Stringtown on the pike
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| Stringtown on the pike - novel John Uri Lloyd |
a tale of northernmost Kentucky
From preface:
My name is Samuel Drew, and I am now a professor of chemistry at the university on the Hill. When I think of my boyhood, memories of the Kentucky pike arise, and I recall the experiences of Sammy Drew, a barefooted child. The boy who, in August's heat, between noonday and mid-afternoon, dared to walk bare-footed upon that road, raised his feet quickly. I know whereof I speak, for I often relieved my blistering soles by slipping aside into the weed-lined by-paths, preferring them, even if they passed near the honey-locust tree, under which danger lurked in the great brown thorns that always menace the barefooted boy of Kentucky.
That pike is yet vivid to memory. Again I see the dust of bygone times. Again the sun's fierce rays force mc to greater laziness. Often I seek a shade tree at the roadside, there to find the grassy brink of a grateful spring and, leaning over the sward, bury my face in the hard limestone water, drinking deep and long. Then, thoroughly content, I sit on the overhanging sod in the shadow of the tree and spatter the cool water with my toes, bathing a stone-bruise in the very fount from which I drank. With nose-tip close to the water's surface, I eye the flitting cloud shadows, scan the reflected tan-freckled face, and watch the water-bugs and crawfish as. deep in the limpid pool, they stir the sand in the vein's I I Stringtown on the Pike mouth.
Finally, I turn upon my back and gaze into space, dreaming of nothing, thinking of nothing. From my earliest school days, chemistry excited my keenest interest. When but a child I sat absorbed during the experiments made by the teacher while he instructed the advanced class — the class in chemistry — of our country school. By chance I finally obtained a copy of " Comstock's Chemistry," and day by day kept abreast with the students who recited in that subtle science. Either luck or fate made a chemist of me, luck because the subject chanced to be taught in my room; or fate, because " what is to be will be." I could not carry a rule in " Brown's Grammar " from one day to another, and I still detest the word " grammar " because of those twenty-six artificial rules.
If I committed to memory some portions of history, in a week thereafter I mixed the incidents, unless they were connected with something of chemical significance. I could not have remembered from day to day whether Gustavus Adolphus fought in the War of the Roses or conducted the Thirty Years' conflict. Of everything but chemistry, my head seemed vacant. All else slipped through as a wind-struck fog flies through a leafless woodland.
The result was that, though other subjects filtered out of my brain as through a sieve, chemistry remained securely caught by the mind meshes. I should add, however, that historical events connected with the enticing science remained, as, under similar conditions, did mathematical signs and formulae. Chemistry served as a nucleus of attachment. My one-sided mind caught the chemistry of a subject and bound thereto or blended therewith all connected matters, as alcohol blends ether and water. The teacher scolded me often in the kindness of severity for my indifference 2 Stringtown on the Pike to other subjects.
I was one of the blockheads; at least he seemed to regard me as such, not appearing to know anything of my one talent. The little boys of my row each learned something concerning everything, as do all mediocre brains, and one by one passed beyond me; and I, in humiliation, sat conspicuously among younger children, absorbed in the one unreached study that was destined in after years to wreck my life. Chemistry! Would to God I could blot out the word
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