Clarence Darrow

“ And no less dead and past are the turning wheel, the groaning mill, the crumbling dam, and the kindly voice that told me of the wonders of the Roman world. And as my mind goes back to the Latin grammar and the little dusty office in the mill, I cannot suppress the longing hope that somewhere out beyond the stars my patient father has found a haven where they still can speak the Latin tongue, and where he comes nearer to Cæsar and Virgil and Ovid and to the blue Mediterranean Sea than while the high hills and stern conditions of his life kept him busy grinding corn. ”

“ In childhood the shadows are wholly forgotten in the brilliant radiance of the sun, and the clouds are so deep as to obscure for a time all the heavens above.
Over childhood, as over all the world, hangs the black pall of punishment,—which is only another name for vengeance and hate. In my day, and I fancy too often even now, parents believed that to “spare the rod” was to “spoil the child.” It was not the refinement of cruelty that made parents promise the child a whipping the next day or the next week, it was only their ignorance and thoughtlessness ”

“ I might rather mourn and lament, with all the teachers and parents and authors, that I was so profligate of my time when I was yet a child, and that I was not more studious in those far-off years. But as I look back to my childhood days, my sluggish heart beats quicker, and I can feel the warm young blood rush to my tingling feet and hands, and I realize once more the strange thrill of delight and joy that life and activity alone bring to all the young. ”

“ Ball-playing with us was quite another thing. The result of our games depended as much upon our mistakes, and those of the other side, as upon any good playing that we did. In a moment of intense excitement the batter would knock the ball straight into the short-stop’s hands; it was an easy matter to throw it to first-base and head off the runner, and every boy on the field and every man in the crowd would shout to the short-stop just what to do. He had time to spare; but for the moment the game was his, and all eyes were turned on him. ”

“ It is one of the errors of childhood to believe in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and, strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the young. It is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right and wrong. It is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate that overrides all earthly schemes. ”

“ For the hundredth time I protest that I want to play,—to finish my unending game; and again he tells me no, that John Stuart Mill began studying Greek when he was only three years old. And with heavy heart and muttered imprecations on John Stuart Mill, I am taken away from my companions and my play, and set down beside my father with my book. I can feel even now my sorrow and despair, as I leave my playmates and turn the stupid leaves. ”

“ ILLUSIONS As I look back upon my childhood, it seems as if the world were an illusion and as if everything were magic that passed before my eyes. True, we children learned our lessons in our arithmetics and geographies and readers, but we only learned by rote and said them from our lips; they had no application to our lives,—they were only tasks which we must get through before our foolish parents and unkind teachers would leave us free to live. We seem to have breathed an enchanted air, and to see nothing as it really was. ”

“ I can see him with his books,—English, Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew,—carrying them back and forth to the dusty mill, and snatching the smallest chance, even when the water was spilling over the dam, to learn more of the wonders that were held between the covers of these books.
All my life I have felt that Nature had some grudge against my father. If she had made him a simple miller, content when he was grinding corn and dipping the small toll from the farmer’s grist, he might have lived a fairly useful, happy life. ”

“ CHILDHOOD SURROUNDINGS The life of the child is not the life of the man, and the town of the child is not the town of the man.
I can never see Farmington except through my boyhood’s eyes, and no doubt the town and its people were not at all the same to the men and the women that they were to me. Every object meant one thing to them and quite a different thing to our childish minds. As I grew to boyhood, the mill-pond was only a place where I could fish and skate and swim, and the great turning wheel served only to divert my wondering eyes and ears as it kept up its noisy rounds. ”

“ In some form I am sure I have been fishing all my life, and will have no other sort of sport. Ever and ever have I been casting my line into the great unknown sea, and generally drawing it up with the hook as bare as when I threw it down; and still this in no way keeps me from dropping it in again and again, for surely sometime something will come along and bite! We are all fishers,—fishers of fish, and fishers of each other; and I know that for my part I have never managed to get others to nibble at my hook one-half so often as I have swallowed theirs. ”

“ In those far-off days the churchyard was only a casual thought that flitted now and then like a shadow through my mind,—never with much personal relation to myself, but more in connection with my father or mother, or with some old neighbor whom I knew and loved; but I find that more and more, as we grow older, the thought of churchyards becomes familiar to our lives and brings a personal meaning of which childhood cannot know. ”

“ The joys of childhood are keen, and the sorrows of childhood are deep. Years alone bring the knowledge that in thought and in feeling, as in the heavens above, sunshine and clouds follow each other in quick succession. ”

“ But I have put off writing this story for many, many years, until at last I am beginning to think of getting old; and if I linger much longer over unimportant excuses and explanations, I fear that I shall die, and future generations will never know that I have lived. For I am quite certain that no one else will ever write my story, and unless I really get to work, even my name will be forgotten excepting by the few who go back to my old-time home, and open the wire gate of the little graveyard, and go down the winding path between the white headstones until they reach my mound. ”

“ Last summer, when I visited the old Pennsylvania town, I went to the little burying-ground, and inside the yard I found an iron picket fence, and in this enclosure a monument taller than any other in the yard, and on this stone I read Squire Allen’s name. Poor old man! It is many years since the worms ate up the last morsel of the old man that even a worm could find fit to eat, but still even after death and decay he lies there solitary and exclusive, the most commanding and imposing of all the names that seek immortality in the carved letters of the granite stones. ”

“ My parents and teachers told me that I could never write or speak unless I learned grammar, and so I tried and tried, but even now I can hardly tell an adverb from an adjective, and I do not know that I care. When a little boy, I used to think that if I really had anything to tell I could make myself understood; and I think so still. The longer I live the surer I am that the chief difficulty of writers and speakers is the lack of interesting thoughts, and not of proper words. Certainly grammar was a hideous nightmare to me when a child at school. ”

“ At least the dreams were a part of childhood’s life, as later dreams are a part of maturer years. And, after all, if the dreams had not been dreamed then life had not been lived.
But here in the great pond we sometimes caught real fish. True, we waited long and patiently, with our lines hanging listlessly in the stream. True, the fishes were never so large or so many as we hoped to catch, but such as they were we dragged them relentlessly from the pond and strung them on a willow stick with the greatest glee. ”

“ But while I so plainly see the little, idle, prattling child, looking with wondering eyes at the great turning wheel, and asking his simple questions of the grave, kind old man in the great white coat, somehow there is no relation between that simple child and the man whom the world has buffeted and tossed for so many years, and with such a rough unfriendly hand, that he cannot help the feeling that this far-off child was really someone else. ”

“ As the last day drew near, our minds were filled with visions of how easy life would be when there was no school, and of the pleasure the summer held in store for us. On the last day we had no lessons to recite, and in the afternoon our parents were invited in, and we spoke pieces and read essays,—that is, the boys generally spoke the pieces and the girls read the essays. Somehow a boy never could write an essay, and even if he could manage to write one it would be beneath his dignity to stand up on the platform and read from little sheets of notepaper tied with red or blue ribbon. ”

“ There never was the slightest excuse or need for us to be anything but diligent and kind,—and still our young hearts were so perverse and hard that we let the lessons pass unheeded, and clutched at the smallest piece of pie or cake, or the slightest opportunity to deceive some good kind teacher, although we must have known that we missed a golden chance to become President of the United States and have money in the bank besides. ”

“ He, like myself, had wandered far and wide since he passed me on the bridge. He came to ask me to help him get a job. Somehow, as I saw him then, and recalled the arrogance and pride that old Squire Allen and his family always had, I am afraid I almost felt glad that he had been obliged to come, I am almost sure I felt that at last fortune was making things right and even. I cannot find in my philosophy any good reason why the scheme is any more just if he was rich and I was poor when we were young, and I am rich and he is poor when we are growing old,—but still I believe I felt this way. ”

“ More and more as the years go by we love the sun and the green earth, the silent mountains and the ever-moving sea. It seems as if slowly and all unawares our Mother Nature prepares and ripens us to be taken back into her all-embracing breast. ”

“ The hopper is filled with grain, the wheat is tolled, the water keeps falling over the great wheel, the noise of the turning stones and moving pulleys fills the air with a constant whir. My father leaves the mill at its work, comes into the little office, shuts the door, and tells me that mensa is the Latin word for “table.” This is more important to him than the need of rain, or the growing wheat, or the low water in the pond. ”

“ It is needless to add that the barber got the money,—and of course the death of the uncle and the good luck of the nephew were entirely due to the fact that the barber would not shave a customer on the Sabbath day.
Well, those were marvellous tales on which our young minds fed. I wonder now which is the more real,—the world outside as it seemed to us in our young school-days, or that same enchanted land our childhood knew, as we look back upon the scene through the gathering haze that the fleeting years have left before our eyes! ”