p. 370 | The Big Boots

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 17, 1882

The Big Boots.

THE ruins of that old country school-house yet remain, a deformity by the roadside.

It had brick walls, and these are not entirely gone. A portion of the chimney, too, is still to be seen, while old foundation-stones, and bits of lath, and broken layers of mortar, make the place desolate and forbidding. The wet, spongy farm-lot in the rear is no handsomer, nor the rude highway more attractive, than was the case forty years ago.

It would seem as if country school-houses, like country grave-yards, were once begrudged the room required for them, and hence, pushed into the most uninviting places.

Even now, in sleep, I sometimes dream of my school-days there, and of the little boy with the big boots—the sorrowful little boy, whom none of us knew enough to make happy. Boys are not really more cruel then men, but their well of kindness lies deep, and they leap over it and run around it, without knowing how clear and sparkling its waters would be if drawn up.

I was a lad of eleven, the first and only winter of my attendance there. I am now more than fifty, and in the review, that single winter seems as long to me as a dozen years. The incidents of youth have a consistency like that of pure gold, and the mind afterwards beats them out, so that they cover a very broad surface.

Mr. Tanner, the master, I would know in a moment were he to rise up before me now, and the fresh-looking girl at the desk in the corner, and the blue-eyed country beauty, whose seat was by the window, and the freckled boys, and boys with tow hair, the big boys on the back seat, and the little boys on the front seat by the stove—I would recognize them every one, could some psychological wonder bring them back to me again, with the looks that they have long since shed, atom by atom, on the road of life.

There was one little fellow about my own age, whom, on the first day of school, I remarked as having a thoughtful and somewhat troubled face, and to be poorly dressed.

It was a cold day in November, and at recess some of the boys put on their overcoats. One of them, who had a very handsome garment of the kind, on taking it down from its nail in the entry, observed beside it an old, faded coat belonging to some one else. This he rudely grasped, and with a jeering, cruel air and derisive whoop, exclaimed:—

"What rag is this?"

At the same time he threw it across the small entry and out upon the stone step.

Another kicked it as it fell, while a third caught it up and ran with it, as if it were a kite or a banner. Presently, however, it was dropped, and as the boys became somewhat scattered, I saw the little fellow of the reflective face hastily pick up the despised article and return it to the place where it hung. As he turned away his countenance was flushed, and he drew the back of his hand across his somewhat handsome eyes.

It was his coat; this was plain, and all my enjoyment of the recess was spoiled, for I thought how he must feel to be jeered at and insulted for what he could not help, and what had no doubt caused him much anxiety and mortification, even before any one had made it a subject of ridicule.

He did not put on the coat at that time, though he had worn it in the morning, but when the day was over, and all the children were making ready for home, as the bitter wind whistled past the door, he once more buttoned it around him, and I was glad to find that nothing was said, although some of the boys looked curiously at his thread-bare attire, as if wondering how he could wear such clothes on the very first day of school. But I now observed that he had ill-fitting boots, much too large for his feet; and although the coat escaped attack for the time, the boots did not.

"Boots! boots! what is the price of old leather?" "Who wants to take a sail in a mud scow?" were some of the unfeeling ejaculations that he was compelled to hear as he started out upon the road with the others, who, after the manner of rude school-boys, sauntered or ran along pushing each other into ditches, or throwing pebbles at gate-posts and trees.

The following day was still colder, and the boy came wrapped in his poor overcoat; but this had now ceased to attract particular attention; the big boots, which really made a remarkable appearance upon feet so small, becoming the butt instead.

They made a louder sound on the school-house floor than the boots of any other boy; and the sensitive heart of young Master Robert Brown (for this was the lad's name) told him so. There were enough others to tell him so too. Oh, the cruelty of those sarcastic smiles and impudent glances!

One evening I told my parents of the boy with the big boots, who came from the other end of the district; and my mother replied that Robert Brown must be the son of that Mr. Brown who lived at the turn of the road, two miles off; and who by intemperance kept his whole family in misery.

Mrs. Brown, my mother said, was an excellent woman, and was always mending and fixing up her children's clothing, trying in her careful, anxious way, to make something of nothing, and often, too, succeeding surprisingly well.

Robert, she added, had an elder brother, who had gone to sea, and perhaps the big boots might be a pair which he had left at home. The family had lately lost a little girl, Robert's sister, and were in affliction every way, and she hoped that I would never show by word or look that I noticed the clumsy boots or the threadbare coat.

And now I remember hearing Robert say to himself, sobbing, one day when the big boys had treated him ill:—

"O, little Mamie! little Mamie! I am glad you cannot know of it!"

One day not long after the commencement of the school, two of the committee called upon some business with the teacher, and at recess some of the boys maliciously remarked that they had observed these officials smiling at Robert's big boots, as he stood in his class or shuffled along the floor.

This was not true, but it had its effect. The idea that grown-up men could regard him with derision for his patched jacket and his poor, clumsy boots, seemed to impress him with a feeling more forlorn than aught else had done.

How many leaden thoughts fell on his young heart! He recalled his father, a drunkard; his mother, so careful, so sorrowful, so worn with work, so tender of himself; his little sister, asleep under the new mound, where his own and his mother's hands placed, every ivy, mosses, and circlets of the pretty creeping-jenny—for it was all they could do; and then in the midst of all how inexpressibly dreadful to his mind seemed the taunts which poverty brought upon him. The coat upon which his mother had sewed at night, hoping it might answer; the boots she had dreaded to ask him to wear; the course dinner that the boys had made fun of at noon, as he took it from his pail,—the thought of these things made him feel more bitter than ever, and suddenly at that recess that he was missed from among his school-fellows.

I found him stretched at full length on the damp ground, out of sight of his tormentors, and when I knelt by his side, and put my arm tenderly about him, his sobs were violent. He cried long and bitterly—all the more for this sympathy, so precious, so unexpected.

Presently a number of school-boy faces peered over the fence that had hidden us from the common view, but after a moment's watching, they slunk away in shame.

I soon perceived that my school-mates were talking earnestly among themselves, and saw also that some of the faces I had thought so cruel wore a look of repentance and sorrow.

The teacher's bell sounded, and we all thronged into school—Robert Brown the last. How sad he looked. The master asked no questions; but he must previously have observed something of the condition of things, for when school was over at night, he put his arm around Robert's neck, and asked him to remain for a few moments. Robert held me by the hand, and asked that I might remain also.

Then, when we were alone, he told, at the master's request, the story of his troubles. How simply and how frankly he spoke, and what unstudied pathos there was in his words! The school-master's eyes were full of tears, and in answering the poor little boy, his voice became choked, and more than once he left a sentence unfinished. As to myself, I could not help weeping outright.

The next day Robert was absent. He had taken cold during the few minutes in which he lay on the wet ground, and as the weather was now stormy, his mother had not ventured to send him.

His absence afforded the master an opportunity of talking to the other pupils in a way which he could hardly have done had the little boy with the big boots been present.

My school-fellows had, however, already begun to think—begun to put themselves in Robert's place, and imagine how they would feel if their mothers, who so loved them, were poor and care-worn, and sat up at night, trying to make old things answer for their dear boys, hoping that the other boys would not notice the difference, or at least would not speak of it—to consider how it would be if, when they came to school, all this anxiety, and toil, and love were mocked by unfeeling voices, and all the dear things of home were insulted through a senseless derision, by those who had the good fortune to possess parents who could buy them new coats, new mittens, and new boots. There is almost everything in thinking, and at last the boys thought.

Master Tanner spoke kindly to them on the subject. Though he could be stern at times, there was now not one atom of severity in his tones.

His heart had no room for anger, but as he spoke, he became eloquent. It was a soft, willing kind of eloquence, and the most thoughtless boy in the school was affected to tears.

Whether or not Robert's mother knew what had transpired I cannot tell; but the succeeding day he came again, wearing the same coat and boots as before. But the boys saw them not, or saw them only to feel a heartache, and a new-born sympathy for the poor little fellow who would not have worn them if he could have helped it. The tide of impulse had turned.

Nothing was overdone, but there was kindness of act and tone, and the big boys showed that they were doing what they could, in a gentle, unobstrusive way, to make Robert forget that they had ever treated him ill.—Evangelist.