CHAPTER III

WHAT THE BOYS DID WHEN BRYANT WAS YOUNG

Life in the time of Bryant’s boyhood was rather hard and rough. New England country life was never easy. The chairs were very straight-backed, the beds were hard, and the food was not very delicate, though there was always plenty of it—plenty of pork and beans, if nothing else. For all that, the boys in Bryant’s day had a very good time, which he tells about in the account of his early life to which we have already referred.

Among the pleasant occurrences of those old-fashioned times were the neighborhood “raisings.” When a man intended to build a house he got all the big, heavy timbers together for the frame, and then called in the neighbors to help him put them up. The minister always made a point of being present; and the young men thought it great sport, as did the boys, who could only look on. “It was a spectacle for us,” says Bryant, “next to that of a performer on the tight-rope, to see the young men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the beams at a great height from the ground, or as they stood to catch in their hands the wooden pins and the braces flung to them from below. Each tried to outdo the other in daring, and when the frame was all up, one of them would usually cap the climax by standing on his head on the ridge-pole.”

Another good time was had at the maple sugar frolic. In spring, when the sap begins to come up in the maple trees, men go about, and bore two or three holes in every maple tree in a sugar camp. In these they stick little spigots with holes through them, and underneath they set a pail to catch the sap. Soon it begins to drop. When the pails are filled, the men bring fresh ones, and carry off the sap to an enormous iron kettle hung on a pole over a hot fire.

“From my father’s door,” says Bryant, “in the latter part of March and the early part of April, we could see a dozen columns of smoke rising over the woods in different places, where the work was going on. After the sap had been collected and boiled for three or four days, the time came when the thickening liquid was made to pass into the form of sugar. This was when the syrup had become of such a consistency that it would feather—that is to say, when a beechen twig, formed at the small end into a little loop, dipped into the hot syrup and blown upon by the breath, sent into the air a light, feathery film.” The syrup was then lifted off and poured into moulds, or else stirred rapidly until cooled, when it became delicious brown sugar in loose grains. The boys had a great deal of fun “trying” the syrup to see if it was ready to “sugar off.”

Then there were husking-bees and apple-parings and cider-making; and in the winter all the young people went to singing school.

Bryant in his boyhood was also fond of fishing for trout in the small streams, where there were plenty of fish to catch. Another sport was squirrel shooting. The young men would divide into two equal parties and see which party could shoot the most squirrels.

Of course, in those days everybody went to church. Young Bryant began when he was only three years old. History does not say how he behaved, but there was not much chance to be naughty in church in those times. Every parish had its tithing man, whose business it was to maintain order in the church during divine service, and who sat with a stern countenance through the sermon, keeping a vigilant eye on the boys in distant pews and in the galleries. Sometimes when he detected two of them communicating with each other, he went to one of them, took him by the arm, and leading him away, seated him beside himself. He was also directed by law to see that the Sabbath was not profaned by people wandering in the fields or fishing in the brooks.

When he was eight years old, young Cullen began to make poetry. His grandfather thought him rather bright at this, and a year or two later asked him to turn the first chapter of the Book of Job into verse. He did it all. Here are two sample lines:

His name was Job, evil he did eschew. To him were born seven sons; three daughters, too.

For this he received a ninepenny piece, though his father thought the lines rather bad.