Another Picture Is Of My Mother At The Close Of The Day, When
We Children, After Our Supper Of Bread And Milk, Join In A Last Grand
Frolic On The Green Before The House.
I see her sitting out of doors
watching our sport with a smile, her book lying in her lap, and the
last rays of the setting sun shining on her face.
When I think of her I remember with gratitude that our parents seldom
or never punished us, and never, unless we went too far in our
domestic dissensions or tricks, even chided us. This, I am convinced,
is the right attitude for parents to observe, modestly to admit that
nature is wiser than they are, and to let their little ones follow, as
far as possible, the bent of their own minds, or whatever it is they
have in place of minds. It is the attitude of the sensible hen towards
her ducklings, when she has had frequent experience of their
incongruous ways, and is satisfied that they know best what is good
for them; though, of course, their ways seem peculiar to her, and she
can never entirely sympathize with their fancy for going into water. I
need not be told that the hen is after all only step-mother to her
ducklings, since I am contending that the civilized woman - the
artificial product of our self-imposed conditions - cannot have the
same relation to her offspring as the uncivilized woman really has to
hers. The comparison, therefore, holds good, the mother with us being
practically step-mother to children of another race; and if she is
sensible, and amenable to nature's teaching, she will attribute their
seemingly unsuitable ways and appetites to the right cause, and not to
a hypothetical perversity or inherent depravity of heart, about which
many authors will have spoken to her in many books:
But though they wrote it all by rote
They did not write it right.
Of all the people outside of the domestic circle known to me in those
days, two individuals only are distinctly remembered. They were
certainly painted by memory in very strong unfading colours, so that
now they seem to stand like living men in a company of pale phantom
forms. This is probably due to the circumstance that they were
considerably more grotesque in appearance than the others, like old
Pechicho among our dogs - all now forgotten save him.
One was an Englishman named Captain Scott, who used to visit us
occasionally for a week's shooting or fishing, for he was a great
sportsman. We were all extremely fond of him, for he was one of those
simple men that love and sympathize with children; besides that, he
used to come to us from some distant wonderful place where sugar-plums
were made, and to our healthy appetites, unaccustomed to sweets of any
description, these things tasted like an angelic kind of food. He was
an immense man, with a great round face of a purplish-red colour, like
the sun setting in glory, and surrounded with a fringe of silvery-
white hair and whiskers, standing out like the petals round the disc
of a sunflower. It was always a great time when Captain Scott arrived,
and while he alighted from his horse we would surround him with loud
demonstrations of welcome, eager for the treasures which made his
pockets bulge out on all sides. When he went out gunning he always
remembered to shoot a hawk or some strangely-painted bird for us; it
was even better when he went fishing, for then he took us with him,
and while he stood motionless on the bank, rod in hand, looking, in
the light-blue suit he always wore, like a vast blue pillar crowned
with that broad red face, we romped on the sward, and revelled in the
dank fragrance of the earth and rushes.
I have not the faintest notion of who Captain Scott was, or of what he
was ever captain, or whether residence in a warm climate or hard
drinking had dyed his broad countenance with that deep magenta red,
nor of how and when he finished his earthly career; for when we moved
away the huge purple-faced strange-looking man dropped for ever out of
our lives; yet in my mind how beautiful his gigantic image looks! And
to this day I bless his memory for all the sweets he gave me, in a
land where sweets were scarce, and for his friendliness to me when I
was a very small boy.
The second well-remembered individual was also only an occasional
visitor at our house, and was known all over the surrounding country
as the Hermit, for his name was never discovered. He was perpetually
on the move, visiting in turn every house within a radius of forty or
fifty miles; and once about every seven or eight weeks he called on us
to receive a few articles of food - enough for the day's consumption.
Money he always refused with gestures of intense disgust, and he would
also decline cooked meat and broken bread. When hard biscuits were
given him, he would carefully examine them, and if one was found
chipped or cracked he would return it, pointing out the defect, and
ask for a sound one in return. He had a small, sun-parched face, and
silvery long hair; but his features were fine, his teeth white and
even, his eyes clear grey and keen as a falcon's. There was always a
set expression of deep mental anguish on his face, intensified with
perhaps a touch of insanity, which made it painful to look at him. As
he never accepted money or anything but food, he of course made his
own garments - and what garments they were! Many years ago I used to
see, strolling about St. James's Park, a huge hairy gentleman, with a
bludgeon in his hand, and clothed with a bear's skin to which the head
and paws were attached.
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