hich my
brothers did not share. One fall when I was about fifteen I had the
promise from Father that I might go to school at the Academy in the
village that winter. But I did not go. Then the next fall I had the
promise of going to the Academy at Harpersfield, where one of the
neighbor's boys, Dick Van Dyke, went. How I dreamed of Harpersfield!
That fall I did my first ploughing, stimulated to it by the promise
of Harpersfield. It was in September, in the lot above the sugar
bush--cross-ploughing, to prepare the ground for rye. How many days I
ploughed, I do not remember; but Harpersfield was the lure at the end of
each furrow, I remember that. To this day I cannot hear the name without
seeing a momentary glow upon my mental horizon--a finger of enchantment
is for an instant laid upon me.

But I did not go to Harpersfield. When the time drew near for me to go,
Father found himself too poor, or the expense looked too big--none of
the other boys had had such privileges, and why should I? So I swallowed
my disappointment and attended the home district school for another
winter. Yet I am not sure but I went to Harpersfield after all. The
desire, the yearning to go, the effort to make myself worthy to go, the
mental awakening, and the high dreams, were the main matter. I doubt
if the reality would have given me anything more valuable than these
things. The aspiration for knowledge opens the doors of the mind and
makes ready for her coming.

These were my first and last days at the plough, and they made that
field memorable to me. I never cross it now but I see myself there--a
callow youth being jerked by the plough-handles but with my head in a
cloud of alluring day-dreams. This, I think, was in the fall of 1853. I
went to school that winter with a view to leaving home in the spring to
try my luck at school-teaching in an adjoining county. Many Roxbury boys
had made their first start in the world by going to Ulster County to
teach a country school. I would do the same. So, late in March, 1854,
about the end of the sugar season, I set out for Olive, Ulster County.
An old neighbor, Dr. Hull, lived there, and I would seek him.

There was only a stage-line at that time connecting the two counties,
and that passed twelve miles from my home. My plan was to cross the
mountain into Red Kill to Uncle Martin Kelly's, pass the night there,
and in the morning go to Clovesville, three miles distant, and take
the stage. How well I reme