The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
J >> John Muir >> The Story of My Boyhood and YouthIn the short winter days, when it was dark even at our early bedtime,
we usually spent the hours before going to sleep playing voyages
around the world under the bed-clothing. After mother had carefully
covered us, bade us good-night and gone downstairs, we set out on our
travels. Burrowing like moles, we visited France, India, America,
Australia, New Zealand, and all the places we had ever heard of; our
travels never ending until we fell asleep. When mother came to take a
last look at us, before she went to bed, to see that we were covered,
we were oftentimes covered so well that she had difficulty in finding
us, for we were hidden in all sorts of positions where sleep happened
to overtake us, but in the morning we always found ourselves in good
order, lying straight like gude bairns, as she said.
Some fifty years later, when I visited Scotland, I got one of my
Dunbar schoolmates to introduce me to the owners of our old home, from
whom I obtained permission to go upstairs to examine our bedroom
window and judge what sort of adventure getting on its roof must have
been, and with all my after experience in mountaineering, I found that
what I had done in daring boyhood was now beyond my skill.
Boys are often at once cruel and merciful, thoughtlessly hard-hearted
and tender-hearted, sympathetic, pitiful, and kind in ever changing
contrasts. Love of neighbors, human or animal, grows up amid savage
traits, coarse and fine. When father made out to get us securely
locked up in the back yard to prevent our shore and field wanderings,
we had to play away the comparatively dull time as best we could. One
of our amusements was hunting cats without seriously hurting them.
These sagacious animals knew, however, that, though not very
dangerous, boys were not to be trusted. One time in particular I
remember, when we began throwing stones at an experienced old Tom, not
wishing to hurt him much, though he was a tempting mark. He soon saw
what we were up to, fled to the stable, and climbed to the top of the
hay manger. He was still within range, however, and we kept the stones
flying faster and faster, but he just blinked and played possum
without wincing either at our best shots or at the noise we made. I
happened to strike him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he
still blinked and sat still as if without feeling. "He must be
mortally wounded," I said, "and now we must kill him to put him out
of pain," the savage in us rapidly growing with indulgence. All took
heartily to this sort of cat mercy and began throwing the heaviest
stones we could manage, but that old fellow knew what characters we
were, and just as we imagined him mercifully dead he evidently thought
the play was becoming too serious and that it was time to retreat; for
suddenly with a wild whirr and gurr of energy he launched himself over
our heads, rushed across the yard in a blur of speed, climbed to the
roof of another building and over the garden wall, out of pain and bad
company, with all his lives wideawake and in good working order.
After we had thus learned that Tom had at least nine lives, we tried
to verify the common saying that no matter how far cats fell they
always landed on their feet unhurt. We caught one in our back yard,
not Tom but a smaller one of manageable size, and somehow got him
smuggled up to the top story of the house. I don't know how in the
world we managed to let go of him, for as soon as we opened the
window and held him over the sill he knew his danger and made violent
efforts to scratch and bite his way back into the room; but we
determined to carry the thing through, and at last managed to drop
him. I can remember to this day how the poor creature in danger of his
life strained and balanced as he was falling and managed to alight on
his feet. This was a cruel thing for even wild boys to do, and we
never tried the experiment again, for we sincerely pitied the poor
fellow when we saw him creeping slowly away, stunned and frightened,
with a swollen black and blue chin.
Again--showing the natural savagery of boys--we delighted in
dog-fights, and even in the horrid red work of slaughter-houses, often
running long distances and climbing over walls and roofs to see a pig
killed, as soon as we heard the desperately earnest squealing. And if
the butcher was good-natured, we begged him to let us get a near view
of the mysterious insides and to give us a bladder to blow up for a
foot-ball.
But here is an illustration of the better side of boy nature. In our
back yard there were three elm trees and in the one nearest the house
a pair of robin-redbreasts had their nest. When the young were almost
able to fly, a troop of the celebrated "Scottish Grays," visited
Dunbar, and three or four of the fine horses were lodged in our
stable. When the soldiers were polishing their swords and helmets,
they happened to notice the nest, and just as they were leaving, one
of them climbed the tree and robbed it. With sore sympathy we watched
the young birds as the hard-hearted robber pushed them one by one
beneath his jacket,--all but two that jumped out of the nest and tried
to fly, but they were easily caught as they fluttered on the ground,
and were hidden away with the rest. The distress of the bereaved
parents, as they hovered and screamed over the frightened crying
children they so long had loved and sheltered and fed, was pitiful to
see; but the shining soldier rode grandly away on his big gray horse,
caring only for the few pennies the young songbirds would bring and
the beer they would buy, while we all, sisters and brothers, were
crying and sobbing. I remember, as if it happened this day, how my
heart fairly ached and choked me. Mother put us to bed and tried to
comfort us, telling us that the little birds would be well fed and
grow big, and soon learn to sing in pretty cages; but again and again
we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and their
frightened children, and could not be comforted. Father came into the
room when we were half asleep and still sobbing, and I heard mother
telling him that, "a' the bairns' hearts were broken over the robbing
of the nest in the elm."
After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or six years, very
few of my schooldays passed without a fist fight, and half a dozen was
no uncommon number. When any classmate of our own age questioned our
rank and standing as fighters, we always made haste to settle the
matter at a quiet place on the Davel Brae. To be a "gude fechter" was
our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school. To
be a good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard
to hold high places in our classes and gloried in being Dux. We fairly
reveled in the battle stories of glorious William Wallace and Robert
the Bruce, with which every breath of Scotch air is saturated, and of
course we were all going to be soldiers. On the Davel Brae
battleground we often managed to bring on something like real war,
greatly more exciting than personal combat. Choosing leaders, we
divided into two armies. In winter damp snow furnished plenty of
ammunition to make the thing serious, and in summer sand and grass
sods. Cheering and shouting some battle-cry such as "Bannockburn!
Bannockburn! Scotland forever! The Last War in India!" we were led
bravely on. For heavy battery work we stuffed our Scotch blue bonnets
with snow and sand, sometimes mixed with gravel, and fired them at
each other as cannon-balls.
Of course we always looked eagerly forward to vacation days and
thought them slow in coming. Old Mungo Siddons gave us a lot of
gooseberries or currants and wished us a happy time. Some sort of
special closing-exercises--singing, recitations, etc.--celebrated the
great day, but I remember only the berries, freedom from school work,
and opportunities for run-away rambles in the fields and along the
wave-beaten seashore.
An exciting time came when at the age of seven or eight years I left
the auld Davel Brae school for the grammar school. Of course I had a
terrible lot of fighting to do, because a new scholar had to meet
every one of his age who dared to challenge him, this being the common
introduction to a new school. It was very strenuous for the first
month or so, establishing my fighting rank, taking up new studies,
especially Latin and French, getting acquainted with new classmates
and the master and his rules. In the first few Latin and French
lessons the new teacher, Mr. Lyon, blandly smiled at our comical
blunders, but pedagogical weather of the severest kind quickly set
in, when for every mistake, everything short of perfection, the taws
was promptly applied. We had to get three lessons every day in Latin,
three in French, and as many in English, besides spelling, history,
arithmetic, and geography. Word lessons in particular, the
wouldst-couldst-shouldst-have-loved kind, were kept up, with much
warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of the French,
Latin, and English grammars to memory, and in connection with
reading-lessons we were called on to recite parts of them with the
rules over and over again, as if all the regular and irregular
incomprehensible verb stuff was poetry. In addition to all this,
father made me learn so many Bible verses every day that by the time I
was eleven years of age I had about three fourths of the Old Testament
and all of the New by heart and by sore flesh. I could recite the New
Testament from the beginning of Matthew to the end of Revelation
without a single stop. The dangers of cramming and of making scholars
study at home instead of letting their little brains rest were never
heard of in those days. We carried our school-books home in a strap
every night and committed to memory our next day's lessons before we
went to bed, and to do that we had to bend our attention as closely on
our tasks as lawyers on great million-dollar cases. I can't conceive
of anything that would now enable me to concentrate my attention more
fully than when I was a mere stripling boy, and it was all done by
whipping,--thrashing in general. Old-fashioned Scotch teachers spent
no time in seeking short roads to knowledge, or in trying any of the
new-fangled psychological methods so much in vogue nowadays. There was
nothing said about making the seats easy or the lessons easy. We were
simply driven pointblank against our books like soldiers against the
enemy, and sternly ordered, "Up and at 'em. Commit your lessons to
memory!" If we failed in any part, however slight, we were whipped;
for the grand, simple, all-sufficing Scotch discovery had been made
that there was a close connection between the skin and the memory, and
that irritating the skin excited the memory to any required degree.
Fighting was carried on still more vigorously in the high school than
in the common school. Whenever any one was challenged, either the
challenge was allowed or it was decided by a battle on the seashore,
where with stubborn enthusiasm we battered each other as if we had not
been sufficiently battered by the teacher. When we were so fortunate
as to finish a fight without getting a black eye, we usually escaped a
thrashing at home and another next morning at school, for other traces
of the fray could be easily washed off at a well on the church brae,
or concealed, or passed as results of playground accidents; but a
black eye could never be explained away from downright fighting. A
good double thrashing was the inevitable penalty, but all without
avail; fighting went on without the slightest abatement, like natural
storms; for no punishment less than death could quench the ancient
inherited belligerence burning in our pagan blood. Nor could we be
made to believe it was fair that father and teacher should thrash us
so industriously for our good, while begrudging us the pleasure of
thrashing each other for our good. All these various thrashings,
however, were admirably influential in developing not only memory but
fortitude as well. For if we did not endure our school punishments and
fighting pains without flinching and making faces, we were mocked on
the playground, and public opinion on a Scotch playground was a
powerful agent in controlling behavior; therefore we at length managed
to keep our features in smooth repose while enduring pain that would
try anybody but an American Indian. Far from feeling that we were
called on to endure too much pain, one of our playground games was
thrashing each other with whips about two feet long made from the
tough, wiry stems of a species of polygonum fastened together in a
stiff, firm braid. One of us handing two of these whips to a
companion to take his choice, we stood up close together and thrashed
each other on the legs until one succumbed to the intolerable pain and
thus lost the game. Nearly all of our playground games were
strenuous,--shin-battering shinny, wrestling, prisoners' base, and
dogs and hares,--all augmenting in no slight degree our lessons in
fortitude. Moreover, we regarded our punishments and pains of every
sort as training for war, since we were all going to be soldiers.
Besides single combats we sometimes assembled on Saturdays to meet the
scholars of another school, and very little was required for the
growth of strained relations, and war. The immediate cause might be
nothing more than a saucy stare. Perhaps the scholar stared at would
insolently inquire, "What are ye glowerin' at, Bob?" Bob would reply,
"I'll look where I hae a mind and hinder me if ye daur." "Weel, Bob,"
the outraged stared-at scholar would reply, "I'll soon let ye see
whether I daur or no!" and give Bob a blow on the face. This opened
the battle, and every good scholar belonging to either school was
drawn into it. After both sides were sore and weary, a strong-lunged
warrior would be heard above the din of battle shouting, "I'll tell ye
what we'll dae wi' ye. If ye'll let us alane we'll let ye alane!" and
the school war ended as most wars between nations do; and some of them
begin in much the same way.
Notwithstanding the great number of harshly enforced rules, not very
good order was kept in school in my time. There were two schools
within a few rods of each other, one for mathematics, navigation,
etc., the other, called the grammar school, that I attended. The
masters lived in a big freestone house within eight or ten yards of
the schools, so that they could easily step out for anything they
wanted or send one of the scholars. The moment our master disappeared,
perhaps for a book or a drink, every scholar left his seat and his
lessons, jumped on top of the benches and desks or crawled beneath
them, tugging, rolling, wrestling, accomplishing in a minute a depth
of disorder and din unbelievable save by a Scottish scholar. We even
carried on war, class against class, in those wild, precious minutes.
A watcher gave the alarm when the master opened his house-door to
return, and it was a great feat to get into our places before he
entered, adorned in awful majestic authority, shouting "Silence!" and
striking resounding blows with his cane on a desk or on some
unfortunate scholar's back.
Forty-seven years after leaving this fighting school, I returned on a
visit to Scotland, and a cousin in Dunbar introduced me to a minister
who was acquainted with the history of the school, and obtained for me
an invitation to dine with the new master. Of course I gladly
accepted, for I wanted to see the old place of fun and pain, and the
battleground on the sands. Mr. Lyon, our able teacher and thrasher, I
learned, had held his place as master of the school for twenty or
thirty years after I left it, and had recently died in London, after
preparing many young men for the English Universities. At the
dinner-table, while I was recalling the amusements and fights of my
old schooldays, the minister remarked to the new master, "Now, don't
you wish that you had been teacher in those days, and gained the honor
of walloping John Muir?" This pleasure so merrily suggested showed
that the minister also had been a fighter in his youth. The old
freestone school building was still perfectly sound, but the carved,
ink-stained desks were almost whittled away.
The highest part of our playground back of the school commanded a view
of the sea, and we loved to watch the passing ships and, judging by
their rigging, make guesses as to the ports they had sailed from,
those to which they were bound, what they were loaded with, their
tonnage, etc. In stormy weather they were all smothered in clouds and
spray, and showers of salt scud torn from the tops of the waves came
flying over the playground wall. In those tremendous storms many a
brave ship foundered or was tossed and smashed on the rocky shore.
When a wreck occurred within a mile or two of the town, we often
managed by running fast to reach it and pick up some of the spoils. In
particular I remember visiting the battered fragments of an
unfortunate brig or schooner that had been loaded with apples, and
finding fine unpitiful sport in rushing into the spent waves and
picking up the red-cheeked fruit from the frothy, seething foam.
All our school-books were extravagantly illustrated with drawings of
every kind of sailing-vessel, and every boy owned some sort of craft
whittled from a block of wood and trimmed with infinite
pains,--sloops, schooners, brigs, and full-rigged ships, with their
sails and string ropes properly adjusted and named for us by some old
sailor. These precious toy craft with lead keels we learned to sail on
a pond near the town. With the sails set at the proper angle to the
wind, they made fast straight voyages across the pond to boys on the
other side, who readjusted the sails and started them back on the
return voyages. Oftentimes fleets of half a dozen or more were
started together in exciting races.
Our most exciting sport, however, was playing with gunpowder. We made
guns out of gas-pipe, mounted them on sticks of any shape, clubbed our
pennies together for powder, gleaned pieces of lead here and there and
cut them into slugs, and, while one aimed, another applied a match to
the touch-hole. With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach
and fired at the gulls and solan-geese as they passed us. Fortunately
we never hurt any of them that we knew of. We also dug holes in the
ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a
fuse made of a wheat-stalk, and, reaching cautiously forward, touched
a match to the straw. This we called making earthquakes. Oftentimes we
went home with singed hair and faces well peppered with powder-grains
that could not be washed out. Then, of course, came a correspondingly
severe punishment from both father and teacher.
Another favorite sport was climbing trees and scaling garden-walls.
Boys eight or ten years of age could get over almost any wall by
standing on each other's shoulders, thus making living ladders. To
make walls secure against marauders, many of them were finished on top
with broken bottles imbedded in lime, leaving the cutting edges
sticking up; but with bunches of grass and weeds we could sit or stand
in comfort on top of the jaggedest of them.
Like squirrels that begin to eat nuts before they are ripe, we began
to eat apples about as soon as they were formed, causing, of course,
desperate gastric disturbances to be cured by castor oil. Serious were
the risks we ran in climbing and squeezing through hedges, and, of
course, among the country folk we were far from welcome. Farmers
passing us on the roads often shouted by way of greeting: "Oh, you
vagabonds! Back to the toon wi' ye. Gang back where ye belang. You're
up to mischief, Ise warrant. I can see it. The gamekeeper'll catch ye,
and maist like ye'll a' be hanged some day."
Breakfast in those auld-lang-syne days was simple oatmeal porridge,
usually with a little milk or treacle, served in wooden dishes called
"luggies," formed of staves hooped together like miniature tubs about
four or five inches in diameter. One of the staves, the lug or ear, a
few inches longer than the others, served as a handle, while the
number of luggies ranged in a row on a dresser indicated the size of
the family. We never dreamed of anything to come after the porridge,
or of asking for more. Our portions were consumed in about a couple of
minutes; then off to school. At noon we came racing home ravenously
hungry. The midday meal, called dinner, was usually vegetable broth, a
small piece of boiled mutton, and barley-meal scone. None of us liked
the barley scone bread, therefore we got all we wanted of it, and in
desperation had to eat it, for we were always hungry, about as hungry
after as before meals. The evening meal was called "tea" and was
served on our return from school. It consisted, as far as we children
were concerned, of half a slice of white bread without butter,
barley scone, and warm water with a little milk and sugar in it, a
beverage called "content," which warmed but neither cheered nor
inebriated. Immediately after tea we ran across the street with our
books to Grandfather Gilrye, who took pleasure in seeing us and
hearing us recite our next day's lessons. Then back home to supper,
usually a boiled potato and piece of barley scone. Then family
worship, and to bed.
Our amusements on Saturday afternoons and vacations depended mostly on
getting away from home into the country, especially in the spring when
the birds were calling loudest. Father sternly forbade David and me
from playing truant in the fields with plundering wanderers like
ourselves, fearing we might go on from bad to worse, get hurt in
climbing over walls, caught by gamekeepers, or lost by falling over a
cliff into the sea. "Play as much as you like in the back yard and
garden," he said, "and mind what you'll get when you forget and
disobey." Thus he warned us with an awfully stern countenance, looking
very hard-hearted, while naturally his heart was far from hard, though
he devoutly believed in eternal punishment for bad boys both here and
hereafter. Nevertheless, like devout martyrs of wildness, we stole
away to the seashore or the green, sunny fields with almost religious
regularity, taking advantage of opportunities when father was very
busy, to join our companions, oftenest to hear the birds sing and hunt
their nests, glorying in the number we had discovered and called our
own. A sample of our nest chatter was something like this: Willie
Chisholm would proudly exclaim--"I ken (know) seventeen nests, and
you, Johnnie, ken only fifteen."
"But I wouldna gie my fifteen for your seventeen, for five of mine are
larks and mavises. You ken only three o' the best singers."
"Yes, Johnnie, but I ken six goldies and you ken only one. Maist of
yours are only sparrows and linties and robin-redbreasts."
Then perhaps Bob Richardson would loudly declare that he "kenned mair
nests than onybody, for he kenned twenty-three, with about fifty eggs
in them and mair than fifty young birds--maybe a hundred. Some of them
naething but raw gorblings but lots of them as big as their mithers
and ready to flee. And aboot fifty craw's nests and three fox dens."
"Oh, yes, Bob, but that's no fair, for naebody counts craw's nests and
fox holes, and then you live in the country at Belle-haven where ye
have the best chance."
"Yes, but I ken a lot of bumbee's nests, baith the red-legged and the
yellow-legged kind."
"Oh, wha cares for bumbee's nests!"
"Weel, but here's something! Ma father let me gang to a fox hunt, and
man, it was grand to see the hounds and the lang-legged horses lowpin
the dykes and burns and hedges!"
The nests, I fear, with the beautiful eggs and young birds, were
prized quite as highly as the songs of the glad parents, but no Scotch
boy that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs
of the skylarks. Oftentimes on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for
hours enjoying their marvelous singing and soaring. From the grass
where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as
if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and,
sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious
melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then
suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher,
soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days,
and oftentimes in cloudy weather "far in the downy cloud," as the poet
says.
To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck
in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest-sighted of us all. "I
see him yet!" we would cry, "I see him yet!" "I see him yet!" "I see
him yet!" as he soared. And finally only one of us would be left to
claim that he still saw him. At last he, too, would have to admit
that the singer had soared beyond his sight, and still the music came
pouring down to us in glorious profusion, from a height far above our
vision, requiring marvelous power of wing and marvelous power of
voice, for that rich, delicious, soft, and yet clear music was
distinctly heard long after the bird was out of sight. Then, suddenly
ceasing, the glorious singer would appear, falling like a bolt
straight down to his nest, where his mate was sitting on the eggs.