Farmington by Clarence Darrow — Read

Our house stood a short distance beyond the town, and on the other side of the creek that ran my father's mill. This little stream came down out of the hills from somewhere a long way off, and emptied into the river that wound through the long valley beside the road, flowing from no man knew where. I must have been nine or ten years old before I was allowed to go to the mouth of the stream and watch it join the river and run off between the high hills beyond the town into the great unknown world. Many years before, I had heard that there was such a place, but I was not allowed to go; it was so far away, and the dangers were supposed to be so very great,-though why, I cannot say, any more than I can give a reason for other things that we boys believed, or, for that matter, that we grown-up folk believe.

But I used to go quite early across the creek to the little town; at first holding my father or mother tightly by the hand, or, rather, having my hand held close by theirs. There were many wonders on the way: first, the old wooden bridge that used often to be carried off in the spring, when heavy rains and melting snow and ice came down the stream. But this bridge was nothing compared with the long covered one below the town, that I found some years later, when I had grown large enough to fish and was ashamed to hold my father and my mother by the hand.