I know that in writing the following pages I
am divulging the great secret of my life, the
secret which for some years I have guarded far
more carefully than any of my earthly
possessions; and it is a curious study to me to analyze
the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel
that I am led by the same impulse which forces
the unfound-out criminal to take somebody into
his confidence, although he knows that the act is
liable, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing.
I know that I am playing with fire, and I feel the
thrill which accompanies that most fascinating
pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find a sort
of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all
the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into
a practical joke on society.
And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of
unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse from
which I am seeking relief, and of which I
shall speak in the last paragraph of this
account.
I was born in a little town of Georgia a few
years after the close of the Civil War. I shall
not mention the name of the town, because there
are people still living there who could be
connected with this narrative. I have only a faint
recollection of the place of my birth. At times
I can close my eyes, and call up in a dream-like
way things that seem to have happened ages ago
in some other world. I can see in this half vision
a little house,--I am quite sure it was not a large
one;--I can remember that flowers grew in the
front yard, and that around each bed of flowers
was a hedge of vari-colored glass bottles stuck
in the ground neck down. I remember that once,
while playing around in the sand, I became
curious to know whether or not the bottles grew
as the flowers did, and I proceeded to dig them up
to find out; the investigation brought me a
terrific spanking which indelibly fixed the incident in
my mind. I can remember, too, that behind the
house was a shed under which stood two or three
wooden wash-tubs. These tubs were the earliest
aversion of my life, for regularly on certain
evenings I was plunged into one of them, and scrubbed
until my skin ached. I can remember to this day
the pain caused by the strong, rank soap getting
into my eyes.
Back from the house a vegetable garden ran,
perhaps, seventy-five or one hundred feet; but to
my childish fancy it was an endless territory. I
can still recall the thrill of joy, excitement and
wonder it gave me to go on an exploring
expedition through it, to find the blackberries, both
ripe and green, that grew along the edge of the
fence.
I remember with what pleasure I used to
arrive at, and stand before, a little enclosure in
which stood a patient cow chewing her cud, how
I would occasionally offer her through the
bars a piece of my bread and molasses, and
how I would jerk back my hand in half
fright if she made any motion to accept my
offer.
I have a dim recollection of several people who
moved in and about this little house, but I have
a distinct mental image of only two; one, my
mother, and the other, a tall man with a small,
dark mustache. I remember that his shoes or
boots were always shiny, and that he wore a gold
chain and a great gold watch with which he was
always willing to let me play. My admiration
was almost equally divided between the watch and
chain and the shoes. He used to come to the
house evenings, perhaps two or three times a
week; and it became my appointed duty whenever
he came to bring him a pair of slippers, and
to put the shiny shoes in a particular corner; he
often gave me in return for this service a bright
coin which my mother taught me to promptly
drop in a little tin bank. I remember distinctly
the last time this tall man came to the little house
in Georgia; that evening before I went to bed he
took me up in his arms, and squeezed me very
tightly; my mother stood behind his chair wiping
tears from her eyes. I remember how I sat upon
his knee, and watched him laboriously drill a hole
through a ten-dollar gold piece, and then tie the
coin around my neck with a string. I have worn
that gold piece around my neck the greater part
of my life, and still possess it, but more than once
I have wished that some other way had been found
of attaching it to me besides putting a hole
through it.
On the day after the coin was put around my
neck my mother and I started on what seemed to
me an endless journey. I knelt on the seat and
watched through the train window the corn and
cotton fields pass swiftly by until I fell asleep.
When I fully awoke we were being driven through
the streets of a large city--Savannah. I sat up
and blinked at the bright lights. At Savannah
we boarded a steamer which finally landed us in
New York. From New York we went to a town
in Connecticut, which became the home of my
boyhood.
My mother and I lived together in a little
cottage which seemed to me to be fitted up almost
luxuriously; there were horse-hair covered chairs
in the parlor, and a little square piano; there
was a stairway with red carpet on it leading to a
half second story; there were pictures on the
walls, and a few books in a glass-doored case.
My mother dressed me very neatly, and I
developed that pride which well-dressed boys
generally have. She was careful about my associates,
and I myself was quite particular. As I look
back now I can see that I was a perfect little
aristocrat. My mother rarely went to anyone's
house, but she did sewing, and there were a great
many ladies coming to our cottage. If I were
around they would generally call me, and ask me
my name and age and tell my mother what a
pretty boy I was. Some of them would pat me
on the head and kiss me.
My mother was kept very busy with her
sewing; sometimes she would have another woman
helping her. I think she must have derived a fair
income from her work. I know, too, that at least
once each month she received a letter; I used to
watch for the postman, get the letter, and run to
her with it; whether she was busy or not, she
would take it and instantly thrust it into her
bosom. I never saw her read one of these letters. I
knew later that they contained money and,
what was to her, more than money. As busy as
she generally was she, however, found time to
teach me my letters and figures and how to spell
a number of easy words. Always on Sunday
evenings she opened the little square piano, and
picked out hymns. I can recall now that whenever
she played hymns from the book her tempos
were always decidedly largo. Sometimes on other
evenings when she was not sewing she would play
simple accompaniments to some old southern songs
which she sang. In these songs she was freer,
because she played them by ear. Those evenings
on which she opened the little piano were
the happiest hours of my childhood. Whenever
she started toward the instrument I used to
follow her with all the interest and irrepressible joy
that a pampered pet dog shows when a package
is opened in which he knows there is a sweet bit
for him. I used to stand by her side, and often
interrupt and annoy her by chiming in with
strange harmonies which I found either on the
high keys of the treble or the low keys of the bass.
I remember that I had a particular fondness for
the black keys. Always on such evenings, when
the music was over, my mother would sit with me
in her arms, often for a very long time. She
would hold me close, softly crooning some old
melody without words, all the while gently
stroking her face against my head; many and many a
night I thus fell asleep. I can see her now, her
great dark eyes looking into the fire, to where?
No one knew but she. The memory of that
picture has more than once kept me from straying
too far from the place of purity and safety in
which her arms held me.
At a very early age I began to thump on the
piano alone, and it was not long before I was able
to pick out a few tunes. When I was seven
years old I could play by ear all of the hymns
and songs that my mother knew. I had also
learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but
I preferred not to be hampered by notes. About
this time several ladies for whom my mother
sewed heard me play, and they persuaded her
that I should at once be put under a teacher; so
arrangements were made for me to study the
piano with a lady who was a fairly good musician;
at the same time arrangements were made
for me to study my books with this lady's
daughter. My music teacher had no small difficulty at
first in pinning me down to the notes. If she
played my lesson over for me I invariably
attempted to reproduce the required sounds
without the slightest recourse to the written
characters. Her daughter, my other teacher, also had
her worries. She found that, in reading,
whenever I came to words that were difficult or
unfamiliar I was prone to bring my imagination to
the rescue and read from the picture. She has
laughingly told me, since then, that I would
sometimes substitute whole sentences and even
paragraphs from what meaning I thought the
illustrations conveyed. She said she sometimes was
not only amused at the fresh treatment I would
give an author's subject, but that when I gave
some new and sudden turn to the plot of the story
she often grew interested and even excited in
listening to hear what kind of a denouement I would
bring about. But I am sure this was not due to
dullness, for I made rapid progress in both my
music and my books.
And so, for a couple of years my life was
divided between my music and my school books.
Music took up the greater part of my time. I
had no playmates, but amused myself with
games--some of them my own invention--which could
be played alone. I knew a few boys whom I had
met at the church which I attended with my
mother, but I had formed no close friendships with
any of them. Then, when I was nine years old,
my mother decided to enter me in the public
school, so all at once I found myself thrown among
a crowd of boys of all sizes and kinds; some of
them seemed to me like savages. I shall never
forget the bewilderment, the pain, the heart-sickness
of that first day at school. I seemed to be
the only stranger in the place; every other boy
seemed to know every other boy. I was
fortunate enough, however, to be assigned to a teacher
who knew me; my mother made her dresses. She
was one of the ladies who used to pat me on the
head and kiss me. She had the tact to address
a few words directly to me; this gave me a
certain sort of standing in the class, and put me
somewhat at ease.
Within a few days I had made one staunch
friend, and was on fairly good terms with most
of the boys. I was shy of the girls, and remained
so; even now, a word or look from a pretty
woman sets me all a-tremble. This friend I bound
to me with hooks of steel in a very simple way.
He was a big awkward boy with a face full of
freckles and a head full of very red hair. He
was perhaps fourteen years of age; that is, four
or five years older than any other boy in the class.
This seniority was due to the fact that he had
spent twice the required amount of time in
several of the preceding classes.
Up to Podcast Index
