July 17, 2025 • 10 mins
Dive into Warners engaging and humor-filled memoir as he shares his experiences growing up on a farm in Charlemont, Massachusetts. Narrated by Mark Penfold, this podcast will transport you back to a simpler time and place.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eleven of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
Mark Penfold, Chapter eleven, Home Inventions. The winter season is
not all sliding downhill for the farmer boy by any means,
(00:21):
yet he contrives to get as much fun out of
it as from any part of the year. There is
a difference in boys. Some are always jolly, and some
go scowling always through life, as if they had a
stone bruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round every morning
to sell molasses candy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece.
(00:42):
It was worth fifty cents a day to see his
cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is
now the owner of a large town at the west.
To be sure, there are no houses in it except
his own. But there is a map of it, and
roads and streets are laid out in it, with dwellings
and churches and academies, and a college and an opera house.
And you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hartford
(01:04):
on paper. He and all his family have the fever
and ague and shake worse than the people at Lebanon,
but they do not mind it. It makes them lively.
In fact, ed may is just as jolly as he
used to be. He calls his town Maeopolis, and expects
to be mayor of it. His wife, however, calls the town. Maybe.
(01:25):
The farmer boy likes to have winter come for one thing,
because it freezes up the ground so that he can't
dig in it, and it is covered with snow, so
that there is no picking up stones nor driving the
cows to pasture. He would have a very easy time
if it were not for the getting up before daylight
to build the fires and do the chores. Nature intended
the long winter nights for the farmer boy to sleep,
(01:47):
but in my day he was expected to open his
sleepy eyes when the cock crew, get out of the
warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his cold pantaloons,
and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone
down to zero. Rake, open the coals on the hearth
and start the morning fire, and then go to the
barn to fodder. The frost was thick on the kitchen windows,
(02:08):
the snow was drifted against the door, and the journey
to the barn in the pale light of dawn over
the creaking snow, was like an exile's tripped to Siberia.
The boy was not half awake when he stumbled into
the cold barn and was greeted by the lowing and
bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for their breakfast. How
their breath steamed up from the mangers and hung in
(02:29):
frosty spears from their noses. Through the great lofts above
the hay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind whistled
and the snow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated.
I used to spend much valuable time in planning a
barn that should be tight and warm, with a fire
in it if necessary, in order to keep the temperature
somewhere near the freezing point. I couldn't see how the
(02:52):
cattle could live in a place where a lively boy
full of young blood would freeze to death in a
short time if he did not swing his arms and
slap his hand and jump about like a goat. I
thought I would have a sort of perpetual manger that
should shake down the hay when it was wanted, and
a self acting machine that should cut up the turnips
and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing
(03:12):
for the cattle and horses to drink. With these simple arrangements,
I could lie in bed and know that the chores
were doing themselves. It would also be necessary, in order
that I should not be disturbed, that the crow should
be taken out of the roosters, but I could think
of no process to do it. It seems to me
that the hen breeders, if they know as much as
they say they do, might raise a breed of crowless
(03:34):
roosters for the benefit of boys, quiet neighborhoods and sleepy families.
There was another notion that I had about kindling the
kitchen fire that I never carried out. It was to
have a spring at the head of my bed, connecting
with a wire which should run to a torpedo which
I would plant overnight in the ashes of the fireplace.
By touching the spring, I could explode the torpedo, which
(03:56):
would scatter the ashes and cover the live coals, And
at the same time i'm shake down the sticks of
wood which were standing by the side of the ashes
in the chimney, and the fire would kindle itself. This
ingenious plan was frowned upon by the whole family, who
said they did not want to be waked up every
morning by an explosion, and yet they expected me to
wake up without an explosion. A boy's plans for making
(04:19):
life agreeable are hardly ever heated. I never knew a
boy farmer who was not eager to go to the
district school in the winter. There is such a chance
for learning that he must be a dull boy who
does not come out in the spring of fair skater,
an accurate snowballer, and an accomplished slider downhill with or
without a board on his seat, on his stomach or
on his feet. Take a moderate hill with a foot
(04:42):
slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a go
round of boys on it, and there is nothing like
it for whittling away boot leather. The boy is the
shoemaker's friend. An active lad can wear down a pair
of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice
will scrape his toes. Sledding or coasting is also slow
fun compared to the bareback sliding down a steep hill
(05:03):
over a hard, glistening crust. It is not only dangerous
but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a
degree to make a tailor laugh. If any other animal
wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy wears
out his clothes in winter, it would need a new
one once a month. In a county district, school patches
were not by any means a sign of poverty, but
(05:24):
of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition. Our elders used
to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet
iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he
wore out his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse,
ciphering hard sums. For that extraordinary statement, he received two castigations,
one at home that was mild, and one from the schoolmaster,
(05:45):
who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's
sliding place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on
a sliding scale according to the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however, was the study
of history, early history the Indian Wars. We studied it
mostly at noontime, and we had it illustrated as the
(06:07):
children nowadays have object lessons. Though our object was not
so much to have lessons as it was to revive
real history. Back of the schoolhouse rose around hill upon
which tradition said had stood in colonial times, a block
house built by the settlers for defense against the Indians.
For the Indians had the idea that the whites were
(06:27):
not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle
them with a tomahawk. It was called Forked Hill. It
was very steep on each side, and the river ran
close by. It was a charming place in summer where
one could find laurel and checkerberries and sassafras roots, and
sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across
the river and listening to the murmur of the deerfield.
(06:49):
The Methodists built a meeting house thereafterwards, but the hill
was so slippery and winter that the aged could not
climb it, and the wind raged so fiercely that it
blew nearly all the young Methodists away, many of whom
were afterwards heard of in the West. And finally the
meeting house itself came down into the valley and grew
a steeple and enjoyed itself. Ever afterwards. It used to
(07:10):
be a notion in New England that a meeting house
ought to stand as near heaven as possible. The boys
at our school divided themselves into two parties. One was
the early settlers and the other the Pequoes, the latter
the most numerous. The early settlers built a snow fort
on the hill and a strong fortress. It was constructed
of snowballs rolled up to a vast size, larger than
(07:32):
the Cyclopean blocks of stone which formed the ancient Etruscan
walls in Italy, piled one upon another, and the hole
cemented by pouring on water, which froze and made the
walls solid. The Pequoes helped the Whites build it. It
had a covered way under the snow through which only
could it be entered. And it had bastions and towers
and openings to fire from, and a great many other
(07:53):
things for which there are no names in military books.
And it had a glacis and a ditch outside. When
it was completed, the early settlers, leaving the women in
the schoolhouse a prey to the Indians, used to retire
into it and await the attack of the Pequoes. There
was only a handful of the garrison while the Indians
were many and also barbarous, it was agreed that they
(08:14):
should be barbarous. And it was in this light that
the great question was settled whether a boy might snowball
with balls that he had soaked over night in water
and let freeze. They were as hard as cobblestones, and
if a boy should be hit in the head by
one of them, he could not tell whether he was
a backwoe or an early settler. It was considered as
unfair to use these ice balls in open fight, as
(08:35):
it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But
as the Whites were protected by the fort and the
Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the
latter might use the hard missiles. The Pequoes used to
come swarming up the hill with hideous war whoops, attacking
the fort on all sides with great noise and a
shower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance
(08:56):
and well directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they
attempted to scale the walls. The settlers had the advantage
of position, but they were sometimes overpowered by numbers and
would often have to surrender. But for the ringing of
the school bell. The Pequoes were in great fear of
the school bell. I do not remember that the Whites
ever hauled down their flag and surrendered voluntarily, but once
(09:18):
or twice the fort was carried by storm, and the
garrison were massacred to a boy and thrown out of
the fortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's
cap was to scalp him, and after that he was
dead if he played fair. There were a great many
hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it
was in the cause of our early history. The history
(09:39):
of Greece and Rome was stuff compared to this. And
we had many boys in our school who could imitate
the Indian War, whoop enough better than they could scan
Arma virumque Cano. End of Chapter eleven. Recording by Mark
Penfold
Chapter eleven of Being a Boy by Charles Dudley Warner.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
Mark Penfold, Chapter eleven, Home Inventions. The winter season is
not all sliding downhill for the farmer boy by any means,
(00:21):
yet he contrives to get as much fun out of
it as from any part of the year. There is
a difference in boys. Some are always jolly, and some
go scowling always through life, as if they had a
stone bruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round every morning
to sell molasses candy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece.
(00:42):
It was worth fifty cents a day to see his
cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is
now the owner of a large town at the west.
To be sure, there are no houses in it except
his own. But there is a map of it, and
roads and streets are laid out in it, with dwellings
and churches and academies, and a college and an opera house.
And you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or Hartford
(01:04):
on paper. He and all his family have the fever
and ague and shake worse than the people at Lebanon,
but they do not mind it. It makes them lively.
In fact, ed may is just as jolly as he
used to be. He calls his town Maeopolis, and expects
to be mayor of it. His wife, however, calls the town. Maybe.
(01:25):
The farmer boy likes to have winter come for one thing,
because it freezes up the ground so that he can't
dig in it, and it is covered with snow, so
that there is no picking up stones nor driving the
cows to pasture. He would have a very easy time
if it were not for the getting up before daylight
to build the fires and do the chores. Nature intended
the long winter nights for the farmer boy to sleep,
(01:47):
but in my day he was expected to open his
sleepy eyes when the cock crew, get out of the
warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his cold pantaloons,
and pull on boots in which the thermometer would have gone
down to zero. Rake, open the coals on the hearth
and start the morning fire, and then go to the
barn to fodder. The frost was thick on the kitchen windows,
(02:08):
the snow was drifted against the door, and the journey
to the barn in the pale light of dawn over
the creaking snow, was like an exile's tripped to Siberia.
The boy was not half awake when he stumbled into
the cold barn and was greeted by the lowing and
bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for their breakfast. How
their breath steamed up from the mangers and hung in
(02:29):
frosty spears from their noses. Through the great lofts above
the hay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind whistled
and the snow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated.
I used to spend much valuable time in planning a
barn that should be tight and warm, with a fire
in it if necessary, in order to keep the temperature
somewhere near the freezing point. I couldn't see how the
(02:52):
cattle could live in a place where a lively boy
full of young blood would freeze to death in a
short time if he did not swing his arms and
slap his hand and jump about like a goat. I
thought I would have a sort of perpetual manger that
should shake down the hay when it was wanted, and
a self acting machine that should cut up the turnips
and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing
(03:12):
for the cattle and horses to drink. With these simple arrangements,
I could lie in bed and know that the chores
were doing themselves. It would also be necessary, in order
that I should not be disturbed, that the crow should
be taken out of the roosters, but I could think
of no process to do it. It seems to me
that the hen breeders, if they know as much as
they say they do, might raise a breed of crowless
(03:34):
roosters for the benefit of boys, quiet neighborhoods and sleepy families.
There was another notion that I had about kindling the
kitchen fire that I never carried out. It was to
have a spring at the head of my bed, connecting
with a wire which should run to a torpedo which
I would plant overnight in the ashes of the fireplace.
By touching the spring, I could explode the torpedo, which
(03:56):
would scatter the ashes and cover the live coals, And
at the same time i'm shake down the sticks of
wood which were standing by the side of the ashes
in the chimney, and the fire would kindle itself. This
ingenious plan was frowned upon by the whole family, who
said they did not want to be waked up every
morning by an explosion, and yet they expected me to
wake up without an explosion. A boy's plans for making
(04:19):
life agreeable are hardly ever heated. I never knew a
boy farmer who was not eager to go to the
district school in the winter. There is such a chance
for learning that he must be a dull boy who
does not come out in the spring of fair skater,
an accurate snowballer, and an accomplished slider downhill with or
without a board on his seat, on his stomach or
on his feet. Take a moderate hill with a foot
(04:42):
slide down it worn to icy smoothness, and a go
round of boys on it, and there is nothing like
it for whittling away boot leather. The boy is the
shoemaker's friend. An active lad can wear down a pair
of cowhide soles in a week so that the ice
will scrape his toes. Sledding or coasting is also slow
fun compared to the bareback sliding down a steep hill
(05:03):
over a hard, glistening crust. It is not only dangerous
but it is destructive to jacket and pantaloons to a
degree to make a tailor laugh. If any other animal
wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy wears
out his clothes in winter, it would need a new
one once a month. In a county district, school patches
were not by any means a sign of poverty, but
(05:24):
of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition. Our elders used
to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet
iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he
wore out his trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse,
ciphering hard sums. For that extraordinary statement, he received two castigations,
one at home that was mild, and one from the schoolmaster,
(05:45):
who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy's
sliding place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on
a sliding scale according to the thinness of his pantaloons.
What I liked best at school, however, was the study
of history, early history the Indian Wars. We studied it
mostly at noontime, and we had it illustrated as the
(06:07):
children nowadays have object lessons. Though our object was not
so much to have lessons as it was to revive
real history. Back of the schoolhouse rose around hill upon
which tradition said had stood in colonial times, a block
house built by the settlers for defense against the Indians.
For the Indians had the idea that the whites were
(06:27):
not settled enough, and used to come nights to settle
them with a tomahawk. It was called Forked Hill. It
was very steep on each side, and the river ran
close by. It was a charming place in summer where
one could find laurel and checkerberries and sassafras roots, and
sit in the cool breeze, looking at the mountains across
the river and listening to the murmur of the deerfield.
(06:49):
The Methodists built a meeting house thereafterwards, but the hill
was so slippery and winter that the aged could not
climb it, and the wind raged so fiercely that it
blew nearly all the young Methodists away, many of whom
were afterwards heard of in the West. And finally the
meeting house itself came down into the valley and grew
a steeple and enjoyed itself. Ever afterwards. It used to
(07:10):
be a notion in New England that a meeting house
ought to stand as near heaven as possible. The boys
at our school divided themselves into two parties. One was
the early settlers and the other the Pequoes, the latter
the most numerous. The early settlers built a snow fort
on the hill and a strong fortress. It was constructed
of snowballs rolled up to a vast size, larger than
(07:32):
the Cyclopean blocks of stone which formed the ancient Etruscan
walls in Italy, piled one upon another, and the hole
cemented by pouring on water, which froze and made the
walls solid. The Pequoes helped the Whites build it. It
had a covered way under the snow through which only
could it be entered. And it had bastions and towers
and openings to fire from, and a great many other
(07:53):
things for which there are no names in military books.
And it had a glacis and a ditch outside. When
it was completed, the early settlers, leaving the women in
the schoolhouse a prey to the Indians, used to retire
into it and await the attack of the Pequoes. There
was only a handful of the garrison while the Indians
were many and also barbarous, it was agreed that they
(08:14):
should be barbarous. And it was in this light that
the great question was settled whether a boy might snowball
with balls that he had soaked over night in water
and let freeze. They were as hard as cobblestones, and
if a boy should be hit in the head by
one of them, he could not tell whether he was
a backwoe or an early settler. It was considered as
unfair to use these ice balls in open fight, as
(08:35):
it is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But
as the Whites were protected by the fort and the
Indians were treacherous by nature, it was decided that the
latter might use the hard missiles. The Pequoes used to
come swarming up the hill with hideous war whoops, attacking
the fort on all sides with great noise and a
shower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance
(08:56):
and well directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they
attempted to scale the walls. The settlers had the advantage
of position, but they were sometimes overpowered by numbers and
would often have to surrender. But for the ringing of
the school bell. The Pequoes were in great fear of
the school bell. I do not remember that the Whites
ever hauled down their flag and surrendered voluntarily, but once
(09:18):
or twice the fort was carried by storm, and the
garrison were massacred to a boy and thrown out of
the fortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's
cap was to scalp him, and after that he was
dead if he played fair. There were a great many
hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it
was in the cause of our early history. The history
(09:39):
of Greece and Rome was stuff compared to this. And
we had many boys in our school who could imitate
the Indian War, whoop enough better than they could scan
Arma virumque Cano. End of Chapter eleven. Recording by Mark
Penfold
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