When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter’s hearth,—the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father’s suggested lessons,—tended to feed a passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm was to smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the daughter of a great scholar,—a scholar at whose name my father raised his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman’s daughter can boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments. She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music, her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.
“Tonics!” said Mr. Squills; “and don’t let him sit over his book. Send him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are growing too large;” and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his hand on my forehead. “Gad, sir, here’s an ideality for you; and, bless my soul, what a constructiveness!”
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was gone.
“My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my aching ideality—“my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good earnest.”
“Bless me, Austin!—at his age?”
“He is nearly eight years old.”
“But he is so forward.”
“It is for that reason he must go to school.”
“I don’t quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me; but you who are so clever—”
My father took my mother’s hand: “We can teach him nothing now, Kitty. We send him to school to be taught—”
“By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do—”
“By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again,” said my father, almost sadly. “My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed, and asked why. What did the gardener say? ‘To prevent their bearing too soon.’ There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of produce, that the plant may last.”
“Let me go to school,” said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life itself answered him.
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