The Believing Years

Edmund Lester Pearson

The Believing Years

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4064066170394

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

MR. COLBURN

Each boy in the school-room had fixed his mind on two objects: the calendar and the clock. On the former stood out in big black characters

June

20

The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams,—the last day of school.

We had thought of it, thought of it far back when snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. To-morrow the tyrannical bell should be silent, and no one could say: Time to start for school!

Many forces had been at work hurrying this day forward: the first blades of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chestnut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were signs and symbols of it.

But in spite of so many omens, the day itself had been outrageously slow to arrive. The robins had abated the enthusiasm of the first few weeks, and become quieter. They were sober householders and family men, now. The golden blossoms of the dandelions were transformed into that shape in which they are useful chiefly to blow upon three times to see at what o'clock your mother wants you. The season had arrived for swimming,—indeed, it had been here for weeks,—Ed Mason and Rob Currier claimed to have gone in swimming at Four Rocks as early as the last day of April. The fish in Little River needed our careful attention. And in front of Austin's shop had long stood a sign displaying a pink pyramid with a spoon stuck therein, and the seductive words Ice Cream, a spectacle that made our Fourth of July money stir uneasily in our pockets.

In short, all the elements of vacation were here,—all but the thing itself. Each morning the summons came at twenty minutes of nine, and each morning we trod the dismal path. Pencils squeaked, and slaty smells arose as the slates were covered with figures and then cleaned with damp sponges. The pungent odor of cedar, from newly sharpened lead-pencils, mingled with the fragrance of pickled limes,—smuggled into school and eaten contrary to the orders of Miss Temple, the teacher. Outside, summer called us in a dozen different ways. And, uneasy prisoners, we chafed and wriggled in our seats.

But, somehow, the days had dragged by, and even this final one had nearly gone. At the last moment, when our release was so near at hand, a dismal spectre arose before us to block the way. It was the forbidding form of Mr. Colburn.

This was a man who had written an arithmetic,—an arithmetic of singular and diabolical ingenuity. He had done this thing long before any of us were born, and then he had passed from the earth. But his work had remained to annoy us. Occasionally, during the last hour of the afternoon session, we wrestled with Mr. Colburn, by request. This was in addition to the regular arithmetic lesson in the morning.

I conceived Mr. Colburn as a tall, spare man, clad in brown leather. His face was brown and leathery, too, and it was puckered and sour. In one hand he held his famous book,—in the other, a big switch. He was full of impertinent curiosity, was Mr. Colburn, and he had no manner of interest in the things that really concerned us.

I wanted to know if Ed Mason (whose seat was next but one behind mine) were going fishing to-morrow morning. Mr. Colburn wanted to know if 3 fifths of a chaldron of coal cost 8 dollars, what is the whole chaldron worth?

I did not care what it was worth, I did not know what a chaldron was, anyway,—and I have never found out. But I saw we were in for an uncomfortable hour as soon as Miss Temple said:

Take your Colburn's Arithmetics and sit up straight in your seats.... Robert, did you throw that? Well, you may go and stand in that corner, with your face to the wall.

Rob Currier did as he was directed with undisguised delight. By one skilful stroke he had put himself beyond the clutch of Mr. Colburn. The rest of us looked upon him with envy,—if we had only been so inspired!

It was base of Miss Temple to devote the last hour of school to Colburn's Arithmetic. We thought regretfully of another teacher we had once had. She would have read to us the adventures of The Prince and the Pauper, and that was altogether better than fretting us about the price of coal. Never in my life have I wished to know the worth of a chaldron of coal, but if ever I have such a wish doubtless the dealer will tell me straight out.

But that was not the way with the people Mr. Colburn knew,—they could never give you a decent answer about anything. If you asked one of Mr. Colburn's friends the price of his horse, he would reply that the horse and the saddle together were worth 100 dollars, but the horse was worth 9 times as much as the saddle,—and that was all you could get out of him.

For my part, I privately resolved never to buy horses of any such disagreeable folk,—a resolution which I have faithfully kept.

Miss Temple must have observed my anxiety to speak with Ed Mason, for she promptly called upon me:—

Samuel, you may take Question 61. Read it.

'A man bought 1 ton and 4 fifths of a ton of fustic for 43 dollars, what was that a ton?'

I struggled with it for a few moments, vaguely wondering what fustic might be, but in the end I was compelled to say that I did not know. Jimmy Toppan and Charley Carter both fell victims to the question. It was finally answered, with some help from Miss Temple, by Joe Carter. The answer did not seem very interesting to us, after it had been found and worked out on the blackboard.

We were watching the clock.

Mr. Colburn would not have cared for clocks,—unless, indeed, he could have made up some hateful question about them. He did not care for our fishing trips; he had no interest in the frog pond and its creatures. The warm, summer day outside had no attraction for him.

He wanted to know if cloth 4 quarters wide is worth 8 dollars a yard, what is 1 yard of the same kind of cloth, that is 5 quarters wide, worth? And his conspirator, Miss Temple, aided and abetted him in his curiosity. She fired the questions at us with unremitting vigor. We were called upon to reduce 9-4/7 to an improper fraction, though how any one could wish to inject into it any more impropriety than it already seemed to possess, was a matter impossible to understand.

The long hour wore on. From outside came the drone of insects. A flock of sheep passed the school,—driven up Elm Street by men who were probably hurrying them to their fate. We tried to look out the windows and watch the progress of the sheep, but we were recalled by Miss Temple, to whom the incident suggested nothing except a chance to try upon us what Mr. Colburn seems to have considered his crowning effort.

A man driving his geese to market was met by another, who said, Good morrow, master, with your hundred geese; says he, I have not a hundred; but if I had half as many more as I now have, and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred; how many had he?

Disheartening as this problem appeared, together with its inhuman suggestion of a man carrying half of a goose about with him, it nevertheless proved useful to us. Joe Carter and one or two others (who affected to enjoy Mr. Colburn) engaged in a long wrangle with each other and with Miss Temple, about the number of geese owned by this palpable lunatic. We regarded them, at first, with a pity not unmixed with loathing; then, as we observed how they were taking up the time, we came to appreciate the value of the discussion. Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan, from the depths of a complete ignorance of the subject, managed to interject one or two inquiries that had the happy result of tangling every one up still worse, and thus prolonging the goose argument.

To our great joy the problem was still unsolved at five minutes of four. Then Miss Temple was forced to bid us close the books. She made a few perfunctory remarks, wished us a pleasant vacation, and, when a gong sounded throughout the building, dismissed the class.

We filed to get our hats, filed downstairs, through the hall, and out the door with a concerted and enthusiastic yell. Mr. Colburn and imprisonment lay behind us; ahead were vacation and freedom. So we whooped once more, and again, until a scissors-grinder, who had gone to sleep on the grass under a tree, woke up with a start. The old horse who drew Oliver's bakery wagon had been standing sleepily in front of a house on the other side of Elm Street. At our third shout he ambled clumsily off, while Mr. Oliver, with a basket of buns in his hand, pursued him down the street.

CHAPTER II

Table of Contents

THE OLD TOWN

Elm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks. Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond comparison.

Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great, graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been in vogue during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the nineteenth century,—all were there.

But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity, before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then, and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly, although the ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if, indeed, they sailed at all.

The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann. Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.

The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardens that lay behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the Common Pasture, rocky knolls