Somehow I can identify my present self only with the boy who went to the Academy on the hill. Back of this, all seems a vision and a dream; and the little child from whom I grew is only one of the old boyish group for whose sake the sun and the changing seasons came and went.  
It must be that for a long time I looked forward to going to the Academy as an event in my boyish life. For I know that when I first went up the hill, I wore a collar and a necktie and shoes,—or, rather, boots. I must have felt then that I was growing to be a man, and that it was almost time to put off childish things. When I went to the Academy, we called the teacher “Professor,” and he in turn no longer called me Johnny, or even John, but to me as “Smith.” A certain dignity 265and individuality had come to me from some source, I knew not where. When we boys came from the playground into the open door, it was not quite the mad rush of noisy and that carried all before it, like a rushing flood, in the little district school.
 
Almost unconsciously some new idea of duty and obligation began to dawn upon my mind, and I had even a faint conception that the lessons of the books would be related in some way to my future life. Among us boys, in our relation to each other, the difference was not quite so great as that between the teacher and ourselves; but our bearing toward the girls was still more changed. In the district school they had seemed only different, and rather in the way, or at least of no special interest or importance in the scheme. Now, we stood before them quite and . They had put on long dresses, and had taken on a reserved and distant air; and much that we said and did in the Academy was with the conscious thought of how it would look to them. This, too, was a reason why we should wear our collars and our boots, and comb our hair, and not be found always at the bottom of the class.
 
I began about this time to get letters at the post-office,—letters addressed directly to me, and which I could open first, and show to the others or not as I saw fit. And I began to know about affairs, especially to take an interest in politics, and to know our side—which of course was always beaten. I, like all the rest of the boys, inherited my politics and my religion. I said,—like all the boys; but I should have said like all people, whether boys or men. So little do we have the habit of thought, that our opinions on religion and politics and life are only such as have come down to us from ignorant and remote ancestors, influenced we know not how.
 
So, too, the same feeling seemed to steal over us at home and in our family group. The old was quieter and wore a more serious look as we gathered round the lighted lamp on the great table with our books. The lessons were always tasks, but we tried to get through them for the sake of the magazine or book of travel or adventure that we could read when the work was done. 267My father was as helpful and interested as ever in our studies, and constantly told us how this task and that would affect our future lives. More and more he made clear to us his intense desire that we should reach the things that had been beyond his grasp.
 
Almost unconsciously I grew into sympathy with his ideals and his life, seeing faintly the grand visions that were always clear to him, and bewailing more and more my own indolence and love of pleasure that made them seem so hard for me to reach. I learned to understand the tragedy of his obscure and hidden life, and the long and bitter contest he had waged within the narrow shadow of the stubborn little town where he had lived and struggled and hoped so long. It was many years before I came to know that the smaller the world in which we move, the more impossible it is to break the prejudices and conventions that us down. And so it was many, many years before I realized what must have been my father’s life.
 
As a little child, I heard my father tell of Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Truth, Wendell Phillips, and the rest of that advance army of reformers, black and white, who went up and down the land arousing the dulled conscience of the people to a sense of justice to the slave. They used to make my father’s home their stopping-place, and any sort of vacant room was the where they told of the black man’s wrongs. My father lived to see these disturbers canonized by the public opinion that is ever ready to follow in the wake of a battle fought to a successful end. But when his little world was ready to rejoice with him over the freedom of the slave, he had moved his soiled and tent to a new battlefield and was fighting the same stubborn, , threatening public opinion for a new and yet more doubtful cause. The same band of used still to come when I had grown to be a youth. These had seen visions of a higher and broader religious life, and a fuller measure of freedom and justice for the poor than the world had ever known. Like the despised tramp, they seemed to have marked my father’s gate-post, and could not pass his door. They were always poor, often , and a far-off look seemed to haunt their eyes, as if gazing into space at something 269beyond the stars. Some little room was always found where a handful of my father’s friends would gather, sometimes coming from miles around to listen to the voices crying in the , calling the heedless world to before it should be too late. I cannot remember when I did not go to these little of the elect and drink in every word that fell upon my ears. Poor boy! I am almost sorry for myself. I listened so rapturously and believed so strongly, and knew so well that the kingdom of heaven would surely come in a little while. And though almost every night through all these long and weary years I have looked with the same unflagging hope for the promised star that should be rising in the east, still it has not come; but no matter how great the trial and disappointment and delay, I am sure I shall always peer out into the darkness for this belated star, until I am so blind that I could not see it if it were really there.
 
After these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where they told each other of their visions 270and their hopes. Many and many a time, as I lay in my bed, I listened to their words coming through the crack with the of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant rainbow they had painted from their dreams.
 
After all, I am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed their dreams. I am glad they really lived above the world, in that ethereal realm which none but the blindly ever see; for I know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights where he really lived and died.
 
And I am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to catch one glimpse of these realms, and to feel one for the devoted life they lived; for however truly I may know that this ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however I may have clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, I am sure that some part of this feeling with me, and that it............