The boyhood of John Kent

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BY ^

WILLIS BOYD ALLEN

Author of “ Tk^. Pine Cone Stories," “ Christmas at Surf Point" “ The Red Mountain of Alaska" “ The Lion City of Africa" etc.

BOSTON AND CHICAGO

Copyright, 1891,

By Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society.

TO a^P father,

WitI) deepest (iratitade, Respect, and lyove,

I offer tl)i3 SodI^.

Contents

CHAPTER page

I. Father and Son 7

II. The Hole in the Wall 22

Chapter I. Father And Son

a certain winter night, when the darkness all around was as black and soft as velvet, and not a star shone in its folds ; when the northeast wind blew steadily and drove myriads of tiny, crystallized snowflakes before it so swiftly that they seemed never to reach the earth at all, but just to whiz past, and off into the sky again ; when the air was bitter cold, and even the snow on the ground looked warm, as one thought of the small leaved plants, the spiders and beetles and ants it sheltered, lying snug and close in their tiny homes, — on this winter night, just after midnight, John Kent stood before a blazing fire, built in the edge of a pine forest, and tried to warm his small hands over the restless red

The Boyhood of John Kent.

flame that would blow in exactly the wrong direction, and either puff smoke in his face or roar away toward the tall, silent trunks of the pines, as if its whole duty were to warm them instead of the shivering, half-benumbed boy on the other side.

“ Poor little fellow ! What will he do without a mother.?”

Those were the first words that John could ever remember in his life. He never forgot them.

“ How old are ye, bub .? ” asked the same voice, in tones so full of sympathy, rough and harsh though they were, that John really began to think that something was the matter.

“Five, sir; ’most six,” said he, his lip trembling, as he looked up into the face bending over him.

“Poor little chap,” repeated the voice. Then there was a whispered consultation, the first speaker’s bright buttons gleaming in the firelight as he held his hand absent-mindedly over the fire.

“Yer father’ll be along soon. He built the fire fer ye, did n’t he .? ”

“Yes, sir ; he told me to stay right here.”

y'

Father and Son.

John was trying hard not to cry. He was conscious of a great longing for his father to come. Indeed, he placed nearly all his wants, at that time of his life, in one class. Every need resolved itself somehow into a temporary lack of father. If he were cold (as he was now, very) he felt vaguely that father meant warmth ; when he was hungry for food, he got the feeling all mixed up with hunger for father ; to be without father was his unexpressed definition, somewhere in the sweet, morning mistiness of his waking child-ideas, of death.

What had happened that afternoon and evening, before the words of the kind-hearted brakeman fell on his ears, he could not remember. When he was old enough to understand, a few years later, he was told that he had been traveling from the old farm-home toward the city with his father and mother. Why they left the pretty trees and cows and snowbirds to go to a place all stones and bricks, he could not fully make out till he was older still; for what should he know of debts and mortgages, of poor crops, foreclosures and auctions

At any rate, there they were, they three — the whole family — rattling along through a white lo The Boyhood of John Kent.

world, with blots of dark woods beside them, and booms of hollow bridges beneath them, on and on, until it was dark, and the pleasant brakeman had come through the car, lighting the lamps, and telling of the big snowdrifts they must go through.

At about this time he had become very sleepy, and, laying his head in his father’s lap, had forgotten all the little remembers he had — and they were very short ones — in sleep, when there had come a crash somewhere, a dull pounding underneath the car, shaking him dreadfully, then another crash, in the midst of which the car tipped over, his mother disappeared, and he presently found himself, still in his father’s arms, lying in a most uncomfortable, upsidedown way, with something heavy on his feet.

It was very, very dark. Snowflakes blew in from the great, cold night and brushed his face.

The something heavy was at length lifted from his feet ; lifted and carried tenderly away by men with lanterns. He could not see what it was, but he heard a groan burst from his father’s lips.

His little hands were upon the man’s bearded face in a moment.

“Does it hurt you, father?”

II

Mr. Kent only replied by kissing the hand in the darkness. He did not dare to move, as a portion of the car roof rested unevenly on the shattered edge of the seat just above him, and a touch or a sudden start might bring down the whole mass upon them. All around, people were crying and calling for help.

As for John, he was not very much disturbed or uncomfortable. So long as his father’s arms were around him, things could not go very badly.

Why did he not feel that way toward his mother, you ask.^ I am not sure; but I think she had not read the New Testament, or, what is still more necessary, practiced the Sermon on the Mount, enough to be a bit like God to her son. She was a good mother, as the world goes ; that is, she clothed and fed him, and put him to bed at night with a rather hasty and formal kiss. But she never came down into his world, to live for him, and with him, to suffer for him in his little punishments and sorrows, and to rejoice with him in his childish joys. It was his father who did this daily, and who was, to some extent, one with his boy, even as he himself tried to be one with his Master.

The result was inevitable. The boy respected,

12 The Boyhood of JoJm Kent

and — yes, perhaps, loved his mother a little ; he lived in his father.

The first thing Mr. Kent had done, on being freed from the wreck of the car, was to carry John in his arms to the edge of the pine woods, only a few steps from the track, and there, brushing aside the snow as well as he could, to build a fire. All this took but a minute or two, for he was perfectly at home in the woods.

Then, bidding his son await his return, he went in search of his wife. He found the broken house she had lived in ; but she herself had gone.

When he came back, his boy was standing sturdily at his post, like Casabianca of old ; save that our small John Kent was well along toward freezing instead of burning.

“ My boy, my precious son ! ” was all his father said as he gathered him in his arms.

There was something in the way these words were spoken, in the way the protecting arms came about him, that was new. There was the faintest possible accent of appeal for help, a grasp as that of a drowning man for a straw, that mingled with the protection of fatherhood. And at the same moment there was born in the swelling breast of John Kent, aged five, a feeling of father-

Father and Son.

hood toward his own father. As they clasped each other tight in the midst of the driving storm, with the darkness about them, and the groans of the dying in the air, they were more nearly one than ever before; and the child, as well as the man, felt the sweetness of giving comfort.

There, I am glad to have gotten over the sad beginning of my story. It was better to tell you one that had the deepest shadows in the first chapter than in the last, was it not ? And you could not fully understand John Kent if I left out the record of that terrible night.

I need not dwell on the rest of their journey : the wrecking train, the telegrams flashing reports of the accident all over the country, the slow progress of the cars with their freight of souls and bodies, the arrival in the city, and the lonely little funeral that had only one carriage after the hearse. Nor, indeed, would you be interested in the life of the two mourners during the next few years.

Mr. Kent was a skillful carpenter, and was pretty sure of work whenever he chose to seek for it. He earned enough to pay for his own and his boy’s support in a cheap boarding-house ; and spent much of his time, in the intervals of his steady jobs, over his books, which constituted almost his only possessions, beyond what he wore on his back.

There was a carpenter’s shop down by the wharves, owned by a friend, who allowed him to put up a bench and keep his tools there for a trifling commission on the pay he received. This arrangement had been made soon after the arrival in Boston, and a small sign had appeared below the larger one : —

GILBERT E. KENT.

CARPENTER AND JOINER.

It was John’s delight to visit this shop, and watch his father at his work. A conversation which took place when he was about nine years of age will give some idea of the relation between the two.

Kent was at work on rather a delicate piece of joiner’s work, such as he loved best to do. John had been watching him intently from a special coigne of vantage which had been built for him, and which I will describe later.

What are you building, father ? — a coffin ?”

Father a7id Son.

Why, no, my boy,” said the man, startled and rather worried by such an unchildlike question.

No, indeed ; it ’s a more cheerful job than that.”

Why, father, when you were making one last week, I heard you tell Mr. Wilson, ^ What a great comfort it would be for the poor thing to get into it and have a good sleep ! ’ ”

‘‘ Did I ? ” rejoined Gilbert hastily. Well, that was for a man who was old and had been sick a long time. He had what they call asthma, and could n’t sleep, except a little bit at a time in his chair.”

But how could he lie down in his coffin, if he was dead, you know ” argued Kent Junior.

** Bless me, child, I should n’t have said that,” said his father, dismayed. “ It ’s a foolish way folks have of speaking. Poor old Collins was really never in the coffin at all ; it was only his body.”

Where was he, then } ”

** With God, somewhere, my boy. In heaven, I trust.”

John was silent for a while, pondering. When he spoke it was after a long breath of relief, which seemed to indicate that his mind was at rest concerning his asthmatic old neighbor. He wanted just one word more, to make assurance doubly sure.

‘‘ It *s the same God we say, ‘Our Father’ to, is n’t it, sir } ”

“ Yes.”

“ Oh, he ’s all right, then,” said John, dismissing the subject contentedly. If old Mr. Collins were where his Father was, neither asthma nor sleeplessness could render his lot wholly bad. He had not yet learned that a man may be so warped and twisted by his sins that he won’t look up and see his Father standing by him. That is indeed “ outer darkness.”

“ But you have n’t told me yet, father,” resumed John, having disposed of Mr. Collins satisfactorily, “ what you 're making.”

“ It ’s a desk, my boy.”

He was zipping off some sharp corners with an odd little plane.

For Mr. Wilson .? ”

Mr. Wilson was the owner of the shop.

“ No, son ; for some rich people on Commonwealth Avenue.”

“ Could n’t they buy one ”

“ Not the kind they want. There is an old lady in the house, and she wanted a desk with a great

Father and Son.

many little nooks and corners — secret drawers, and the like.”

“ Won’t anybody know where they are ? ”

“ No. She won’t tell anybody of them, and I promised not to.”

** Not even to me ?”

“ Not even to you.”

But I can see you while you make them.”

Oh, I don’t mind your looking on. You could n’t remember them.’

John slipped down from his perch, and dusted his little coat before going out-of-doors.

‘‘I guess I won’t watch,” he said, ‘‘for I might remember, and then, you know, the old lady would be sorry.”

All this was said in a quiet, deliberate way which John inherited from his father. He lifted his face to be kissed, before he turned to the door.

“ Good-by, father.”

“Good-by, little son.”

So the days grew into months, and the months into years. John was never sent to a public school, but he had good teaching for all that. There was a silver-haired old lady in the same boarding-house, whose mind and spirit were as fresh and young as they had been at twenty. People do not grow old, I have to remind myself sometimes. They grow better or worse, but not older. The houses in which they live, which we call bodies, do indeed get loose-jointed and shaky and weather-beaten ; but the real You and the real I, inside, remain. In heaven, perhaps, we shall always look as we feel. We should hardly dare to risk it now.

But how easily I stray from my story ! Mrs. Courtley was a lady of the old school. She was Scotch by birth, and now and then a word or phrase of her childhood would slip into- her fine English. She had been well educated, and could teach John to speak, read, and write his mothertongue with true delicacy and force. As time hung heavy on her hands, she was glad to have the boy come to her room and learn at her knee, while to him such a visit was a rare treat. For that room was to him an Aladdin’s cave of wonders ; and Lady Courtley, as the other boarders called her, half in fun and half from genuine respect, was never tired of telling marvelous stories connected with her curiosities. Her young caller soon discovered, also, that his old friend loved to talk about their Father in heaven to

Father and Son.

whose presence his mother and old Collins had gone. Lady Courtley was sometimes inclined to be shocked at the ideas of God entertained by both Gilbert Kent and his son ; but she would never be drawn into an argument on the subject. Nor, indeed, would Gilbert.

For the rest, the boy was taught geography, mathematics, and natural history, by his father, who was passionately fond of all three studies.

The two former he taught by objects and newspapers. He would let John add blocks, shingle nails, shavings, anything except figures. For geography, he would pick up a morning Herald, and read : —

“ Special dispatch from London. It is reported that Livingstone is now near the head-waters of the Congo.”

“Ah, John,” he would say, going to the closet which held his books, “ let ’s see if we can't find Livingstone. First, we '11 call at London' and see what they can tell us about him at the great newspaper offices.”

The voyage across from Boston to Liverpool was carefully marked on the map, with attention to the larger bays, capes, and so on, on the way.

“ Now we ’ll take a train to London, going through” — such and such large cities.

Now rail to Dover, a funny, wheezy little steamer to Calais, rail to Paris, and — do you see ? — down to Marseilles.’'

In this way the journey was carried on until Livingstone was successfully discovered ; and the whole lesson ended with an interview between that noted individual and the explorer, John usually personating Livingstone, and his father the stranger.

Then would come a talk about the animals and plants of Africa, interrupted occasionally by peals of laughter from the boy, who, nevertheless, became far better informed than the average schoolboy of his age concerning the Dark Continent.

Nor were his physical condition and education neglected. Gilbert took care that his son should grow to be strong of lung and limb ; and many were the long walks they took together, out over the Cambridge bridges, or even to Roxbury and Dorchester — generally returning, hungry and happy, in a horse car.

John was acquainted with every fellow of his age on the street where he lived. There were some pretty rough ones among the number ; but such was the boy’s constant sense of his father’s

Father and Son.

presence that he would not speak nor listen to a word that would defile. His companions soon found that it was “ no use to tell little Kent a good story ” ; by which, queerly enough, they meant a bad one.

CHAPTER 11.

THE HOLE IN THE WALL.

T eleven years, John Kent looked very much like other healthy, happy children of his age. His nearness to his father and friendship with Lady Courtley did not make him pale and thin or unnatural-seeming in any way. He had large, honest gray eyes, rather light brown hair, and was of sturdy build. It was a fleet-footed boy who could overtake him in a race, and once he had grappled with a big setter who was worrying a smaller dog. When the master of the setter came up, John was braced up rigidly, holding the larger animal tightly by the throat, in spite of his struggles. The little dog was nowhere to be seen. John let go his hold, and panted, quite breathless, while the man, who was a low-browed fellow, walked off scowling. John saw him turn savagely on the setter and kick him as they passed down the street.

“I saw where the dog got his manners,” said

John, in telling the story to his father that afternoon, among the chips and shavings. ‘‘ So I did n’t blame him so much. I wish the little black-and-tan had thanked me though,” he added.

Mr. Kent smiled over his plane as if he were reminded of some story ; but he only reached up and gave the boy a grave stroke on his moist, wavy hair.

It was at about this time that a great event occurred in John’s life. He came home one evening from a long trip to Roxbury, where he had been sent to deliver a set of small shelves, which the people in the house were to put up themselves.

“O father,” said he, as they walked downstairs to supper together, the man’s arm around the boy — they always came down that way — “how jolly it would be if we lived in a little house of our own ! Could n’t you make one somewhere } ”

“ What put that into your head, my son } ”

“ I don’t know, sir. Perhaps it was the house where I left the shelves. There were only three or four people living in it, I am sure ; and there was a little girl about my age kneeling in a chair at the front window, ‘looking for papa,’ she said.”

“ Well^ can’t you look for me here ? ”

The Boyhood of John Kent.

They had entered the close, ill-ventilated supper room, and. were now seated side by side. Everybody else had eaten supper, so they had the room and untidy table to themselves.

“ Oh, but it ’s different here. There ’s so many people — and — and it isn’t very clean, is it, father .? ”

“You know we are poor, Johnnie. I wish I had a better home for you.”

“ Does it cost more to live in your own house, father } ”

“ Not when you are once in ; but how are you going to get the house ? ”

“ Why, build it, of course ! ”

Mr. Kent shook his head.

“The land costs too much,” he said quietly. “ But I ’ll think over what you have said, my boy. Perhaps something will come out of it.”

John was satisfied that when his father began to “think over” a thing, it was as good as done. So he went to bed happy.

He had not outgrown his old habit. The longing that is hidden somewhere in every one of God’s children, the longing for home, had sprung up in his heart. To him, home meant simply father. And a house where he could only speak

The Hole in the Wall.

to him now and then, or press his hand slyly under the table ; where other people jostled rudely against one another and him, as they went in and out ; where they even shared their room at night with a third inmate, a weak and inoffensive enough young man, who was employed in a canning establishment in East Boston, but who stood between John and communion with his father like the angel wijth the flaming sword in the gate of Paradise, — this was but a mockery of home.

He was too shy to tell his father all this ; perhaps he could hardly have put it into words ; and so he had never voiced his growing longings until the sight of the sweet family life that afternoon had urged him to speak.

What dreams he had that night ! Visions of his father walking with him hand in hand, or sitting by their own fireside reading and talking of an evening. He woke up when the weak young man came in late from an evening at the ‘‘ Howard,” but immediately went to sleep again and began dreaming where he had left off.

The next day he laid the whole matter before Lady Courtley. She gave a little sigh as he prattled eagerly of his new plans, and took her glasses from her kind old eyes to wipe from them a sudden moisture that had gathered there. Where was her home ^ God had kept her out of it all her life ; perhaps as fathers and mothers keep their children from the bright parlor decked for Christmas Eve, to give them all the more glad surprise when they shall at last enter.

“You’ll let me come and see you sometimes, won’t you, John

“I guess I will! You must come every week — or every day,” he added hastily, afraid he had not been cordial enough.

Lady Courtley laughed in her merry way.

“Once a week would do, I think, my bairn. But where is your house to be ? ”

“ Oh, father ’s thinking it over, ma’am. We don’t know yet where it will be. Perhaps — we won’t go, just yet. But I guess we will.”

His face, which had drooped a little at the thought, brightened again. The lady patted the brown head.

“Don’t forget your auld friends, John, in the midst of the new. I doubt ye ’ll find many where you ’re going.”

Lessons occupied the forenoon. At four o’clock came the grand treat of the day — the trip to his father’s shop, from which, an hour or two later,

The Hole in the Wall.

the two would emerge and walk back to the boarding-house together. During the intervening time John would sit on his odd perch and watch plane and saw and bit as they glittered through the yellow wood, driven by a skillful and steady hand.

It is time I told you about that perch. When Gilbert first entered the shop, on his arrival from Maine, and after the completion of his arrangements with Mr. Wilson (who was a distant connection), he had at once noticed, in the corner farthest from the street, a sort of open cupboard in the wall, close to the ceiling.

What in the world is that for, ’way up out of reach ” he had asked.

Oh, that was made by the former owner,” Mr. Wilson said. ‘‘ He had intended to run his lathe by machinery, and the hole was to carry a belt from a machine shop next door.”

Before he had completed his arrangements the machinist had failed, and an old junk dealer had taken his place. The passageway had been blocked up at the further end, but as the two buildings, being out of the great currents of city business, were of wood and about five feet apart, there remained the cupboard-shaped nest.

which Wilson had never taken the trouble to close. From time to time he had thrown odd bits of wood up there, but he confessed he never expected to climb up after them.

Gilbert had thought no more of it at the time ; but when, a few days later, John had accompanied , him to the shop and, in spite of every effort to the contrary, would keep getting in the way, his eye fell for the second time upon the useless cupboard.

“John,” said he, “when you come next time I ’ll have a nest ready for you, where you can stay and look down on us, without getting under foot.”

John took the hint and left.

Two days later, by special invitation, the boy once more appeared at the shop.

“ Now, sir,” said his father, pointing to the dark corner, “ up with you.”

John (then only six years old) rebelled in his secret heart, and his flesh actually crept with fear at the thought of rats and other terrible creatures which might be lurking in that gloomy little cave.

But he never thought of refusing or drawing back for even a moment.

Without hesitation he marched over to the

The Hole in the Wall.

corner, and looked about for some means to get up.

Presently he spied a block of wood nailed firmly to the wall ; it looked as if it might hold. He tried it, catching another with his hand. Then he saw another and another. Up he went, his heart sinking as fast as his body rose. The whole distance was perhaps seven feet from the floor ; it seemed as high as a church spire.

When he reached the last block, he found a semi-circular shelf, like a little platform before the door of a bird house. It was stoutly propped below by iron braces. Upon this he threw himself, panting, face down.

Then, oh, lovely sight ! As he peered over the edge, there was his father looking up at him proudly and delightedly, his brown beard almost touching him, his hands already reaching up to grasp his own. He saw at once that his father had been there all the time, to catch him if he fell. It did not occur to him for years, I think, that the same father had nailed the blocks to the wall beforehand for him to mount by.

Having gained a vast reinforcement of courage from the bearded face, and smiled down into it, and given the two knotted hands a stroke, John turned to the wooden cave behind him. He wanted very much to go in feet first, but concluded that that would not be brave, so he went the other way. Presently his head came bump against the drum-head of boards which were the inside limit of his den.

Once accustomed to the darkness, he found there was a perfect nest of pine and cedar shavings beneath him, together with something soft, which proved, to his delight, to be a ragged old coat of his father’s.

He backed out of his woodpecker’s hole in high glee; laughed, this time to his father, and then dove in again. The cupboard was about two feet in width, and this time he tried and succeeded in wriggling round, while he was in the dark, and emerging head foremost.

Gilbert had already returned to his work.

“ Don’t fall, son ! ” he called out, above the noise of the tools. “ Be very careful and you will be safe. Are you warm ? ” It was early spring.

‘‘Yes, father.”