THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I would rather be a barefooted boy with cheeks of tan and heart of joy than to be a millionaire and president of a National bank. The financial panic that falls like a thunderbolt, wrecks the bank, crushes the banker, and swamps thousands in an hour. But the bank which holds the treasures of the barefooted boy never breaks. With his satchel and his books he hies away to school in the morning, but his truant feet carry him the other way, to the mill pond "a-fishin'." And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm. There he sits, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and like Micawber, waits for something to "turn-up." But nothing turns up until the shadows of evening fall and warn the truant home, where he is welcomed with a dogwood sprout. Then "sump'n" _does_ turn up. He obeys the call of the Sunday school bell, and goes with solemn face, but e'er the "sweet bye and bye" has died away on the summer air, he is in the wood shed playing Sullivan and Corbett with some plucky comrade, with the inevitable casualties of _one_ closed eye, _one_ crippled nose, _one_ pair of torn breeches and _one_ b.l.o.o.d.y toe. He takes a back seat at church, and in the midst of the sermon steals away and hides in the barn to smoke cigarettes and read the story of "One-eyed Pete, the Hero of the _wild_ and _woolly_ West." There is eternal war between the barefooted boy and the whole civilized world. He shoots the cook with a blow-gun; he cuts the strings of the hammock and lets his dozing grandmother fall to the ground; he loads his grandfather's pipe with powder; he instigates a fight between the cat and dog during family prayers, and explodes with laughter when p.u.s.s.y seeks refuge on the old man's back. He hides in the alley and turns the hose on uncle Ephraim's standing collar as he pa.s.ses on his way to church, he cracks chestnut burrs with his naked heel; he robs birds' nests, and murders bullfrogs, and plays "knucks" and "base-ball."

He puts asafetida in the soup, and conceals lizzards in his father's hat. He overwhelms the family circle with his magnificent literary attainments when he reads from the Bible in what he calls the "pasalms of David"--"praise ye the Lord with the pizeltry and the harp."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.]

His father took him to town one day and said to him: "Now John, I want you to stay here on the corner with the wagon and watch these potatoes while I go round the square and see if I can sell them. Don't open your mouth sir, while I am gone; I'm afraid people will think you're a fool."

While the old man was gone the merchant came out and said to John: "What are those potatoes worth, my son?" John looked at him and grinned. "What are those potatoes worth, I say?" asked the merchant. John still looked at him and grinned. The merchant turned on his heel and said: "You're a fool," and went back into his store. When the old man returned John shouted: "Pap, they found it out and I never said a word."

His life is an endless chain of pranks and pleasures. Look how the brawling brook pours down the steep declivities of the mountain gorge!

Here it breaks into pearls and silvery foam, there it dashes in rapids, among brown bowlders, and yonder it tumbles from the gray crest of a precipice. Thus, forever laughing, singing, rollicking, romping, till it is checked in its mad rush and spreads into a still, smooth mirror, reflecting the inverted images of rock, and fern, and flower, and tree, and sky. It is the symbol of the life of a barefooted boy. His quips, and cranks, his whims, and jollities, and jocund mischief, are but the effervescences of exuberant young life, the wild music of the mountain stream.

If I were a sculptor, I would chisel from the marble my ideal of the monumental fool. I would make it the figure of a man, with knitted brow and clinched teeth, beating and bruising his barefooted boy, in the cruel endeavor to drive him from the paradise of his childish fun and folly. If your boy _will_ be a boy, let him be a boy still. And remember that he is following the paths which your feet have trodden, and will soon look back upon its precious memories, as you now do, with the aching heart of a care-worn man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WILD MUSIC OF THE MOUNTAINS.]

(Sung to the air of Down on the Farm.)

Oh, I love the dear old farm, and my heart grows young and warm, When I wander back to spend a single day; There to hear the robins sing in the trees around the spring, Where I used to watch the happy children play.

Oh, I hear their voices yet and I never shall forget How their faces beamed with childish mirth and glee.

But my heart grows old again and I leave the spot in pain, When I call them and no answer comes to me.

THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.]

If childhood is the sunrise of life, youth is the heyday of life's ruddy June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and sc.r.a.ping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields to the pressure of his perspiring paroxysms until his feet are folded like fans and driven home in the pinching leather; and as he sits at church with them hid under the bench, his uneasy squirms are symptoms of the tortures of the infernal regions, and the worm that dieth not; but that is only the penalty of loving. When he begins to wander through the fragrant meadows and talk to himself among the b.u.t.tercups and clover blossoms, it is a sure sign that the golden shaft of the winged G.o.d has sped from its bended bow. Love's archer has shot a poisoned arrow which wounds but never kills. The sweet venom has done its work. The fever of the amorous wound drives the red current bounding through his veins, and his brain now reels with the delirium of the tender pa.s.sion. His soul is wrapped in visions of dreamy black eyes peeping out from under raven curls, and cheeks like gardens of roses. To him the world is transformed into a blooming Eden, and _she_ is its only Eve. He hears her voice in the sound of the laughing waters, the fluttering of her heart in the summer evening's last sigh that shuts the rose; and he sits on the bank of the river all day long and writes poetry to her. Thus he writes:

"As I sit by this river's crystal wave, Whose flow'ry banks its waters lave, Me-thinks I see in its gla.s.sy mirror, A face which to me, than life is dearer.

Oh, 'tis the face of my Gwendolin, As pure as an angel, free from sin.

It looks into mine with one sweet eye, While the other is turned to the starry sky.

Could I the ocean's bulk contain, Could I but drink the watery main, I'd scarce be half as full of the sea, As my heart is full of love for thee!"

Thus he lives and loves, and writes poetry by day, and tosses on his bed at night, like the restless sea, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams, until, in the ecstacy of his dream, he grabs a pillow.

One bright summer day, a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin'

a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made one final desperate effort to explain--"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "G.o.d bless you, my son, how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SEERSUCKER YOUTH AT THE BAPTIZING.]

If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period, I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister, his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.

But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university, with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall, in full evening dress, singing as he staggers:

"After the ball is over, after the break of morn, After the dancer's leavin', after the stars are gone; Many a heart is aching, if we could read them all-- Many the hopes that are vanished, after the ball."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER THE BALL.]

It is then that "somebody's darling" has reached the full tide of his glory as a fool.

THE PARADISE OF HOME.

How rich would be the feast of happiness in this beautiful world of ours, could folly end with youth. But youth is only the first act in the "Comedy of Errors." It is the pearly gate that opens to the real paradise of fools.

"It's pleasures are like poppies spread-- You seize the flower, its bloom is shed, Or like the snowfall on the river-- A moment white then melts forever."

Whether it be the child at its mother's knee or the man of mature years, whether it be the banker or the beggar, the prince in his palace or the peasant in his hut, there is in every heart the dream of a happier lot in life.

I heard the sound of revelry at the gilded club, where a hundred hearts beat happily. There were flushed cheeks and thick tongues and jests and anecdotes around the banquet spread. There were songs and poems and speeches. I saw an orator rise to respond to a toast to "Home, sweet home," and thus he responded:

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: John Howard Payne touched millions of hearts when he sang:

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

But as for me, gentlemen, give me the pleasures an' the palaces--give me liberty, or give me death. No less beautifully expressed are the tender sentiments expressed in the tender verse of Lord Byron:

"'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark Bay deep mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, And look brighter when we come."

But as for me, gentlemen, I would rather hear the barkin' of a gatlin'

gun than to hear the watch dog's honest bark this minute. I would rather look into the mouth of a cannon than to look into the eyes that are now waitin' to mark my comin' at this delightful hour of three o'clock in the morning."

Then he launched out on the ocean of thought like a magnificent ship going to sea. And when the night was far spent, and the orgies were over, and the lights were blown out at the club, I saw him enter his own sweet home in his glory--entered it, like a thief, with his boots in his hands,--entered it singing softly to himself:

"I'm called little gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup, Though I could never tell why--(hic), Yet still I'm called gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup, Poor little gutter pup--I--(hic)."

He was unconscious of the presence of the white figure that stood at the head of the stairs holding up a lamp, like liberty enlightening the world, and as a tremulous voice called him to the judgment bar, the door closed behind him on the paradise of a fool, and he sneaked up the steps, muttering to himself, "What shadows we are--(hic)--what shadows we pursue." Then I saw him again in the morning, reaping temptation's bitter reward in the agonies of his drunk-sick; and like Mark Twain's boat in a storm,

"He heaved and sot, and sot and heaved, And high his rudder flung, And every time he heaved and sot, A mighty leak he sprung."