breach of which, on the part of his children, was very apt to be
followed by consequences not the most pleasant in the world, for he
held that a good switch was an essential article of household
furniture, and its occasional use a cardinal principle in the
philosophy of family rule. One Sunday, when I was some ten or eleven
years old, when the old people were gone to meeting (and they had to
go eight miles to find a meeting house), I, with an older brother,
tired of lying around the house, concluded to take a stroll along up
the brook. It was a time of severe drouth, and the stream was dried
up, save here and there a small pool, clear and cold, the bottom of
which consisted of smooth and clean-washed stones and pebbles. In one
of these was a number of beautiful speckled trout, averaging maybe a
quarter of a pound each in weight. Here was a temptation too strong to
be resisted. We had no hooks or lines with us, and would not have
ventured to use them _on Sunday_, if we had. That would have been
fishing. But the taking of those trout with our hands was quite
another matter. So, rolling our pants up above our knees (there was no
use of talking about shoes and stockings; such luxuries were not
within the range of indulgence to boys of our age in those days, save
in the frosts and snows of winter, and stubbed toes, stone bruises,
and thorns in the feet, come floating along down from the long past,
like shadows of darkness on the current of memory. By the way, will
some rich man, who was reared in the country in the good old times
when boys went barefooted in the summer months, when chapped feet,
stone bruises, stubbed toes, and thorns that pierced and festered in
their _soles_ were the great ills that 'darkened deepest around human
destiny,' solve for me a problem of the human mind? Will he tell me
whether, in his after life, when he was the owner of broad acres, fine
houses, piles of stocks in paying corporations, and huge deposits in
solvent banks, he ever felt richer or prouder when counting his gains,