IF I WERE A BOY AGAIN by James T. Fields

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 3, 1881

IF I WERE A BOY AGAIN.

By James T. Fields

LET me tell you my dear lads, some of the things I would do if I were a boy again—some of the too often neglected acts I would strive to accomplish if it were in my power to begin all over anew.

This paper was written expressly for you, young fellows, who are beginning to think for yourselves, and are not averse to hearing what an old boy who loves you, has to say to his younger fellow-students.

I think I would learn to use my left hand just as freely as my right one, so that if anything happened to lame either of them, the other would be already to write and "handle things," just as if nothing had occurred. There is no reason in the world why both hands should not be educated alike. A little practice would soon render one set of fingers just as expert as the other; and I have known people who never thought, when a thing was to be done, which particular hand ought to do it, but the hand nearest the object took hold of it and did the office desired.

I would accustom myself to go about in the dark, and not be obliged to have a lamp or candle on every occasion. Too many of us are slaves to the daylight, and decline to move forward an inch unless everything is visible. One of the most cheerful persons I ever knew was a blind old man, who had lost his sight by an accident at sea during early manhood. He went everywhere, and could find things more easily than I could. When his wife wanted a spool of cotton, or a pair of scissors from upstairs, the gallant old gentleman went without saying a word and brought it. He never asked any one to reach him this or that object, but seemed to have the instinct of knowing just where it was and how to get at it.

Surprised at his power of finding things, I asked him one day for an explanation; and he told me that when he was a boy on board a vessel, it occurred that he might some time or other be deprived of sight, and he resolved to begin early in life to rely more on a sense of feeling than he had ever done before. And so he used to wander, by way of practice, all over the ship in black mid-night, going down below and climbing around anywhere and everywhere, that he might, in case of blindness, not become wholly helpless and of no account in the world. In this way he had educated himself to do without eyes when it became his lot to live a sightless man.

I would learn the art of using tools of various sorts. I think I would insist on learning some trade, even if I knew there would be no occasion to follow it when I grew up. What a pleasure it is in after-life, to be able to make something, as the saying is!—to construct a neat box to hold one's pen and paper; or a pretty cabinet for a sister's library, or to frame a favorite engraving for a Christmas present to a dear, kind mother. What a loss not to know how to mend a chair that refuses to stand up strong only because it needs a few tacks and a bit of leather here and there! Some of us cannot drive a nail straight; and should we attempt to saw off an obtrusive piece of wood, ten to one we would lose a finger in the operation.

It is a pleasant relaxation from books and study to work an hour every day in a tool-shop; and my friend, the learned and lovable Prof. Oliver Wendell Holmes, finds such a comfort in "mending things," when his active brain needs repose, that he sometimes breaks a piece of furniture on purpose, that he may have the relief of putting it together again much better than it was before. He is as good a mechanic as he is a poet; but there is nothing mechanical about his poetry, as you all know who have read his delightful pieces. An English author of great repute said to me not long ago, "Professor Holmes is writing the best English of our time." And I could not help adding, "Yes, and inventing the best stereoscopes, too!"

I think I would ask permission, if I happened to be born in a city, to have the opportunity of passing all my vacations in the country that I might learn the names of trees and flowers and birds. We are, as a people, sadly ignorant of all accurate rural knowledge. We guess at many country things, but we are certain of very few.

It is inexcusable in a person like my amiable neighbor Simpkins, who lives from May to November on a farm of sixty acres in a beautiful wooded country, not to know a maple from a beach, or a bobolink from a catbird. He once handed me a bunch of pansies and called them violets, and on another occasion he mistook sweet-peas for geraniums.

What right has a human being, while the air is full of bird-music, to be wholly ignorant of the performer's name? A boy ought also to be at home in a barn, and learn how to harness a horse, tinker up a wagon, feed the animals, and do a hundred useful things the experience of which may be of special service in after-life, as an explorer or traveler, when unlooked-for emergencies befall him. I have seen an ex-President of the United States, when an old man, descend from his carriage, and re-arrange buckles and straps about his horses when an accident occurred, while the clumsy coachman stood by in a kind of hopeless inactivity, not knowing the best thing to be done. The ex-President told me he had learned about such matters on a farm in his boyhood, and he was never at a loss for remedies on the road when his carriage broke down.

If I were a boy again, I would learn how to row a boat and handle a sail and above all, how to become proof against sea-sickness. Of course, every young person now-a-days, male or female, learns to swim, so no advice on that score need be proffered; but if I were a boy again I would learn to float half a day, if necessary, as in rough a bit of water as I could find on our beautiful coast. A boy of fifteen who cannot keep his head and legs all right in a stiff sea ought to—try until he can. No lad in these days ought to drown—if he can help it.

I would keep "better hours," that is, I would go to bed earlier than most boys do. Nothing gives more mental and bodily vigor than sound rest when properly applied. Sleep is our great replenisher, and if we neglect to take it naturally in childhood, all the worse for us when we grow up. If we go to bed early, we ripen; if we sit up late, we decay; and sooner or later we contract a disease called insomnia, allowing it to be permanently fixed upon us, and then we decay even in youth. Late hours are shadows from the grave.

If I were a boy again, I would have a blank book, in which I could record, before going to bed, every day's events just as they happened to me personally. If I began by writing only two lines a day in my diary, I would start my little book, and faithfully put down what happened to interest me.

On its pages I would note down the habits of birds and animals as I saw them, and if the horse fell ill, down should go his malady in my book, and what cured him should go there too. If the cat or the dog showed any peculiar traits, they should all be chronicled in my diary, and nothing worth recording should escape me.

There are hundreds of things I would correct in my life if I were a boy again, and among them is this especial one; I would be more careful of my teeth. Seeing, since I have grown up how much suffering is induced by the bad habit of constantly eating candies and other sweet nuisances, I would shut my mouth to all allurements of that sort. Very hot and very cold substances I would studiously avoid. Toothache in our country is one of the national crimes.

I would have no dealings with tobacco, in any form, if I were a boy again. My friend Pipes tells me he is such a martyr to cigar-boxes that his life is a burden. The habit of smoking has become such a tyrant over him that he carries a tobacco bowsprit at his damp, discolored lips every hour of the day, and he begs me to warn all the boys of my acquaintance, and say to them emphatically, "Don't learn to smoke!" He tells me, sadly, that his head is sometimes in such a dizzy whirl, and his brain so foul, from long habits of smoking he cannot break off, that he is compelled to forego much that is pleasant in existence, and live a tobacco-tortured life from year to year. Poor Pipes! He is a sad warning to young fellows who are just learning to use the dirty, unmannerly weed.—James T. Fields.