The Autobiography of an Idea

I

The Child

Once upon a time there was a village in New England called South Reading. Here lived a little boy of five years. That is to say he nested with his grandparents on a miniature farm of twenty-four acres, a mile or so removed from the center of gravity and activity which was called Main Street. It was a main street of the day and generation, and so was the farm proper to its time and place.

Eagerly the grandparents had for some time urged that the child come to them for a while; and after a light shower of mother tears—the father indifferent—consent was given and the child was taken on his way into the wilderness lying ten miles north of the city of Boston. The farm had been but recently acquired, and the child appeared, shortly thereafter, as a greedy parasite, to absorb that affection, that abundant warmth of heart which only Grandma and Grandpa have the intuitive folly to bestow. In short they loved him, and kept him bodily clean.

To the neighbors, he was merely another brat-nuisance to run about and laugh and scream and fight and bawl with the others—all bent on joy and destruction. The peculiar kink in this little man’s brain, however, was this: he had no desire to destroy—except always his momentary mortal enemies. His bent was the other way.

Now lest it appear that this child had come suddenly out of nothing into being at the age of five, we must needs authenticate him by sketching his prior tumultuous life. He was born of woman in the usual way at 22 South Bennett Street, Boston, Mass., U.S.A., on the third day of September, 1856. And, for the benefit of the exigent and meticulous, it may be added, on the authority of the young mother, that the event occurred on the second floor: day Tuesday, hour 10 p.m., weight ten pounds. The mother, at that date, had arrived at the age of twenty-one years, while the father would be thirty-eight come Christmas.

The long interval of passing years has made it clear that this pink monstrosity came into the world possessed of a picture-memory. He remembers, even now, certain cradle indiscretions; and from that same cradle he recalls a dim vision of a ghostly lady in somber black, and veiled, entering through the open door and speaking in a voice strangely unlike the mellow tones of his nearby mother. He remembers that one night in midwinter, he was lifted from his warm cozy refuge, bundled up and taken to the third floor. Grandpa was already there, scraping the heavy frost from one of the small square window panes; finally, after the ecstasies of Mama and the awed tones of Grandpa, the child was lifted up and held close to the pane to see what?—a long brilliant, cloud-like streak, which, he dimly fancied, must be unusual; but as it seemed to have no connection with the important concerns of his existence, he was glad to leave it to itself, whatever it was, and return to the warm spot from which he had been taken. This streak in the sky was Donati’s comet of 1858.

Before going further into the doings of this two-year-old, it may be well to give an outline of his mongrel origin.

As to his father, Patrick Sullivan, no need for discussion—he was Irish. As to the mother, Andrienne List Sullivan, she seemed French, but was not wholly so. She had the typical eyelids, expressive hazel eyes, an oval face, features mobile. She was a medium stature, trimly built, highly emotional, and given to ecstasies of speech. But she also had parents: her father, Henri List, was straight German of the Hanoverian type—six feet tall, well proportioned, erect carriage, and topped by a domical head, full, clean-shaven face, thick lips, small gray eyes, beetling brows and bottle-nose. He was of intellectual mold, and cynically amused at men, women, children and all else. Her mother, a miniature woman of great sweetness and gentle poise, was Swiss-French, born in Geneva—where also her three children were born. But her long Florentine nose suggested, unmistakably, an Italian strain. Her maiden name was Anna Mattheus. Like a true mère de famille, she ruled the roost, as was the custom in French society of the Middle Class. Her mind was methodic, her affection all-embracing.

Henri List was reticent as to his past, but the family gossip had it that as a young man he was educated for the Catholic priesthood, rebelled at the job and ran away from home.

The intervening years between this hegira and his arrival in Geneva, Switzerland, are a blank. There seems to have been some lack of clearness as to his vocation in Geneva; was he a Professor of Greek in the University, or did he coach rich young English gentlemen through their university course? In any event he was highly educated, and he prospered. It was further gossiped that, having met Anna Mattheus—considerably older than he—who kept a store filled with a sumptuous stock of choice linens and laces, he courted her. It was sneeringly said he married her for her money. At any rate, they were well to do, and lived in a marble house with large grounds called La Maison des Paquis. Here three children were born to them, in order of arrival: Andrienne, Jennie and Jules. The narrator has in his possession a small oval card with perforated edge, on the plain field of which is drawn with colored pencils, a park-like view, with house half-hidden among the trees. On the back, in the handwriting of her mother, is the notation “Terrace de la Maison des Paquis faites par Andrienne en 1849”—(that is at the age of fourteen). According also to family gossip, there seems to be no doubt that Henri List was tainted with cupidity. He speculated and finally lent ear to the wiles of a Jew. He ventured his all. The enterprise strangely and suddenly lost its credit, and the house of List tottered and collapsed in irretrievable ruin. Anna List borrowed money of her relatives to take the family to America, to forget the past and start anew in a strange land. Little wonder that Grandfather was reticent. It required a span of years for the narrator to pick up little by little the thread of the story.

As to Patrick Sullivan; he had no secrets, but his memory did not extend much back of his twelfth year. He said his father was a landscape painter, a widower, and he an only child. That together they used to visit the county fairs in Ireland. That at one of these fairs he lost his father in the crowd and never saw him again. Thus at the age of twelve he was thrown upon the world to make his way. With a curious little fiddle, he wandered barefoot about the countryside, to fiddle here and there for those who wished to dance; and of dancing there was plenty. Thus traveling he saw nearly all of Ireland. This wandering life must have covered a number of years. The period that emerges from the wander-period seems obscure in transition, but his attention must have focused on dancing as an art. As to the grim determination of his character, his pride and his ambition, there can be no doubt; but what chain of influences took him to London is not known. Arrived there, he placed himself under the tutelage of the best—most fashionable—masters, and in due time set up an academy of his own. Not content with this advance, which was successful, he must needs reach the heights of his art, and in Paris, the center of fashion, took instruction of the leading masters. In those days dancing was a social art of grace, of deportment, and of personal carriage. It had many branches of development, from the simple polka to highly figurative formations, in social functions, upward to its highest and most poetic reach in the romantic classical ballet. It was an art of elegance that has passed with the days of elegance. Artificial it largely was, yet humanizing, and beneficent. In such wise must the social value of the dance, of the dancing master, and the academy of a day long since past be visualized, to be understood in this day.

This young Irishman had another grand passion. To him the art of dancing was a fine art of symmetry, of grace, of rhythm; but parallel to this ran a hunger for Nature’s beauty. He must have been a pagan, this man, for in him Nature’s beauty, particularly in its more grandiose moods, inspired an ecstasy, a sort of waking trance, a glorious mystic worship. In this romantic quest, he had, through a series of years, footed it over a considerable part of Switzerland.

It seems strange at first glance that these highly virile and sensitive powers should be embodied in one so unlovely in person. His medium size, his too-sloping shoulders, his excessive Irish face, his small repulsive eyes—the eyes of a pig—of nondescript color and no flash, sunk into his head under rough brows, all seemed unpromising enough in themselves until it is remembered that behind that same mask resided the grim will, the instinctive ambition that had brought him, alone and unaided, out of a childhood of poverty.

Naturally enough he had not found time to acquire an “education,” as it was then called and is still called. He, however, wrote and spoke English in a polite way, and had acquired an excruciating French. Hence by the standards of his time in England he was no gentleman as that technical term went, but essentially a lackey, a flunkey or social parasite. Perhaps it was for this reason he revered book-learning and the learned. He knew no better.

It is probable that, about this time, the lure of America, goal of the adventurous spirit, the great hospitable, open-armed land of equality and opportunity, had been acting on his imagination. This is surmise. The fact, of which there is documentary evidence, is this: that on the 22nd day of July, 1847, he took passage at London for Boston in the good ship Unicorn of 550 tons register burden. This, in the eleventh year of the reign of Victoria; Louis Philippe nearing his political end; with revolution ripening in Germany; and the United States kindly relieving Mexico of its too heavy burden. And this, also, while a small prosperous family in a small European city was awaiting, all unconscious, the call to join him in the same city of the same far away land; and that but eleven brief years lay between them all and the advent of a child to whose story we must now begin a return. For the finger of fate was tracing a line in the air that was to lead on and on until it reached a finger tracing a line now and here.

Patrick Sullivan reached Boston in 1847, set up an academy and was successful. He always was successful. His probity was such that he could always command desirable influence and respect. He was familiar with polite forms. Later on, probably in 1850, the Geneva family also reached Boston. Somehow they met. The young Irishman, keen through training in the hard school of experience and self discipline was always wide awake; and this is what happened; he met the young girl, Andrienne, in the conventional way, was attracted by her grace of manner, her interesting broken English, her skilled piano playing; paid his court to her, professed love for her; they became engaged, and on the 14th of August, 1852, they were married. What is more likely is this; that he heard her playing of Chopin, Beethoven, et al., with approval, for he was fond of music; that he asked her to substitute dance music; that after the first few bars he was electrized—he had found a jewel without price. Her sense of rhythm, of sweep, of accent, of the dance-cadence with its reinforcements and languishments, the tempo rubato—was genius itself. He lost no time in marrying her as a business asset. She was lovable and he may have loved her. It is possible but hardly probable; for there is nothing in the record to show that he loved others, or that he loved himself. He was merely self-centered—not even cold. He was moderate of habit; drank a little wine, smoked an occasional cigar, and was an enthusiast regarding hygiene. The stage-setting augured well for the coming child. The stock was sound. All the tribe were black-haired. So he came to pay his visit in due time, as recorded, believed by his mother to be an angel from Heaven, so great, so illusioning is the Mother-passion. But, as regarded from the viewpoint of the chronicler, he was not an angel from heaven. At the age of two he had developed temper, strong will, and obstinacy. He became at times a veritable howling dervish. He bawled, he shrieked, he blubbered, sobbed, whined and whimpered. He seemed to be obsessed by fixed ideas. Once in a while, as time passed, there came periods of relative calm within the pervading tempest, and now and then he was not wholly unlovable. A rising sun seemed to be dawning within him. He became interested in his bath, given daily in a movable tub. Grandma would allow none but herself to perform this rite, and as she sponged him down, he would sing to her something about Marlbrouck s’en va-t’en guerre, or tell what this giant did, or that fairy. Life was beginning to break in upon him from outside. A continuous breaking in from the outside and breaking out from the inside was to shape his destiny.

He loved to look out of the window; to see people moving to and fro. But it was when first he saw the street-cleaners at work that there upsprung a life-fascination—the sight, the drama of things being done. South Bennett Street ran from Washington Street to Harrison Avenue, a short block, but for him a large world. The street was paved with cobble stones; the sidewalks were of brick. He was there at the window when the work began. Came on the front rank; four men armed with huge watering cans painted red; these they swung in rhythm one-two, one-two. The thrill began, the child breathed hard. Then followed the second rank—four men with huge brooms made of switches; they also, two-fisted, swung one-two, one-two, shaping a windrow in the gutter. Then came the glory of it all, the romantic, the utterly thrilling and befitting climax—an enormous, a wonderful speckled gray Normandy horse, drawing a heavy tip cart, and followed as a retinue by two men, one sweeping the windrows into hillocks, the other with shovel and with mighty faith, moving these mountains into the great chariot. Thus appeared from Washington Street, thus passed in orderly action, thus disappeared into Harrison Avenue the Pageant of Labor, leaving the child, alone, thrilled with a sort of alarm of discovery, held by an utter infatuation. He had missed nothing; he had noted every detail. He had seen it whole and seen it steady. It is a close surmise that what actually passed in the child’s mind, aside from the romance, was a budding sense of orderly power. Indeed, the rhythm of it all! And then, to the wondering child, there began the dawn of a wonder-world.

His mother often dandled him on her foot, holding his puny outstretched hands in hers, and in great glee and high spirits sang to him about Le bon roi Dagobert, Le grand St. Elois, and other heroes of the nursery. He felt these tales to be true, especially when the high points and low points of knee action were reached in a rushing climax. But one evening his mother took him for a visit; and on the return walk he tired and wailed. The mother raised him to her shoulder, and when the tears had dried he looked upward at the sky and beheld with delight the moon plowing its way through fleecy clouds. He called upon his mother to share in the joy. She too looked upward, yet told him that the moon was not plowing a path through the clouds, but that the clouds were driven by the wind across the face of the moon. This astounding statement he received as an affront to his common sense, and so stated. But the mother was adamant in her folly. He looked again skyward, to confirm himself. As by accident his eye fastened on the moon; the moon held steady and he was amazed to see the clouds go by. Then consciously he tried it on the clouds and the moon again plowed on. This process he reversed and reversed until he felt sure, and then it was he confided to his weary mother sagging under the intolerable burden of him, that he had made a discovery! He felt a sense of mastery and pride. He, he, had discovered this thing. In a world rising larger, difficulties appeared, and this particular thing was not quite what it seemed at first to be. But he had mastered it. That his mother knew all about it, had told him all about it, instantly faded; the child sank into sleep. The mother, weary unto death, reached her destination; she entered with her sleeping son while the clouds and the moon in the stillness of early night went their serene way undisturbed by further mundane intervention.

Ever at the window pane, he liked to watch the snow, falling gently in large moist flakes and, in the little gusts, swirling and piling here and there, gathering curiously in odd nooks, and crannies, gathering on the window panes across the street, gathering on his own window panes, mantling the trees in a loving way, building far out in a roll from the top of a neighbor house—and not breaking off (why did it not break off?). And the stillness, the muffled stillness, the lovely stillness. He was not satisfied to glance, he must look long, very long and steadily, he must see things move, he must follow the story, he must himself live the drama of dark things slowly changing into white things. It was all so real to him as he gazed through the window pane, alone and very quiet. And then when morning came, the hasty rattle and scoop and sip of the shovels, cleaning the sidewalks, heaping the snow in mountains in the street. Again the song of work, the song of action.

About this time a strange thing happened. It is the mother’s story repeated many times in after years. It seems one afternoon she was at the piano playing a nocturne with the fervor and melancholy sweetness that were her sometime mood. Lost in dreamland she played on and on, when of a sudden she seemed to hear a voice low-pitched like a sigh, a moan. She stopped, looked, listened; no one there. She seemed mistaken; then from under the very piano itself, came a true sob, a child sob and sigh. Why tell what happened? Her precious son in her arms pressed tight to her bosom; tears, tears, an ecstasy of tears, a turmoil of embraces, the flood gates open wide, a wonder, a joy, a happiness, an exultation, an exaltation supreme over all the world. The child did not understand. Why did he, unnoticed, enter the room; why secrete himself where he was found; why was he overcome and melted into lamentation? Had anyone else been playing, would he have thus responded? Had a new world begun to arise, this time a wonder-world within himself? Had there been awakened a new power within this child of three—a power arising from the fountainhead of all tears?

Thus after traversing a long orbit inversely to the prehistoric of the family genealogy, and tracing, on the backward swing, the curve of a little one’s experience in contact with the outer world and his individual impulsive responses thereto, we again take the train for South Reading.

Arriving at the station a man descends, asks directions, and follows the first dirt road to the left, leading over an almost treeless flat, and heading for a somewhat distant hill. Part way up the hill he notices a house on the right. Here lived a man named Whittemore, who having lost a leg, proceeded in due consideration of the remaining one, to invent, perfect and manufacture a new type of crutch, which has remained the standard to this day. The workshop stood some distance back of the house, just at the beginning of the pine woods that covered part of the hill. The road here takes a curve to the right, traverses the back of the hillside with a heavy growth of pines on the right ascension, and a neat valley to the left with scattering woods and meadow. The road then straightens, becomes of easy grade, and begins to emerge from the wilderness, so to speak. An orchard comes into view on the left, a field of herds-grass on the smoothly rounded hilltop at the right. Straight ahead, running at the right angles and terminating the road thus far traversed, was the main road from South Reading to Stoneham. The land here was level for a moment or two. At the left-hand corner of the intersection stood a rather modern house, clapboarded, painted white with green shutters, and in front of it on the Stoneham Road were two stately elms. Here lived the Tompsons. The person who made this trip had no sooner reached the intersection and made a mental note or two of the surroundings than he saw a middle-aged or elderly couple, quite near, slowly approaching from the left on the road running toward South Reading. They were leading between them a chubby child who was screaming at the top of his angry voice, crying savagely, declaring vindictively he would not go, he would not go to school. The traveler must have worn the tarnhelm of legend, for they saw him not. To our thinking he was a phantasm of years to come. The child was absurdly dressed. Under an immense straw hat, curving broadly upward at the brim and tied on with a ribbon, appeared his upturned face, red, bloated, distorted; angry eyes, terribly bright, running with tears in a stream; a mouth hideously twisted out of shape. Below this raging hell was a sort of white jacket and a big bow tie. Below this, white pantalettes, gathered in at the ankle and more or less flounced or frizzled. These pantalettes were the source of his fear, of his rage and his protest. He had already on account of them, he said, been regularly insulted by the neighbors’ children who had formed a circle around him and danced, sneered, pointed the index of scorn, and made merry. Was that not enough? Must he now face a schoolful of tormentors? He would not go, he would not go! He bawled and screamed that he would not go! The child was on the verge of hysterics; it seemed less agonizing to face death than ridicule. The elders consulted quietly, turned back, the child still between them, and disappeared at the entranceway of a house a hundred yards or so beyond the Tompsons on the Stoneham Road. Next day, the child appeared in conventional garb. His name was Louis, or, as his Grandmother pronounced it, Louie. It was a joyous day for him, a sad day for her. For in her heart she knew that with the laying away of the pantalettes there was laid away a child—a child gone forever—a child soon to be but a sweet memory—a child soon to metamorphose into a tousle-headed, freckled, more or less toothless, unclean selfish urchin in jeans; and that he would continue to grow bigger, stronger, rougher, and gradually grow away from her—ever more masculine, ever more selfish. But this apprehension, this heart’s foreboding was not to come wholly true, for she held his love—she held it to the end. The child was not an enfant terrible; he was, rather, an independent, isolated compound of fury, curiosity and tenderness. Subtle indeed were the currents flowing and mingling within him, embryonic passions arising and shaping, ambitions vaguely stirring; while his sharp eyes saw everything. Spring was on the wane. The birds were full-throated in glorification of the number of bugs and worms eaten, or the intensive discussion of domestic affairs. High up in one of the Tompson elms—the one to the east—hung the purse-like nest of the selfsame golden orioles that came there year by year, while from a nearby meadow floated the tinkle of a solitary bob-o-link winging its way rejoicing. The day was beauteous; full sunshine flooded and enfolded all. The child, after much thought—of its kind—suddenly announced he was ready. His curiosity had been insidiously at work. He would see the school; he would meet new children; he had become eager; he would be a big boy in the world’s opinion. So, on this same cheerful morning, hand in hand with Grandma, who alone habitually assumed responsibilities, he began the pilgrimage of learning that hath no end. They took the dusty road that led eastward, directly toward the north end of the village. They leisurely mounted a gentle grade until the crest was reached. At this exact point, just behind the stone wall to the right of the road—marvel of marvels—stood a gigantic, solitary ash tree. On account of a certain chipmunk, various flowers, pebbles, and other things, the child had not noticed it during the approach. But of a sudden, there it stood, grand, overwhelming, with its immense trunk, its broad branches nearly sweeping the grass, its towering dome of dense dark green; opposite it, across the road was a farm house; back of it an open pasture. From the vantage of the road spread out a view of things below. The grandmother was for going on. The child stood transfixed, appalled. A strange faraway storm, as of distant thundering, was arising within his wonderself. He had seen many trees, yes; but this tree—this tree! He trembled strangely, he wished to cry; with gentle scolding he was dragged away. From this point the road was bare and shaggy. Halfway down, to the left, and set well back, was found not the little red schoolhouse of romance, but a rather large white one, clapboarded, green blinds, gabled, a bell, a well with force-pump, trampled playground, and so on. He was duly presented to the teacher. Her face and form, alas, like many another face and form, have passed into memory’s oblivion. All details settled, he was to come the next morning, which he did, after successfully passing the magnet tree, while saluting it affectionately in a calmer mood. Day after day he passed the tree. It became his tree—his Great Friend.

He was to spend many days at this barren hillside school. He became acquainted with the boys and girls there, for it was coeducational. What these children did during the recess hour would scandalize the wholly good. But to the casual sinner, scrutinizing the depths of his own past, reason might be found and a certain tolerance engendered whereby these vagaries of small animals, if not exactly condoned, might at least be minimized as the native output or byproduct of inquisitiveness and emulation. The child was as yet too young to fight. But according to the rules and regulations of the gang his time was but deferred, for each new boy must establish his fistic status.

The schoolroom was large and bare with two wooden posts supporting the roof. The teacher sat at her desk on a raised platform at the wall opposite the entrance. The children sat at rows of desks (a row per grade) at right angles to the rear wall; in front of them an open space for recitation by class; blackboard on the wall and so forth. There were five grades in the single room. Teacher sat at her desk, ruler in hand to rap with or admonish. All the children studied their lessons aloud, or mumbled them. The room vibrated with a ceaseless hum, within which individual voices could be heard. Everything was free and easy; discipline rare. There was however a certain order of procedure. Came time for a class to recite. They flocked to the wall and stood in a row; neither foot nor head at first. Questions and answers concerning the lesson of the day. Teacher’s questions specific; pupils’ answers must be definite, categorical. Teacher was mild, patient; the answers were sometimes intelligent, more often hesitant, bashful, dull, or hopelessly stupid. Each answer was followed by a monotonous “go to the foot,” “go to the head;” and all the time the hum went on, the unceasing murmur, a thin piping voice here, a deeper one there, a rasping out yonder, as they pored over their primers, first readers, geographies, arithmetics; while now and again Teacher’s voice rose high, questioning the class on the rack, the children answering as best they could. This babel merged or deliquesced into a monotone; there seemed to be a diapason, resonant, thick, the conjoined utterance of many small souls trying to learn, entering the path of knowledge that would prove short for most of them. The children were all barefoot and rather carelessly clad; notably so in the matter of omissions. One thing is certain and the rest is lies: This school was of, for, and by the people.

The child was given his proper place in the lowest grade, or class, or whatever it was called. He took hold rather blithely. He seemed to feel the importance of his entry into this new world, so different from home. Little by little he seemed to feel that he belonged there; but he never succeeded in feeling that the school belonged to him except as to its externals. Somehow he did not fit into the curriculum or the procedure. He was of a pronounced, independent nature. He quickly became listless as to his own lessons. He seemed to be nothing but a pair of eyes and ears not intended for books, but for the world little and big about him. In this immediate sense he was almost devoid of self-consciousness. His normal place was at the foot of his class. But one day he awakened to the fact that unawares he had become interested, not in books, but in procedure; said procedure consisting in the oral examinations and recitations of the grades above his own, as they, in accordance with the arrangement of the schoolroom, stood directly in front of him, drawn up in line, undergoing the routine torture. He began to notice their irregular mass-effect and their separate persons. He followed their fortunes in going to the foot and going to the head. He transferred himself to them. He noticed, too, which girls were the prettiest and which boys were the gawkiest. He learned the names of all. He became solicitous of their personal fortunes, in their struggle for knowledge or their attempts to escape it. For him, it became a sort of drama, a sort of stage performance, and he began to note with growing interest what they said and what teacher said, which answers were correct, which were failures. Over and over he saw and heard this until he came to know the groundwork of what all the grades above him were struggling with. But as to his own lessons—Alas! Yet he followed the upper grades so intently that he became critical: What was this about the four men who built so many perches of stone wall in three days, and two other men who were to build some wall in six days? What did it amount to anyway? The real question was where was the wall to be built? For whom was it to be built? What was his name? What were the names of the men who were building the wall, (for it was becoming a real wall)? Were they Irish or Scotch? Where did they get the stone to build the wall? Did they get it from the rough quarry across the road from the schoolhouse? Did they gather up boulders from the fields? Was not this matter of four men and two men irrelevant? The information was too sparse, too unconvincing. He could not place the wall, and what good was any wall he could not see? And thus he went on, unaffected by the abstract, concerned only with the concrete, the actual, the human.

One evening when all were at home, a letter arrived addressed to Grandpa. He opened the envelope and read the letter aloud. It was from Teacher, and set forth with deep regret and concern that his grandson was a dull boy, that he was inattentive, would not study his lessons, was always at the foot of his class, but he was a nice boy. Could not Mr. List bring influence to bear to induce Louis to reform his ways? Would not a kindly word from him, concerning the need of education, have a moral effect? She had used all her powers of persuasion, and so forth and so on. At the end of the reading Grandpa dropped the letter on the floor, burst into volcanic laughter, roaring until the lid of the heater rattled, rocking forward and backward on his chair, clapping himself on the knee, in a series of subsiding outbursts, ending in a long drawn spasmodic chuckle, expressive of his cynical sense of humor, his infinite contempt for those who had eyes and yet saw not. To call his sharp-eyed grandson a dullard! Why, he said, one might as well call Sirius a flapjack, and other joking words to that effect, for he was fond of teasing his grandson, whom he had so long watched out of the corner of his eye. But Grandma, more conservative, took the matter seriously. With her grandson standing at her knees, a bit abashed, a bit afraid, after giving her six propitiatory kisses, his arms about her neck and cheek to cheek, she found it, oh, so hard, to scold him. Instead she told him gently how necessary it was to acquire an education; how necessary to that end that little boys, particularly her own grandson, for the family’s pride, should attend industriously to lessons. Could he not do better, would he not do better? He said he could and would; and all was peace.

Next day, at school, he pitched in, and the next day and the next; shutting out all else. Oh, it was so easy to head this class; so easy for one who knew what the upper grades knew, or thought they knew for a moment or perhaps a day. They knew not that it was all, save a bare remnant, fated to fade away forever. Tired of heading the class, which was so easy, he occasionally, and indeed with increasing frequency fell to zero, because of a lapse, because, perhaps, of a twitching squirrel in a tree nearby the window, or a beautiful white cloud curiously changing shape as it slowly drifted through a beautiful blue sky. And what did it all amount to? What signified it to be at the head of a row of dull-wits? He was becoming arrogant. For Grandma’s sake, he kept on, after a fashion. He was becoming bored.

Summer was waning. The third of September was at hand. Six candles in the cake announced an anniversary. He was overjoyed. He was actually six.

The winter of 1862–3 passed along with its usual train of winter sports and hardships. Louis joined heartily according to his height and weight in all the sports. Of hardships he knew nothing. What fun it was to be drawn on a sled over the snow by his Uncle Julius. To be drawn on the same sled over the dark sheer ice of the pond by Uncle on newly sharpened skates. What thrill of courage it required not to cry out as he shuddered at the darkness below, and wondered whether the pace were not too swift. But Uncle, some fifteen years older than he, was to him a big man; and what could not a big man do? So he had faith in Uncle, if not entire confidence, as they flew here and there among the gay crowd of skaters. How they went way to the end of the pond and then swung back past the ice houses where men were beginning to work! And later on how thrilled and stilled he was by the thunderous boom and tear of an ice crack ripping its way from shore to shore! And many such booms he heard on similar trips in zero weather. And then the men at work cutting ice! How exciting it was to watch men at work. They used large hand saws to cut ice into square blocks and there was one strange saw drawn by a horse. Then men with poles shoved and dragged the ice-blocks through the clear water to the bottom of the runway, and then it was hauled up the runway by a horse that walked away with a rope that ran through a pulley and then back to the ice cake. The ice seemed very thick and clear.

And then came splendid snowstorms, decorating the trees, forming great drifts through which he struggled in exultation, every now and then stumbling and falling with his face in the snow. How he rolled over and over in glee in the snow of a white world, a beautiful world even when the gray skies lowered. And why not? Had he not warm woolen mittens knitted by Grandma, and hood and stockings by the same faithful hands, and “artics”? Was he not all bundled up?

And the sleigh rides. Oh, the sleigh rides in the cutter with the horse looming so high, and the row of bells around the horse’s collar, jangling and tinkling in jerky time. And he so warm under the buffalo robe. And they met so many other sleighs in the village when they went to the post-office or the grocery store, and he noticed so many men walking about clad in buffalo coats. And he made snowballs and did all the minor incidentals. It was his first experience within the pulchritude of a winter in the open. His mother came frequently to see him and caress him. He could hardly understand why she loved him so; he had so many other personal interests and distractions. But he hailed her comings and deplored her departures.

While his name was Louis, he had other names—interesting ones, too. He had not been christened or baptized. The question had called for a family council. The father, a nominal Freemason, not sure whether he was a Catholic or an Orangeman or anything in particular, expressed no serious interest; he would leave it to the rest. Grandpa, as usual, vented his view in scornful laughter. Grandma, a Mennonite, was opposed to baptism. But Mother in her excited way was rampant. What! Would she permit any man to say aloud over the body of her pure and precious infant that he was born in sin and ask for sponsors? Never! That settled it and they named him Louis Henri Sullivan. It has been declared and denied that the name was given in order to heap honors upon Napoleon III. Be that as it may. The name Henri, obviously, was to deify Grandpa. The Sullivan could not be helped. It was scorned by all but its owner. They detested the Irish, whose peaceful penetration of Boston had made certain sections thereof turn green. Even his wife could not stand for it, much less for Patrick. So sometimes she gallicized the name; which wasn’t so bad, when she used it in the third person, nominative, singular. Then she had an inspiration, an illumination one might say, and invented the word Tulive, whatever that may have meant, as a general cover-name, and thus secured a happy, lifelong escape. But later on, say about the age of twelve, the scion asked his father about this name Sullivan, which seemed to coincide with shanty-Irish. So his father told him this tale: Long ago in Ireland, in the good fighting days, there were four tribes or clans of the O’Sullivans: The O’Sullivan-Moors, the O’Sullivan Macs, and two others. That We were descended from the O’Sullivan-Moors, and that all four tribes were descended from a Spanish marauder, who ravished the west Irish coast and settled there. His name it appears was O’Soulyevoyne or something like that, which, translated, meant, “The Prince with One Eye.” Now, however great was the glory of this pirate chief, his descendant, Louis Henri Sullivan O’Sullivan-Moore-O’Soulyevoyne, had this specific advantage over him of the high-seas. The prince had but one eye that must have seen much; the youngster of six had two eyes that saw everything, without desire to plunder.

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.
And these become part of him or her that peruses them here.

Whitman