The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthFather, as was customary in Scotland, gave thanks and asked a blessing
before meals, not merely as a matter of form and decent Christian
manners, for he regarded food as a gift derived directly from the
hands of the Father in heaven. Therefore every meal to him was a
sacrament requiring conduct and attitude of mind not unlike that
befitting the Lord's Supper. No idle word was allowed to be spoken at
our table, much less any laughing or fun or story-telling. When we
were at the breakfast-table, about two weeks after the great golden
time-discovery, father cleared his throat preliminary, as we all knew,
to saying something considered important. I feared that it was to be
on the subject of my early rising, and dreaded the withdrawal of the
permission he had granted on account of the noise I made, but still
hoping that, as he had given his word that I might get up as early as
I wished, he would as a Scotchman stand to it, even though it was
given in an unguarded moment and taken in a sense unreasonably
far-reaching. The solemn sacramental silence was broken by the dreaded
question:--
"John, what time is it when you get up in the morning?"
"About one o'clock," I replied in a low, meek, guilty tone of voice.
"And what kind of a time is that, getting up in the middle of the
night and disturbing the whole family?"
I simply reminded him of the permission he had freely granted me to
get up as early as I wished.
"I _know_ it," he said, in an almost agonized tone of voice, "I _know_
I gave you that miserable permission, but I never imagined that you
would get up in the middle of the night."
To this I cautiously made no reply, but continued to listen for the
heavenly one-o'clock call, and it never failed.
After completing my self-setting sawmill I dammed one of the streams in
the meadow and put the mill in operation. This invention was speedily
followed by a lot of others,--water-wheels, curious doorlocks and
latches, thermometers, hygrometers, pyrometers, clocks, a barometer, an
automatic contrivance for feeding the horses at any required hour, a
lamp-lighter and fire-lighter, an early-or-late-rising machine, and so
forth.
After the sawmill was proved and discharged from my mind, I happened
to think it would be a fine thing to make a timekeeper which would
tell the day of the week and the day of the month, as well as strike
like a common clock and point out the hours; also to have an
attachment whereby it could be connected with a bedstead to set me on
my feet at any hour in the morning; also to start fires, light lamps,
etc. I had learned the time laws of the pendulum from a book, but with
this exception I knew nothing of timekeepers, for I had never seen the
inside of any sort of clock or watch. After long brooding, the novel
clock was at length completed in my mind, and was tried and found to
be durable and to work well and look well before I had begun to build
it in wood. I carried small parts of it in my pocket to whittle at
when I was out at work on the farm, using every spare or stolen moment
within reach without father's knowing anything about it. In the middle
of summer, when harvesting was in progress, the novel time-machine was
nearly completed. It was hidden upstairs in a spare bedroom where
some tools were kept. I did the making and mending on the farm, but
one day at noon, when I happened to be away, father went upstairs for
a hammer or something and discovered the mysterious machine back of
the bedstead. My sister Margaret saw him on his knees examining it,
and at the first opportunity whispered in my ear, "John, fayther saw
that thing you're making upstairs." None of the family knew what I was
doing, but they knew very well that all such work was frowned on by
father, and kindly warned me of any danger that threatened my plans.
The fine invention seemed doomed to destruction before its
time-ticking commenced, though I thought it handsome, had so long
carried it in my mind, and like the nest of Burns's wee mousie it had
cost me mony a weary whittling nibble. When we were at dinner several
days after the sad discovery, father began to clear his throat to
speak, and I feared the doom of martyrdom was about to be pronounced
on my grand clock.
"John," he inquired, "what is that thing you are making upstairs?"
I replied in desperation that I didn't know what to call it.
"What! You mean to say you don't know what you are trying to do?"
"Oh, yes," I said, "I know very well what I am doing."
"What, then, is the thing for?"
"It's for a lot of things," I replied, "but getting people up early in
the morning is one of the main things it is intended for; therefore it
might perhaps be called an early-rising machine."
After getting up so extravagantly early, all the last memorable winter
to make a machine for getting up perhaps still earlier seemed so
ridiculous that he very nearly laughed. But after controlling himself
and getting command of a sufficiently solemn face and voice he said
severely, "Do you not think it is very wrong to waste your time on
such nonsense?"
"No," I said meekly, "I don't think I'm doing any wrong."
"Well," he replied, "I assure you I do; and if you were only half as
zealous in the study of religion as you are in contriving and
whittling these useless, nonsensical things, it would be infinitely
better for you. I want you to be like Paul, who said that he desired
to know nothing among men but Christ and Him crucified."
To this I made no reply, gloomily believing my fine machine was to be
burned, but still taking what comfort I could in realizing that anyhow
I had enjoyed inventing and making it.
After a few days, finding that nothing more was to be said, and that
father after all had not had the heart to destroy it, all necessity
for secrecy being ended, I finished it in the half-hours that we had
at noon and set it in the parlor between two chairs, hung moraine
boulders that had come from the direction of Lake Superior on it for
weights, and set it running. We were then hauling grain into the barn.
Father at this period devoted himself entirely to the Bible and did no
farm work whatever. The clock had a good loud tick, and when he heard
it strike, one of my sisters told me that he left his study, went to
the parlor, got down on his knees and carefully examined the
machinery, which was all in plain sight, not being enclosed in a case.
This he did repeatedly, and evidently seemed a little proud of my
ability to invent and whittle such a thing, though careful to give no
encouragement for anything more of the kind in future.
But somehow it seemed impossible to stop. Inventing and whittling
faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe
to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of
arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy
oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All
flesh is grass." This, especially the inscription, rather pleased
father, and, of course, mother and all my sisters and brothers admired
it. Like the first it indicates the days of the week and month, starts
fires and beds at any given hour and minute, and, though made more
than fifty years ago, is still a good timekeeper.
My mind still running on clocks, I invented a big one like a town
clock with four dials, with the time-figures so large they could be
read by all our immediate neighbors as well as ourselves when at work
in the fields, and on the side next the house the days of the week and
month were indicated. It was to be placed on the peak of the barn
roof. But just as it was all but finished, father stopped me, saying
that it would bring too many people around the barn. I then asked
permission to put it on the top of a black-oak tree near the house.
Studying the larger main branches, I thought I could secure a
sufficiently rigid foundation for it, while the trimmed sprays and
leaves would conceal the angles of the cabin required to shelter the
works from the weather, and the two-second pendulum, fourteen feet
long, could be snugly encased on the side of the trunk. Nothing about
the grand, useful timekeeper, I argued, would disfigure the tree, for
it would look something like a big hawk's nest. "But that," he
objected, "would draw still bigger bothersome trampling crowds about
the place, for who ever heard of anything so queer as a big clock on
the top of a tree?" So I had to lay aside its big wheels and cams and
rest content with the pleasure of inventing it, and looking at it in
my mind and listening to the deep solemn throbbing of its long
two-second pendulum with its two old axes back to back for the bob.
One of my inventions was a large thermometer made of an iron rod,
about three feet long and five eighths of an inch in diameter, that
had formed part of a wagon-box. The expansion and contraction of this
rod was multiplied by a series of levers made of strips of hoop iron.
The pressure of the rod against the levers was kept constant by a
small counterweight, so that the slightest change in the length of the
rod was instantly shown on a dial about three feet wide multiplied
about thirty-two thousand times. The zero-point was gained by packing
the rod in wet snow. The scale was so large that the big black hand
on the white-painted dial could be seen distinctly and the temperature
read while we were ploughing in the field below the house. The
extremes of heat and cold caused the hand to make several revolutions.
The number of these revolutions was indicated on a small dial marked
on the larger one. This thermometer was fastened on the side of the
house, and was so sensitive that when any one approached it within
four or five feet the heat radiated from the observer's body caused
the hand of the dial to move so fast that the motion was plainly
visible, and when he stepped back, the hand moved slowly back to its
normal position. It was regarded as a great wonder by the neighbors
and even by my own all-Bible father.
[Illustration: THERMOMETER]
[Illustration: SELF-SETTING SAWMILL
Model built in cellar]
Boys are fond of the books of travelers, and I remember that one day,
after I had been reading Mungo Park's travels in Africa, mother said:
"Weel, John, maybe you will travel like Park and Humboldt some day."
Father overheard her and cried out in solemn deprecation, "Oh, Anne!
dinna put sic notions in the laddie's heed." But at this time there
was precious little need of such prayers. My brothers left the farm
when they came of age, but I stayed a year longer, loath to leave
home. Mother hoped I might be a minister some day; my sisters that I
would be a great inventor. I often thought I should like to be a
physician, but I saw no way of making money and getting the necessary
education, excepting as an inventor. So, as a beginning, I decided to
try to get into a big shop or factory and live a while among machines.
But I was naturally extremely shy and had been taught to have a poor
opinion of myself, as of no account, though all our neighbors
encouragingly called me a genius, sure to rise in the world. When I
was talking over plans one day with a friendly neighbor, he said:
"Now, John, if you wish to get into a machine-shop, just take some of
your inventions to the State Fair, and you may be sure that as soon as
they are seen they will open the door of any shop in the country for
you. You will be welcomed everywhere." And when I doubtingly asked if
people would care to look at things made of wood, he said, "Made of
wood! Made of wood! What does it matter what they're made of when they
are so out-and-out original. There's nothing else like them in the
world. That is what will attract attention, and besides they're mighty
handsome things anyway to come from the backwoods." So I was
encouraged to leave home and go at his direction to the State Fair
when it was being held in Madison.
VIII
THE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSITY
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.
When I told father that I was about to leave home, and inquired
whether, if I should happen to be in need of money, he would send me a
little, he said, "No; depend entirely on yourself." Good advice, I
suppose, but surely needlessly severe for a bashful, home-loving boy
who had worked so hard. I had the gold sovereign that my grandfather
had given me when I left Scotland, and a few dollars, perhaps ten,
that I had made by raising a few bushels of grain on a little patch of
sandy abandoned ground. So when I left home to try the world I had
only about fifteen dollars in my pocket.
Strange to say, father carefully taught us to consider ourselves very
poor worms of the dust, conceived in sin, etc., and devoutly believed
that quenching every spark of pride and self-confidence was a sacred
duty, without realizing that in so doing he might at the same time be
quenching everything else. Praise he considered most venomous, and
tried to assure me that when I was fairly out in the wicked world
making my own way I would soon learn that although I might have
thought him a hard taskmaster at times, strangers were far harder. On
the contrary, I found no lack of kindness and sympathy. All the
baggage I carried was a package made up of the two clocks and a small
thermometer made of a piece of old washboard, all three tied together,
with no covering or case of any sort, the whole looking like one very
complicated machine.
The aching parting from mother and my sisters was, of course, hard to
bear. Father let David drive me down to Pardeeville, a place I had
never before seen, though it was only nine miles south of the Hickory
Hill home. When we arrived at the village tavern, it seemed deserted.
Not a single person was in sight. I set my clock baggage on the
rickety platform. David said good-bye and started for home, leaving me
alone in the world. The grinding noise made by the wagon in turning
short brought out the landlord, and the first thing that caught his
eye was my strange bundle. Then he looked at me and said, "Hello,
young man, what's this?"
"Machines," I said, "for keeping time and getting up in the morning,
and so forth."
"Well! Well! That's a mighty queer get-up. You must be a Down-East
Yankee. Where did you get the pattern for such a thing?"
"In my head," I said.
Some one down the street happened to notice the landlord looking
intently at something and came up to see what it was. Three or four
people in that little village formed an attractive crowd, and in
fifteen or twenty minutes the greater part of the population of
Pardeeville stood gazing in a circle around my strange hickory
belongings. I kept outside of the circle to avoid being seen, and had
the advantage of hearing the remarks without being embarrassed. Almost
every one as he came up would say, "What's that? What's it for? Who
made it?" The landlord would answer them all alike, "Why, a young man
that lives out in the country somewhere made it, and he says it's a
thing for keeping time, getting up in the morning, and something that
I didn't understand. I don't know what he meant." "Oh, no!" one of the
crowd would say, "that can't be. It's for something else--something
mysterious. Mark my words, you'll see all about it in the newspapers
some of these days." A curious little fellow came running up the
street, joined the crowd, stood on tiptoe to get sight of the wonder,
quickly made up his mind, and shouted in crisp, confident,
cock-crowing style, "I know what that contraption's for. It's a
machine for taking the bones out of fish."
This was in the time of the great popular phrenology craze, when the
fences and barns along the roads throughout the country were plastered
with big skull-bump posters, headed, "Know Thyself," and advising
everybody to attend schoolhouse lectures to have their heads explained
and be told what they were good for and whom they ought to marry. My
mechanical bundle seemed to bring a good deal of this phrenology to
mind, for many of the onlookers would say, "I wish I could see that
boy's head,--he must have a tremendous bump of invention." Others
complimented me by saying, "I wish I had that fellow's head. I'd
rather have it than the best farm in the State."
I stayed overnight at this little tavern, waiting for a train. In the
morning I went to the station, and set my bundle on the platform.
Along came the thundering train, a glorious sight, the first train I
had ever waited for. When the conductor saw my queer baggage, he
cried, "Hello! What have we here?"
"Inventions for keeping time, early rising, and so forth. May I take
them into the car with me?"
"You can take them where you like," he replied, "but you had better
give them to the baggage-master. If you take them into the car they
will draw a crowd and might get broken."
So I gave them to the baggage-master and made haste to ask the
conductor whether I might ride on the engine. He good-naturedly said:
"Yes, it's the right place for you. Run ahead, and tell the engineer
what I say." But the engineer bluntly refused to let me on, saying:
"It don't matter what the conductor told you. _I_ say you can't ride
on my engine."
By this time the conductor, standing ready to start his train, was
watching to see what luck I had, and when he saw me returning came
ahead to meet me.
"The engineer won't let me on," I reported.
"Won't he?" said the kind conductor. "Oh! I guess he will. You come
down with me." And so he actually took the time and patience to walk
the length of that long train to get me on to the engine.
"Charlie," said he, addressing the engineer, "don't you ever take a
passenger?"
"Very seldom," he replied.
"Anyhow, I wish you would take this young man on. He has the strangest
machines in the baggage-car I ever saw in my life. I believe he could
make a locomotive. He wants to see the engine running. Let him on."
Then in a low whisper he told me to jump on, which I did gladly, the
engineer offering neither encouragement nor objection.
As soon as the train was started, the engineer asked what the "strange
thing" the conductor spoke of really was.
"Only inventions for keeping time, getting folk up in the morning, and
so forth," I hastily replied, and before he could ask any more
questions I asked permission to go outside of the cab to see the
machinery. This he kindly granted, adding, "Be careful not to fall
off, and when you hear me whistling for a station you come back,
because if it is reported against me to the superintendent that I
allow boys to run all over my engine I might lose my job."
Assuring him that I would come back promptly, I went out and walked
along the foot-board on the side of the boiler, watching the
magnificent machine rushing through the landscapes as if glorying in
its strength like a living creature. While seated on the cow-catcher
platform, I seemed to be fairly flying, and the wonderful display of
power and motion was enchanting. This was the first time I had ever
been on a train, much less a locomotive, since I had left Scotland.
When I got to Madison, I thanked the kind conductor and engineer for
my glorious ride, inquired the way to the Fair, shouldered my
inventions, and walked to the Fair Ground.
When I applied for an admission ticket at a window by the gate I told
the agent that I had something to exhibit.
"What is it?" he inquired.
"Well, here it is. Look at it."
When he craned his neck through the window and got a glimpse of my
bundle, he cried excitedly, "Oh! _you_ don't need a ticket,--come
right in."
When I inquired of the agent where such things as mine should be
exhibited, he said, "You see that building up on the hill with a big
flag on it? That's the Fine Arts Hall, and it's just the place for
your wonderful invention."
So I went up to the Fine Arts Hall and looked in, wondering if they
would allow wooden things in so fine a place.
I was met at the door by a dignified gentleman, who greeted me kindly
and said, "Young man, what have we got here?"
"Two clocks and a thermometer," I replied.
"Did you make these? They look wonderfully beautiful and novel and
must, I think, prove the most interesting feature of the fair."
"Where shall I place them?" I inquired.
"Just look around, young man, and choose the place you like best,
whether it is occupied or not. You can have your pick of all the
building, and a carpenter to make the necessary shelving and assist
you every way possible!"
So I quickly had a shelf made large enough for all of them, went out
on the hill and picked up some glacial boulders of the right size for
weights, and in fifteen or twenty minutes the clocks were running.
They seemed to attract more attention than anything else in the hall I
got lots of praise from the crowd and the newspaper-reporters. The
local press reports were copied into the Eastern papers. It was
considered wonderful that a boy on a farm had been able to invent and
make such things, and almost every spectator foretold good fortune.
But I had been so lectured by my father above all things to avoid
praise that I was afraid to read those kind newspaper notices, and
never clipped out or preserved any of them, just glanced at them and
turned away my eyes from beholding vanity. They gave me a prize of ten
or fifteen dollars and a diploma for wonderful things not down in the
list of exhibits.
Many years later, after I had written articles and books, I received a
letter from the gentleman who had charge of the Fine Arts Hall. He
proved to be the Professor of English Literature in the University of
Wisconsin at this Fair time, and long afterward he sent me clippings
of reports of his lectures. He had a lecture on me, discussing style,
etcetera, and telling how well he remembered my arrival at the Hall in
my shirt-sleeves with those mechanical wonders on my shoulder, and so
forth, and so forth. These inventions, though of little importance,
opened all doors for me and made marks that have lasted many years,
simply, I suppose, because they were original and promising.
I was looking around in the mean time to find out where I should go to
seek my fortune. An inventor at the Fair, by the name of Wiard, was
exhibiting an iceboat he had invented to run on the upper Mississippi
from Prairie du Chien to St. Paul during the winter months, explaining
how useful it would be thus to make a highway of the river while it
was closed to ordinary navigation by ice. After he saw my inventions
he offered me a place in his foundry and machine-shop in Prairie du
Chien and promised to assist me all he could. So I made up my mind to
accept his offer and rode with him to Prairie du Chien in his iceboat,
which was mounted on a flat car. I soon found, however, that he was
seldom at home and that I was not likely to learn much at his small
shop. I found a place where I could work for my board and devote my
spare hours to mechanical drawing, geometry, and physics, making but
little headway, however, although the Pelton family, for whom I
worked, were very kind. I made up my mind after a few months' stay in
Prairie du Chien to return to Madison, hoping that in some way I might
be able to gain an education.
At Madison I raised a few dollars by making and selling a few of those
bedsteads that set the sleepers on their feet in the morning,--inserting
in the footboard the works of an ordinary clock that could be bought
for a dollar. I also made a few dollars addressing circulars in an
insurance office, while at the same time I was paying my board by taking
care of a pair of horses and going errands. This is of no great interest
except that I was thus winning my bread while hoping that something
would turn up that might enable me to make money enough to enter the
State University. This was my ambition, and it never wavered no matter
what I was doing. No University, it seemed to me, could be more
admirably, situated, and as I sauntered about it, charmed with its fine
lawns and trees and beautiful lakes, and saw the students going and
coming with their books, and occasionally practising with a theodolite
in measuring distances, I thought that if I could only join them it
would be the greatest joy of life. I was desperately hungry and thirsty
for knowledge and willing to endure anything to get it.
One day I chanced to meet a student who had noticed my inventions at
the Fair and now recognized me. And when I said, "You are fortunate
fellows to be allowed to study in this beautiful place. I wish I could
join you." "Well, why don't you?" he asked. "I haven't money enough,"
I said. "Oh, as to money," he reassuringly explained, "very little is
required. I presume you're able to enter the Freshman class, and you
can board yourself as quite a number of us do at a cost of about a
dollar a week. The baker and milkman come every day. You can live on
bread and milk." Well, I thought, maybe I have money enough for at
least one beginning term. Anyhow I couldn't help trying.