In our pieces and in our lessons a great deal was said about the duties that children owe their parents, a great deal about how much our parents had done for us, and how kind and obedient we should be to them. But I cannot recall that there was a single line about the duties that parents owe to children, and how much they should do for the child who had nothing to say about his own entrance into the world. It is true that these books were written for children, but just as true that the children were to become parents, and that most of them would get little instruction beyond the district school. Which fact may to some extent account for the great number of bad and foolish parents in the world.
Many of these pieces told how much we owed the country, and of our duty to live for it and fight for it, and if need be to die for it. I cannot recall that a single one ever told of any duty the country owed to us, or anything that should be given in return for our service and our lives. All of which shows what a great handicap we children suffered by being obliged to go to school.
After the last piece had been spoken, the teacher put on her most serious face (she always had a variety of faces to put on) and told us how she loved us all,—although she had never said a word of this sort before,—how good and faithful and studious we had been; she told us how kind our parents were to let us go to school, how sad she felt at the final parting, and how impossible it was that the little group could ever be gathered together again this side of heaven, which she trusted all of us would some day reach, so that she might meet us once again. At this we began to regret that we had not treated her better and been more obedient to her rules. Then we felt sad, and drew our coat-sleeves across our eyes, and wished that she would stop talking and let us go out. Finally she spoke the last words and dismissed the school, and our days of captivity were done. Each child snatched his carefully packed books and slate, and with shouts and laughter rushed through the schoolhouse door into the free open world outside.
Our house stood a short distance beyond the town, and on the other side of the creek that ran my father’s mill. This little stream came down out of the hills from somewhere a long way off, and emptied into the river that wound through the long valley beside the road, flowing from no man knew where. I must have been nine or ten years old before I was allowed to go to the mouth of the stream and watch it join the river and run off between the high hills beyond the town into the great unknown world. Many years before, I had heard that there was such a place, but I was not allowed to go; it was so far away, and the dangers were supposed to be so very great,—though why, I cannot say, any more than I can give a reason for other things that we boys believed, or, for that matter, that we grown-up folk believe.