My First day in Trowsers.

"Love was once a little boy," the old song says, and so was I; though I cannot flatter myself that beyond this there is any point of resemblance between Love and me,—stay, there is one strong one—I was extravagantly fond of shooting with a bow and arrow, and we all know that Love does nothing else but travel about shooting his little arrows into folks' hearts. I never shot anything but bull-frogs.

But I haven't got to my "trowsers" yet, have I? I don't see what made me think about Love here, for if poets and painters tell the truth, he never knew anything about trowsers—at least, he never had any.

I had toddled patiently through nearly four years of that period in the life of boys when there is little in their dress to distinguish them from girls, and which period is therefore a most aggravating memory to boys in general, when my mother astounded and delighted me one morning by the announcement that I was to have a pair of trowsers—that they were even then almost finished. What a whirl my little head was in all that day, to be sure! How my incipient manhood swelled and swaggered, impatient of the trammels of frocks and pantalettes! What dreams I had that night!

The next morning the trowsers came home, and had they been the jewelled robes in which I was to be proclaimed emperor of half the world, I could scarcely have looked upon them with more pleasure and pride— simple little India-nankeen trowsers, as they were, with buttons of pearl, and white embroidery of linen braid.

It was a bright morning in early June, and my mother decided that I might have them on at once. Oh, the pride of that day! What a space of time seemed to stretch between it and the yesterday! From what an airy height of scorn did I look down upon the whole race of frocks—even that one of crimson and black which only twenty-four short hours before, it had been the topmost delight of my little heart to be allowed to wear!

I was passed from hand to hand throughout the household—receiving admiring criticisms, and growing prouder and prouder; particularly when old Wangie, the cook, who was chief among my friends, exclaimed—"Bress de chile, he look grand as a king!"

I then begged my mother to let me sit out on the front step, "to see the wagons and folks go by," I said; but in reality, I am afraid, I only wanted to show my new trowsers. She said I might, and tied my hat on for me. I had not been there many minutes, before along came half a dozen of the youngest of the village boys, among them my cousin Philip, two years older than I. So long as I was in frocks, they had only condescended to greet me now and then in passing, with a—"Well, little 'un!"

But now I had emerged from the chrysalis of frocks—I was a boy—one of themselves, and entitled to consideration. So they stopped to talk with me, and look at my trowsers. They quite took down my pride by saying, in a patronizing tone—"They'll do for the first ones." But I remembered what Wangie had said, and managed to still keep up my grand feeling.

Presently they said they were going over into the meadow, to gather violets and buttercups, and asked me to go with them.

I said, quickly—"I'll go ask"—I was going to say "I'll go ask mother," but, just then, came the proud remembrance of my trowsers, and I thought to myself—"I am too big and too old to be asking mother every time I want to do anything; I'll go without asking." So I took Philip's hand, and off we started.

We went up a little hill and clambered through a fence, and there lay the meadow before us—oh, so lovely!—its rich robe of green grass pinned with buttercups—buttercups that seemed to have made captive the sunbeams that brought them life, so golden-bright and beautiful they were; and violets, upon which in tribute to their modesty, the sky had bestowed its color with its dew. Everything was in the first glad impulse of a new life.

The hill ran around two sides of this meadow, and right at the junction of the two sides, about half way down the slope, there was a little spring of clearest, coolest water. The half of a small barrel, with the head knocked out, had been sunk down about the fountain, and the space around it filled in tightly with gravel. By this means the little spring was forced to fill up the barrel, into which the people dipped their pitchers and buckets, before it got a chance to go idling, and singing, and splashing, as it did afterwards, away through the green grass, over the white pebbles, to the great dark woods beyond the meadow.

The owner of this spring, to protect it from the sun in hot weather, and to keep the cows away from it, when they were pasturing in the meadow, had built a little stone wall and arch around and partly over the barrel. The front part of this wall slanted backward (like the top of a gig or chaise when it is pushed half way back), so that the top of the archway, which was nicely sodded and seemed like a part of the hill, came directly over the barrel; to this front wall an old outside cellar-door had been hung; but rust and much use had broken its hinges, and, at the time I write of, it had to be lifted off and on. That morning, for some reason, they had not put it on, after getting water, but had left it up on the archway, with about one-third of it reaching over the edge.

After we had tired of gathering flowers, we all went up to this spring to drink, and see an old bull-frog that had lived there all alone for years. He used to sit up in a dark corner, on a large stone, all the summer through. He had never, in the memory of the oldest of us, been seen anywhere but upon that one stone, and he sat so still that he seemed more like a statue of a frog, than a real, live one. After sunset, above all the other "voices of the night," you could hear his deep bass through half the length of the village. We used to call him the village "Watchman," because his croaking sounded so exactly like the cry of watchmen—"All's well!" "All's well!"

I had heard Philip describe the "Watchman's" great eyes that never winked, and his ghostly stillness; I had heard his cry too, and it was with not a little awe—I am not sure there was not some fear mixed with the awe—that I approached the domicil of this village-wonder—this patron-saint of the spring. Philip pointed up into the dark corner, and at first I could only see two great solemn eyes; but presently I could make out the white throat, webbed feet, and dingy green back of the famous animal.

I was rather disappointed that he was not bigger and fiercer looking, for I had fancied that he must be something like the great dragon with which St. George had such a terrible time, only more tame, and not quite so big. But there was something in his quiet, steady look that I could not get my eyes away from; so I looked at him and he looked at me, till Philip took me by the hand, saying—"Come; we're going to sit up on the old door there, in the sun, and try who likes butter."

We all got seated on the door, and they proceeded to test each other's love for butter, by holding a buttercup under their chins. If it made a golden reflection upon their throats, it was a sure sign they did like butter; if it made no reflection, then they did not like it.

After it was decided that I had a strong regard for butter, my thoughts returned to the old bull-frog, and I crawled along to that corner of the door which overhung the spring, and lay down flat on my stomach, to get a good view of him. I had not lain there long before the boys got through with their buttercup experiment, and proposed to go home, as it was nearly dinner-time, they thought. With one accord they jumped off the door, and, quick as a flash, it tilted up, and headforemost I went, for all the world just like a bull-frog, plump into the spring!

The barrel was not wide enough for me to turn around in, even if I had thought of it. But I only thought, for an instant, how bright and pretty the sandy bottom was, through which the up-springing water came bubbling softly against my lips and cheek—then my head seemed to become very full—I felt as though I were choking, and there was a sound in my ears like that of a wind in the woods; then everything grew dark and seemed to stop. The boys were so frightened they could do nothing, and there I stuck. There I might have stuck till my little legs had grown so stiff, and still, and cold, that it had been beyond the power of even India-nankeen trowsers to wake them into life, and warmth, and vanity again.

But, happily for me, there was a woman spinning just outside the door of the little house on the hill, who, with the instinctive watchfulness which mothers have for all children, had kept her eye upon us all the time, and when I was tilted into the spring, she ran quickly down, seized me by the heels, drew me out, and carried me, all white and cold as death, to my mother. By the time she reached our house, there was a little fluttering of the heart, which, after they had rubbed me awhile with flannels dipped in hot rum, gradually increased to the usual regular beat; soon the lips grew red again, and directly the eyes opened. They were a little vacant and glassy at first, and I felt bewildered, but it was not long before I remembered all about the whole affair.

The first words I spoke were to ask about my trowsers. They brought them in to me, all wet and soiled, where they had rubbed against the green sedges about the spring. The sight of them in this condition distressed me so much that old Wangie, who had been running about wringing her hands and crying—"Oh, little massa am dead, sartin!"— but who was now overjoyed to find that I was not, declared they should be washed and ironed that very day. She started off with them in such a hurry that she trod on the tail of her favorite cat, Jim, who was washing his face with his paw by the door. Wangie (bless her old black face!—she's dead now;) would have stopped and petted the poor cat, usually, but this time to the great astonishment of all, for she had the kindest heart in the world, she gave him a prodigious kick, which sent him full two yards down the hall.

My mother had learned all about the accident from the boys and the woman who saved me, and when, after a few hours, I was able to get up, she took me quietly into her room and explained to me how wrong it was to go over to the meadow without asking her permission, and told me that, although I had been pretty severely punished already, yet, in order to make me remember never to do so again, she should put my trowsers away in the drawer for two weeks, during which I was to wear frocks again.

What a blow was this to me! How all my pride and glory of the morning were humbled to the earth! All the little world of hopes and vanities which my foolish heart had wrought, was scattered to chaos again! I bore up under it pretty well the rest of the day, ate my supper in silence, and went quietly to bed; but after mother had gone down, and I was left alone, I could stand it no longer. I lay there in the dark sobbing and sobbing, till I sobbed myself to sleep.

So ended my first day in trowsers!