University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
I START FOR COLLEGE AND MY UNCLE JACOB ADVISES ME.

THE time came at last when the sacred habit of intimacy
with my mother was broken, and I was
to leave her for college.

It was the more painful to her, as only a year before, my
father had died, leaving her more than ever dependent on
the society of her children.

My father died as he had lived, rejoicing in his work and
feeling that if he had a hundred lives to live, he would devote
them to the same object for which he had spent that
one—the preaching of the Gospel. He left to my mother the
homestead and a small farm, which was under the care of
one of my brothers, so that the event of his death made no
change in our family home center, and I was to go to college
and fulfill the hope of his heart and the desire of my
mother's life, in consecrating myself to the work of the
Christian ministry.

My father and mother had always kept sacredly a little
fund laid by for the education of their children; it was the
result of many small savings and self-denials—but self-denials
so cheerfully and hopefully encountered that they
had almost changed their nature and become preferences.
The family fund for this purpose had been used in turn by
two of my older brothers, who, as soon as they gained an
independent foothold in life, appropriated each his first
earnings to replacing this sum for the use of the next.

It was not, however, a fund large enough to dispense with
the need of a strict economy, and a supplemental self-helpfulness
on our part.

The terms in some of our New England colleges are
thoughtfully arranged so that the students can teach for
three of the winter months, and the resources thus gained
help out their college expenses. Thus at the same time they
educate themselves and help to educate others, and they
study with the maturity of mind and the appreciation of the
value of what they are gaining, resulting from a habit of
measuring themselves with the actual needs of life.

The time when the boy goes to college is the time when he
feels manhood to begin. He is no longer a boy, but an unfledged,
undeveloped man—a creature, half of the past and
half of the future. Yet every one gives him a good word
or a congratulatory shake of the hand on his entrance to
this new plateau of life. It is a time when advice is plenty
as blackberries in August, and often held quite as cheap—
but nevertheless a young fellow may as well look at what
his elders tell him at this time, and see what he can make
of it.

As I was “our minister's son,” all the village thought it
had something to do with my going. “Hallo, Harry, so
you've got into college! Think you'll be as smart a man as
your dad?” said one. “Wa-al, so I hear you're going to college.
Stick to it now. I could a made suthin ef I'd a had
larnin at your age,” said old Jerry Smith, who rung the
meeting-house bell, sawed wood, and took care of miscellaneous
gardens for sundry widows in the vicinity.

But the sayings that struck me as most to the purpose
came from my Uncle Jacob.

Uncle Jacob was my mother's brother, and the doctor not
only of our village, but of all the neighborhood for ten miles
round. He was a man celebrated for medical knowledge
through the State, and known by his articles in medical
journals far beyond. He might have easily commanded a
wider and more lucrative sphere of practice by going to
any of the large towns and cities, but Uncle Jacob was a
philosopher and preferred to live in a small quiet way in a
place whose scenery suited him, and where he could act

precisely as he felt disposed, and carry out all his little
humors and pet ideas without rubbing against conventionalities.

He had a secret adoration for my mother, whom he regarded
as the top and crown of all womanhood, and he
also enjoyed the society of my father, using him as a sort of
whetstone to sharpen his wits on. Uncle Jacob was a
church member in good standing, but in the matter of belief
he was somewhat like a high-mettled horse in a pasture,—he
enjoyed once in a while having a free argumentative race
with my father all round the theological lot. Away he
would go in full career, dodging definitions, doubling and
turning with elastic dexterity, and sometimes ended by
leaping over all the fences, with most astounding assertions,
after which he would calm down, and gradually suffer
the theological saddle and bridle to be put on him and go
on with edifying paces, apparently much refreshed by his
metaphysical capers.

Uncle Jacob was reported to have a wonderful skill in the
healing craft. He compounded certain pills which were
stated to have most wonderful effects. He was accustomed
to exact that, in order fully to develop their medical properties,
they should be taken after a daily bath, and be followed
immediately by a brisk walk of a specific duration in the
open air. The steady use of these pills had been known to
make wonderful changes in the cases of confirmed invalids,
a fact which Uncle Jacob used to notice with a peculiar
twinkle in the corner of his eye. It was sometimes whispered
that the composition of them was neither more nor
less than simple white sugar with a flavor of some harmless
essence, but upon this subject my Uncle Jacob was impenetrable.
He used to say, with the afore-mentioned waggish
twinkle, that their preparation was his secret.

Uncle Jacob had always had a special favor for me, shown
after his own odd and original manner. He would take me
in his chaise with him when driving about his business, and
keep my mind on a perpetual stretch with his odd questions

and droll, suggestive remarks or stories. There was a
shrewd keen quality to all that he said, that stimulated like
a mental tonic, and none the less so for a stinging flavor of
sarcasm and cynicism, that stirred up and provoked one's
self-esteem. Yet as Uncle Jacob was companionable and
loved a listener, I think he was none the less agreeable to
me for this slight touch of his claws. One likes to find
power of any kind—and he who shows that he can both
scratch and bite effectively, if he holds his talons in sheath,
comes in time to be regarded as a sort of benefactor for his
forbearance: and so, though I got many a shrewd mental
nip and gripe from my Uncle Jacob, I gave on the whole
more heed to his opinion than that of anybody else that I
knew.

From the time that I had been detected with my self-invented
manuscript, up to the period of my going to college,
the expression of my thoughts by writing had always
been a passion with me, and from year to year my mind had
been busy with its own creations, which it was a solace and
amusement for me to record.

Of course there was ever so much crabbed manuscript,
and no less confused, immature thought. I wrote poems,
essays, stories, tragedies, and comedies. I demonstrated
the immortality of the soul. I sustained the future immortality
of the souls of animals. I wrote sonnets and odes,
in whole or in part on almost everything that could be mentioned
in creation.

My mother advised me to make Uncle Jacob my literary
mentor, and the best of my productions were laid under his
eye.

“Poor trash!” he was wont to say, with his usual kindly
twinkle. “But there must be poor trash in the beginning.
We must all eat our peck of dirt, and learn to write sense
by writing nonsense.” Then he would pick out here and
there a line or expression which he assured me was “not
bad.” Now and then he condescended to tell me that for a
boy of my age, so and so was actually hopeful, and that I

[ILLUSTRATION]

UNCLE JACOB'S ADVICE.
"So you are going to college, boy! Well, away with you; there's no use
advising you; you'll do as all the rest do. In one year you'll know more
than your father, your mother, or I, or all your college officers—in fact,
than the Lord himself."

[Description: 467EAF. Image of a young Harry having a solemn discussion with his Uncle Jacob. Both men are wearing suits and standing in front of a fireplace. On the wall behind the fireplace are various trinkets, such as a candle, ornate clock, an engraved bottle and a landscape portrait. On the wall is a bookshelf with books askew.]

should make something one of these days, which was to me
more encouragement than much more decided praise from
any other quarter.

We all notice that he who is reluctant to praise, whose
commendation is scarce and hard-earned, is he for whose
good word everybody is fighting; he comes at last to be the
judge in the race. After all, the fact which Uncle Jacob
could not disguise, that he had a certain good opinion of
me, in spite of his sharp criticisms and scant praises, made
him the one whose dicta on every subject were the most important
to me.

I went to him in all the glow of satisfaction and the tremble
of self-importance that a boy feels who is taking the
first step into the land of manhood.

I have the image of him now, as he stood with his back to
the fire, and the newspaper in his hand, giving me his last
counsels. A little wiry, keen-looking man, with a blue,
hawk-like eye, a hooked nose, a high forehead, shadowed
with grizzled hair, and a cris-cross of deeply lined wrinkles
in his face.

“So you are going to college, boy! Well, away with you;
there 's no use advising you; you 'll do as all the rest do. In
one year you'll know more than your father, your mother,
or I, or all your college officers—in fact, than the Lord himself.
You'll have doubts about the Bible, and think you
could have made a better one. You 'll think that if the
Lord had consulted you he could have laid the foundations
of the earth better, and arranged the course of nature to
more purpose. In short, you'll be a god, knowing good and
evil, and running all over creation measuring everybody
and everything in your pint cup. There'll be no living with
you. But you'll get over it,—it's only the febrile stage of
knowledge. But if you have a good constitution, you'll
come through with it.”

I humbly suggested to him that I should try to keep clear
of the febrile stage; that forewarned was forearmed.

“Oh, tut! tut! you must go through your fooleries. These

are the regular diseases, the chicken-pox, measles, and
mumps of young manhood; you 'll have them all. We only
pray that you may have them light, and not break your constitution
for all your life through, by them. For instance,
you'll fall in love with some baby-faced young thing, with
pink cheeks and long eyelashes, and goodness only knows
what abominations of sonnets you'll be guilty of. That
isn't fatal, however. Only don't get engaged. Take it as
the chicken-pox—keep your pores open, and don't get cold,
and it'll pass off and leave you none the worse.”

“And she!” said I, indignantly. “You talk as if it was
no matter what became of her—”

“What, the baby? Oh, she'll outgrow it, too. The fact
is, soberly and seriously, Harry, marriage is the thing that
makes or mars a man; it's the gate through which he goes
up or down, and you shouldn't pledge yourself to it till you
come to your full senses. Look at your mother, boy; see
what a woman may be; see what she was to your father,
what she is to me, to you, to every one that knows her.
Such a woman, to speak reverently, is a pearl of great
price; a man might well sell all he had to buy her. But it
isn't that kind of woman that flirts with college boys. You
don't pick up such pearls every day.”

Of course I declared that nothing was further from my
thoughts than anything of that nature.

“The fact is, Harry, you can't afford fooleries,” said my
uncle. “You have your own way to make, and nothing to
make it with but your own head and hands, and you must
begin now to count the cost of everything. You have a
healthy, sound body; see that you take care of it. God gives
you a body but once. He don't take care of it for you,
and whatever of it you lose, you lose for good. Many a
chap goes into college fresh as you are, and comes out with
weak eyes and crooked back, yellow complexion and dyspeptic
stomach. He has only himself to thank for it. When
you get to college they'll want you to smoke, and you'll
want to, just for idleness and good fellowship. Now, before

you begin, just calculate what it'll cost you. You can't
get a good cigar under ten cents, and your smoker wants
three a day, at the least. There go thirty cents a day, two
dollars and ten cents a week, or a hundred and nine dollars
and twenty cents a year. Take the next ten years at that
rate, and you can invest over a thousand dollars in tobacco
smoke. That thousand dollars, invested in a savings bank,
would give a permanent income of sixty dollars a year,—
a handy thing, as you'll find, just as you are beginning life.
Now, I know you think all this is prosy; You are amazingly
given to figures of rhetoric, but, after all, you've got to get
on in a world where things go by the rules of arithmetic.”

“Well, uncle,” I said, a little nettled, “I pledge you my
word that I won't smoke or drink. I never have done
either, and I don't know why I should.”

“Good for you! your hand on that, my boy. You don't
need either tobacco or spirits any more than you need water
in your shoes. There's no danger in doing without them,
and great danger in doing with them; so let's look on that
as settled.

“Now, as to the rest. You have a faculty for stringing
words together, and a hankering after it, that may make or
spoil you. Many a fellow comes to naught because he can
string pretty phrases and turn a good line of poetry. He
gets the notion that he's to be a poet, or orator, or genius of
some sort, and neglects study. Now, Harry, remember that
an empty bag can't stand upright; and that if you are ever
to be a writer you must have something to say, and that
you've got to dig for knowledge as for hidden treasure.
A genius for hard work is the best kind of genius. Look at
great writers, and see how many had it. What a student
Milton was, and Goethe! Great fellows, those!—like trees
that grow out in a pasture lot, with branches all round.
Composition is the flowering out of a man's mind. When
he has made growth, all studies and all learning, all that
makes woody fibre, go into it. Now, study books; observe
nature; practice. If you make a good firm mental growth,

I hope to see some blossoms and fruits from it one of these
days. So go your ways, and God bless you!”

The last words were said as Uncle Jacob slipped into my
hand an envelope, containing a sum of money. “You'll
need it,” he said, “to furnish your room; and hark'e! if
you get into any troubles that you don't want to burden
your mother with, come to me.”

There was warmth in the grip with which these last
words were said, and a sort of misty moisture came over
his keen blue eye,—little signs which meant as much from
his shrewd and reticent nature as a caress or an expression
of tenderness might from another.

My mother's last words, after hours of talk over the evening
fire, were these: “I want you to be a good man. A
great many have tried to be great men, and failed; but
nobody ever sincerely tried to be a good man, and failed.”

I suppose it is about the happiest era in a young fellow's
life, when he goes to college for the first time.

The future is all a land of blue distant mists and shadows,
radiant as an Italian landscape. The boundaries between
the possible and the not possible are so charmingly vague!
There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow forever
waiting for each new comer. Generations have not exhausted
it!

De Balzac said, of writing his novels, that the dreaming
out of them was altogether the best of it. “To imagine,”
he said, “is to smoke enchanted cigarettes; to bring out
one's imaginations into words,—that is work!”

The same may be said of the romance of one's life. The
dream-life is beautiful, but the rendering into reality quite
another thing.

I believe every boy who has a good father and mother,
goes to college meaning, in a general way, to be a good fellow.
He will not disappoint them.—No! a thousand times,
no! In the main, he will be a good boy,—not that he is
going quite to walk according to the counsels of his elders.
He is not going to fall over any precipices—not he—but

he is going to walk warily and advisedly along the edge
of them, and take a dispassionate survey of the prospect,
and gather a few botanical specimens here and there. It
might be dangerous for a less steady head than his; but he
understands himself, and with regard to all things he says,
“We shall see.” The world is full of possibilities and open
questions. Up sail, and away; let us test them!

As I scaled the mountains and descended the valleys on
my way to college, I thought over all that my mother and
Uncle Jacob had said to me, and had my own opinion of it.

Of course I was not the person to err in the ways he had
suggested. I was not to be the dupe of a boy and girl flirtation.
My standard of manhood was too exalted, I reflected,
and I thought with complacency how little Uncle
Jacob knew of me.

To be sure, it is a curious kind of a thought to a young
man, that somewhere in this world, unknown to him, and
as yet unknowing him, lives the woman that is to be his
earthly fate,—to affect, for good or evil, his destiny.

We have all read the pretty story about the Princess of
China and the young Prince of Tartary, whom a fairy and
genius in a freak of caprice showed to each other in an enchanted
sleep, and then whisked away again, leaving them
to years of vain pursuit and wanderings. Such is the ideal
image of somebody, who must exist somewhere, and is to be
found sometime, and when found, is to be ours.

“Uncle Jacob is all right in the main,” I said; “but if I
should meet the true woman even in my college days, why
that, indeed, would be quite another thing.”