Watch Yourself Go By

“Al-f-u-r-d!” A farmyard call rises in three increasingly urgent waves as a four-year-old makes another dash for the old well—and the adults race after him.

Al. G. Field’s 1912 autobiography begins in the country, among a busy farm household where the women keep watch and the little boy keeps finding ways past them. Called “Al-f-u-r-d” before he knows himself as Alfred, the First Born has one consuming ambition: to peer into the well’s black depths. The more his family warns him, bars the door, and guards the kitchen, the more irresistible the mystery becomes. Field recalls the chase with affectionate comic relish, but the danger is real: one missed moment could send the curious child over the edge. Can anyone keep him away from the well—and what is he so determined to discover?

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