USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Picturesque Hampden : 1500 illustrations > Part 6
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The reason is a very simple one. They are not trained to work when they are young, and therefore they are beaten at every point by the boys who are trained to work. Pretty nearly all the prizes of life are carried off by the men who have learned to work. The boys who are compelled by circumstances to learn this lesson are perfectly sure, in this country, to outstrip those who have not learned it.
I heard, the other day, a very good story of one of our best known and most prosperous business men. He was a farmer's boy, and when he was ten years old he went out for the first time with the men into the potato field to help in hoeing the potatoes. It was a large field, and the
34
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
soil was stony, and there were many weeds, and the progress was slow. After they had been at work for some time, the boy lifted himself up and looked around upon the few rows that were hoed, and then over the wide field upon which so small a beginning had been made, and said, with a sigh :
"Can this field of potatoes ever be hoed ? "
Well, the work went on, and after a good while the last row was finished. It had been a long and tedious job, but it was done. By and by it was necessary to hoe the potatoes the second time, and the boy was summoned to help. He had not been at work very long when he straightened up, this time with a very different com- ment :
"This field of potatoes," he said, " has been hoed once, and it can be hoed again."
THE NORTHERN VALLEY.
There it is-the whole philosophy of it. The boy had learned a most salutary and precious lesson. He had learned that it was possible to accomplish a long and difficult and disagreeable task by settling right down to it, and keeping at it, hill by hill and row by row - hour after hour and day after day - until it was done. He had learned the value of patience and persistence and steadiness. That is the lesson that a farmer's boy has a good chance to learn, and that any boy is likely to learn
for the future; to any boy who has not learned it, the education of the schools is worthless, and money is a curse.
You see, then, boys, that those of you who belong to the class of which 1 first began to speak-those of you who are not obliged to do any regular work, and who have half or more than half of all your working time in which to amuse yourselves - are not, after all, in a very favorable position. You are sometimes talked to about your advantages; but the fact is that you are laboring under great disadvantages.
It is an immense disad- vantage to you that you are not learning, in these years when the habits of life are formed, the habit of steady, patient, plodding work.
It is a disadvantage to you that you have so much leisure. Many of you get the idea that
MOUNT TOM, FROM THE HIGHLAND.
the staple of life is play ; your heads are so full of it that you cannot do justice to your studies; any task becomes irksome to you; and you lose the power of application and the habit of persistence. The abundance of amusements within reach of a city boy whose parents are in fair circumstances is a great obstacle in his way. Such amusements, indulged in to the extent that they are by the majority of boys of this class, debilitate the mind instead of refreshing it, and
IN A CRAFTS' HILL. CORNFIELD.
who has any grit in him, and who is forced to face the hard fact of poverty. Any boy who has learned that lesson well, has good promise
THE LOWER GATEHOUSE -WHITING STREET RESERVOIR.
THE RIVER AND VALLEY, FROM THE NORTHAMPTON ROAD.
35
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
THE ROAD TO MOUNTAIN PARK.
NEAR THE RESERVOIR.
WOODLAND LAKE.
unfit the boy for the serious business of life. The free access to the city libra- ries and the circulating libraries is, I fear, a great disadvantage to many of you. It need not be if you make the right use of them ; but if you read almost wholly for amusement, as many of you do-if you read only novels and sensational tales of travel- then your reading has exactly the same effect upon your mind that other amusements have. The result of it is that you lose your mental grip, and find yourselves unable to do any patient, vigorous mental work.
Another of your disadvantages is that you have too much money to spend - or, if you have not much, that which you have comes easily - with little or no effort or sacrifice on your part. You have not much chance of learning the cost of money. Money costs work, and any large amount of it costs prudence and
frugality. That is the rule, to which there are few exceptions. You are not likely to prove exceptions to the rule when you go out into the world, and it is a pity that you should seem to be exceptions now. You think, perhaps, that your fathers get consider- able money without seeming to work very hard; but you forget that it was by years of hard work, with small earnings and small savings, that your fathers, most of them, gained the power, and the knowledge, and the credit, and the capital that enable them now to reap large rewards with comparative ease. You are not going to do offhand what it has cost them a lifetime to learn how to do. And it is a great misfortune to
THE LOWER POND.
THE RESERVOIR.
WINTER IN MOUNTAIN PARK.
36
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
A WINTER VIEW ACROSS WOODLAND LAKE.
you that your money, be it much or little, is so easily gotten; you do not realize the price that must be paid for money, and you throw it away in a reckless fashion ; as the wise man says, it comes lightly and is soon diminished.
What people call your advantages are really your disadvantages ; for, while you are having a good time here hanging on the fences, sunning yourselves in the vacant lots, watching the ball games, or joining in laughing over the minstrel shows and plays at the theater, reading the novels and the story papers, spending your money for little
SNOW FIELDS.
luxuries, the poor boys and the country boys are learning to work; learning to put themselves right down to hard tasks ; learning that disa- greeable things can be done by sticking to them ; learning, in their small gains, what a costly thing money is; learning the great and profitable lessons of labor, and patience, and frugality, and steadfastness ; and so, when you and they start out together in the great arena of the world's work, they go right past you, and the first you know you are nowhere, and the work of the world and the prizes of industry and skill and power are in their hands.
You often see two young men beginning together in business, with equal chances and equal abilities, the only difference between them being that one of them has learned during his boyhood what work means, and the other has not. Presently this last one finds that there is much that is disagreeable and confining and tedious about his work; that much is required and little is given for it; and he gives it up and is off in search of something pleasanter. It is not easy to find; and so he tries one thing after another, sticking to nothing long and getting no mastery of anything. His gains are therefore small, but his wants are many; his expenses exceed his income; he is always in debt, and by and by he gets utterly discouraged. Luck is all against him, he says, it is no use to try, and he sinks down into helpless poverty, or perhaps plunges into vice or crime. A great many of the forgers and defaulters come from this class. The other young man, meantime, sticks to his work. He knows that work is not always agreeable, but he is not going to let the task conquer him; he will conquer the task. He has done it before and can do it again. Success does not come all at once, but he
can wait as well as work. And it comes to him by and by. He does not need to go in search of it; promotion seeks him. Prosperity does not need to be run after; it follows.
Now, boys, you are thinking by this time that, for those of you who are so unlucky as not to be obliged to earn your own living, there is a dubious outlook. Well, I have only been giving you the facts. I did not invent these facts; I have simply reported them as honestly as I could, and you certainly can afford to look them honestly in the face. I want to guard you, however, against one or two wrong inferences.
You must not infer that all the country boys who come to the cities become rich and influential men. There are tens of thousands of them who become paupers; there are tens of thousands of them who come to the city because they do not like to work, and because they imagine that city folks have an easy time of it. They come to grief, of course, and it serves them right.
Neither must you infer that all poor boys in the cities become lead- ing merchants and leading lawyers. Tens of thousands of them are growing up to be paupers and criminals.
Neither are you called upon to believe that these boys from whom we have heard, liked the severe and confining labor at which they were kept in their boyhood. Some of them disliked it less than others did, no doubt; but most of them did hard work, not because they enjoyed it, but because they were compelled to do it.
What these facts and figures teach is simply this - that a boy in city or country, who is trained to work, who gets the discipline of will that
MOUNTAIN PARK MEADOWS.
comes with that training, has eighteen chances of succeeding in life, when the boy who has not had this training has one chance.
They teach, also- and this is the fact that I want you all to notice - that you cannot afford to go with the majority of your class, unless your class greatly changes its habits ; that if you do about as the other fellows of your class do, you will come out about where the other fellows of your class come out-and that is nowhere -crippled, beaten, distanced in the race of life.
AMONG THE HILLS -MOUNTAIN PARK.
37
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
THE ROAD DOWN FROM THE PARK.
Well, then, is there no chance for you? Yes; there is a splendid chance, if you will only seize it. There have been those from your very class who have won success. They had your disadvan- tages, but they have made men of themselves-successful, worthy, influential gentlemen. Al honor to them! What they have done, you can do.
Can anything be done to give the boys in the city a better chance?
Yes; there are some things that can be done, and that must be done. Our system of education must be modified so as to provide industrial as well as mental training. The education of the hands, the education of the eye, the education of the judgment, the education of the will, that a boy gets by learning to work, are of more consequence in future life than arithmetic and geography and grammar. These last are of great importance, but those first are of greater importance; and it is a poor system of education that makes no provision for them.
It is habits rather than methods of industry, however, that you need to learn ; and many of you will find some opportunities of learning these about your own homes if you will look for them. There is considerable work of one kind or another that boys can do - that some boys do-in con- nection with the house, or the garden, or the grounds; and if you will shoulder this, and do it well and faithfully, the exercise and the training will be very profitable to you, and may be very helpful to your parents.
Furthermore, there is plenty of chance for you to do faithful mental work; and this, if you will take hold of it with a will, may be almost as valuable training for future usefulness as manual labor could be.
To begin with - there is your every-day school work, to which some of you might give a great deal more time, with great profit. If you will take the studies that you like least, and go at them with the determination to master them-if you will put yourself right down to the disagreeable parts of your school work with steady patience, and hold yourself to them till they are thoroughly done - you will get, in such victories as these, a discipline of will that is almost as good as you would get in hoeing a stony potato field. Besides, there are lines of reading and study that you could take up in connection with your school work, in which you would find the best kind of discipline. If the boy who now spends almost all his afternoons in the park, or visiting boy friends, and almost all his evenings at his club, or at the music hall, and who fills in the intervals of leisure with Fireside Library stories, will make up his mind to give at least two solid hours of every day to the reading
MOUNT HOLYOKE, FROM THE PARK.
of some instructive book - doing it of his own accord, doing it thoroughly, not fooling around two hours with the book in his hand, but holding his attention
right to it, whether he is specially interested in it or not, till he comprehends it and fixes it in his mind -that will prove to him a most valuable training. The boy who can do a thing like this can make a man of himself. He is not the kind of chap that will be elbowed off the track by country boys, nor by anybody else.
Of course you ought to have a chance to play. A boy likes to play, and a schoolboy needs to play. I should wish my boys to have at least two hours every day of good, wholesome, vigorous outdoor sport. So much as that would not hurt them, I am sure - though that is a great deal more than I had. But I am equally sure that all those city boys who really expect to hold their own in the great competitions of the world, must give less time to idleness, and play, and foolish reading, and put their minds and their wills in training for the serious work of life.
-- Washington Gladden, in St. Nicholas.
A MOUNT TOM BROOK.
SONG OF THE MOUNTAIN.
Far from their mountain home my streams Wander and leave me to my dreams ; Singing they go To the sea below, And leave me to my dreams.
Once, from my arms they could not stray ; Helpless, but safe, they cradled lay Clasped in my arms, Secure from harms, Nor wished from me to stray.
Now from my sheltering care they roam, Seeking below a fairer home. Ever be nigh Oh, gracious sky, Where'er my streams may roam.
Sun, moon and stars my wanderers guard ; Cheer all their way ; - their tasks are hard, The way is long,
They are not strong,- Watch o'er them, guide and guard.
Come, fleetest night-winds, speed away, A message bear for me, I pray, To far off sea - Where'er they be - My children, far away.
Carry my love, lest they forget Old days at home with me, - and yet Forbear to chide,- The world is wide, And busy hearts forget.
Gather their kindest thoughts of me, Wrap in a cloud that waits by the sea, And in my dreams My wandering streams Shall come and comfort me.
JOHN HOWARD JEWETT.
38
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
BUYING THE NEWS.
STORIES OF THE MILLS.
THE ROMANCE OF AN OLD MILL MAN. 1.
For several years Uncle John Graham sat in a corner of the spool-room, by one of the windows that projected from the roof, mending loom harnesses. He was a Scotchman by birth, but he had come to America when a young man, enlisted in the army in the first year of the war and had been wounded at Shiloh. He carries a bullet in his breast yet that the doctors had never been able to extract. The wound troubled him sometimes as he grew older, and disabled him from hard or heavy work. So the superintendent of the Dexter mills, who knew his faithfulness, had given him this light employment.
The niche of the spooling and warping room where he worked was the lightest and least noisy spot in the noisy room. It was a large room, and in this further
HAMPDEN STREET.
THE TAFT GREENHOUSES.
NORTH WALNUT STREET.
corner the roar of the spooling frames and the noise of the warpers were blended in a hum that was not unpleasant. The light from the window as it fell on Uncle John's head, showed a bald spot on the crown that was marking a wider and wider circle every year. He was a cleanly, oldish man, and in his thin figure, bowed now from carrying so long that concealed bullet, and in his gentle, kindly face there was nothing to suggest that he had once been a soldier.
A GROUP IN PROSPECT PARK.
A WELL-FILLED DOORSTEP.
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PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
DOORSTEP FRIENDS.
There was a bit of sentiment about Uncle John's past. It was said that his sweetheart had come before him to America, and just when he had saved the money to come over and marry her, he received word that she was dead. It was said, too, that in his room at the house where he lived with his widowed sister, was a little alcove filled with the mementos of his lost sweetheart, where he worshiped as at a shrine.
One Saturday late in September, when there was to be a half-holiday at the mills, Uncle John waited till most of the mill-hands had swarmed out of the big gates before he took down his walking stick from the beam overhead, put on his tidy outdoor coat and hat, and slowly walked down the four long flights of stairs from the top of the Dexter mills to the mill yard. He stopped in the yard for a few minutes to admire the flower beds that were laid out in the lawn of the mill grounds. The dahlias were just coming into bloom -- light and dark and va- riegated in colors. The lawn was separated by a chain fence from the foot walk, and the flowers were for the mill help to look at and admire, but not to touch.
" I'll have some out as fine as these in a week," thought Uncle John.
Then he hurried on to pass through the mill gate before it was closed. Most of his fellow employes had already) disap- peared in the tenement houses and blocks surrounding the mill. One long street, lined with mill tenements, reached straight ahead, and through this street and along another at right angles to it he kept on his way. He passed all the stores and busi- ness blocks, and then struck out for a considerable distance into the country till he came to a little house set alone in the green fields.
This was his own house, built and furnished after years of economy, where he made a home for himself and his sister. A slat fence enclosed a little garden full of old-fashioned flowers. A vegetable patch lay beyond it and a thrifty bit of meadow in the rear pastured a sleek
cow. Uncle John loved every foot of his little estate. He admired as a landscape the level fields around it, and the hills in the distance reminded him of the heather hills of home.
It was looking its best and pleasantest to-day. The sun was bright on the gay garden beds. The dahlias which he had anticipated were beginning to open.
Uncle John pulled a weed or two from the garden, picked up a few bits of paling that were scattered alongside the path, and walked slowly around to the kitchen door. He stood there a few minutes, looking over the place with a kind of serene gravity. Then he turned and went indoors.
There were voices in earnest con- versation in the front room, and Uncle John sat down in the kitchen to rest.
RESIDENCE OF E. S. WATERS.
THE DRINKING FOUNTAIN -HAMPDEN PARK.
AFTERNOON -PROSPECT PARK.
FEEDING THE DOG.
"Janet's got company, and by the sound it's somebody I don't know. I'll sit here till she's gone," he thought.
It was a woman's voice, shrill and shrewd and not very pleasing that was speaking. The high-pitched words could be heard dis- tinctly in the little kitchen.
"You don't mean to say that he's lived single all these years, an' all on account of her. Why, it's twenty years and more. I never heard of such a thing in my life."
Janet's voice was then heard in tones of exasperation.
" But how did you happen to lend yourself to help such a deceit, woman? What did you do it for? And why have you kept up the lie so long, to come and tell us the truth at this late day ?".
"Well," replied the woman, in a lower voice and with a note of apology in it, "you know what Jess was-or mebbe you don't know. She was that masterful that she'd always get her own way. I was a young gell myself then, amd Jess was my room- mate. I set a sight by her, an' when she wanted me to write the letter to get her out of a snarl, I did it."
"But I don't see now why she did such a thing," said Janet. "She must have known my brother wouldn't have held her to her word if she wished to be free. He wasn't that sort of a man."
"No," returned the woman, "'t wasn't that. She wasn't afraid of him. But I suppose she liked him a bit after all. They'd been lass and lad to- gether at home, and she hated to have him think ill of her. She was bound to go off with the other fellow. He'd money, and dash, and style, and Jess had got to care more for them things than for any plain fellow plodding on at home. But she didn't want John to know. She'd rather have him think her dead."
"And so the two of you plotted to spoil the lad's life and break his heart," said Janet.
"Well, I don't know about that," re- turned the other. "Maybe it might have been worse for him than 'tis now. If you'd seen Jess as 1 did ten years ago, I reckon you'd 'a thought so. However, 'tis all over now, and can't be helped."
"No, it can't be helped," repeated Janet.
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PICTURESQUE
HAMPDEN.
it stood in one corner of the room. Just above, set in a pretty hand-carved frame with a vase of flowers before it, hung the picture of a young girl.
It was an old-fashioned "tin-type" of a by-gone time, but even the poor workmanship and queer dress could not conceal the beauty of the handsome, careless face. Her head was turned a little, showing the thick, rich braid of abundant hair hanging down the girl's back. Her eyes were bright and full and brown, and a smile lurked in the corners of her saucy mouth.
Uncle John looked piteously at the pictured image of his shattered idol, worshipped so vainly and so long.
DWIGHT STREET, FROM MAIN.
Then the woman was heard rising to go, and Janet did not ask her to stay.
Uncle John heard the door close behind her and saw her going out at the gate-a coarse, stout woman in a gay shawl, and with scattering locks of black hair blowing about her blowsy face.
Janet was startled when she came into the kitchen and saw Uncle John sitting there.
Walter
DWIGHT STREET, CORNER RACE.
DWIGHT STREET, NEAR HIGH.
" Why, John, I didn't hear you come in!" she exclaimed. "Did you hear what that woman was saying?"
" Yes, Janet, 1 heard."
" If the story's true, that accounts for it - why you never could get any more particulars about Jessie, and why you never could find the grave."
Uncle John rose and walked with an uncertain step into the room adjoining the kitchen, which was kept for his own.
The mill gossips had been partly right. A small desk with a few books upon
"Jesse, Jesse, I don't believe it, lass. I don't believe it," he murmured in a tone of pathetic appeal. MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE CITY HALL. But when Janet opened the door half an hour later to call Uncle John to his dinner, the room was vacant and the picture was gone from its place on the wall. *
* * * * * It was noticed during the following winter that Uncle John was failing. He walked * *
THE SECOND LEVEL CANAL, SOUTH FROM DWIGHT STREET.
THE BUSINESS CENTER, VIEWED FROM DEPOT HILL ..
PICTURESQUE HAMPDEN.
11
A DOWN-LOOK FROM DEPOT HILL.
more feebly and his hair was whitening fast. He was not old enough in years to age so rapidly, and it was thought his old wound was troubling him again.
A little girl now came to the mill to bring him a warm dinner on pleasant days. It was a child that Uncle John and his sister had rescued from the clutches of Mother Tassett.
When she first began to come she was a thin, scared looking child, showing the effects of ill usage and neglect. Now she was plump and healthy. In the comfortable clothes which Janet had made for her, she was as neat and comely as any of the mill people's children.
Often, when the mill gates were open at night, she was seen waiting patiently for Uncle John. When he appeared they went homeward together, hand in hand.
Mother Tassett, from whose place the little girl had been taken, had come to the village about a year before and found quarters in a tenement of Rum Alley. If the atmosphere of wickedness about that neighborhood had been strong before, it was stronger than ever after Mother Tassett came. She was the boldest as well as the smartest of the dissolute gang of that desolute corner of the town.
It was a good thing for the neighborhood and a good thing for little Agnes Frye when Mother Tassett, in spite of all her
THE OLD|HOLYOKE HOUSE-1867.
HO SHALL BE BUR NEXT
INSFIELO, NEW YORK BNA BOSTEN
IL LINE OF STATIONARY POCKER B
THE POST OFFICE ENTRANCE.
shrewdness, had at last run her neck into the noose of the law far enough to insure her a six months' sentence. The little girl was left behind at the police station, waiting the action of the overseers of the poor, and there Uncle John had seen her, ragged and forlorn, and in pure pity had taken her home. Now the one dread of her life was the day when Mother Tassett would emerge from prison and try to claim her again. But the time went on and no such claim was made. " Mother Tassett's back, and she 'pears to be tryin' to drink herself to death this time," Kate Bowlin an- nounced, one day late in the spring, to the girl who at- tended the next warping frame, and the word was passed to Uncle John. Mother Tassett never ap- peared, however, to make trouble for Agnes or her new guardian.
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