The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as his city cousin.When school keeps, he has only to "do chores and go to school," but between terms there are a thousand things on the farm that have been left for the boy to do.Picking up stones in the pastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them.Some lots appeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to the surface, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft garden soil; it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boys this sort of fall work.And very lively work it was on frosty mornings for the barefooted boys, who were continually turning up the larger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place that had been covered from the frost.A boy can stand on one leg as well as a Holland stork; and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole of his foot was likely to stand in it until the words, "Come, stir your stumps," broke in discordantly upon his meditations.For the boy is very much given to meditations.If he had his way, he would do nothing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think about things, and enjoy his work as he goes along.He picks up potatoes as if each one were a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, and requiring careful examination.
Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (as he does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since he is released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the school is his opening into the world,--his romance.Its opportunities for enjoyment are numberless.He does not exactly know what he is set at books for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs, standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness of consequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography as something that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but not at all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole.But recess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boy rushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess? He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer; he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entire self-forgetfulness, and an energy that would overturn the world if his strength were proportioned to it.For ten minutes the world is absolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, and he is his own master for that brief time,--as he never again will be if he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,--and nobody knows how old he was.And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vast projects can be carried out which have been slyly matured during the school-hours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between the Indians on one side and the settlers on the other; the military company is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are carried on which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of wind sufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch.
Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, and enmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot, after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; cases of long credit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys;boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is considered much more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even if the explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, and then take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity.The country-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider world than he knew at home, in many ways.Some big boy brings to school a copy of the Arabian Nights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page, and the last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly read under the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parents disapprove of novel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the house except a pious fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latest comic almanac.The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of the treasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself in the land of enchantment open before him.He tells at home that he has seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy has promised to lend it to him."Is it a true book, John?" asks the grandmother; because, if it is n't true, it is the worst thing that a boy can read." (This happened years ago.) John cannot answer as to the truth of the book, and so does not bring it home; but he borrows it, nevertheless, and conceals it in the barn and, lying in the hay-mow, is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he is supposed to be doing chores.There were no chores in the Arabian Nights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius, who would feed the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood in a minute.It was through this emblazoned portal that the boy walked into the world of books, which he soon found was larger than his own, and filled with people he longed to know.