Oh! What a golden chain is memory – it connects our early childhood to our present thoughts and links us to the anchor of our future hopes. Shall we count the links of that long chain, one by one, and see how they connect all our joys, our happiness, all our pain and sorrow, all our ambitions and disappointments, all our likes and dislikes, all our love and hate, all the opportunities that we embraced or neglected, all our good or bad intentions, or unkind acts, all our charitable dispositions or morbid selfishness, all our hopes and dispairs, all our acquaintances and impressions? Probably there is no brighter link in that long chain than the one that connects us with our acquaintances, and our impressions of them. It links those joyous shouts of laughter of childrens’ voices as they rang out in delight at having achieved some advantage in games of play, of hide and seek etc, those swift little feet that have long gone into hiding, those joyous little voices long since stilled in the silence of death. Those voices that once joined with ours as we lisped our morning or evening prayers at our mother’s knee. It links us to our parents voices as they entreated us in words of love, or threatened us with angry words when we had justly deserved it. It links us to all that gave us the inspiration to be good, or to do kindly deeds, and also to those who sowed
tares instead of grain in the fertile soil of our young lives, and marred much of the serne happiness and fullness of joy that might otherwise have been our portion. What a crowd of thoughts conjure up before us when we start to revive the chain of memory.
he next event that stands out clearly in my memory is my fourth birthday, It was customary for the workmen of our district to have a good fat pig to kill about Xmas tine to provide a festive season with fresh pork for us and to provide themselves with ham and bacon for the year to follow. It was also a custom amongst the workmen who were neighbours not to kill at the same time, so when one party killed a pig there used to be what was known as a pig feast, to which all the neighbours were invited and it was probably due to that event that we hear the expression sometimes made concerning people who have seen good times but have since slipped several-rungs down the social ladder – that it is not everyday we kill a pig. My birthday being 23rd of December, it so happened it was on that day of my fourth birthday that my father was to have his pig killed, and although the terrible deed was to be done at four o’clock in the morning, so that it should not interfere with the ordinary routine of the butcher nor my father and I got my father to allow me to rise and see it done. He not only allowed me to see it, but he allowed me to hold the horn lantern that provided the light, and being so anxious to see how it was killed I held the light so that I could see best myself and that so satisfied the butcher that he told me I was to be his butcher when I grew up. Immediately my; aspiration and whole ambition went out to the butchering business, and this remembrance links my first boy playmate, who was about twelve months -my senior, to my ambitions in the butchering business. We discussed the matter with each other, and to wait till I grew up was ruled out of the question. Were we not men then, and could we not start straight away? Of course we could. So we agreed to get into the business and we arranged our shop and started the business with frogs for our stock-in-trade, but there being no demand for our goods the market was so depressed that we; quickly went out of business, and we decided to go in for horses. J. C.,
John COLWILL
Son Male 17 Whitstone, Cornwall, England Ag. Lab.
my first boy playmate, was much bigger than me, and had much less objection to being the horse than I had. We readily agreed that he should be the horse and me the driver. I believe we both found mutual pleasure in the knowledge that he could pull a heavier load than me, and in the knowledge that he was a willing horse. Of course, in playing horses you have to go further afield than your own backyard, so in our wanderings we dropped in on W.J., another willing horse, about equal in size to J. C. So to have a team of willing horses was a very desirable thing and we found a lot of pleasure in it and became best friends, sharing each others joys and woes. About that time ay younger brother was toddling around in his little red frock with the black stars, but he was too small to play horses , and my sister who was two years my senior and who had a girl playmate, used to play and fight in turns, being both of the spitfire temperament, used to join us
In that little village there lived three fanners. One of them we used to call Gramper G. He was a great tall, lanky man as thin as a rake as people used to say, he had a very long nose and had the reputation of being not over-fond of work, but whatever his qualifications or his desire for work he failed in business and came to live with my father, .and mother. The first time I remember being on horseback was with Gramper G who took me up in front of him when he was on his way to the field where he was ploughing. I do not remember whether he did any work that afternoon or whether he spent the time amusing me, but he brought me home again in the evening and I found real pleasure in his company. After he failed in business he became very irritable, and my playmate J. C. and myself found pleasure in teasing him, and getting him to chase us. On one occasion we ran away with his walking-stick; he chased us out into the courtyard, but we climbed one of the elm trees and teased him from our perch. He became so wrathful that he gathered stones to knock us off our perches, and in his frantic endeavour to reach us with the stones he put that much energy into his efforts that he overbalanced, fell backwards, and settled on a heap of manure and then we laughed until we nearly cried while he fumed like a tornado.
