fact is that
athletic sports are educating the muscles too often at the
expense of the brain.

It is the mind work that differentiates you from the herd.
Mental culture calls for study—carefully planned, regular, 10
persistent. One or two hours a day, aiming at some distinct
object, mastering what you learn, adding little by
little, like a miser to his store, will in a few years make of
you a broad, educated man, no matter what your schooling.

To abuse time, have no system. Chance everything. 15
Do your work indifferently. Growl if too much is asked.
Hunt for an easy job. Change often. Dodge obstacles.
Always come a little short of the standard. Fritter away
in silly things the few golden moments left for self-culture.
Then you will not crowd anybody very hard in the contest 20
for leadership.

Time abused is bad luck.

HIDDEN TREASURE

By Charles Reade

Once upon a time there was an old farmer that had
heard or read about treasures being found in odd
places—a potful of gold pieces or something of the sort—and
it took root in his heart till nothing would satisfy
him but he must find a potful of gold pieces too. He spent5
all his time hunting in this place and in that for buried
treasures. He poked about all the old ruins in the neighborhood
and even wished to take up the floor of the church.

One morning he arose with a bright face and said to his
wife, "It's all right, Mary. I've found the treasure." 10

"No! Have you, though?" said she.

"Yes!" he answered; "at least it's as good as found.
It's only waiting till I've had my breakfast, and then I'll
go out and fetch it in."

"Oh, John! How did you find it?" 15

"It was revealed to me in a dream," said he, as grave
as a judge.

"Oh! and where is it?"

"Under a tree in our orchard—no farther than that."

"Oh, how long you are at your breakfast, John! Let's 20
hurry out and get it."

They went out together into the orchard.

"Now which tree is it under?" asked the wife.

John scratched his head and looked very sheepish. "I'm
blessed if I know!"

"Oh, you foolish fellow," said the wife. "Why didn't
you take the trouble to notice?" 5

"I did notice," said he. "I saw the exact tree in my
dream, but now there's so many of them, they muddle
it all."

"Well, I think you're stupid," said the wife angrily.
"You ought to have cut a nick in the right one while you 10
were there."

"That may be," answered John; "but now I see that I'll
have to begin with the first tree and keep on digging till I
come to the one with the treasure under it."

This made the wife lose all hope; for there were eighty 15
apple trees and a score of cherry trees. She heaved a sigh
and said: "Well, I guess if you must, you must. But
mind you don't cut any of the roots."

John was in no good humor. He abused the trees with
all the bad words he could think of. 20

"What difference does it make if I cut all the roots?
The old fagots aren't worth a penny apiece. The whole
lot of them don't bear a bushel of good apples. In father's
time they used to bear wagonloads of choice fruit. I wish
they were every one dead!" 25

"Well, John," said the woman, trying to soothe his
anger, "you know that father always gave them a good deal
of attention."

"Attention? Nonsense!" he answered spitefully.
"They don't need attention. They've got old, like ourselves. 30
They're good for nothing but firewood."

Then, muttering to himself, he brought out pickax and
spade and began his work. He dug three feet deep all
around the first tree, and finding nothing but earth and
stones went on to the next. He heaped up a mound half
as high as his head—but no pot of gold did he strike.

He had dug round three or four trees before his neighbors 5
began to notice him. Then their curiosity was awakened,
and each one told another about his queer actions. After
that there was scarcely an hour in the day that seven or
eight were not sitting on the fence and passing sly jokes.
Then it became the fashion for the boys to fling a stone or 10
two or a clod of dry earth at John.

To defend himself, John brought out his gun, loaded with
fine shot, and the next time a stone was thrown he fired
sharp in the direction it came from. The boys took the
hint, and John dug on in peace till the fourth Sunday, when 15
the parson alluded to him in church. "People ought not
to heap up to themselves treasures on earth."

But it seemed that John was only heaping up dirt; for
when he had dug the fivescore holes, no pot of gold came
to light. Then the neighbors called the orchard "Jacobs's20
folly"; his name was Jacobs—John Jacobs.

"Now then, Mary," said he, "you and I will have to
find some other village to live in, for the jokes and gibes
of these people are more than I can bear."

Mary began to cry. 25

"Oh, John, we have been here so long!" she said. "You
brought me here when we were first married. I was just
a lass then, and you were the smartest young man I ever
saw—at least I thought so."

"Well, Mary," answered John, "I guess we'll try to stay. 30
Perhaps it will all blow over some time."

"Yes, John, it will be like everything else by and by.
But if I were you, I'd fill those holes. The people come
from far and wide on Sundays to see them."

"Mary, I haven't the heart to do that," said the disappointed
man. "You see, when I was digging for treasure
I felt sure I was going to find it, and that kept my heart up. 5
But take a shovel and fill all those holes? I'd rather do
without eggs every Sunday!"

So for six months the heaps of earth stood in the heat and
the frost. Then in the spring the old man took heart and
filled the holes, smoothing the ground until it was as level 10
as before. And soon everybody forgot "Jacobs's folly"
because it was out of sight.

The month of April was warm, and out burst the trees.
"Mary," said John, "the bloom is richer than I've seen
it for many a year; it's a good deal richer than in any of 15
our neighbors' orchards."

The bloom died, and then out came a million little green
things, quite hard. Summer passed. Autumn followed,
and the old trees staggered under their weight of fruit.

The trees were old and needed attention. John's 20
letting in the air to them and turning the soil up to the
frost and sun had renewed their youth. And so, in that
way, he learned that tillage is the way to get treasure
from the earth.

THE SOLITARY REAPER

By William Wordsworth

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

THE STAGECOACH

By Mark Twain

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on,
we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the
hard leather letter sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of
printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes, and books). We 5
stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to
make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve
it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved
and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy
sea. Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among 10
the mail bags where they had settled, and put them on.

Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons, and heavy
woolen shirts, from the arm loops where they had been
swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them—for,
there being no ladies either at the stations or in the coach, 15
and the weather being hot, we had looked to our comfort
by stripping to our underclothing at nine o'clock in the
morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy
Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible and
placed the water canteen and pistols where we could find 20
them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe and
swapped a final yarn; after which we put the pipes, tobacco,
and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail
bags, and then fastened down the coach curtains all around,
and made the place as "dark as the inside of a cow," as 5
the conductor phrased it in his picturesque way. It was
certainly as dark as any place could be—nothing was even
dimly visible in it. And finally we rolled ourselves up like
silkworms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully
to sleep. 10

Whenever the stage stopped to change horses we would
wake up, and try to recollect where we were—-and succeed—and
in a minute or two the stage would be off again,
and we likewise. We began to get into country now,
threaded here and there with little streams. These had 15
high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew
down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party
inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting
posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end 20
and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick,
too, and ward off ends and corners of mail bags that came
lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose
from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the
majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty25
thing, like, "Take your elbow out of my ribs!—can't you
quit crowding?"

Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to
the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too;
and every time it came it damaged somebody. One trip 30
it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it hurt
me in the stomach; and the third it tilted Bemis's nose
up till he could look down his nostrils—he said. The
pistols and coin soon settled to the bottom, but the pipes,
pipestems, tobacco, and canteens clattered and floundered
after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us,
and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in 5
our eyes and water down our backs.

Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable
night. It wore gradually away, and when at last a cold,
gray light was visible through the puckers and chinks in
the curtains, we yawned and stretched with satisfaction, 10
shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was
necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the
world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast.
We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward
the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over15
the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut
or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the
clatter of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands,
awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we
went sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed. 20
It was fascinating—that old Overland stagecoaching.

We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed
his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched
complacently, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with
great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking not 25
the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his
health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and
obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and
half-civilized station keepers and hostlers who were nimbly
unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the 30
stables—for in the eyes of the stage driver of that day,
station keepers and hostlers were a sort of good-enough low
creatures, useful in their place and helping to make up a
world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction
could afford to concern himself with; while on the
contrary, in the eyes of the station keeper and the hostler,
the stage driver was a hero—a great and shining dignitary; 5
the world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed
of the nations.

When they spoke to him they received his insolent
silence meekly and as being the natural and proper
conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips 10
they all hung on his words with admiration (he never
honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed
it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables,
the surrounding country, and the human underlings); when
he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, 15
that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his
one jest—old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted
on the same audience, in that same language, every
time his coach drove up there—the varlets roared, and
slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing they'd 20
ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly
around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same,
or a light for his pipe!—but they would instantly insult
a passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor
at their hands. They could do that sort of insolence as 25
well as the driver they copied it from—for, let it be borne
in mind, the Overland driver had but little less contempt
for his passengers than he had for his hostlers.

The hostlers and station keepers treated the really
powerful conductor of the coach merely with the best 30
of what was their idea of civility, but the driver was the
only being they bowed down to and worshiped. How
admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as
he gloved himself with lingering deliberation, while some
happy hostler held the bunch of reins aloft and waited
patiently for him to take it! And how they would bombard
him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his long whip 5
and went careering away.

The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun-dried,
mud-colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes,
the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten it
to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant to them worth 10
speaking of, were thatched and then sodded, or covered
with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprang a pretty
rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we
had ever seen a man's front yard on top of his house. The
buildings consisted of barns, stable room for twelve or 15
fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating room for passengers.
This latter had bunks in it for the station keeper and a hostler
or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and
you had to bend in order to get in at the door. In place
of a window there was a square hole about large enough 20
for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it.
There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard.
There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a
corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its
base were a couple of black and venerable tin coffeepots,25
a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.

By the door of the station keeper's den, outside, was a
tin washbasin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water
and a piece of yellow bar soap, and from the eaves hung a
hoary blue-woolen shirt, significantly—but this latter was 30
the station keeper's private towel, and only two persons
in all the party might venture to use it—the stage driver
and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of
decency; the former would not, because he did not choose
to encourage the advances of a station keeper. We had
towels—in the valise; they might as well have been in
Sodom and Gomorrah. 5

We (and the conductor) used our handkerchiefs, and
the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, inside,
was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass
frame, with two little fragments of the original mirror
lodged down in one corner of it. This arrangement afforded 10
a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when you
looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple
of inches above the other half. From the glass frame hung
the half a comb by a string—but if I had to describe that
patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample 15
coffins. It had come down from Esau and Samson, and
had been accumulating hair ever since—along with
certain impurities. In one corner of the room stood three
or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches
of ammunition. 20

The station men wore pantaloons of coarse country-woven
stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the
legs were sewed ample additions of buckskin to do duty
in place of leggings when the man rode horseback—so
the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and 25
unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into
the tops of high boots, the heels whereof were armed with
great Spanish spurs whose little iron clogs and chains
jingled with every step. The man wore a huge beard and
mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue-woolen shirt, no 30
suspenders, no vest, no coat; in a leathern sheath in his
belt, a great long "navy" revolver (slung on right side,
hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled
bowie knife. The furniture of the hut was neither
gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and
sofas were not present and never had been, but they were
represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench5
four feet long, and two empty candle boxes. The table
was a greasy board on stilts, and the tablecloth and napkins
had not come—and they were not looking for them, either.
A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup,
were at each man's place, and the driver had a queen's-ware 10
saucer that had seen better days. Of course this
duke sat at the head of the table.

There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore
about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was
the caster. It was German silver and crippled and rusty, 15
but it was so preposterously out of place there that it
was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians,
and the majesty of its native position compelled respect
even in its degradation. There was only one cruet left,
and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked 20
thing, with two inches of vinegar in it and a dozen preserved
flies with their heels up and looking sorry they
had invested there.

The station keeper upended a disk of last week's bread,
of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some 25
slabs from it which were as good as Nicholson pavement,
and tenderer.

He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the
experienced old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned
army bacon which the United States would not feed 30
to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage company had
bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army
bacon further out on the plains than the section I am locating
it in, but we found it—there is no gainsaying that.

Then he poured for us a beverage which he called slumgullion
and it is hard to think he was not inspired when 5
he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was
too much dishrag, and sand, and old bacon rind in it to
deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no
milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients with.

We could not eat the bread or the meat, or drink the 10
"slumgullion." And when I looked at that melancholy
vinegar cruet, I thought of the anecdote (a very, very old
one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down at a
table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot
of mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The 15
landlord said:

"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think
there was mackerel enough there for six."

"But I don't like mackerel."

"Oh—then help yourself to the mustard." 20

—Roughing It.

THE CHAMELEON

By James Merrick