Saturday
Musings
Spectator December
31, 1915
A man who
loves boys and can sympathize and forgive many of their shortcomings, told the
Muser a bit of his own history. He was born on a farm almost within sound of
St. Paul’s chimes, and spent the first twelve years of his life clod-hopping on
the Flamboro hills. He had a loving mother and a father whose idea was to bring
up his children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and to put them at work
on the farm as soon as they were old enough to pick bugs from the potato vines,
or other work that a great healthy boy of six or seven years ought to be able
to do. He was really a kind father in his way, but having been brought up from
childhood to hard work (and he never spared himself), he was determined that his
boys should be educated in habits of industry, even if they wasted but little
time in the country school house. Well, that boy stood it till he was about 14
years of age, and then he determined to paddle his own canoe, and get an
education. He was a husky boy and could plow and harrow, plant and sow, and
make an ordinary hand in the field. He was just such a boy as the average
farmer wanted, because he could hire his services cheaply, and get lots of work
out of him. In telling his story, he said a house, despite the grandeur of its
architectural proportions, never necessarily constituted a home. There are more
boys living in what to them are cages rather than a home. He could not complain
of lack of comforts in his father’s home, nor was anything grudgingly withheld
from him; but, after all, there was something, he could hardly define what,
that was missing. Being a country boy, his experience had been
confined to country life, and now that he had become the father of a family he
felt that the country boy was more to be pitied in his home surroundings than the
boy brought up in a village or a city. He has but few recreations compared with
the town boy, and there are always the odd jobs on the farm requiring his early
and late attention. The country boy has his daily duties to perform, and woe be
unto him if he ever forgets or neglects them. The cows have to be brought up
from the pasture field at night and driven back in the morning; the gaps in the
fences must be repaired; weeds must be kept down, the plants hoed; potato bugs
must not be allowed to get away with the potato crop; the water must be pumped
for the cattle and feed prepared for them. These are the regular routine work
on the farm, but the odd jobs are numberless, and by the time that his daily tasks
are ended, his wearied body is ready for bed, just about the hour that the town
boy is going to singing school or to some place of recreation in which to spend
the evening hours. The country boy is even too tired to read a chapter in
Baxter`s Saint`s Rest, or some such volume as may be found in the family
library.
There
is a trite saying that ``all work and no
play makes Jack a dull boy`.`The town boy has his share of odd jobs to perform,
but he has also many opportunities for recreation that come not within the
reach of the country boy. The father of the country boy rises early and works
late because he feels the necessity of making hay while the sun shines; and he
argues, if he must do this to make a home for his family, why should not his
boys do their part ? He must take advantage of the short Canadian summer to
make and gather his harvest. He was born and raised on a farm, and he proudly
boasts that there is not a more independent life. He is his own master and is
surrounded with every comfort, and can snap his fingers at the tax collector,
for he has always the money ready when the time comes to pay his share of
running the local government. However, his every effort is expended to
accomplish the maximum amount of work in the shortest possible time. The father
of the country boy was born and raised on a farm and forgets his boyhood days,
since they contained for him some things that were always not pleasant. He is a
good man in every sense of the word, but general conditions and surroundings
have had a tendency to narrow his views of that which goes to make a happy boy
life. He sees the necessity of continued and strenuous effort to accomplish the
tasks that he has learned so religiously to respect. “Make hay while the sun
shines” was drilled into him in his boyhood days, and he naturally feels that
his boy should be brought up in the same way, and do his share from the time he
is able to crush a potato bag between two stones.
A colt born in springtime is pampered
and petted for a couple of years because there is money value in the colt. But
there comes a time when the colt is broken to harness, and now he must his
share in the farm work, or is sold for a good price. He is a silky-nosed colt
no longer, just a plain horse. The country boy is a boy only until the time he is
big enough to be of service, then, like the colt, he is harnessed up for work,
and he is a boy no longer. He is allotted tasks that may not be too much for
his strength but they take the boy out of him and have a tendency to make him
old before his time. He passes from a stripling in short pants, with freckled
legs to the gosling class in long trousers, and the chances are ten to one that
the father never notices the transition stage till the boy develops into young
manhood. The father does not realize that he is no longer a boy, and that he
should have certain liberties and a stipulated allowance for his labor. The boy
is modest in his demands and does not ask the same pay that a hired man would
get, even though his labor is more profitable, for he feels an interest in his
father’s prosperity; but he would like to have some regular amount that he
could call his own, so that when the young people in the neighborhood are
getting up a garden party or a Sunday school picnic or an excursion, he can pay
his share of the expenses. This all he asks, and the father looks in wonder at
his audacity. Has he not reared the boy from infancy, clothed and fed him, and
now to think he would ask for pay! The day comes when there is an election, and
the stripling of only yesterday has now arrived at man’s estate. He announces
that he is going to take a half day off and go and vote with his dad. It comes
as a shock to dad. The father thinks of him only as a boy yet. Every farmer boy
likes to own his own horse and buggy, and when he makes the modest request, the
father tells him that boys are incapable of handling a horse, and that when he
gets older, he will think about it.
Our friend to whom we are indebted for
this chapter on country boys is now a well-to-do business man in Hamilton. He
said, in closing : “I do not intend to cast unworthy reflections upon the
father of the country boy, but to make him think that he has other
responsibilities than merely raising a boy to the slavish work on the farm when
he should be a boy and have a boy’s enjoyment of life. I left home at 14
because I saw no other chance of being anything but a farm hand without pay. I
am now a man of 35 years and have a boy of my own. He is no sluggard, but is
being trained to usefulness in life. He is getting an education to fit him for
the place he may occupy in the world’s activities. I occasionalkly go back to
the old Flamboro home and enjoy the day on the farm. My father is still
inclined to look upon me as an inexperienced youngster . The farmer should have
no work that cannot be paid for and if it is worth paying for, who should
deserve pay more than his own son? I have made it a rule to pay my boy when I
take him from his boy pleasures. It has taught him industrious habits, and a thrift
in saving money, and whenever an opportunity offers to run an errand for
someone else, where a penny can be earned, he drops his play to go. This is
work with some object in view, and that object is a pleasant one.”
Make
men of your boys, but do not lose sight of the fact that in making men of them,
you must treat them as such. If this were done, fewer boys would leave the
country for city life. Instead of our boys seeking the too-often uncertainties
of a city life, they would remain on the farm and be independent. Educate your
boys to be business farmers instead of making them slavish farmhands. Never
forget that you were a boy yourself, and if you were deprived of the pleasures
of boyhood, see to it that your boy has a happy youth at least.
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To brighten the lives with the romance
of love, especially of the younger generation, may not be out of the way, now
and then, for an old Muser. The stories and songs of other days are full of love
and romance. Were the boys and girls of the last century different to those of
the present day, or were they brought up in a simpler atmosphere and surrounded
by simpler influences? This is a problem hard to solve. Well, at a venture, we
will say that the boys of sixty and seventy years ago did not indulge in the cigarette
habit, nor did the girls expose the upper part of their upper bodies to the
vulgar gaxe in the street. One of those plain, outspoken preachers in a western
town said to his congregation, in the course of his sermon, that “Eve in the
Garden of Eden never discovered she was naked till she had eaten of the apple;
and,” said he, “I wish the young ladies of my congregation would eat more
apples.” There are a great many ways for accounting for things now and then.
Old-timers will remember the serenaders that made sweet melody at the midnight
hour in singing to their lady loves. Hamilton always had a reputation for its
singers and its musicians, and this talent was cultivated in the singing schools which the young people
of both sexes attended. One could hear the songs of Stephen Foster, Come Where
My Love Lies Dreaming; The Evening Bells by Beethoven; Balfe’s Then You’ll
Remember Me; Moore’s Oft in the Stilly Night, and, as a farewell, Hatton’s
Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye. Indeed, the jolly singers even attempted that
difficult but sweet melody, Shubert’s Serenade, written in the early years of
the last century, by the gifted composer as a farewell to the girl he could
only love in secret, for in those days it was the height of presumption for the
humble composer and teacher, the son of a peasant, to aspire to the hand of his
pupil, the daughter of a nobleman.
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If you love the classical in music,
attend one of the many recitals at the Conservatory of Music, on James street
south, and the chances are Shubert’s Serenade will have a prominent place on
the program. If you have not read the history of that masterpiece of Shubert’s,
we will give it to you in brief as we found it in a magazine. Captious critics
have protested against the popularity of this familiar Serenade, and would even
now at this late day., though it was written one hundred years ago, rob the
divine author of this graceful little gem. While, the critics say, it is by no
means certain that Shubert is actually the author of the Serenade, yet they
unwillingly concede that the air reveals many traces of the style of the great
composer. The story, as we find it, tells us that the year 1816 witnessed the beginning of an
episode in Shubert’s life, quite different in many respects from what had
preceded. He was engaged by a Hungarian count to teach music to his family, two
daughters and a son. Shubert’s intercourse with this amiable family was very
pleasant, and in the course of it seems to have occurred the nearest approach
to a love affair that can be detected in his life. Caroline, the second
daughter of Count Esterhazy, was only eleven years of age when she became his
pupil. But as time elapsed and she became seventeen or eighteen, it is supposed
Shubert manifested symptoms of having fallen in loive with her. Caroline asked
him, in a moment of girlish coquetery, why he was dedicating so many delightful
works to other people, and he had never dedicated any to her. Shubert is said
to have replied, “Why should I?”Is not all that I have done been dedicated to
you? How could a man who was never in love have written that Serenade in which
all that is beautiful and scared for the love of a woman not come like a breath
from heaven? Never was the voice of love so passionate and so pure. He was the
son of a peasant, she was the daughter of a count.
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But here is the story as it has been
told by one who admired Shubert, and it is so interesting that it will read by
the students at the Hamilton Conservatory who have so often played and sung the
Serenade. Toward the palace of the great Count Easterhazy a young musician
walked rapidly through the streets of Vienna one morning more than a hundred
years ago. Little had he slept that night, and with the sun he was up, brushing
away at his worn coat, and all the while wondering if it were true, or only a
dream, that he, the unknown Franz Shubert, was to have a nobleman’s daughter
for a pupil.
Still, his beloved master, old Master
Heizer, often had said that sme day he would become famous as a teacher. Now he
was standing in the splendid hall of the palace and to him the Count was
saying, “This is my daughter, Caroline.”
She stood before him,
that great count’s daughter, a child in years, in innocence. Her ees – what mirrored
purities they were! She looked and gently pitied as she looked. She smiled and
touched such spark of love that it would glow in song, in other centuries in a
world grown old.
Ah ! how he lived for
but that lesson after that ! The week was all too long a time to wait. How when
he guided her dainty hands over the keys his own hands would tremble. How dumb
were words that lay within his heart! Did she understand that day when she
said, “Master, speak to me through the keys?”
His souls spoke then.
His heart leaped forth as he played ! Could she know? Did she understand?
That evening came a
note from her/ “In three days we leave for Hungary to stay till autumn,” it
said.
Ah, could he but find
a way to give her the message in his heart which his lips refused to utter!
It was the night
before she was to leave. The air was still and the moon rode in the high
heaven. All the world lay in a shining veil. Love had led the master’s feet
till he stood beneath her chamber window, his head bowed to the jeweled sky, in
his eyes the purity of love supreme. It was spring, and spring’s spirit spoke
through the silver silence of the night, into his mind and heart and soul it
crept – ihto a life made magic by its call.
“Nightingales for me
imploring,
Sing in notes divine,’
Ev’ry tone of sweet lamenting,
Breaches a sigh of mine.”
So Shubert sang his
Serenade, in that, the velvet night of love. So voiced he there, poor lover,
the magic of his immortal plea.
Softly it ceased, he
had come to the end measure, that final
sighof the most perfect music of love. The Serenade – whose soul-satisfying
loveliness has thrilled the hearts of all who since have heard it. When next a
recital is announced in the Hamilton Conservatory, if Shubert’s Serenade is in
the program, be there to listen to it. If you have not the words, here they are
:
Tho’ leaves the night
winds moving,
Murmur low and sweet;
To thy chamber window
roving,
Love hath led my feet.
Silent prayers of
blissful feeling
Link us, though apart,
On the breath of
music stealing
To thy dreaming heart.
Moonlight on the
earth is sleeping,
Winds are rustling low,
Where the darkling
streams are creeping,
Dearest let us go!
All the stars keep
watch in heaven,
While I sing to thee,
And the night for
love was given,
Dearest, come to me.
Sadly in the forest
mourning,
Wails the whippoorwill;
And the heart for
thee is yearning,
Hit it, love, be still.
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