New England Bygones BY E. H. A R R (ELLEX il. KOJ.I.IXrf.) •I NEW EDITION, ENLARGED AND ILLUSTRATED. INTRODUCTION BY GAIL HAMILTON. piiiLADELrniA : J. B. L I P P I N C^ T T - c>c C' 0. 1883. \i0M 9 1882 Copyright, 1882, by J. B. Lippiscott ot, and which clings eternally to it, took deep root in them. At the same time, there went out from them, into their walls and furnishings, that sweetness of life-expression given to them by long use. Time mellowed their homes ; scars enriched them ; necessity added to them, — until, from very bare beginnings, grew the quaintly furnished, picturesque, simply beautiful old farm-houses. ETCHINGS. 39 Very much of the tlirif't and honesty pecuhar to the New Enghmcl race has flowed through this primitive and sturdy stock. Looking back, I see men and women whose characters were of the best ; the hnes of which, hke etchings, are sharp and suggestive. The last time I ever saw old Farmer ]\I. he was firmly grasping a pitchibrk, which was planted in his load; and, from his cart, was giving directions to half a score of stalwart laborers. His hat was weather-beaten; his garments- were coarse and ill-fittino-. To one unused to country life, he 40 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. would have seemed a rough old man, — a common farmer; the worn-out owner of a few acres and a little money, gotten Ijy working while others slept; by self-denial when indulgence would have seemed a virtue ; one who doubled the toils of summer, and cheated himself out of the rest of winter, — a sort of barren Avaif, almost cast out from one century upon the shore of another. Altogether otherwise this man seemed to me. I had known him from my earliest childhood. He had done faithfully the work which had been given liim to do. Whatever lay within its scope and possibilities he had accomplished. Whatever of dignity could be given, by truth and industry and self-respect, to a farmer's life, had been given to his. Forty years before he had been a rustic king in his fields. He was a king still, — this old man of eighty-odd years. There was the same stamp of force upon him. He was old age wiser than youth ; decay more potent than growth ; weakness dictating to strength. Time had ploughed over him ; but, if his hand had lost its cuiming, his eye had not lost its fire. If his body was wellnigh spent, his intellect was unabated. As he stood, poised upon the fruits of his harvest, ruling, with positive will and clear judgment, his laborers of a later generation, he seemed like the old hero that he was ; a half-defiant conqueror over circumstance, brave and resistant to the last. It was o;rand to see him, this half-wild son of nature, standing clear-cut against the blue sky, held up by the instruments and adjuncts of a life of toil ; the wrinkled, aged harvester, tossed out at his last, with a sort of fierce ges- ETCHINGS. 41. tnre, into this transient, Init suo;o;estive, i")icture. Clad in liome- spun, roughened by toil, with no acquired graces of speech, there was yet about him a certain expression of inborn dignity which compelled respect. His eye was piercing ; his voice in- cisive ; his words few ; his manner forcible. He was an eager, honest, successful man, who had taken and held life by siege and storm. This farmer's story will be read hereafter in character ; not in books. It would be tame written out, the daily lite of this man, who, through all his working years, tilled the soil in sum- mer and split rocks in winter. But by and by some famous man will have inherited good blood from this farmer, who, in his plain village life, was known for his uprightness, his thrift, his intelligence, and his sagacity. He will be proud of this an- cestor, whom the bad feared and the good honored ; of this man, whose nobility of nature gave breadth to the narrowness of his calling. Some woman, with more than ordinary beauty, may owe it to this old man, whose sinews, given early to the tuition of nature, grew into symmetrical stature; and whose fi'esh young features were hardened, by care and exposure, into an expression of honest and heroic audacity. S., the blacksmith, who shod horses by day and after night- fall reasoned with his neighbors in the village store, was a re- markaljle man. He was well read ; was especially strong in history, and an excellent debater. His eyes were always blood- shot, and his face was as hard-lined as the steel bars upon which he wrought ; yet, on Sundays, washed clean irom the smut of 42 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. toil, it was a face woi-thv to Ite remembered. Thm he was a noble-looking man, sitting, broad-browed, erect, and observant, at the head of his pew, where he followed Parson B.'s long and sensible discourses Avith the keen relish of an apt logician. This blacksmith shod horses admirably. His shoes fitted, and his nails nevt'r missed. In liis chosen vocation he had a perfect career, because whatever he did he did well. People came to him from far and near, lor no known blacksmith shod horses so well as he. In tliis merit of his work lay tlie [)athos oi his life; for this man, who shod horses, might have ruled men. Tlic logic which swayed the loungers in the village store should have Ijeen given to his equals. It is a mystery why this stalwart wrano;ler, who mio;ht ha\'e fiu'ured and a;rown famous in the world, hammered away, all his days, at horses' feet in a village smithy. There is no end to these remembered representative characters; quaint and positive, always grand, because underlaid by sim- plicity and fidelity to right. These farmers did not adorn their houses much, either in-doors or out, for they were almost always work-driven and weary. Nature took up their task where they left it. They planted fences and gates and well-sweeps. She, with lier frosts and stains and mosses, tumbled and embellished them. The saplings they stai'ted grew into prim poplars and dense, ill-bearing or- chards; l:)ut there was al)out these half- worthless trees, in their moss-clad old age, a kind of fitness which served its time and pnrp)0se. AVlien the square, brown farm-houses began to decay, ETCHINGS. 43 and farmers to graft their newly-planted stocks, the poplars and shaggy old apple-trees began also to die. Each was a sort of a])pendage to the other, and so they passed away together. The sweetest and most natural outgrowth of old-time pastoral life was a love of, and clinging to, the old homesteads. Once New England was full of them; great, brown, roomy, homely houses, facing the south ; led to by green lanes ; shut in by 44 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. ancestral fields; standing quite even with the greensward, which thev met with low-lying stones dug out from tlieir own pastures. Each had its family Ijurial-place, — blessed spot. They were all rieli in spi'ings and brooks and woodlands. They had added to them, year after vear, the glory of trees and bushes and vines ; the wild growth of seeds, flung by the winds into the crevices of walls and unused places. That which was peculiar to them, that wliicli eould not be simulated Ijy art, was a certain Ijeauty given to them by time and use and decay, — a sort of mellowing into the landscape of the piles and tlieir adjuncts, by which each homestead took unto itself an individual expression for its owner and his descendants. Tlie aspect of a farm-house was, to the children of it, as personal of recognition as the face of a father or grandfather. It was to be held in the family name, and go down with it. It was the sanctuary of homely virtues ; the centre of family reunions; the place of its yearly thanksgiving; a spot from wliich its membership had enlarged and diverged ; and to which, when they died, its sons and daughters were brought back for burial. In it, a-eneration after veneration, there was always one left. It was either a faithtul son or daughter who had mari'ied one of her own sort. These men and women were spoken of as " the boys and girls" at home, and, as sucli, they were most admirable. No matter how little fitted they seemed to be for any other sphere, as the appendages and rulers of these old houses they could have hardly been changed lor the l^etter. They were a portion of their appro- priate machinery, and stayed by them from choice, because their ETCHINGS. 45 lives had not grown away from them. The men had a certain audacity of mien ; the simple abandon of persons whose dealings were largely with nature. The women had no artificial ways; little learning ; but much good sense, and their greatest charm was that they were easily satisfied with small pleasures. Their children were the "country cousins"; as much a sweet feature of farm-life as were its dandelions and buttercups and daisies. Thus, by rotation, the homestead was always filled. The foreign land, to which its indwellers all travelled, was the little burial-ground close by. The journey to this was short by linear measurement ; but, reckoned by the events and worth of the days and months and years it took to get there, it was a travel wonderfully rich in effort and results. The external signs of this journey were the ruts in the boards and stones, worn by the steady tramp of feet. What you could not see was the life which had been constantly diverging from such fountains of piety, truth, and industry. As I look back, what strikes me most in that old country living is its simplicity, its earnestness, its honesty, and its dig- nity. The men and women seemed to grapple with their in- herited burdens. They were a race of born athletes and wrestlers with the soil ; the natural outgrowth of it. I see them walking, as they used, across the green fields to the meeting-house, which stood on a hill a mile away from my grandfather's, clad in their long-kept, variously-made holiday garments, — a quaint procession. There are samples of shawls and dresses, preserved by me in memory from the attire of my 46 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. grandfather's fellow-worshippers, every thread of whose real texture has been eaten away. I know just how they were worn. Old Dame H. had a soft, silky, crimson shawl, which she drew closely over her shoulders, and pinned three times down in front. The pins seemed never to vary a thread; and year after year her sharp shoulders rubbed at its warp and woof until it grew stringy and streaked. There were coats and cloaks and dresses, so far removed from any suggestion of mode that their strangeness of make, joined with richness of fabric, gave dignity to them, and the men and women who wore them were the authors of a true style. Old Squire S. never put aside his plaid cloak lined with green baize. His sons and daughters went away from the homestead, and came back richly clad in the world's fashions. That made no difference to him. He walked up the church aisle, year after year, in front of the gayest of them, with his old plaid, which wrapped him about like a tartan ; and, through the singing of psalms, prayers, and benedictions, he stood, with the green baize flung over his shoulders, unconscious that there was anything queer or old-lashioned about him. There was nothing old-fash- ioned. He was a splendid old man, erect, proud, with a broad, white brow, and a grand record for brain-work in all the courts. The old cloak had become a kind of toga, invested by him with the worth of long association, and so had grown to be invaluably a part of himself. There is a sentiment about old wraps, which have travelled with you, and stood by you when the flimsiness of other attire ETCHINGS. 47 has failed. It needs not to be woven in with camel's hair, and it does not suit the texture of lace. It is hostile to fashion, and comes only with using. It is tender, and touches you like keepsakes of lost friends. Your best imported wraps are those which you have brought across the sea yourself; which have the imprint of travel and good companionship ; which have been tossed about in many lands, and had their colors mellowed by much usage. Such can never be duplicated nor simulated. They are a true tapestry, inwrought with a part of the richness of your life. Why cannot some web be woven fit for lifelong "wear, so that memory may be allowed to crystallize about it, and then the mantles of those we have loved could literally fiill upon us ? My grandfather built his house . , in the middle of his ' ' farm. All the farm-houses in that neighborhood were thus centrally located. Isolation was the result ; so was also economy of working force, — no mean item where the soil was hard, rocky, and ungrateful, and bread was truly to be won Ijy sweat of the 50 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. brow. Distance lent much l)eauty to these plain farm-houses. The long, tree-arched green lanes leading to them, their cum- ■hrous gates, their straggling sheds, and half-slovenly profusion of wood-piles and carts, went into the picture ; and the softening aspect of smoke and cloud and outlying verdure gave to them the baptismal touch of all-creative nature. ]\Iy grandfather's lane was overhung fiy stalwart elms and maples. Just at its entrance was a bul)l)ling spring, whose waters trickled down l)y the way-side through beds of violets and Avild flag. The lane itself was fenced in by a stone wall ; in my day tumbled liy frost and fretted with moss. Its turf was like velvet. Two deep wheel-ruts, the wear of years, ran throuo-h it, in and out of which the family chaise Ijonnced rol- lickingly, for liorses were sure to prick up their ears and C|uicken their pace as soon as they snuffed the cool spring. You know that pleasant sound, when, upon turning from the hard highwav, their hoofs struck the porous soil. At the lane's farther end was a gate with a huge, upright beam, uncouth, clumsA^, and slow to move on its hinges, — apt to sag, — ploughing a semi- circle witli its nigh end, and weighing heavily upon the shoulder of the opener. Endurance seemed to have entered into all the I luilding plans of old-time workers ; and size and weight were to them the emblems of endurance. About my grandfather's gate smart-weed and dock-weed and plantain grew profusely, — mean weeds ; but Hannah, maid-of-all-work, distilled from them dyes and balsams. Beauty lay hidden in their juices, which Hannah expressed and fastened into her jxitiently spun and THE FABM. 51 woven fabrics of cotton, linen, and woollen. Over the gate and over the well a massive butternut-tree flung its branches. It stands to-day, with its trunk half-rotten, and I sit under it and seem again a cliild. Only for a moment, for, with the years that have gone into my life, something sweet and beautiful has gone out of it. I)ear little Benny ! you and I came first to- gether through the gateway into the farm-house yard. A white- haired old man stood in the door to welcome us. It was late on a summer's dav : so late that the cattle were lowinti- to be O let through the pasture-bars ; the work of the day was well- nigh past, and the dews and peace of night were beginning to fall. Sweet, sacred eventide ! Gone are they all, — the dear old man, the beautiful lioy, the herds, and the laborers who wrought with them. The structures, built by mortal hands, are rotting and tumbling; the tree is dying; the rest are shadowy things of memory. I look down into the deep old well, with its unsafe curb and sweep (how foolish I am !), for the trout little Benny dropped there more than forty years ago. I see nothing save green, slimy rocks and the shadow of my own face. I say little Benny, because dead children never grow old. We talk of wdiat they might have been, but we possess only wliat they were. Little Benny died more than forty years ago, — a beautiful, precocious boy. Had he lived, he might have lieen a famous . man. He is only remembered as the loving, lovaljle child, and as such I go Ijack to meet him. Very few are the lasting impressions of tlie forms and features of lost ones. Some intensity of word or look or action glorifies a moment of a 52 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. child's life, and makes its expression an imperishable thing of memory. Marion, brown-eyed Marion, rosy, radiant, flinging back her haiv with careless abandon, bursts into my room. By that one attitude and expression I best remember her. You can never know what unwitting posture of your child is to become a treasure to you. If it dies, you will lose hold of its heart- rending reality, and will be consoled by the ideal suggestiveness of its occasional aspects. This is the healing which time, and time alone, brings to your sorrows. Thus talks the old well to me, treading cautiously upon its rickety platform. High up dangles the rusty bucket-handle; THE FARM. 53 the balance weight is gone ; the sweep and beam are rotten and ready to falL A spasm of tenderness seizes me ; things take hie. Summer days come back to me, and with them beau- tiful rural pictures of tired men and patient animals slaking their thirst. I shut my eyes and the yard is alive again. Oxen are lapping cool water from the trough ; laborers are grasping the dripping bucket, poised on the edge of the curb; upon the doorstep sits my grandfather, his white hair streaming over his shoulders. How clear-cut the whole scene is, — this picture of common farm-life ! The oxen lift their heads and blink their eves, and then go back to their draught. It seems as if they never would be done. The men let down the bucket twice and thrice over, and up it comes, each time more coolly drippmg than before. Its crystal streams splash back into the deep old well with a pleasant, resonant sound. Hannah comes out with her pails and fills them, and I, standing on tiptoe, lean over the curb and watch the water as it trickles down the mossy rocks. She is meanwhile unconscious, as I am, that through those simple acts our lives are being irrevocably woven together, each with the other, as well as with the drinkers and drawers around us, in a never-fading picture. Dear, cool, overflowing, delightful old well ! your waters in those summer days were magic waters, and the creatures who drank of you, even the dumbest of them, were by you baptized for me with an undying beauty. The heavy farm-gates, though uncouth and hard to manage, were made pleasant objects by age. The lane-gate of my grand- father, hugged by a vine, had put out grasses and weeds from 54 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. its joints, and was mottled all over with moss. The make of these gates was always a marvel. Pegs and supple withes stood instead of hinges ; and a strong bar, fastened to their centre, ran, with a sharp angle, to the upper end of a tall post. They were in keeping with the well-sweeps, the ragged fences, and stone walls. They grew, picturesquely, into the landscape, and pointed out otherwise inconspicuous entrance-ways. These latter were often only slight wheel-ruts cut into the sods of the fields, so that the gate-posts served as signboards to benighted and weary travellers. They loomed up, gray and ghostly, out of the darkness of night, and Avere homely signals of hospitality in winter snow-wastes. "I see the gate, — Ave're almost there!" shouted Bennv. AVe were making our first joint visit to my grandfather's farm, and the friendly bars and beams of this gate beckoned to us. Hospitable old gate ! — which would never then budge an inch at my tugging; but which nevertheless always swung, with a right royal arch, wide open, to let me in. A second gate, at my grandfather's, opened from the opposite side of the flirm-house yard, just beyond the butternut-tree, into another lane. This lane went down into the pasture and the woodland. Ki its farther end were the clumsy, unstable pasture-bars, against which the cattle crowded at nightfall, and leaped past the fearless children who let them out. These farmers' childreuf who roamed pastures and woods, unmindful of herds, and came back shaggy and weighed down with all sorts of wild growth, were truly the foster-children of nature. Year after vear of their half-untamed lives she srave to them THE FARM. 55 ", I, III i,',i'' ; ''I'lh ,i'i 1 ,,, , jU.l'i:-i...|i^l'..i.'.M.'li.i.'.. Ij|i l||llll|||lllni|ll|lli{|lini»lll|ll{1l|llll II lliinn ll lllllll iinni Tiiinniiinimninm n llllllllllilllWIIIIIIillllllllililllllllll the simple gifts of her annual harvests, and quickened their senses towards that in her which was imperishaljle. These young freebooters laid up enduring 56 > NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. riches. Lying on her pasture-knolls, tossing about amongst her dead leaves, tramping through brooks and bogs and brushwood, they stumbled upon her treasures unawares. The berries and nuts and mints they sought were transient things ; but the glories of the days which brouglit them entered into, and gave to them a good and delight which were eternal. Those children are made richer and better, who have early dealings with Nature ; she gives to them a joy which will stand by them all tlieir days. If they get it not, they will have missed something most admi- rable out of their lives. In farmers' families, the driving of the cows to pasture passed by rotation from one child to another. Sometimes a man or woman of the household took up the task, from necessity or inclination, as a duty or diversion. They were, most often, thoughtful, observant men and women, to whom their morning and evening lessons, such as God gave to them in the changeful aspects of earth and sky, were, perhaps half unconsciously, well learned. Sweet scents and sounds and sights greeted them. They got from the morning strength for the day's burdens, and the peace of twilight lifted these burdens from them. I recall three men who, all through middle life and far into old age, morning and night, at unvarying hours, drove their herds to and from the pastures. Their cows knew them, and, in the virtue of patience, seemed quite as human as they. They were all three grand men, sensible, honest, and carrying weight in town affairs. This humljle duty, cheerfully done, did but illus- trate and embellish the childlike simplicity of their lives. There THE FARM. 57 could be no more pastoral picture than that of these respectable farmers plodding along the highway with their cows in the early- brightness of morning. They were literally walking hand in hand with nature. Transplanted into a city, they would have been poor in its riches, unfitted for its pursuits and pastimes. On the country highway they were heirs of the soil ; lessees of the landscapes and sky views ; unconscious absorbents of the earth's brightness and beauty. I know" men in liigh places who look back with keen pleasure to their cow-driving days, when the lowing herds used to come across the rocky pastures to meet them, and who, from these enforced morning and evening walks, grew to be observers and lovers of nature. I remember with delight my grandfather's pasture, poor of soil and scanty of herbage ; uneven of surfiice ; its hillocks clad with moss and wintergreen ; cut in 58 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. two by a clear, bal tilling Ijrook ; shaded here and there by clumps of trees ; raei;Q;ed with rocks and ferns and wild shrubs : marshy next to the mill-pond, as well as treacherous, and tangled with flag and bulrushes. Rare old New England pasture-lands ! You were stingy of grass, but you were ueyer-failing in beauty, — that beauty wdiich was reyealed to the children, who, next to the herds, were your true owners. Early in spring-time, against lino'erinu; snow-f)anks, came beds of blue and wdiite yiolets ; a little later, hidden among crisp, crackling leayes, pink and wdiite arbutus, — sweetest of all spring blossoms. Ferns unfolded ; mint scented the brookside ; coltsfoot brightened its shoal bed ; the marsh bristled wdth spiked leayes. AVith the coming of summer, the water-soaked and porous soil by degrees dried up. One had no longer to pick his way from stone to stone across boggy places (what early pasture roamer does not recall the oyerrated audacity of such passages ?) ; ferns grew strong and deep-colored ; l:)0g onions curled their brown coils against the rocks (they would not pull now with the old relish) ; weeds and shrubs and stinted trees took on the gifts of the passing seasons, and, as you trod on them or brushed Ijy them, sent out to you their wild flavors. Close by the mill-pond the soil was always soft, and marked by the hoof-prints of cattle. Here the pond was shoal and full of lilies. On hot summer days the tired animals would stand for hours knee-deep in the sluggish water, unconscious pictures of peaceful pastoral life. Their crooked trail, winding in and out through the dampest and shadiest portion of the pasture-land, had a friendly look. Its black line was easy to be traced far into THE FARM. 59 the evening, and was always a pleasant thing to stumble upon. It has guided many a wanderer home. What traveller has not had his heart gladdened by footprints in waste places ? My path was treacherous and hard to follow, but it led one down through tall, sweet-scented bushes ; across the shoal brook : over a long stretch of ferns ; past rocks and crackling brusliwood, into the alders and bulrushes and wild flag, outside of which were the shoal water and a lily-bed, where, stuck fast in the mud, was a rotting old boat, wliich the waves lapped lazily. Here the children from far and near used to come for lilies, ])usliing with poles out into the pond. One summer day, at niii-htfall, a little uirl was missino" from a farmer's house. She had gone out in the inorning and had not come back. Two weeks went by and no clue of her was found. Meanwhile the budded lilies blossomed on the pond, and other children went one day in search of them. They came back, not lily-laden, but with a great horror on their lips. Pushing about among the pads, they had come upon something wliich they dared not touch ; something which two weeks before was fairer than any lily, but which now was an awful thing, to be hastily put out of sight. On this shore the children used to plait rush caps and play with flag-leaves in mimic warfare. The black, soggy soil was honeycombed by their busy feet, and their constant companions were the cattle, who cooled themselves in the shoal edge of the pond. The blue of the distant hills, the sunshine, the shimmer of the pond, the verdure of forest and woodland and lowland 60 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. and upland overarched and surrounded and hemmed them in. Absorbed thus by the landscape, they were made transient features of its glory. When the summer had passed, grasses bloomed, with a faint purple haze, on the uplands, and bushes flaunted in crimson, forerunners of the dying of the year. Eare pastoral scenes ! Again I am watching the shadows of ancient pines, lying across the pond ; herds browse the hillocks ; I see the daintily coiling smoke of distant farm-houses ; the cocpaetting of clouds and sunshine ; the noble framework of hill and forest. The old music comes back, — the rino- of the woodman's axe ; the whiz of the mill under the hill ; the lowing of herds ; bird-song ; insect-hum; and, above all, the drowsy lapping of the pond against its shore. Behold the beauty, the plenty, the generosity of my i^asture ! What shall be said of the woodland, errand, solemn old wood- land, with its pines, grim and ragged with time ; full of pallid ferns and such dainty blossoms as love dark places ; tangled with a wild undergrowth, and ankle-deep with the crackling waste of past years ! Dense, damp, dark, stately old woodland, — I love all pines because of my early friendship with yours. Lying on the mouldy carpet of your waste verdure, I caught your whispers with the hidden sources of your growth, and watched you from my chamber-window as weird and wild you battled with storms. The whistlino; of a fierce winter's wind throui:;h a forest of pines is a mournful sound ; it seems like a prolonged wail of the per- secuted trees. No tree has a more striking mission than the THE FARM. 61 pine. It is the vanguard tree of nature. Grand, erect, beauti- ful, it enriches the low, sandy plain ; climbing, strong and ag- gressive, ever climbing, it lies prone against the mountain-side, clothing it with eternal verdure. There is something pathetic in the wild gesticulations of these brave trees, flinging out their stinted and shrunken arm-like branches in defiance to the winds ; stretching them back from the mountain-sides towards the valleys, until, planted among the clouds, they wax frigid and dumb and dead. mSE ACK through the green lane again to the old ,L)/\ farm-hoube. I gently |)ush open a door which leads into a hall, wherein I have sported away many a day in childhood. At the other end of this hall is another door, through which came, forty years ago, the odor of sweet- Ijrier and honeysuckle. I tiptoe across the fragile floor and look out. Field-scents greet me, so familiar that I am almost dazed into believing that many things have not been, and that the dear old days have come back. Once a bench and basin stood beside this door, where tired laborers used to make them- selves tidy for their meals. Just beyond was a kitchen-garden, with a beehive close by, and a grindstone under a maple. Bench and basin, hive and stone are gone, and burdocks and plantain have taken the place of homely vegetables ; but the sapling little 62 THE FARM-HOUSE. 63 Benny planted lias grown into a massive tree. Who would have thought to have tracked him after a lapse of more than forty years? Is this not a true spirit communion, — this catching glimpses, among the shadows of the long past, of dear faces which have not grown old; this wistful turning back towards the sunshine of our earlier days? My grandfather's kitchen was a sombre room, ceiled and painted brown; with huge beams, high dressers, and yawning fireplace. It had only two small windows, and was entered by nine doors. It was in reality the great hall of the house. What it lacked by day was light and sunshine. At night, brightened by a roaring backlog, it was full of cheer. Then its beams and ceilings and simple furnishings were enriched by shadows, and the pewter dishes upon its brown dressers shone in dancing firelight like silver. The two shelves, full of leather-covered books ; the weatherwise almanac, hanging from a peg ; the cross- legged table and prim chairs ; the long crane, with its hissing teakettle ; the brush ; the bellows ; the settle in the corner, and whatever else was there, all became fire-changed, and were mel- lowed into the bright scene. This room was by night the best part of the house. It was always the true heart of it ; that vital centre from which diverged its indwelling life. It was the place where people lounged and lingered. Because its small windows let in few sunbeams, those which did come in were all the more precious. Because it was full of homely things, and was, as the women said, '' most convenient," it had inwrought into it, as a picture, a quaint beauty of adaptation. Mellow, 64 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. brown old kitcliens, — how many costly rooms simulate, in their furnishings, your inexpensive colors ! There was a dignity in the domestic labor of my grandfather's kitchen. Its w^orkers wrested from the humility of their voca- tion some measure of that beauty which would have been thrust upon them by more gracious conditions of life. Their daily walk was narrow : it was almost bounded by their kitchen ; but this latter was glorified by firelight and consecrated by use. The simple harmony of it, which has made it a charming thing of memory, was reflected upon these women. They became a part of it, and, as such, they are not drudges in plain garments, but quaintly-costumed life-studies in a picture of a delightful old room. I can see now my stately grandmother preparing her noontide meal. Her checked apron and muslin cap were spotlessly clean, and she handled her clumsy utensils with a becoming deftness. Hannah, the maid, hovered around, ready to lend a helping hand. The crane, hung with pots, kept up a constant sizzling, and covered pans spluttered from ember-heaps in the corner. There was no hurry, no bustle, no rattling of dishes. Hannah blew a tin horn from the back-door. There was a swashing at the little bench outside. The crane was swuno; out ; covers were lifted ; THE FARM-HOUSE. 65 pans were taken Irom the corners ; with perfect order the dinner passed from the fire to the table, well cooked, sufficient, and wdiolesome. It was not daintily served, with cut-glass and china, but it was full of the essence of vitality, and had the merit of utter cleanliness. My grandmother presided over it with a serious dignity untaught by rules of etiquette ; and in no way was the discipline of her household better shown than by the utter decorum of its meals. The kitchen floor was white and worn with much scrubbina;, — hollows telling where its best seats by the hearth were. The doors opened into rare rooms : this one into a granite-walled dairy, as cool, clean, and compact as if it were cut fi'om the solid rock. The next led into the cellar, full of compartments and bins and dark closets, crammed in winter with farm prod- ucts. This storehouse never failed. Its apples were wild things, but toothsome, for they were the best from a great orchard, and one scented them from the stairway out of a long line of barrels. Nothing can quite equal for richness the flavor which a year's ripeness pours into a farm-house. It is only found in country homes, — this condensed sweetness, which has gone out of all the months of the year into the fashioning of the many things which were heaped and hoarded at the gathering in of the harvest. How fruits stored in old cellars kept their freshness ! That of one apple-tree in particular, at my grandfather's, never got its true ripeness until late in April. When first harvested it w^as crabbed, puckering the mouth. It was a tiny, bright fruit, profusely mottling its tree with crimson. It shrank and withered 66 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. by keeping ; but it grew palatable in inverse ratio to its size. I remember a branch, broken off by accident, which carried its relish into the days of June. It was a pretty thing, hanging from the cellar-wall, — a hardy waif from the dead harvest of the past year. Two doors led into bedrooms, in which were chests of drawers full of homespun linen. Over the dairy ran the stairway, lead- ing to chambers severely simple in furnishing, but clean, and made bright by sunshine. The floors of these chambers were kept strewn with sand, — a cheap, changeful covering, which at night I used to scrawl over with skeleton pictures, to be scattered in the morning. The doors mostly opened with iron latches. These latches were clumsy things, lifting by a thumb-piece with a sharp click, and sending a shiver through one on frosty days. On the shed doors, made of wood, they were drawn up by the traditional bobbin. Brass knobs adorned the doors of the spare room. These were kept polished, and were held in high esteem. Their machinery, shut into a clumsy iron case, was screwed upon the outside of the door. As works of art none of these fastenings were much to 1:»e commended, but as quaint appendages to their homely doors were the best latches I have ever known. The west room was the family " keeping-room," also lighted up at night by a roaring backlog. The brush and bellows in this room were pretentious with green and gold, and the shovel and poker were headed with brass knobs ; but the fire was not a whit more cheerful than that in the brown kitchen. THE FARM-HOUSE. 67 I have sat hour after hour in that kitchen watchino- the backlog's slow consumption, lialf l^linding my eyes with its flickering brightness. It was a long-dying, companionable thing, taking strong hold upon a child's fancy. It had lieen dragged to its place in the early morning, snow-bound and shaggy. It was defiant of its fate, and fought against it through the whole day. It truly died by inches. From its ends sizzled and dropped its sap, — its true life-blood ; its substance fell off ring by ring ; its ashes settled slowly upon the hearth. Everybody hacked at ^,\x it ; it was constantly plied with shovel, ^^ tongs, and poker ; sparks flew fu- riously ; coals flaked off ; by degrees the log grew thin in the middle. At last a solid blow finished it; it snapped, and the parted ^j^^aejri-'fe.,,^ ^ ends fell without the iron dogs ; the brands were ready to be raked up ; the backlog was no more. Its life was jocund and brilliant. It was eloquent with fiery tongues, and the stories it told to a child, with crackling voice, went not out with its smoke. Farmers were not stingy with their fuel, for the brush in the woodlands grew faster than they could burn the ancient 68 K^W ENGLAND BYGONES. trees. My grandfather's backlogs were drawn through the house on a hand-sled, — snowy, mossy things, dripping with sap and shaggy with bark. They were buried in embers, and then sup- plemented with a forelog, which, in its own turn, was plied with lighter fuel and bolstered up with iron dogs. The building of this pile was an art ; and the practical farmer knew how to adjust the size of the log to the day's consumption, so that it was quite sure to shatter and break in season for the early " raking up" of the night. This " raking up" at my grand- father's was his own care ; and it was thought worthy of note in an almanac, when, once upon a time, his coals had failed to keep, and a fresh supply was brought from a neighbor's half a mile away. The ashes of those ancient wood-fires were full of virtue. They went to leach in spring for the making of family soap, and spread their richness far and wide over hungry fields. The west room of the old farm-house was most cheerful in long winter evenings ; not made so by social life or by artificial adornments, but rather by a sweet peace, and by the rich gifts of its outlying world. With face flattened against its window- panes, I, a nature-loving child, peered out at the glittering mill- pond and the dark woodland ; traced the thread of a highway ; caught the ,sound of transient bells ; made friends with snow and clouds and shadows, and came to love its wild winter scenery. Without a love for nature, life in this isolated farm-house through the winter months, to one unused to it, must have been lonely and monotonous. In February, when the lane almost daily filled THE FARM-HOUSE. 69 with snow, my grandfather opened a highway through the " upper field." This was more easily kept clear, but it tailed to entice many comers. People hugged their firesides through winter snows, and learned to be content. There was a largeness about the home-life of ancient well-to-do country people. Tliey had space, great houses, and great rooms ; and if they had little show, they had at least no shams. Their houses needed lew furnishings, because so much embellishment was given to them by nature. Through many years, vivid and beautiful, have stood bv me the rare adornments of my grandfather's great house. They were skies and woods and water and far-off hills let in through its windows ; the shifting aspects, of winter snows and summer verdure ; and many especial revelations from earth and sky. It was a great house, so large that its uncarpeted chambers gave back an echo to my footsteps ; and I never went up to its garret, which I did seldom and softly, without a feeling of loneliness. This garret was a weird place, with shelves and scaffolds packed with the waste of years, and its beams hung with dried herbs. It was dimly lighted by two small gable windows, and at the head of the stairway was cut in two by a rambling old chimney. More than any other spot in the house it had the air of age and decay. Its dealings appeared to be wholly with the past, and things out of which life had gone. All that was in it looked as if it had belona-ed to another cen- tury ; and herbs filled the air with a sickish, musty smell. It was so far away from the living-rooms that few sounds of busy in-door life ever reached it. It was a gray ghost of a chamber, 10 70 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. in which nobody had ever hved ; a sort of burial-place for worn- out and faded things. It was delightful to come down from it into the brighter rooms, which seemed, all of them, to be per- vaded by some savory odor. Dried lavender and rose-leaves sent out their scents from chests and drawers ; the dairy, the cellar, the cheese-room had each their own flavor ; and the best essence of every edible seemed to disengage itself over the open fire. Johnny-cakes baked in the corner ; pies cooked in the oven ; meat roasted on the spit ; potatoes boiled in pots ; and from them all into the room came appetizing steams. The old folks talked but little in winter evenings. My grand- mother's knitting- work dropped stitches now and then, which she drowsily picked up with an "Oh, dear suz!" My grand- lather, sitting opposite to her, by one corner of the hearth, dozed, with the ruddy firelight mocking at his wrinkles. Across them Ijoth, on the chest of drawers, on the bed-curtains, on the tall clock, on the white walls, danced this same firelight ; out through the small panes it streamed over the waste of snow into the highway, cheering the cold traveller ; bright, beautiful home-light. Peaceful, long-seeming, dreamy winter evenings, vou made one used to the sighing of winds, the roaring of storms, the cold glitter of snow^ ; and you taught one, through isolation, to find how much there is that is beautiful and satis- fving to be gotten out of the roughest aspects and moods of nature ; you also taught how simple may be the resources of a true home-life. The door on the other side of the front entry opened into THE FARM-HOUSE. 71 the east room. This was the '' best room," or, as my grand- father called it, the " fore" room. Most noticeable of its fur- nishing was the bed, — more for show than use. It was a tall structure, built up of corn-husks and feathers, not to be leaned against or carelessly indented. Its blue and white checked canopy, edged with knotted fringe, suspended by hooks from the ceiling, was spun and dyed and wTjven by the women of the household. Every piece of linen they used was of their own make. A pillow-case from that house is marked in plain letters A. D., meaning Abigail Drake, who spun and wove it there more than eighty years ago. The letters are stitched in with yellow silk (it must once have been black) after an ancient sampler. This sampler was a curious thing, running through the alphabet and numerals in several texts and various-colored silks, punctuated at the end by two skeleton birds, and winding up with this wise maxim, " Industry is its own reward." It also announced in written text that Abigail Drake, at the age of twelve, in such a year, wrought this sampler. Such samplers were worked by girls in the village schools. Their letters were pricked in and out with extreme care, and the best executed of them were generally framed and hung in the fore room. They were as precious to those who made them as if they had been rare water-colors, and the measure of a young woman's accomplishment was taken from the skill with which she had done this task. As rags, these old samplers are worthless now ; as the faded work of bright young girls of a past century, they interest one ; for they are fabrics into 72 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. which, in long ago summer days, were inwrought some of the old-fashioned simplicity and patience and industry of a dead generation. My grandfather's flax was of good grain. Its bed w^as just inside of the pasture-bars, making a dainty show of blue blos- soms. There could be nothing prettier in the way of flowers than it was. Waving in the wind, it seemed like a bit of summer sky let dow^n. It was tended with great care, and harvested and made ready for use with much labor. Failure of the crop by untoward weather, or any mishap in its preparation, was looked upon as a great misfortune. In lone; summer afternoons my orrandmother and Hannah planted their little wheels by the back-door, and hour after hour drew out the pliant threads which were to be woven, in the loom up-stairs, into variously patterned coverlets, table- cloths, and towels. One is touched in handling, at this remote day, the fabrics fashioned by these ancient women. It seems as if they had woven into them a warp and woof of their own vitality, and that the strength which went out of the patient workers entered into their webs, and gave to them a texture of beauty and endurance. This old farm-house pillow-case of mine is as firm as if its fibre had been plucked from the flax- Ijed but yesterday, and it is as lustrous as it was when the fingers Avhich wove it first cut it from the beam. To nothing does the past cling more than to such ancient cloths. The threads you handle, which moth and mildew have marred, are not the real thing; that is a finer undershot, impalpable to THE FARM-HOUSE. 73 touch of stranger, but trailing down to you, like silken folds, glittering and precious with tenderest memories. How many operations of breaking and bleaching and boiling those home products had to go through before they came out at last faultless as the fruits of foreign looms ! The bureau, in the fore room, was always crammed with fine twined linens, white as snow, and scented with lavender and rose-leaves. How did those women accomplish so much ? I look back upon them wdth pride and wonder ; for my grandmother was no drudge : she was a true lady. Never was there a more dignified or better bred woman than she ; never the mistress of a more well-ordered household. She was never hurried, never behindhand with her work ; was given to hospitality, and was tasteful in her dress. Very few, in those days, were the complications of daily living ; still I marvel how my grandmother managed to be so cultivated and so elegant, and yet sit, hour after hour, at the loom, plying her shuttle with no less persistence than, in spinning, she drew out her threads. Across the huge beams, under and over each other, crossed and recrossed these threads, like a spider's web. I know by what manifold toil they were gotten there : by reeling, sizing, spooling, and warping, before my grandmother could begin to throw her shuttle. The work was slow, but it never flagged. Threads were broken and carefully taken up ; quills gave out, and were patiently renewed; the web grew, thread by, thread, inch by inch ; the intricate pattern came out upon the surface, and pleased the weaver's eye ; neighbors dropped in and gossiped 74 NJEW ENGLAND BYGONES. over and about it. The days wore on ; the worker never failed at her beam; until, most. likely at the close of some long sum- mer's afternoon, the end of the warp was reached ; the treadles stopped ; the web was done. How^ delighted the women used THE FARM-HOUSE. 75 to be with their woven fabric, so slowly constructed, so quickly unwound ! They stretched it out, clipped its hanging threads, held it up to the light, and stroked and caressed it as if it were a living thing. It would have been a mean web indeed had it brought them no high satisfaction. It may have been that spinning and weaving, l:)y long practice, grew to be a sort of unconscious mechanical process ; that the workers, in their long- hours of monotonous employment, were given to meditation ; and thus, from their double vocation, came perhaps that air of serious dignity common among the better class of farm-house women. Nothing could be more picturesque or prettier, in country life, than the little flax-wheel, with well-filled distaff', being plied in a shady doorway by comely matron or rosy lass. The loom, with its web and weaver, made a classic picture ; and its con- tinuous thud, sounding hour after hour from an upper room, was a symbol of that pathetic patience which entered so largely into the lives of workino; women. The lore room was seldom used. It was rather a store-room for liousehold treasures ; for such thino-s as had been bouo;ht with hard-earned money were highly prized bv these simple people. Its furniture was the costliest and most modern, as well as the ugliest, in the house. It was a sort of show-room. The china and glass in its cupboard were marvellously fine, and have come down as heirlooms. They are suggestive of the tendencies and tastes of women, who are traditionally most charming, through simplicity, because, from the force of their 76 NEW' ENGLAND BYGONES. condition, their lives could not be otherwise than simple. Their merit, therefore, is not so much in the fact that they lived so near nature, which they could not help doing, — that they took to themselves a beauty of which they knew not, — as that, while possessing the common instincts of woman, they bore burdens with heroic patience, and, through long, hard-worked lives, kept ;. *K^ 1 '{^ #-• / -^•- ^^& -■■ri: \ ^.^& ^ ^^ _^im gl^ n se^t up a holiday simulation of that ease and luxury which was not their own. A narrow flight of stairs led, from the front entry, up to the guest-chambers. One of them was haunted. The ghost of this room was a harmless thing. A child of the house, Oily by name, had been found crushed in the woodland by a fallen tree. It was so long ago that his little grave had sunk far below its THE FARM-HOUSE. 77 fellows ; yet his memory had been kept fresher than the turf above it by the legend of this east chamber. Its furnishina;s were quaint and homely : a huge oaken chest of drawers, rush- bottomed chairs, and a low bedstead hung with checked In'own and white linen. Between the two front windows was a looking- glass in a queer little frame, with a silhouette picture of my grandfather and grandmother on either side of it. In a cup- board by the chimney was a set of fine china, painted in flowing blue. In through its windows came the eternal, ever-shifting glory of the outlying landscape. As I looked out of these windows on summer mornings, my heart grew full, like a heart touched by love, so profuse in variety and beauty was the scenerv of this wild, lonely s{)ot. 11 SPRING-TIME AND HAYING. There is no end to the coquetry of a New England spring. Some early March morning you look out upon a waste of snow. You are weary of 'it; you long to see life and growth and verdure come into the dead landscape. Old winter flings Lack against the pane scuds of snow and sleet. Then come dark days, clinging mists and warm rains, trying to patience and evil for invalids. Little water channels, with a melancholy gurgle, undermine the snow-banks. There is everywhere a gradual subsidence of sur- face. Tops of tall rocks peep out ; highways get to be wellnigh impassable ; cellars grow wet ; brooks begin to roar and rivers 78 SPRING-TIME AND HAYING. 79 to rise ; there is a universal sizzling and steaming. This grizzly, dispiriting commotion is the birth-throe of spring. Shortly the mossy housetops begin to smoke ; the fields and pastures are full of bare knolls and patches ; fences, which have been winter- buried, once more zigzag through the landscape, and dark lines mark the lanes and highways. Leaf-buds swell, and the frosts of the night melt l)elbre the morning sunshine. Little boys trundle their sap-buckets through the pastures, and you see that the yearly marvel of verdure is being inwrought into the branches and twigs of the bare forests. Another season of seed- time and harvest will be born unto you. Chimney corners are deserted ; farmers begin to bestir them- selves. They sort over their seeds, put in repair their farm utensils, and, before they get fully harnessed to their out-of-door work, attend to their town affairs. What country-bred boy or girl does not remember that yearly meeting, when all the voters of the town swarmed about its great, bare hall, and cast into the ballot-box those tickets the making up of which had cost months of logic in the village stores and much hard feeling among honest neighbors ? All the children were politicians that day ; and the moderator, generally chosen for his loud voice, was as distinguished to them as if he had been made President of the whole republic. The elective process was a slow one ; often so hotly contested that the count for representative to General Court was hardly reached at nightfall. The little boys who peddled molasses candy (most of it badly burned) gave out the bulletins of its progress. The slumpy drifts had to be cut down 80 J^J^W ENGLAND BYGONES. beforehand to make the roads passable, over which, when their votes were needed, the feeble old men were taken at the ex- pense of their party. The breaking up of the meeting was shown, to waiting housewives, by the thickening on the high- way of returning farmers, most of them laden with budgets of gingerbread and candy. The women were as anxious for news as if there had been a great battle, and the zest of the day, to the children, was only surpassed by that of the annual muster. This muster, or " training day," as it was more often called, was their best holidav, when the militia was drilled in a vacant lot of some fortunate town. What child ever forgot that show when once seen ? As an early experience or a remembered picture, what could surpass it ? How real the soldiers were with their muskets and bright uniforms ! What a great man the captain was! And the drum-major, who ever saw his like? What a marvel of discipline the soldiers showed ! what uniformity of step ! what skill in evolution ! what success of officers in horsemanship ! All day long they went through their drills, and the gaping crowd stared and marvelled, half taking this play for a real thing and these men for true soldiers. Before daylight, from the country miles around, wagons full of living freight began to pour into the field, until it was half packed with sight-seers. These wagons were drawn close up by the wall as a safe place for the girls and younger children. The unharnessed horses, to be kept quiet with hay, were tied close by, and the larger boys got astride the wall or climbed into neighboring SPUING- TIME AND HAYIN(^. SI trees. Booths were put up, and pedlers' carts stood thick in an inner ring. Gingerbread and candy were the staple articles of trade, with such bright gauds as would be likely to catch an uncritical eye. It was the custom for lasses to receive presents on this day, and because of this many a hard-earned penny was foolishly spent. It was amusing to see the plain farmers going about with their red bandanna handkerchiefs (show things) full of gingerbread, the extent of their day's dissipation. It was good gingerbread, with a sort of training flavor, which died out with the giving up of the custom of the day. At noon, when the soldiers dispersed for dinner, the most adventurous boys followed the great officers to the tavern, and looked in at the windows to see them eat, whispering to each other of the prowess of these dangerous men. It was not considered respectable for young girls to wander about among the crowd, so they lunched in the wagons, or on the greensward by them, and their nooning was the harvest of the dealers in gingerbread. The climax of the drill was the firine off of the o-uns, which brought many an urchin down from his perch as quickly as if he had been shot in the head. Unbred horses did not relish the day, and were constantly making little side stampedes, no less exciting than the drill itself. A shower took all the feather and glory out of the show, and sent soldiers flying in front of the crowd. Before nightfall parties got mixed. Soldiers mistook themselves lor citizens, and citizens forgot the deference due to soldiers. It was generally growing to be truly warlike, when at order of the great captain the trainers, led by music of bugle 82 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. and drum, marched magnificently from the fiel(L The crowd waited. Men, women, and children seemed to devour with their eyes this departing glory; this toy pageant, which had given them a merry day ; this mock soldiery, which had stimrdated patriotic virtue; this thing, wdiich was not foolish Ijecause it was so real to them. When it had fairly passed out of sight each went his and her own way, and, almost before the drum had stop})ed playing its marching tune, the field was deserted. By the first of May morning sunshine begins to have power, and through your windows comes the gladsome gush of spring birds. The Iniried life of nature has burst its cerements ; the earth is mellowing ; trees are leaving, and sods are waiting to be turned. Here and there, under the shady side of fences or on distant hill -tops, lie strips of dingy snow. You do not mind them, for your feet walk over crisp mosses and tender grass ; you rustle aside last year's perished leaves for arbutus, and close beside these same snow-strips you find violets. Anon the landscape grows picturesque w^ith the blue frocks and red shirts of farm laborers, with ploughs and bonfires and oxen and children and slowly-moving carts. To the farmer there seems to be no end to spring labor. Sowing and planting over, the upspringing seed is to be care- fidly watched and tended. Each day brings its weight of ever- varying cares. The New England farmer of moderate means truly gets his bread by the sweat of his brow. The vegetables and grains, which make up so large a portion of his fare, are raised by dint of prudent forecast, and the bringing to bear :SPliING-TIME AND HAYING. 83 of much practical pliilosophy upon stingy soil. In the spring, my grandiather and his one man-servant, with an occasional day of foreign help, were equal to the work of the farm. But in haying-time, thrice a day, a score or more of stout-limbed laborers gathered around my grandfather's board, and the cup- board in the brown kitchen groaned under its weight of hearty viands. Sudden showers brought over willing neighbors, and now and then a traveller would stop a day or two to lend a rook and not yours ! As the season wore on grasses grew stout and tall ; heavy showers lodged them ; and truant boys, and girls made unthrifty paths through the fields. Farmers began to whet their scythes and plant their grindstones under shady trees ; sure signs of coming haying. The delights of those hayings have outlasted years, and the aroma of them still pervades every ripened field. Time has not changed the teeming life of nature. When I see little heads, bobbing up and down in yonder meadow yellow with buttercups, I rememljer that strawberries used to grow where buttercups blossomed. New shadows are chasing each other over ripening grain ; familiar fruits lie everywhere ; the forest-trees, just as they used, overlap each other with shaded folds of intense verdure. Fulness of sunshine falls everywhere on fulness of vegetation. Back to me, through the features of the present, come memories of the past. Late in June I hear a familiar sound, — the sharp click of a scythe making a beginning of the mid-year harvest. The year is waxing old. The vellow stubble of the first mown field tells that ; and it has a suggestive desolateness. What odor so sweet 92 NEW ENGLAXD BYGONES. as that of new-mown hay? It is tlic ])reath of the dving grass, of which there is no wisp so small that, when I sever it, it shall not send forth this delicious scent to tell me of bygone days of abundant and beautiful harvests. Of all the waste luxuriance which the earth pours forth in her yearly ripening, this is the most beautiful and beautifying. Lying broadcast u|)on fields, threading them in careless wind- rows ; flung together in heaps ; traihng from Lidened carts ; crowning oxen and Laborers with fantastic wreaths ; in whatever place it finds or flings itself, it is the same dehghtful, sweet- scented, dying grass. There is no earth so flat, no landscape so tame, that its yearly hay harvest shall not undulate it into lines of beauty. Up and down the dusty highway, jolting al)Out uneven fields, the homely carts used to go, gathering up their precious loads, slowly wreathing their rails and wheels and shafts, I can see my grandfithei' wiping the sweat fi'om his brow, and curiously eying the sky, — treacherous sky, playing pranks with the best plans and labors, but all-creative in putting new life into a siunmer landscape. Piling up, snow-white, these clouds come, some hot August afternoon, out of the horizon, very beau- tiful at first, but treacherous, and the dread of hay-makers. They at once define their edges with a soft-tinted rose color, and grow apace. They roll on, with stately march, towards the zenith, right over the anxious workers and waiting harvests. Growing angrv, getting lurid, overlapping each other with l:)razen folds, threatening, they sound their warning of low-muttered SPRING-TIME AND HAYING. 93 thunder, condense their brightness into vivid lightning, and the whole sky grows dense and black with pent-up waters. Farmers used to fly to each other's aid at such times, runnino; like bees about the fields, goading and urging on their laa;o'ard oxen, — Broad and Bright and Cherry and Star. Carts strained and groaned like living things ; clouds flew higher and higher ; little children tugged in the eati'er race ; the hav blew out in long streamers with the wild winds ; the scurrving drops came thicker and thicker ; the storm burst at last ; when, as if by 13 94 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. magic, men and oxen and teams vanished, and the wind and rain had their way with the ;iiown and unmown grasses left in the fields. The noonings were bright features of a haying landscape. At summons of horn, away went the workers through lanes and highways to their noontide meal. More often, to save time, they took it in the field. I see and hear it all,— men stretching their brawny limbs upon the hay-heaps ; oxen chewing the new- mown grass under shadow of their loads; barefooted boys and girls scudding about with lunch-pails and pitchers ; the drone of bees ; the chirrup of grasshoppers ; the babbling of the brook ; the lapping of the mill-pond ; and many undertones of nature brought out by the unusual quiet of this hour. Oh the peace, the glory, given by those summer noonings to the tired bodies and cramped souls of working men ! AVhether they knew it or not, something of the fervor of the meridian sunshine, some- thing of the earnestness of the mid-day nature, something of the fulness of the mid-year harvest went into them, through their senses, and bore fruit in thankfulness and patience. Some- thing of the narrowness of their ordinary lives went out of them unawares. The nooning over, bustle again prevailed. There was no faltering, no let up, until the horn gave notice of the evening meal. Then, through lanes and highway, fields let out their workers, who cheered their homeward way with simple talk. They went over the day's labors ; forecasted the sky, and planned the toils of the morrow; prone all to the rest of the coming SPRING-TIME AND HAYING. 95 night. Into the barns were shoved the ladened racks, to be emptied in the early morning; down into the west sank the sun ; over the beautiful creation of the harvest fell the older beauty of night ; and unto weariness, and to the patience of labor, past and to come, floated, with noiseless motion, sweet, dreamless, strength-giving sleep. ^X%%M-\^fy.. 3 were would - l:)e liayniakers, Benny and I, jogging along with Jonathan the man-servant in an old market -wagon, to- wards our grandfather's farm. As remembered, we made a homely load, but a happy one. We were half wild with joy, and chattered like magpies all the way about our promised delights. The whole universe was ours that day. We were not simply wayfarers to our grandfather's farm, but travellers at large ; and the narrow circle of the horizon seemed as vast to us as the belt of the whole continent would now. We felt well ; and if, in passing, travellers eyed us sharply, we were sure that they THE VISIT. 97 knew us for young haymakers. It never occurred to us that our equipage was unusuah The only fault we found was with the slowness of our pace and the jolting of the springless wagon; but the one gave our quick eyes a chance to spy out way-side wonders, and the other sent the blood into our cheeks. I am quite sure that we had a better time than we should have had with my grandfather's pretentious chaise and one of his smarter horses. I can see now the yellow lilies we counted among the pines that day. I have loved yellow lilies ever since. They were cheertul things to a — child's eye, gleaming out from an old forest. They were almost as pretty alongside the front door -steps of unpainted country- houses, where they paled somewhat, multiplied, and grew in clumps ; whereas in the forest each blossom stood by itself in flaunting brightness, and seemed to come out of the wood to meet you. The country through which we passed on our journey was sparselv settled, and mostly covered with a thin forest of old 98 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. pines. This forest was full of a shaggy undergrowth of scrub- oaks and knolls of low huckleberry-bushes. The day was hot, and everything glowed with sunlight. In vain we turned oui' umbrella this way and that. Its whalebones creaked ; the sun's rays pierced straight through it, past our straw hats, into our little brains; and we settled down, only to have our shoulders half baked by the high wagon-back. The sand of the road-side glittered ; the wheel-tires sank into it and came up hot and bright. Each stone was a reflecting mirror, and the business of every leaf and twig seemed to be to absorb and send forth heat. The quiet was so perfect that the slightest crackle of a twig was distinctly heard. Yet, underlying this glare and seem- ing silence was a certain positive procession of sound. We shut our eyes from sheer weariness, and were lulled to sleep by this soft drone of living, growing, ever-renewing nature. You country-livers know what this voice is, which has no alphabet, no written language, but which is nevertheless an all-pervading, thrilling monotone, best rendered in what are called her solitudes. Benny said he could hear things grow ; and surely the wise little head both saw and heard many beautiful things that day. So we young haymakers were not ashamed of the springless, rattling old market-wagon. Neither were we ashamed of Jona- than, with his homespun clothes and leathern whip, chewing his cud like an ox, and shouting to his horse with a never-ending " git ap." This horse was not a fine-looking beast. She was a true farm-horse, broad-backed and round-sided, carrying her head low, with a shaggy mane. She was old and not ambitious, THE VISIT. 99 pacing along, at the rate of five miles an hour, with a lumbering gait which gave a double jolt to the clumsy wagon. She was, however, to be respected for her age and her safety ; and, known by the name of Betsy, had been for almost thirty years carefully tended by the family of which she was a true member. New England farmers were all. merciful to their beasts of burden, and this kindness was a natural expression of the ingrained justice of their natures. But one horse in the neighborhood was older than this one of my grandfather's, and that belonged to the aged minister of the parish. His horse, roaming at large, was as much a feature of the village landscape as its meeting-house or its school-house. It grew into the history and the traditions of the place. It was an unaggressive, harmless animal, and came to hold a sort of feeble kinship with all the villagers. When an absentee asked after the townspeople and their affairs, he also asked after the parson's horse ; and thus the unwitting beast came to be a repre- sentative of an enlarged humanity. This horse, long toothless and fed upon porridge, was so defiant of mortality that, out of sheer compassion, it was slain at last outside the village. I verily believe that the young men and maidens of the parish who had grown up during the lifetime of this dumb creature, and were used to the constant sight of it by the way-side, mourned the loss of the " parson's horse" with almost a sen- timent of human friendship. The Betsy of my grandfather's must have come of hardy stock, for she, too, outlived for several years her usefulness, 100 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. and wandered during the summer, a hobbling, gray pensioner, upon the shore of the mill-pond, where one day she was found stark and stiff, close by the old boat. She used, when past service, to limp up to the ])asture-bars and lean her old head Mm, ^ \\r^ if" upon the upper rail, giving us children a sort of blear-eyed recognition which was quite touching. To see this head bobbing up and down amongst the far-off alder-bushes was as pathetic to our child-hearts as if the poor creature could have talked and reasoned with us. We were glad when she gave up the ghost THE VISIT. 101 in a natural Avay, for my grandfather could not consent to have her killed. Benny and I did not after all make a very mean appearance on our first visit alone to our grandfather's farm. We were only two untaught children going to a haying. Our equipage and our dress were suited to our calling. We were Ijent on a kindly errand,— we were to carry youth and cheerfuhiess, and so joy, into the great lonely house of an old man. Being imagi- native children, and having little book learning, that which we desired to believe, and which fact failed to give us, we coined out of our own brains. The seven-mile sandy plain, with its pines and dwarf-oaks, we declared to be no less than forty miles long ; whilst a moderate-sized pond Benny confidently whispered behind Jonathan's back could be no other than the Dead Sea itself. Yet this simple-hearted Benny was over-wise for his years about everything which could be coaxed by search and observation from the outlying landscape of his home, and he was, besides, a charming young romancer. It is delightful to go back to one's days of just such fresh-hearted credulity. Some of our childhood faiths mav have been very foolish indeed, but many of them were beautiful, and we are tender of them all in memory in after-years. We can afford to lose none of them, for these same foolish beliefs were wise to us once, and swelled the sum of our earthly joys. In my grandfather's time, when railroads had not permeated Eastern New England, a long journey was an epoch in a child's life ; and that was called such which was accomplished by several 14 102 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. days of slow-paced travel. It was made a subject for private devotion and public prayer. " Our brother and sister about to go on a long journey" became marked people in the parish. Neighbors "dropped in of evenings" to talk the matter over; and it was dreamed about and wrought for many weeks before- hand. The finest fabrics of the house were set aside and shaped over for that child who was going to Boston, or perhaps to some nearer town ; to whom most likely was given especial and lighter tasks, as one upon whom the unction of travel had already lallen. The night before the start was a busy one in the farm-house. Many last stitches were to be taken, and the bandbox or small trunk to be packed by the careful mother. The child's ward- robe, made for the occasion, was meagre, but clean and strong. It was the best the farm had to give, and was fine to the wearer. I can see Farmer Brown starting off with his daughter Sally, bound for Boston, just as he started over forty years ago. He was a well-to-do farmer, homely, but shrewd and honest, and had held high places of town trust. How exactly he is recalled ! His broad collar seems to cut his ears with its sharp edges, and his stock clasps his neck like a vice. His blue-black homespun suit has been long made, but well kept, and its showy buttons are of double gilt. Sally's frock is of store calico, with a white ruffle in the neck. The shawl she wears, of some printed pongee stuff, is a family heirloom, which her grandmother wore before her. Her bonnet, too gay and too small for her, has just come from Boston, a gift from her seldom-seen uncle, who now and then thrusts a town gaud upon this neglected country relative. THE VISIT. 103 The family of this uncle they are going to visit. The innocent souls have not waited for an invitation. With them the instinct of kinship is as strong as their faith in their religion. For six months the mother's busy brain and fingers have toiled over fine twined threads of wheel and loom, to weave for this young girl an outfit suitable for this great occasion. She is a blithe- some lass, just grown uj), and is engaged to teach the village school. They climb into the lumbering wagon. The younger children swarm about them, whilst the dear mother stands in the doorway with bared arms, shading her eyes with her hand, and watches 104 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. them until they are gone out of sight under the hill Sally is the envy of all the other village girls, and mothers gossip to- gether of this weighty journey of hers. Many an aged country-reared person knows what that journey was to Sally ; how grand and mysterious the town seemed to her, with its many streets, its crowds of people, its various wares, and its many lights; how, impressed and oppressed by it, she grew self-conscious and lonely, and wished herself home again. Her uncle's house was an enchanted palace to her, and she a dazed girl in it. It was revealed to her that what pertained to herself and to her father was not in keeping with her sur- roundings. They were plainly-dressed, homespun country-people, well clad alongside the deep greens and russet browns of their farm, but ill assorting with gay town fashions. She saw and took in much. Her keen senses and bright mind were quickened to a wider scope by this somewhat unpalatable taste of strange living. The day of her departure was a relief to her. She went back as she came, except that she was lightly laden with simple purchases. She was as warmly Avelcomed as if she had come from a foreign land. The trinkets she had bought were as marvellous to her mother and the other children as they would have been to her once. She somewhat pitied their igno- rance, but kept her own counsel. She was wiser than before she went, but not cpiite so happy. A glory had gone out of her home which could never come back. Its rooms were lower and narrower ; and their fitness had been lost from the garments which had been fashioned lor her with so much care. Their THE VISIT. 105 textures and dyes were homespun, and so less esteemed. She made a better teacher for having been to Boston, because she had more weight with her scholars. But the sweetest relish of her rural home had died out for her. In later years it came again, as a delightful memory. She would then have given half she possessed to have been starting once more Irom the old farm- house, a simple-hearted girl in calico by the side of the home- spun father, with the dear mother watching her from the doorway. Our old horse plodded along so wearily that the shadows had grown long on the neighboring hills, and cow-bells were tinkling at the pasture-bars, when we drove through the gateway at the end of the green lane. Far away we had caught sight of our grandfather standing in his door. We knew him by his grav hair tossed in the wind. " He's an old dear," whispered Benny; "just a little cross sometimes, but never cross to me." No, he was never cross to little Benny, and seldom to any other child. He was a most orderly man, and was apt to lose patience when children upset his settled ways. He never was known to scold Benny, lor the boy was his namesake, and had about him, he used to say, the look of those who die young. There was an unusual trembling of the aged hand which patted our heads, and a very tender greeting of the old man to us. Then he held us at arms' length, saying, with a merry twinkle in his eye, " So you young rascals have come to haying, have you ? Well, I must say, your mother needn't have rigged you out Hke two Arabs; still, I think you'll do." Happy little Benny 106 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. thought he was praising our looks, and told me shortly that Arabs must be some grand people. My grandlather was a keen-witted, resolute, handsome man of good English stock. His life was as methodical as clock- work. His thrift wrested a competence from the soil ; but his best legacy to his descendants was a certain inborn freedom of soul. He loved every inch of his farm, not as a plougher and plodder, but as an observer and thinker. So positive and sell- asserting was this high type of his manhood that his only son, when exceptionally well educated and of exalted rank in his profession, never seemed more than his equal. Having lived past his fourscore years, he ended his prosperous and reputable life by a death of serene dignity. He was called stern by his fellow-townsmen ; but no man or woman ever questioned his integrity. His career, considering the possibilities of his nature, was a narrow one, but of the best, so far as it went. It had little gilt and polish, — not enough of recreation, — but such as it was, he took it up patiently and faithfully, and got out of it whatever of good it had in it. He did with all his might whatever he had to do, which was so much that it crowded his life to the verge of servitude. He was serious and earnest, if not stern, because the demands of his lot left little room for lighter moods, so that a higher sense of justice and humanity was born of this half- tragic element of his condition. The children of such f^ithers were well-trained children. The parent's will was law with them, and the law of the parent was THE VISIT. 107 the word of God. These unpetted yet deeply-loved sons and daughters were truthful and honest. They were respecters of age, keepers of the Sabbath, and clean in all their ways, because their home tuition had been founded upon the highest principles of religion and morality. Tears and tender words did not come easily to such hard workers and simple livers. They had an element of heroic resistance to what they considered weakness, and a Spartan estimation of all tokens of it. Mothers could lay out their dead children for burial, and fathers could look upon them with tearless eyes. They would put them in graves close to their homes, and then go back to their old grooves, giving little outward sign. But the hurt was there, deep and for all time. These massive old heroes, these truthful, earnest wrestlers for duty, held their reticence as a comely instinct, — a sacred inner life. The Christian New Englander of forty years ago was most reverent. His children were God's trust to him ; as such he trained them, and as such he gave them up. If he unwisely crucified the tastes and desires of his sons and daughters, it was because of his own blind zeal and an overstraining of Bible precepts. If any of them, in morality, fell short of the home standard, he was more smitten by it than he would have been by their death. After a supper of bread and milk, Benny and I were sent to bed, with orders to be up bright and early for the haying. The sun was already making great red streaks across the checked hangings in the east chamber when Benny's tap at 108 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. my door, and the patter of his Uttle feet across the sanded floor, startled me from an uneasy slumber. I had been dream- ing of the enclosure in the mowing-field. I thought we were gathering buttercups on Olly's grave, when a great pit suddenly yawned, and Benny fell into it. " Quick, we are almost ready," he shouted, and then ran away, ''to help fix off,'' he said. He had pumped a basin of fresh water, which, with a clean towel, awaited me on the wooden bench at the back-door. I scrubbed my face and hands with zest in that tin basin, and would be willing to-day to taste, in the same homely way, the pleasant abandon of that summer morning, if with it would come back the scents and voices, the glowing light, and the simple occu- pations of its' long-past, happy day. We ate no breakfast, Benny and I, we were too happy for that ; besides, a huge basket under Jonathan's arm was, Hannah whispered, "brimful of goodies." The leathern-handled keg puzzled us ; but Benny was a philosopher, and, pointing to the flies swarming about its spigot, confidently declared that it held some savory drink. The smallest rakes were laid aside for the new hands, as our grandfather jocosely called us, and we were left to follow after the loads. Our little fists grew red and speckled ; but Benny said they would soon be tough like Jonathan's, and the fun of treading down the sweet hay and jolting over the sill of the barn more than made up for all our ills. " Our new hands ain't so green after all," remarked spruce David to his fellow- mower. " Tell better arter the new's off," was Jonathan's bluft' THE VISIT. 109 reply. " The old clown !" whispered Benny. " How clcvor David is !" said I. By and by, when the sun had gotten into the zenith, we began to feel hot and tired, and cast longing glances towards the shadv rock l;)y the spring, behind which were the keg and bundle. My grandfather, seeing us lag, took pity upon us, and sent us there to rest. "VVe ate our share of the lunch, and took long draughts of sweetened water from the keg. Bennv thought there was too much ginger in it, but drank freely. Alas ! for the struggling fly which, sticking fast upon Benny's nose, daubed over with molasses, made us forget* to put back the spigot. 15 no X-EW ENGLAND BYGONES. When the thirsty mowers came round the rock the keg was empty. " ►So much for Ijabies in haying-time," growled Jonathan. My grandfather looked severe, and told us to " start for the house." So we did, David slipping round the rock to say to us that it was no matter, for he would fill the keg again. We idled the afternoon sadly away in the old farm-house. True to human nature, we little ones turned against each other. " You are black as a crow," said Benny. " And you," retorted I, "are as speckled as an adder." "All from this hateful hay- ing," Benny went on. Then, common grief making common cause, we came together again ; and, pledging everlasting absence from the having field, we dwelt in love and harmony until bed- time. tSomehow my tired little Ijody would not rest that night. I had another frightful dream about a deep pit and little Benny. I kept waking up ; but the bed-curtains looked so black, and the dimly-seen windows so ghostly, that I shut my eyes and lay trembling with fear half the night. It was very late the next morning when I was awakened by the merry haymakers under my window, on their way to the mowing-field. Above every other voic-e rang out Benny's, glad and care free. After that the haying-time passed away quickly and merrily. Best of holidays to me ; from which have come some of the brightest pictures and purest sentiments of my life. Pay-day came. Jonathan and David received their well-earned wages; scores of transient helpers had come and gone ; Benny and I each clasped in our brown hands four bright silver dollars. THE VISIT. Ill The big gate opened to let out the market-wagon, with two joyous-hearted (jhildren. Their clothes were much the worse for wear, and they looked even queerer than they did when they came. Thev turned tenderly Ijack to the white-haired old man, who watched them from the porch-door. " I'll come again very soon," called Benny- He did come, and the big gate opened wide to let him in. _iiji_S,>__V_ HE summer harvest was past, but not the remembrance of it. Benny and I were ever counting the months, and then the weeks, before another haying. We spent our holidays in the making of miniature rakes, and were garrulous the whole winter with our simple memories. No story-book could give us pleas- ure like going over the past summer's homely life. We talked much of little things : of the maimed lamb that limped at our call to his evening meal ; the .speckled trout in the deep old well ; the play rock ; the herds ; the apple-trees ; and much, very much, of the dear, trembling old man, who never seemed old to us, over whom the unreasoning love of childhood cast the glamour of immortal youth. There was to be a jubilee, in. anticipation of which I had exchanged my grandfather's dollars for bright ribbons, whilst Benny's had gone into the price of a pair of fine gaiters. The long-wished-for morning came. Benny's little jacket, with a 112 LITTLE BENNY. 113 white collar piimed to its neck, hung from a nail in the wall ; his new gaiters stood upon the mantel. Benny could not wear them then. I entered into the sports of that day with all the buoyancy of childhood; and though I heard Benny's moans as I passed the half-opened door, I did not think at evening to bid him good-night or give him his wonted kiss. Giddy girl ! That same sick Benny was the gay companion of haying-time. Ever thus selfish is joy. What sympathy can gladness have with sorrow ? If death has never entered your own household, you can carry little consolation to the mourner, — your words will be as sounding ]:)rass and tinkling cymbals. Days passed away; long, weary days. The gaiters still kept their place on the mantel ; the white collar had become yellow with smoke and dust, but still it stayed. Benny no longer asked about the jubilee, and I shrank from his darkened room. How anxiously I watched the doctor's face as he softly emerged from the sick- chamber ! How my little heart beat if ever its wonted benignant smile returned ! One morning (Benny had been ill two weeks) I was awakened by the rumbling of a vehicle. There was no mistaking the sound ; it was the old market- was-on. In a few minutes I was by my grandfather's side. Thfere was no tremulous grasp of the hand, no gentle greeting, no fond pat on tha head. His thoughts were with Benny, his namesake. " Tread softly," whispered the doctor, as I led my grandfather to the side of the sick-bed. He leaned heavily on his staff, and a tear trickled down his furrowed cheek. 114 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. " Benny will not help us hay another year," said the old man to me, in broken tones. How that death-knell fell on my soul ! Was Benny, the good, the beautiful Benny, to die and be buried in the cold, damp earth ! It could not be ; and yet, as I looked at him the terrible conviction forced itself upon me. His little LITTLE BENNY. 115 brown hands had become thin and white, his cheeks sunken. He opened his eyes. " Benny, do you know me ?" asked grandfather, fondly. He murmured incoherently something al)Out haying-time, the big rock, and the mowing-field. Again my grandfather dropped a tear. It was more than my childish heart could bear. I ran to my chamber, and throwing myself upon the bed yielded to the first sharp agony of life. Oh, it is a fearful thing to pass for the first time through the gates of sorrow ! It was dark, very dark, when I was awakened by a light tap upon my shoulder. I knew the touch ; it was my grandfather's hand. I asked no questions, but followed him instinctively to the sick-room. I knew that Benny, my loved Benny, was dying. There was no shrinking from the mysterious threshold. In the agony of that moment I could not cry, but stood by the side of the dear boy as cold, calm, and still almost as himself. There was no look of recognition, no word from the palsied tongue. One gasp, one quiver of the thin lij), and the fragile chord which bound his pure soul to earth was broken, — there was no longer in that household a little Benny. It was a most solemn death- room. A mother wept for her lost one, and refused to be com- forted ; a father was bowed in agony for the child of his heart ; and, more touching still, the silvered locks of decrepit age mingled with the golden curls of lifeless childhood. Thus it is— the child sports a Ijrief hour ; manhood leagues with mammon a few short years ; and only here and there is given a long life. 116 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. Eummaging not long since amongst some old letters, I came upon one directed in faded ink to my grandfather. It could hardly be deciphered, so worn and discolored was it by time. It was a summons to Bomy's bedside. At the bottom of the page, in an old man's tremulous hand, was this postscript: "Benny died of brain fever the next day, at ten of the clock p.m. He was my best beloved grandchild." For weeks I mourned for my lost playmate. His chair kept its place in the corner ; the miniature rakes were fondly cher- ished ; the collar was still unpinned. By chance one day the chair was moved ; anon the rusty pin was drawn from the jacket, and one by one the little rakes disappeared. The next haying-time found me almost as blithe and gay as ever. Thus evanescent are the griefs of early childhood. Little Benny was buried on the old farm. It was my grandfather's wish that he should be. People came from far and near to his funeral. They made a quaint throng, — hard-faced men and women, serious and sympathetic, and young men and maidens, with a curious awe at this, in the country, unusual presentment of the sublime beauty of a dead child. All along the farm-yard fence, as far as to the farther gate, stood the homely teams of these people, who had left their tasks to show their respect and sympathy for their neighbor. This congregating of wagons about a country house was a sure token of woe, more significant and touching than any bands of crape ; so also was the decorous going in and out of the silent throng. Seen from a distance, they made a LITTLE BENNY. ii; blossoms solemn pageant contrasted with the usual quiet of a country home. Benny lay in his coffin between the windows of the " fore-room," — that _--■ room which was never used save for 'some memorial purpose. Its doors and wnidows ^'I!^^^^^ were flung wide open now, and the bright sunshine streamed athwart the child's face and kindled it into a marvellous life likene'>s. He had few flowers al^out him , but from the 1 garden and the fields outside came the scent ol he had loved, and sweet-smelling things were clasped in the hands of the women. He seemed not to be dead, but asleep ; and most tenderly did nature caress this clay image of her child-lover with her best summer gifts. The mourners, with their dearest friends, sat about the boy, thus holding fast to him to the last. The preacher stood upon the threshold of the lore room, talking mostly to them, and praying for them with a painful personality. He did not, however, forget 16 118 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. the application of liis text and the lesson of the day to the people in the other rooms. His voice pervaded every corner of the house, and the breeze -caught it up and carried it to the traveller on the highway, — a solemn sound. When he had finished Farmer Brown, in his homely way, but with a voice tender with sorrow, said, " The mourners can now look at the child." Did you ever respond to such a call ? What measure is there to the agony of this last silent interview with the unresponsive dead ; this unanswered greeting of one who, for time, is lost in the most irrevocable sense ; this unheeded letting-out of the affections to what is already going back to dust ? Next to the mourners, the neighbors were invited to take a last look at the departed. Keenly, as if it were but yesterday, do I remember the sweet speech of this unpolished man ; the instinctive shrinking of this tender-hearted rustic from thrusting a cruel fact upon tliose whom it most concerned. The relatives were asked to look upon their child as upon one who slept; the neighbors, for the last time, upon the dead. They all — men, women, and children — took their turn over the little coffin. They were greatly moved, even the hardest featured of them. Men drew their horny hands over their eyes, and women sobbed aloud over this child, whom many of them had never seen while living, but who, dead, wrought from their suppressed natures this miracle of emotion. He lay there, his golden curls and long lashes sun-gilded, and clinging to his marble image with strange brightness. He was to them a new and beautiful revelation. He was as unlike their LITTLE BENNY. 119 own children as if he had belonged to another race. Death could not chisel the best of their own into his likeness. They saw, but could not comprehend, the rare quality of this child, and so they looked upon him and wept in wonder. He was too beautiful, they said, to be put out of sight ; and nature seemed to rebuke them while she smiled upon all the stages of this his last and little journey. The sun sank towards the west, and from Ijevond the woodland and pasture it streamed across the o|)en grave, and filled the thing itself with a waiting glory. The child was covered and carried across the green field, and let dowu into it ; and in a little while all there was left of the sad pageant of that summer's day was a small brown mound in sight of the west room window. It seems to me, as I look back, a sweet burial without dreail, that carrying out of the lovely child from tli<3 old farm-house, amidst sunshine and tender mourning, and laying him down in the green field which lie had made jocimd the summer before with his delight. We talked of this l:)oy as having been cut off", but after all his little life had Ijeen full and complete and well rounded ; and when his short journey had come to an end, the sunshine which he had brought with him flooded and followed him. His burial on it glorified the farm. He was always there, not as under the mound with its lettered stone, but as a true little Benny, who, unresponsive to touch or speech, did yet roam about the place. He has never grown old, but has grown grand with years. The capacity of this child has been perfected by loving- memory to the measure of the whole universe. He roams at 120 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. large. I shall never know him here again, by sight or s})eech or touch, but one day we shall, I ti'ust, know each other, not as we were, but as we are to be. Thus the watchers and waiters, whose going away from us tore our hearts, are to take the sting of death from us. They compelled us -to shut them out of our earthly homes that they might welcome us into a heavenly. Dear children, you of earlier and you of later days, how will the mystery of your brief lives be unravelled when you shall come down resplendent to the shore of the shining river, that you may help over the old, the infirin, and the weary, who stayed behind and mourned for you ! 1/ cJ.t'iC jpQ f^^fS^:^:^ «'^wc / jrandfather's burial-place was within a stone's throw of the west room windows. To one coming from north or south, east or west, it was as conspicuous as the house itselh Its tablets were the ghosts of my childhood. They gave me many terrified waking hours, taking shape and motion to me as I stared at them from my chamber window. These family graveyards were a- peculiar feature of the country. They gave pathos to a landscape, recording with tragic fidelity the sorrows and mortality of its inhabitants. My grandfather loved his burial-place. It was in the way of a straight path to the orchard and the mowing field, but he seemed glad to be turned aside by it. No spot, he said, was too good for little Benny. He used to sit hour after hour at the window which overlooked it, the wind softly lifting his silvery hair, while he silently contemplated this smallest, but most precious, of all his 121 122 KUW ENGLAND BYGONE^S. fields. What was he thinking about ? what memories touched him? Avhat certainties awed him? Watching with the keen eye of childhood I got no sign, for the s})iritual life of this reticent old man was chary of utterance. lie knew that in this Ijed he should some day be laid at rest ; and the more trembling his old limbs grew, the nearer his feet approacherl the borders of the silent land, the more he used to sit and gaze at his uTaves. ^'Nv"/'^>-P'Nk- and ponder, without doubt, V^ upon the mysteries of the hereafter. These little fields were family heirlooms. No one could be so pinched by poverty, or so depraved in sentiment, as w^illingly to sell them. AVhen farms changed owners, these were carefully exempted and fenced in. Occasionally circumstance so far removed, or Providence so blotted out, a posterity, that a gi-ave l)ecame ownerless. THE BUBIAL-PLACE. 123 Even then humanity kept it from hard usage. No question of utility could uj^root from the sod the claim upon it of its first occupants. It was kept by their memory as firmly as when they held in living hands its written title-deeds. There comes especially to mind such a burial-place. It was upon a hillock in the corner of a field, at the end of a green lane : a lovely spot overlooking a wide stretch of country. A sweet apple-tree, always in summer full of fruit, overhung it. I see the uneven mound now, matted with OTass, strewn with golden apples, and only telling by tradition of the presence of the dead. I rememljer how stealthily children climbed up the wall and snatched at overhanging boughs. They were shy of the wind- falls on the other side, for these lonely graves were to fields what ghosts are to haunted chambers. My grandfather's old farm-house, with its lands, may go to strangers ; but the little field, first made precious to me by Benny's burial, shall remain undesecrated. Under every change of life I know that it will be to me and my children a hallowed possession. Its mounds, whose tenants have gone back to the dust from whence they came, have given place to hollows full of rank grass and yarrow. Its slabs of perishable slate are seamed and fretted by the wear and tear of many years. Its tumbled wall is covered with raspberry-vines and sumachs, and a maple-tree has grown monumental with the years which have eaten away the inscriptions Irom the stones beneath it. Not long since I visited the spot. I plucked a blossom from a straw- berry-vine which had thrown its tendrils into an old grave, and 124 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. looked upon the uneven earth about me. Benny's Httle stone reproached me with its forty odd years of wear. I grew sorrow- ful. Then Irom the luxuriant outgrowth around me came the assurance of hope in death ; every crevice of the crumbling- stones was teemina; with veei;etation. Growth had been born of decay; from death had sprung beautiful life. The sod itself had been ripened by giving back to it its rightful dust. Why then should one mourn when a spirit, let loose from its bonds, exchanges its kinship with sin and sorrow and pain for a glorious immortality ? "Sacred to the memory of the dead!" This is the most common leo;end, and also the truest and l^est. There is no beino; so mean that he may not claim for himself this epitaph. The grave is common ground. So far as this world goes, it brings all to the same level. The beggar is as sure of his morsel of earth as the prince is of his toml). The rankness of the one is as eloquent as the pomp of the other. The prince was clothed in purple and fine linen, and the damp mould clasped him ; the beggar was clad in rags, and the busy grass wove lor him a rentless covering. The world is full of unknown graves, of whose tenants she tells no stories : the unmarked and uncared-for graves of people stranded by accident or circumstance ; of slaughtered soldiers ; of pioneers in new countries '; of martyrs to liberty ; of travellers in far lands. The sea is continually dragging into its hungry maw human life, which it absorbs and hides as relentlessly as it washes away the sands of its shore. There is an unutterable THE BURIAL-PLACE. 125 pathos in nameless graves. I have walked through acres strewn thick with soldiers' bones, the harvest of great battles. No in- scription has touched me like the simple " unknown" which breaks the monotony of their epitaphs. It tells that there lies a man, no matter how long and well he has fought for his country, who was so undowered by fortune, so smitten hy cir- cumstance, that even his name has been lost ! Yet no grave can be naked and forsaken, for trees and shrubs and grasses and flowers will grow on it, and over it spans the grand arch of heaven. In the pioneer days of New England the churchyard was a favorite burial-place. The early settlers, beset hy Indians, gen- erally planted their meeting-houses upon hill-tops which over- looked the wooded country. They were thus less easily surprised, and better- defended in case of danger. These meeting-houses had watch-towers ; were strong with oaken beams and barricades ; and on Sunday were filled with armed worshippers. To hold out unsleeping through long services was the chief effort of many of the overworked hearers. But the men, whose eyes were wide open, whose ears were quick to hear, whose thoughts were clear, condensed, their post was in the towers. Not an unseen shadow passed over the woodland ; not an unheard twig broke in it ; scarcely the rustle of a leaf escaped them. Death, or worse, might be the price of one minute of laggard service. "What a grand picture one of these heroic old watchmen would make, perched, defiant and faithful, on one of those bygone church-towers ; standing there as much a warrior against the 17 126 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. wildness of nature as the savageness of man. Gerome has painted a Mussubnan calUng to prayers from tlie minaret of a mosque. The turbaned old Turk, leaning from his lofty perch, gives a weird beautv to this cold, heathen picture. Our Christian watch- man, lifted over the desolateness of the forest and the wiles of the savage, could not help standing out from such a foreground with a clear-cut and sublime distinctness. It is curious to trace out on the higliest point of some prom- inent New England landscape the almost hidden outlines of one of these Christian strongholds, invisible to the passer-by, but positive and well-defined to the antiquary. I have seen the latter coax out fr'om a grass-grown summit the underlying sods of an old structure. He paced it for me, and told me where were its pulpit, its door, and its towers. He rebuilt for me this quaint house into the tamed landscape. One cannot at this day well appreciate the heroism of that armed devotion. It is easier to imagine how dazed one of the old watchmen would be to find himself suddenly resuri'ected upon his tower, with no foe to fight against. When the Indians had passed away the meeting-houses were still, for convenience, centrally located ; and, being used by a whole township, were often far away from any habitation. Later, however, the isolated meeting-house, with its " God's acre," was deserted. Population increased, villages sprang up, and new places of worship were built to meet the growing means and needs of the people. The old burial-grounds began to seem too far away and too lonely for the beloved dead. Village people THE BUBJAL-PLACE. 127 di'jse to lay them in some ** '-pot near by, which was lenced carefully out and adorned with trees and shrubs. At the same time the thrifty farmer set aside a spot m some iield, apt -to be the most conspicuous pomt on his larm. Meanwhile the deserted plat, sown thick with the bones of Christian pioneers, was taken up and cared for by nature. Tradition clung to it, ghosts haunted it, vegetation ran riot over it, its walls tumbled, its stones were zigzag, it was ragged and uneven and wild, but beautiful. It lay upon the landscape a legend of the past, whether you read it in its rude inscriptions 128 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. or in the gray desolateness of its aspect. It came to be known as "the old graveyard," — sometliing incorporated into tlie history and atmosphere of tlie place ; a solemn suburb, in the sentiment of which every villager had an inherited or acquired possession. A mile away from a New England village, on the edg6 of a primeval forest, by the side of a deserted highway, have lain undisturbed for years the bones of its patriarchs. Here was once a meeting-house, but so long ago that nothing but tradition tells of its site. This meeting-house doubtless had its towers and its watchers ; but the thing itself, and the actors in it, have literally gone back to dust. Only the undying beauty of the landsca])e remains, which embodies in it the ancient burial-place. This is almost surrounded by a pine ibrest, and is only separated by the thread of a grass-grown path from a beautiful lake. It is one of the sweetest spots I ever knew ; and if a patch of earth can be sacred to the memory of the dead', this is made so by the dedication of munificent nature. The site of it, with that of the meetiny-house, contrary to custom in troublous times, lies low. The shimmering little pond must have been delightful to the pioneers of the unljroken wilderness. Its shores can be but little changed from what tliey were in the days of the old meeting-house, for the pine-trees of its encircling forest seem as ancient as time itself. Were the pines, without undergrowth, and the pond and the highways good for strategic purposes, or were the builders of this ancient house beguiled by the exceeding beauty of the landscape ? Three Indians, after a hard struggle, were once killed upon this pond, and the meeting-house outlived THE BURIAL-PLACE. 129 their race; so I suppose the old savage drama was played out in it. Long sermons were preached; guns were stacked by its doorway ; and up in its towers stood men, whose eyes never turned away from the road, the pond, and the pines. Of all the tragic and historic life of the spot, we have left only this forsaken burial-place. Now and then a traveller, drawn by the shimmering of the little pond through the trees, follows the by-road which leads to it. He stoops down, pulls apart tangled weeds and grass, and tries to spell out some of its time-worn inscriptions. He finds the deeply-cut name of the last pastor of the church, and of scores of other ancient and godly men. What he fails to decipher are manifold texts of scripture and verses of old hymns, quaintly spelled and lettered. This now illegible stonescript was once tenderly illustrative of the virtues of the underlying dead. I recall, as if it were but yesterday, the last burial in that old churchyard ; the rude bier ; the procession of villagers following after' the mourners ; the sunshine and the silence of the day. The train wound slowly through the forest, by the pond, into the churchyard. There was no rattling of hearse and coaches ; no crowd of gazers in holiday attire. It was a carrying of the dead with simple, solemn ceremony to the grave. The bier was set down ; the villagers stood around it ; and then the minister, with bare head, said, reverently, " Let us pray." His voice went through the old wood, across the pond, and seemed to fill all space. I know of no service more beautiful and impressive than a 13U JV:EW ENGLAND BYGONES. village funeral of olden times. I have been to many such, and each stands out in memory like a painting. The bereavement of one villager was the grief of every other. Silence and sorrow fell over them all. The presence of the dead hallowed a house. Hard-working women crowded in, and grew gentle and beautiful with svmpathv. Bronzed men, with hands calloused by toil, lifted and folded the rusty pall as lightly as if it had l)een of gossamer. The preacher, standing upon the threshold of the " best room," filled the house with his simple words ; hymns were sung reverently by untrained voices ; relatives took a last look of their dead ; neighbors followed after them ; the lid was ham- mered down with that mournful stroke once heard never for- gotten ; the coarse-handed, warm-hearted men lilted the coffin as tenderly as they had handled the pall, and carried it outside where the bier waited to receive it. The house was hushed as it passed out, and the procession, called out by some neighbor, noiselessly formed behind it. What a terrible passing out that is, — the going forth of a dead body never to i'eturn ! Hope goes forth with the most forlorn departure of a living friend. Sickness, distance, time, all leave room for desire and expectation ; death never. AVe cannot know our loss until our dead have left us. The presence of the lifeless body gives us a measure of consolation. It awes us by the symmetry of its marble beauty. The utter peace and silence which possess it steal also into us, and we sit com- forted in the presence of our dead. But oh ! who can measure the utter agony of that hour when they go from us for all time. THE BURIAL-PLACE. 131 borne out unresisting, to be forevermore things of the past ? If we call out to them, their own lips are dumb. Stretching out our arms for them, their own are bound and move not. Turning- back to the desolated household, what utter emptiness is there, silence and darkness and nothingness where was fulness and brightness and presence ! No echo of a voice in the air ; no footfall ; never so light a touch of the hand ; gone, utterly gone ; henceforth to be slipping farther and farther away from the treacherous hold of memory. After a funeral the people were apt to linger, dropping olF one by one, each to his own w^ay and work ; only relatives and near friends staying to sit down to unrelished baked meats. The bier, flinging out its fantastic arms, always marked the newest-made grave, and stayed upon it until transferred to that of a later comer. I have listened hours to a village necrology from the lips of an old woman, who never missed the date of a funeral, nor forgot the way the wind blew on the day of it, or the meats the mourners ate. Her tales, told mostly in rude rhyme, were ludicrously minute, yet simple and touching. It was like the unrolling of a panorama of scenes, rough, perhaps, and sharply sketched by a few lines, but most admirable for truth and power. Tender traditions, quaint old customs, you are all a part of the treasures of bygone days. ■^".V.'.-rfk-./.i^S^,#^. Theee "were "lined men" anut not familiar ; helpful, but not aggressive. She takes note of your necessities, which she relieves without ostentation. So great is her generosity of effort that she keeps no account in memory of those deeds by which she has made you her debtor. If she needs you she freely asks of you. She is more reticent of her words than her works ; and weighs well her speech, that by it her social relations may not be marred. She is unmoved by impulse or prejudice. She may be hard of exterior, but ten- derness dwells in her. If bidden to a feast she goes to it in her best attire, with serious dignity ; but into the sick-room she NEIGHBORS. 153 glides with unchanged garments, bearing with her the healing of herbs, softness of presence, and a feeling heart. My first-born was buried from a country home. His short life had been of no use to any one outside of that home. To my neighbors he had left nothing worthy of remembrance ; he had made hardly a ripple upon the surface of their quiet lives. He had simply come and passed away. Lo! what was wrought by the silent mystery of his death. They thronged about him. They touched his white garments with exquisite tenderness, and let fall upon them tears of pity and love. One of them wrapped him in his winding-sheet, smoothed his hair prettily, and touched his Ijrow with a holy, motherly kiss. Beloved country neighbors of another home, dear are the memories of your spontaneous kindness to me and mine, — you true, tender-hearted, Iree-handed, helpful, bygone neighbors. Tirzah, Tirzah the good ! you were hard-worked and plain ; but you were so clothed upon with self-denial, kindness, and charity that my children loved you, and you were beautiful to them. They never missed in you any graces ; to them you were pure gold. Dear old woman ! when your weary feet shall pass over to the shining shore, two, I am sure, will gladly go down to meet you. Kind old Tirzah, may I some time see you in the beautiful garments of immortality! '' Grod bless Tirzah!" lisped Marion, in infantile speech ; and night after night went up this simple petition until the child's tongue forgot its cunning. My grandfather's neighbors were scattered over a wide space of country. The nearest one of them was half a mile away ; 154 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. but distance only seemed to lend zest to their intercourse with one another. Lack of diversion also gave impulse to it. The drama they all helped to play was upon a narrow stage, with few acts ; and they, the actors in it, were so far apart that each stood out to. the others most conspicuous for the right or wrong render- ing of his part. Every incident and accident of one's daily life was, to his neighbor, what his costumes are to the player in the theatre, a sort of marking of him. His horse, his oxen, his wagon, and his dog identified him, like the wearing of a stage garment; and all his incomings and outgoings, all the ways of his household, were most familiar to his townspeople. Sunday noonings made neighbors ; the courtesies of hayings and harvest- ings brought them together ; and the leisure of winter revealed each to the other. They were compelled to be dependent upon, and so kind to, one another, — these simple, isolated people. They found relief Irom the restraint of labor and the suppression of their working days in their holiday garrulousness, and their eao'er recos-nition of everv other man and woman as their neio-h- l:>or. When clad in their best suits, with a little respite from toil, their whole natures seemed to rebound; and silent, stern men became eager chatterers. Very simple gossip it was, mainly of herds and crops and town affairs. They thronged the meeting- house steps on Sundays, gathered in knots about the village stores, and never failed on the highway to salute one another with much speech. The smallest mishap to the one was speedily known to the rest, and this large recognition came back manifold in sympathy. NEIGHBORS. 155 Extreme deference was exacted from children to parents, and from youth to old age. Amongst the men there was little social assumption, save that the Ijest thinkers, known as such, took unto themselves a certain boldness of speech. Their salutations followed custom, and their common talk ran in grooves ; but the mass of them were as strong in logic as their soil was in rock ; and they were almost as easily turned as the latter from their slow-formed opinions. They were weather-wise almost to accuracy, and foretold to one another the coming and shifting of storms. 156 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. Nothing could be quainter upon the highway than the meeting in midsummer of two anxious farmers in their high-backed wagons. They stopped, compared the size and state of their exposed crops ; and then fell to watching the clouds, each shading his eyes with his hand. Hardy, resolute, half-defiant, they had a sort of heathen aspect — these sons of and worshippers of the soil. Their hopes, and so their hearts, were bound up in the signs of sun and wind and cloud, and they naturally grew into such picturesque and harmless idolaters. The women of my grandfather's neighborhood were more given to social distinctions than the men. The wives of '' forehanded" farmers and professional men were apt to be somewhat exalted, or, in the speech of the times, "looked up to." This was because of a partial exemption from toil; and they lacked the intensity, the wild flavor, of those humbler women, who threw their whole strength and will into their vocations, and thus made themselves worthy of better things. What if these latter did seem like drudges, and grow hard and ugly to sight; the patience and the power and the will to do were still in them, and the price they paid for their fidelity gave a pathetic nobleness to the sacrifice. The w^omen were, as a class, religious. They were not emo- tional, busy, bustling Christians. They knew little about missions and Dorcas societies. There was not much poverty to tax their sympathies. They were learned in doctrines, firm of faith, and full of a simple reverence. They were never so fagged or bur- dened that they could not, on the Lord's day, lay aside their cares and toils,, and go up to His house. It ought to have been NEIGHBOUR. 157 an easy thing for these women to enter into the kingdom. Their Hfe here was so hard Upon them that the life to come must have held out to their weary souls a picture, beyond all measure delightful, of the eternal rest, the everlasting peace of the true gospel. The meao-reness of their lot beu,ot in many of them a stinu;iness about dollars and cents ; but the most carnal-minded of them were truly reverent on the Lord's day ; and they all endured frost-bites and long sermons, in their unwarmed churclies, with a praiseworthy patience. Sweet to them was the hush of their restful Sabbaths. It was the sign and token to them of a Sabbath that should never end. When their" children were young, these ancient mothers had to clothe them with garments spun and woven l)y their own hands ; and for the daughtei's, as they grew up, table-linen and bedding were to l)e stored away for their "tixing out." In my grandmother's day this thrifty forecasting of fate was the custom in farmers' families, and she was deemed rich to whose treasures gifts of silver and china were also added. Daugliters were ex- pected to marry. Marriage brought extra care and toil to a woman ; but she did not shrink from that, for labor was her lot; and she of the humbler sort, to whom no suitor came, was quite sure to take up her narrower vocation as tailoress or dress- maker or household servant. It was tliought to be generous in a farmer to let his daughter " learn a trade," thus freeing lier from tlie heavier drudgeries of farm-work. There must have been cheapened lives, but there were, at least, no idle ones 21 158 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. amongst these women. They began their lustrous webs in early girlhood. They accepted their condition as they found it ; they did with all their might what the Lord gave them to do, and so were in their calling true livers. The tailoress, with her awkward goose, stitching and pressing coarse cloths into homely garments, grew gray-haired in the service of friendly neighbors. Her meagre pay, through long hoarding, rolled up with years. She got to be a house-owner and land-owner, and so a woman of repute and weight amongst others. Lucy and Hester were two such humble neighbors of my grandfather's. They were in middle life when I knew them-; two sisters, to whom their father, in dying, had left a life interest in his house and estate. This was the usual way in those days of providing for the old age of unmarried daughters ; not the most safe or generous way for them, but consistent with their training and habits of self-reliance. With health, they were sure to be self-supporting, and in sickness and old age they would he cared for, grudgingly it might be, in the rooms set apart for them in the old homestead. Lucy and Hester might have well dreaded any possible de- pendence upon their brother, a crabbed, morose man, whose surly nature seemed to infect his home and all its surroundings. It was a dismal, joyless-looking house. Seen from a distance, it had a most inhospitable look, unsoftened by any green, growing thing, uncorniced, unpainted, grim, cold, forbidding. The room of Lucv and Hester seemed to catch all the sunshine lying about it. Their goose was always pounding at seams, their tongues NEIGHBORS. 159 were always going in concert, and they were the busiest, cheeriest, pkimpest, most prosperous of old maids. They had money in the bank ; how much no one knew, but rumor added to it faster than their nimble fingers could ever have earned it, until they came to be esteemed rich women. People wondered wdiy they had never married, for they were fair- faced and womanly, and full of lovaljle- ness m their low degree. They were fond of children, and took several little boys to bring up, but somehow these all turned out b a d 1 y. One stole some of their h a r d- earned money, another tried to l)urn their house. People said the sisters were too easy with tiiem. It may be, after all, that thev had fallen upon their true vocation, and that they were jollier and more useful with their goose in hand than they would have been as wives and mothers. 160 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. Joseph their l:)rother did not mar their comfort much, for they were not in hi:^ power. His wife (hed early uf overw(.)rk, leaving her tasks and her discomforts as an inheritance to her daughter. This daughter, Abigail hy name, was a tall, thin, hut sweet-faced girl, who, when I first saw her, was drudging her life out for her cruel father. She had a lover in a well-to-do farmer from the next town, but she never married. The linen was all spun and woven and packed away ; the bridal dress was made ready, and then, one June day, she who was to have worn it was borne out to the tamily burial-place. Not long after the father died suddenly and unmourned. Then Lucy and Hester came into full possession of the farm. They took down the little sign " Tailoring done here" from their win- dow, planted lilacs and rose-bushes about the house, and trained a creeper over the frcjnt door. They did not make many changes, but somehow the dismal look went out of the place, and the cheer, which Ijefore was confined to their own one room, now seemed to pervade the whole house. They were become, for the country, ti'uly lich women ; but, from force of habit, they kept basting and stitching and pressing until their goose grew too heavy for them. Then, from being the two tailoresses who worked about the town, they passed into the two cheerful old sisters, whose serene latter years and calm end were a rest and a lesson to their weary neighbors. Very faithful to each other in their marriage relations were these ancient men and women. They were given neither to sentiment nor demonstration. The women promised to honor NEIGHBORS. 161 and obey their husbands; and they did honor and ol)ey them, not with weak serviHty but with trust and wilHngness. The twain were truly yoked together to bear Hfe's burdens ; and, working side by side, year after year, they grew to be most helpful and needful and dear to each other. Theirs may not have been the highest type of marriage, but such as it was it made each a necessity to the other, and whatever it lacked in grace and beauty it made up in truth and stability. If there was in it any actual or implied degradation of woman, this was shown in the preference of sons over daughters in the disposition of their small estates. The thrift and " fixing out" of the latter were thought to l)e sufiicient for them, and the farm witli its belongings was given to the sons. As a sul)ject of contemplation, as a Sabbath picture divorcey hard- trodden trails, and the old farmer was heard to say to his men one summer that " the young cusses" had cut up his field like a checker-board. He hacked up the fern-l:)ed. cut down the cherry-tree, and tore up all the wavside berrv-bushe.-^. But dear old Mother Nature outwitted him, and the next year the ferns came up again as rank as ever; strawljerries and wild-fiowin's ii'i'ew where the trees and bushes had been : tlu' eau,'er cliildren THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. W. made new trails after new tilings, and crisscrossed the field worse than ever. There was something delicious to the children in their stolen marches upon this forbidden field. I see them now, leaping at recess past the gap in the wall (that gap which would never stay mended) into their trails, neck dee}) in grass, tumbling and tripping as they went. Their faces are beauti- ful, framed in memory by the ferns and grains and grasses of long since dead harvests; they bring with them an Indian summer afterglow of sentiment. The school-house yard was a sunny spot, defined bv four flat corner-stones, good for the game of goal, crisscrossed by two hard-trodden paths, and littered by loose-lying sticks and pebbles. Its stone wall was jagged, thistle-lined, and much beset by bees. 194 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. In the corner next to the school-house was an ever-present gap. You know how handy such wall-holes used to be in your child- hood ; how your bare feet clung to the smooth rocks, which had tumbled to the other side. You have doubtless yourself helped make them in pasture boundaries, or been the bruised victims of unpremeditated breaks. Nobody ever seemed to know how this hole came. It was a school mystery, incessantly mended and as incessantly undone. Close by this gap was one corner of the goal-ground. The lively game of goal was played by the girls at recess, the largest ones claiming the stones and right of way. They flew eagerly from rock to rock, cheeks aglow and hair streaming. The smaller girls either watched them or strayed alongside forbidden fields for wild forage. The game of goal was too tame for the lioys, wdio, when their turn came, rushed uproariously out, skimmed along the walls, tumbled with somersaults into the fields, hurrahed up and down the highways, irresponsible, dirty, happy ; seldom getting through recess without a free fight. The small boys played marbles on the sunny door-steps, or exchanged pocket treasures around the school-house corner. When the teacher's knock put an end to the uproar, they tumbled in as they had tumbled out, marvellously disentangling at the threshold of the school-room. The teachers of the winter schools were a mixed race. Well- educated farmers sometimes eked out their incomes and filled up their winter leisure by teaching school. Such were always ?avage disciplinarians. A boy seemed as tough of hide to them THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 195 as " Cherry" and " Brindle," who drew their carts. They were fertile in punishments and cruel with the ferule, — green, birchen, supple ferule, used for the tingling and blistering of so many outer integuments. These teachers were apt to be nasal readers, but they were infallible in spelling, geography, and book-keeping. They were not much given to oral instruction, Ijut followed one up closely in the multiplication table, abbreviations, and laws of punctuation. The village teachers were called masters and mistresses, for many of them a fitting title, mimic despots as they were. Often bright young men, for the sake of the meagre pay, taught these schools. They were apt to have a hard time of it, and had to be strono- of muscle and will not to get " smoked out," or un- mercifully bothered by uncouth tricks. The winter schools were rough. Farmers' boys, freed from work, many of them grown to man's estate, flocked to them with slate and copy-book and text-books, to lay up that stock of school learning which was to make them oracles in the villao-e stores, moderators in town- meetings, and representatives to general courts. They were difficult to manage ; puzzled the master with hard sums and knotty questions, and roared out their conceits like young giants. They stamped through the snowy entries, shaggy-coated, puffing like engines, rubbing their frosty ears ; uncouth, yet honest, patient, and full of a rude humanity ; worthy, hard-working- farmers that were to be. Here and there one different from the rest, a "queer fellow," so called, drifted apart from his school- mates, so that, years after, they were wont to turn wearily from 196 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. their ploughs and boast that in boyhood they had mated Avith a famous man. The zeal of all of them was great after learning. Their patience was pathetic. The dullest of them hacked away at their books as doggedly as they did in summer at the rocky soil. Passing along the highway in winter evenings, you might behold, through the exposed windows of farm-houses, young boys deep in their tasks, by the light of tallow-candles and open fires ; and it was pleasant to see the '' old folks" watching them with a sweet pride, only surpassed by the conceit of the young learners. The books they used were few and seldom changed ; but they seemed then to be good enough, and the recitations from them were the best of their kind. These district schools were nurseries of talent and ambition. Their conditions of severity and re- striction have sent forth great and famous men. The most laggard scholars were yearly bettered by them, and the bright ones got from their three or four winter months of hard study as much as most boys and girls get nowadays from nine months' tuition. The discarded books of these schools are often foimd in the closets and garrets of old farm-houses, with their thick brown covers and worm-eaten leaves. Their text is of quaint lettering, but their sense is unabated by time, and one feels tempted to go back to the use of these potent things of the past, whose obsolete rules have taught so many wise men. Turning them over and following them is like talking with friends who, long ago, helped to make us what we are. Did you never, in later THE DISTBICT SCHOOL. 197 life, run across a reader (long since out of print) which was used by the schools of your youth ? Its pages seem as famihar to you as nursery rhymes, and you feel towards it as tenderly almost as if it were a human thing, — this stilted old reader, whose solid literature was one of the stumljling-hlocks of your childhood. You have not forgotten its standard declamations and dialogues, thrillingly rendered by loud-voiced boys and girls ; and the oft-repeating of its much prose and rhyme maxle you forever intimate with them. The names of men who made your school-books are household words to you, and when you would teach your children, your tongue trips upon the rules wliich they taught you. What unpenned literature is bound up in books ! The stories printed on their pages are often less pathetic, less tragic, than the I'eal life scenes which touch or sisrht of them can brina; back to you. I confess to an awe in handling ancient books, and follow their tender, mouldy pages as if I were in the presence of their past owners. The fading names upon their flv-leaves have the helpless significance of all memorials of the dead. There is a sad delio;ht in rummaorino; throuo-h an old librarv, — in dragging out from corners and upper shelves volumes tucked away as worthless, but redeemed into preciousness by past use of them. Books that you used in A^our school-days, you curiously turn over for the marks you left in them. Gift-books, which have been thrust aside, are taken back, for the memory of him or her wdio wrote upon their Ijlank leaves pleasant messages. Guide- books and books that you read upon journeys thrust their titles 198 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. upon you, and set you again on your travels. Books once read Avith friends quicken your memories of social life. Books with strange names in them, picked up from stalls, affect you like human waifs ; and ancient books, of quaint dialect, like ghosts of the past. But lielbre all others are the books which never get tucked away in corners ; those which were read last by the loved and lost. How many have such, with marks left in ; pencil touches ; a stray letter ; names scrawled, — pitifully meagre, lui- satisfactory traces of hands which can never again turn them I Take from me my books, most of them, if you will, but do not dare to touch the precious volumes in blue and gold turned slowly over bv the fingers of my dying child. They left no soil on the page, but their sacred imprint is no less indelifile to me. Dear old books, all of you, — no matter how much your printed leaves lie, the overlapping text, legible alone to faithful love, can never be false ! You may grow mildewy and musty, l)ut ever tender and beautiful shall be, the associations with Avhicli vou are Ijound. Ancient schoohhouses were not built for comfort. Their seats were high and narrow, their desks awkward and mconvenient. Their chimnevs were large, fireplaces broad and smoky, and the floors in iront of them were sure to be worn with the tranq) of uneasily-seated children, who in winter went up to them in never- ending procession. The worst-used place in the whole district was the school-room. Youno'sters hewed and haclvcd at their o desks with a revengeful persistence. The plastering of the walls was covered with rude inscriptions, and the ceiling overhead THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 199 bespattered with ink and paper squibs. No boy or ^irl ever plead guilty of any of these mars and blots, but many additions went each term into the aggregate of this spontaneous frescoino-. The old school-room in my grandfatlier's district was full of scrawls and names and quaint maxims. Almost every teacher had his or her profile in it, done in tolerable outline by roguish fingers. No law had force against this custom. The scribbling of the school-room had become a second nature to the scholars, and it seemed less culpable because the rough, blotched walls 200 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. upon near inspection resolved themselves into art exjionents of child-life ; made up of outline leaves and flowers and birds and scraps of rhyme, — crude pictures of what had gone into and out of the children's days. The marring of school-rooms thus, in one sense, becomes their embellishment. ■ The names, whittled indelibly into desk-lids and door-posts, and all the traces of by- gone child possession, — these are the true ghosts of scholars and school-days that are past. ' In summer the rows of small, opposite windows in old school- houses, open upon the children's necks, inured them to draughts ; and nothing could be purer than the breezes which blew from everv quarter of the heavens into these wide-opened rooms. In winter up the big chimneys went most of the heat, and with it all the bad air ; whilst throuo;h cracks and chinks without number blew the l)itina; but health-oivina; north wind. It was hard on little boys and girls in corner-seats ; but then they were all well wrapped up in homespun suits, and Avere always going to the fire to warm their tingling fingers and toes. Every comer into the room let in a blast of cold air. At recess the boys tumbled into the snow, and came back shaking it from their garments. Two or three deep in a semicircle they hugged the fireplace, and sucked at snow-balls crushed in their half-frozen fingers till the tap of the master's ferule sent them unwillingly to their desks. The floor aliout the fireplace was always soppy in winter with incoming snow, and in summer was sure to be wet from slate- washings and the careless upsetting of di]>pci's. Close by it. THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 201 upon a low iDench, stood the water-pail, the tillino- of which on summer days was a rare privilege to the older girls. The spring was quite far away, close by the edge of a wood. It was a prettv sight to see them Ijursting into the school-room, staggering under their load : rosy, laughing, with their api-ons full of flowers and mint from the brookside. The water of the spring had a snakv repute, but it was freely drank of by all the children, and in various ways catered largely to their comfort and delight. On hot sunnner days the larger girls used to splash it about, and it would trickle down the aisles to scatter in dust-bound globules over the dirigv floor. Peculiar, positive, and unlike any other, was at night the, summer odor of these school-rooms. The thick dust, srround flne by the tramping of restless feet, elsewhere musty, here seemed to be scented with the withered roses and ferns and mint left behind them by the half-wild children. Apple-cores, scraps of paper, and bits of })encil were scattered about, and now and then the sweeper came across something from out the treasures of a boy's pocket. The latter often in school-hours found a wav to the floor, and got lodged in the teacher's desk. It was curious to look into the children's boxes, and see in them how mischievous boys and girls had whiled away the laggard hours : hoAV manv apples and ginger-cakes had been slyly eaten, and cul)l)v-houses built from books, unbeknown to the teacher. The desk of the latter, last locked, was always fragrant with confiscated fruit. The aspect of one of these rooms after the dav's work was over was tenderly suggestive. It was a place out of which a 202 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. jocund life had gone, and the waste scattered aronnd was made up of such things as the children had gotten out of their stay in it. There was something poetical in this leaving behind them the scents of the weeds and blossoms which the_y had plucked, — the lading memorials of the delights of a day that had passed. The person who found solid comfort in the winter schools was that master who boarded 'round in country districts, and tasted the cream of kindness in formers' houses. He sat in the best seat, in the corner, through winter evenings, book in hand, reserved, prim, feared, if not hated, by the youngsters. His presence quickened the life of a household. Best dishes were brought out, and dainties came upon the table. The " fore room" was most likely opened, and neighljoring tarmers came in of evenings to converse with this son of learning. The house- wile was more spruce in her attire, and the children were "fixed up" for the occasion. Some of these masters were like watch- dogs, and from their corner no covert sneer escaped them. The hard school usage of many a boy and girl dated from dislike come of these transient tarryings. The summer school-mistresses, mostly farmers' daughters, seldom brought mucli learning to their tasks, but they were generally good-natured, and in favor with their scholars. Hard- worked mothers sent their younger children to them as freely as if they had been hired nurses, and the lower row of seats was always full of the druling, sleepy little things, with legs helplessly dangling. Patchwork and samplers were allowed in these schools, and curious pieces of their faded old needlework THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 203 are still to be found in country farm-houses. The securing of the summer schools was oiten the cause of ill-feeling. Much canvassing was done, and committeemen were chosen with ref- erence to particular candidates, who went before them to be examined in arithmetic, grammar, geography, and writing. The school pay was meagre, but a large item then to the girl of simple tastes and habits. It was astonishing how much the glory of the summer de- pended, to the children, upon the nature of the mistress. All the sunshine they got in their school-hours seemed to pass through her ; and by her disposition, as much as by the book lessons she taught them, she did her work at moulding their characters. A cross mistress turned their sweet into bitter, and made the otherwise happy days long and wearisome. Tlie chil- dren took upon such their natural revenges. They brought her no flowers ; they lagged at their books, and withdrew from the aspect of the room much of its wild summer adornments. But this was only a transient suppression ; outside they were the same romping, riotous, nature-loving children. If you have forttmately been one of these school-children, you recall the features and accidents of my picture, — the low-roofed school-house ; its adjoining wood-shed, littered with chips ; the beaten play-ground ; the outlying field, full of buttercups ; the w^ayside, thick with thistle and mullein and hardback ; the over- hauiiino; trees, the fallen fruit of which was lawful plunder ; the near wood; the far-off mountains; the blue sky overhead; the sunlicrht ; the shadows ; the moving life of the scene. You see 204 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. the traveller coming down the thread of a highway on the distant hill ; the farmer's daughter spreading her clothes to bleach in the orchard ; working-men and oxen in the fields ; the shimmer of the near stream. You hear the brook's l)abble and the hum of the insects ; the song of thirds and the drowsy undertone of nature. You see and feel it all, — the onward processes of life ; the unerring growth of the year ; the resistless tramp of time. Very much would you give to leap back for a day upon the old goal-ground, that you might lie upon the grass, a scholar and a dreamer, and again watch that narrow landscape, which grew into you with a fruitful minuteness, and which has been the stable groundwork of the best landscapes of your maturer life. point of all the country round it. Such was William Saylor's of Whitefield Corner. The long bench for loafers, and the feeding-troughs for horses in front of its door, were no less its sign than was the painted board, on which was inscribed in gilt letters the owner's name. Bench loafers were perennial. They were the lazzaroni of village life; as much its grotesque embellishment as gargoyles were of gothic architecture. Three of them are distinctly pictured in memory upon the outside wall of William Saylor's store, against which in summer thev used to sit and sun themselves, given to whittling and expectoration. Their intermittent talk was like the dull 27 206 NEW ENGLAND BYdONES. drone of bees. With sluggish curiosity tliey eyed the passing- traveller, and were somewhat stirred by the coming of the stage. Smoking blackened pipes with short stems, they occasionally exchana;ed what thev called "chaws of terbaccer;" and with a dialect of their own, were of the class which has been the source of the slang so often falsely given in story as a type of the prevailing speech of old-time New England. These loafers were rarely disabled by liquor, but were sj)oken of as "soaked;" and even when past this recognized boundary of sobriety, were generally harndess. Nor Avere they lacking in a certain instinct of civility. If a comely matron or prcttv lass alighted from her wagon before them, they Ibrebore comment ujion her charms until she was inside the store. When their bench had Ix^en usurped by their betters, they slouched across the wav t(j the cobbler's slio[) oi' the tavern. In liaying and haryest times, when the la/i<'st <_)f them were absorbed into adjacent fields, AVilliam Sayl()r himself would come out and sit on the liench, waiting tor such stray custom as dairy work 01' daily farm wants might bring to him. Nobody could seem less busv or more contented than he, basking in the sun- shine. In truth, he was both busv and anxious. Alert for cus- tomers, he was reckoning his profits and forecasting future trade. He had some re})utation for gallantry ; but what shopper was ever harmed bv his well-turned compliments ? His graciousness was the more commendal»le because nature had marred his })ro- portions l)y several deformities ; otherwise he would have been, people said, a handsome man. His love of g(jssip was pro- THE COUNTRY STORE. 207 verbial. There was a Whitefield saying that what WilHam Savior did not know was " not worth knowing ;" also, that no talking could go on wdiere he was without his " putting in an oar." By the more worldly-wise he was called sharp at a bar- gain, but he was trusted by simple farmers' wives with credulitv. The earliest remembered errand of most Whitefield children was to his store. His profits came in by cents ; the abject in- dustry of a whole year bringing him but a few hundred dollars. Yet he was looked upon as " well-to-do," for he lived gener- ously in a large house, overhung by trees, and for years had been both postmaster and town-clerk. He was a tireless officer, ferreting out marginal writing upon newspapers, and exacting fines with relish. Becky, his wife, was one of the neatest housekeepers in White- field. Her shining floors were the terror of dirty bovs. Her garden, overlooked by the meeting-house, was a wonder and delight. Never were such double poppies and marigolds as it held ; never such red apples, such purple damsons, such fat currants and gooseberries ; and though its flowers jostled each other with odd varietv of color, thev were a a-reat delisrht to uncritical eyes. It had the name of being a stingy garden. Even windfalls by the roadside were begrudged the passer-by. That which was really its best fruit, however, could not be withheld, — that sense of beauty and luxury which went out from it into the hearts of tired women, who, in meeting-time, used to keep their eyes fixed upon its blossoms, while gratefully breathing its scents. As they 208 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. sat swinging great palm-leaf fans, with a sort of rhytlmiic motion, their patient faces, softened by the day's ease and con- tentment, were picturesque, and, in a measure, beautiful. In a city, William Saylor, with his maimed body, would have been tossed about, an unknown waif, Ijy its all-devouring current. In the little village of Whitelield, bolstered up by kind neighbors, his executive force was projected upon the surface of its life, an important factor. He was the spry, bustling, curious, kindly, courteous, loquacious storekeeper, who taught fashions with con- fidence and flicility ; grasping, yet trusted ; oracular, but humble ; fallil)le, while on the whole well-meanino; ; full of harmless con- ceit ; unstinted in paying hospitality ; half admirable ; half grotesque. Peace to his ashes ! How many people, who are hidden away unnoticed in towns and cities, might, in the quiet of some country village, rise to a high individuality, and make a lasting impress on neighbor- hood life ! William Saylor always seemed to be hopping in and out his box of a counting-room, the walls of which were zigzagged with broad tape, stuck full of Ijills and letters. These were, for the most part, yellow with age ; and the uppermost ones, with faded labels, had served as roosts for generations of flies. This littered room was the very heart of the village. Each day the stage-driver flung into it his mail-bag, which linked retired people to the wider world ; and from it every night William Saylor carried in a small, leather-covered box, thickly studded with brass nails, the profits of his day's trade. How well I THE COUNTRY STORE. 209 recall Moses, the stage-driver, as he dashes up, six in hand, with a loud " Whoa," almost flinging his leaders on their haunches ! Windows swarm with faces ; the loafers forget to puff at their pipes. Out flies a leather bag, caught by the postmaster half- way ; and in ' a twinkling back it comes, little lightened by loss of the Whitefield mail. A snap at the heads of the leaders ; a prancing ; a dash,— away flies the coach in a cloud of dust, and the loafers settle back to their pipes. Later, in the silent, de- serted street, William Saylor, holding tight his leathern box, spry as a cat despite his lameness, flits past closed houses to his home. The stage-driver's bustle, the trader's caution, the coming of the mail, were but ripples from the great far-off" tidal waves ; and yet these ripples marked the day quite as much for the village of Whitefield as did the tidal waves for populous towns. Over the store were two chambers, one of which was the office of an able, hot-headed lawyer, wdio had been heard through a hole in the floor threatenino; to kick an obstinate client down- stairs. AVilliam Saylor was suspected of keeping an ear open to this hole ; but secrets could go up as well as down, and though curious, he was discreet. Why it was never stopped can be no mystery to one country-born, who well remembers the tendency in rural life to drift with plans into the indefinite f^iture, — to ''put off;" a dallying due much to lack of means for execution; more to an instinctive acquiescence with the sluggish tide of custom ; for thus one taketh his ease. 210 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. In the other chamber were kept farming utensils and such things as would crowd the store below. It was curiously rugged, and without like domestic associations, had somehow the at- mosphere of a larm-hoase garret. It was humanized by a library of books, most of which had been in use for half a cen- tury. Long since mellowed, they had begun, many of them, to decay ; and not one of them was so fresh as to seem out of place in this spot given over to cobwebs and dust. The store-shelves rose from floor to ceiling, and were packed close with a medley of such things as the actual wants or mild vanities of a plain people might suggest. " Dry-goods" were arranged with some eye to effect. Red and blue and yellow fabrics made contrasting streaks, while various fancy articles dangled from thick-set hooks in partitions of shelves. Under the counters were odds and ends of traffic. Thence came cotton batting and "factory yarn," and woollen skeins spun by farmers' wives. A peculiar odor pervaded the place. Sometimes it was of molasses, sometimes of fish, and again of tea or coffee. There was always a iaint scent of snuff in the air. When the tra})- door of the cellar, in which were kept the butter and poi'k, taken in barter, was lifted, there came up a strong smell of New England rum. The spigot of the molasses hogshead in the back part of the store seemed to be always drizzling into a tin measure, which in summer made an excellent fly-trap. The molasses had then a yeasty trick of foaming, and was apt to sour. Once in a while it "sus-ared." THE COUNTBY STOB.E. 211 The floor of that portion of the store given over to groceries beeanie in time thick coated and ahnost bh\ck. Save for its daily s])rinkling and sweeping, the place was perhaps never cleaned. Yet this gradual accumulation of grime was such a familiar feature of long-used, unpainted buildings of this sort. that I am not sure it would have been so well or gratefullv rememljered had it been robbed of its brown and coljwebbv encrusting. This all sounds homelv ; but vou mio;ht search in vain on city streets for the mellow, ])leasing aspect of an old-time coun- try store. Entered by a narrow door ; dindy hghted ; full of oddly-mixed commodities ; its unplastered ceiling black with smoke, and crossed by Ijeams hung thickly with quaint things ; rust and mildew lurking in corners and creeping along edges of shelves ; shop-worn webs, the better for mellowing ; fresh goods u]iheaving the older on the shelves, and easily traced in strata : the mvsterious maw '" under the counter :"' it was as I'ich and warm in tone as an old Persian prayer-rug, and the bai'baric flavor of its mingled odors was, strange to say, agreealjle. It needed no show-window, for the woman who ha