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Was there ever anything, I said, like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations, inventing or finding them, since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly.
The country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways.
John had got thus far in his studies, which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but were in reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of high and mighty adventure. He was a simple country-boy, and did not know much about the world as it is, but he had one of his own imagination, in which he lived a good deal.
You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you can, but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form their surface. Do you know Richardson's Dictionary? I said to my neighbor the divinity-student. Haöw? said the divinity-student. It was too late. A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown colt.
A country-boy, he learned first the rough and ready English of his rustic mates, who knew how to make nice verbs and adjectives curtsy to their needs.
But that which lives most vividly in his memory and most strongly draws him back to the New England hills is the aromatic sweet-fern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to crush in his hands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of New England. The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard of Christmas. There was no such day in his calendar.
I had shared in none of its trusts; I had only felt its exactions. Like some country-boy, or country-girl, for the first time brought into the great world, I surrendered myself wholly to the first gratified impulse. I made no conditions, no qualifications. I set all my hopes of heart upon a single cast of the die, and did not ask what might be the consequences if the throw was unfortunate.
The country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways.
He could see them now, with their worn brown covers and crude pictures: "The Luck and Pluck Series," by Horatio Alger; "Live or Die," "Rough and Ready," etc. How he had thrilled over the story of the country-boy who comes to the city, and meets the villain who robs his employer's cash-drawer and drops the key of it into the hero's pocket!
It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. These harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad.
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