Part 7

On an unlucky day, having eaten too greedily of mince-pie (for he had a fine English appetite), he passed his universal banishing dictum on that darling of New England hearts and stomachs--_the pie_. From thenceforth on feast-days only English plum-pudding was served for dessert. To the New England wife, accustomed to see at least _four_ kinds of pie offered to “company,” if one made pretence even of being truly hospitable and housewifely, the lonely pudding was a great and almost unbearable source of grief and mortification, and many a struggle did she make (trying to imitate her forefathers of old) against the English yoke, but in vain; pieless and barren for years was her table. But reinforcing troops at last came to her rescue; for three daughters were grown, and, brave and strong with youth, they dared to rebel more openly and recklessly than their browbeaten mother.

In 1830 all the Doctor’s relatives, far and near, were invited to eat “Thanksgiving dinner” with him and his family; for he was hospitable enough, in his own fashion; in all, thirty were to sit down at his board. On the day before Thanksgiving, mother, daughters, and “help” were all busy at work from early morning in the great pantry and kitchen, making careful preparation for the coming dinner, and brisk sounds of chopping and pounding and mixing were heard, and savory smells and spicy vapors filled the house. Toward the close of the day, when their work was nearly done, they suddenly heard, to their terror, the sound of the Doctor’s cane (for he was badly crippled with that typical English disease, the gout) thump, thumping through the halls and rooms to the kitchen, an apartment he seldom visited. With palpitating hearts but firm countenances they stood in a hollow square for strength, as does any determined band, while he walked past them to the “buttery,” where were placed in military rows twenty-six of those hated abominations, pies--mince-pies, pumpkin and apple and cranberry, and, the crowning dainty of all, “Marlboro’” pies. Their only hope of salvation was that in the dull, fading November light the tyrant might not discover the forbidden pastry; and, indeed, he did not appear to do so, for he merely glanced scowlingly around, and, without speaking, hobbled back to his office. Once more they breathed freely, and the eldest daughter said, cheerfully: “Now, girls, nothing can happen; if he had seen them we should have had to give them away; but he won’t know anything about it now until they are brought on the table with the pudding, and he will be most through his bottle of port then--but oh, what shall we do when the company goes?”

Poor souls! they slept for one night the happy, unconscious sleep of the victorious, the hospitable, and awoke on Thanksgiving morn to find every pie vanished from the pantry-shelf. Every pie? Yes, and every pie-plate, too!--twenty-six of the new English blue-and-white stone-ware plates. At first they really believed, in their simplicity, that a thief must have entered from outside and stolen them; but why should the marauder take pies, and no other food? Then, too, there was not a foot-print on the light snow which had fallen early in the evening. No; the Doctor must have stolen his wife’s pies! But where could he have hidden the pie-plates? For weeks, yes, for years, they searched in every nook and corner; through the hay in the barns, behind the logs of wood in the sheds, in old barrels and boxes in the cellar, in closets, in trunks, under the eaves in the attic; and they even peered out on the roof behind the peaks of the gable-windows, but no pie-plates could they find. The grim old Doctor kept his silence, until his daughters grew at last to think that some thief must have entered in spite of apparent impossibility.

Thirty-six years later, in 1866, the aged Doctor died, and went, doubtless, to an English paradise. His browbeaten wife had given up the struggle many years before. The daughters, now elderly women, with a long-concealed but unsubdued hatred born of years of tyrannical browbeating and oppression, at once made a triumphal holocaust of many of the cherished treasures of the British tyrant; and the first victim doomed to destruction was the old English coach in which their English grandmother had ridden in state through the country. This broken-down, moth-eaten, rat-nibbled, cobweb and dirt-filled relic had stood unused for fifty years--an abominable nuisance, an inconvenient obstruction, a hated eyesore, in the carriage-house connected with their dwelling. The Doctor had cherished it on account of its English birthplace; but now its fate was sealed. As the first heavy blow of the destroying iconoclastic axe struck the hated coach, a loud rattle as of falling crockery was heard, and the executioner paused. A careful investigation discovered an unknown compartment under the driver’s seat which had been constructed for the purpose of hiding despatch-boxes and, perhaps, the bride’s jewel-cases--and in this hiding-place were twenty-six dirt-covered, dark-blue Staffordshire plates. A sudden light of comprehension and recognition came into the faces of the sisters--here were the long-lost pie-plates! The cantankerous old Doctor had craftily arisen in the night, hobbled out silently, in spite of his gout, thrown the carefully and daintily made Thanksgiving pies to the pigs, stealthily packed the plates in the old coach, watched maliciously the unsuccessful plate-search, kept silence throughout the despoiled Thanksgiving dinner and through nearly forty pieless years, and died triumphant.

Half of this treasure-trove, which the Doctor could hide, but, happily, could not take with him, were the Dr. Syntax plates; and from that half came my share. The other plates were of well-known English views--Payn’s Hill, the City of Liverpool, Blenheim Castle, Fulham Church-yard, Windsor Castle--no American views were on any of his crockery; no landing of Lafayette, no State plates, were ever allowed to grace that rank old Tory’s pantry.

Thus, one good, one noble result came from this “ugly trick”--the hidden pie-plates were all saved unscratched, unbroken, for the Doctor’s kinsfolk to-day, who, in gratitude for his unintentional posthumous favor, suitably reward him by telling the story of his spiteful midnight theft whenever we show the plates. And, moreover, we wantonly and openly insulted and jeered at his memory and his gastronomic laws by formally and derisively naming the dark-blue salvage from the coach the Doctor’s Pie-plates.

MY DELFT APOTHECARY JARS

The circumstances under which I first saw my old Delft apothecary jars were so painful, so mortifying, that for a long time I could not bear even to think of them; but now, as years have passed and softened the sharp lines, I will write account of that unique adventure.

We were one day, as was our wont, hunting in old Narragansett for ancient china and colonial furniture, but even on that historic and early-settled ground had met with scant success. At last, on an out-of-the-way road, was found a clew.

We were driving slowly along, when the door of a long, low wood-shed opened, and an elderly man walked out on the single broad stone step and stood, in the lazy country fashion, staring openly and sociably at us as we passed by. He had in one hand a piece of dark wood which he was slowly rubbing with sand-paper. We had driven past his door when my companion suddenly exclaimed: “That man had a claw-foot.”

“A claw-foot!” I answered in astonishment; “what do you mean?--a cloven foot or a club-foot, perhaps?”

“No, you goose; that man had in his hand a claw-foot--the leg of a chair, I am sure, and I am going back to see to what it belongs.”

So we whisked the pony around and drove to the door where the claw-footed man still stood, and we then saw in the one dingy window a small sign bearing the words

+------------------+ | ELAM CHADSEY | | GENERAL REPAIRER | +------------------+

“Are you Mr. Chadsey?” my fellow china-hunter asked. “We saw you with something that looked old-fashioned in your hand, and we thought you might have or know of some antique furniture or old crockery that the owners would be willing to sell.”

“Wal, I ain’t got any to sell; I only mend furnitoor. I’ve got a couple of tall clocks in here repairin’, but they ain’t mine, so I can’t sell ’em. N-o--I don’t know of none--except--What furnitoor do you want?”

“Oh, anything, almost, that is old, and china especially; any old blue pie-plates or such things.”

Elam stood slowly rubbing his claw-foot and at last answered: “I know some old blue-and-white crockery preserve-jars, or jell-pots, ye might call ’em, which I ruther think ye could get ef ye want ’em. Ye see, Abiel Hartshorn, he’s a widower an’ he’s a-goin’ ter marry a school-marm up ter Collation Corners, an’ she’s got awful highty-tighty notions, an’ he’s a-goin’ ter sell the farm, an’ she come down ter see what things she wanted saved out of the house fur her. An’ Abiel’s fust wife she had all these old blue-an’-white pots with letters on ’em, an’ some had long spouts, an’ she always kep’ her preserves an’ jelly an’ sweet pickles in ’em, an’ mighty handy they was too. An’ when this woman see ’em she was real pleased with ’em, but her brother was along with her, and he’s a clerk in a drug-store, an’ he bust out a-larfin’, an’ says he: ‘Them letters on them jell-pots means senna, an’ jalap, an’ calomel, an’ sweet syrup of buckthorn, an’ lixypro, an’ lixylutis, an’ all sorts of bad-tastin’ medicines.’ An’ then she fired right up, an’ says she: ‘I won’t have any of my preserves kep’ in them horrid-tastin’ old medicine-bottles;’ so I guess Abiel would be glad enough ter sell ’em fur most anything.”

We suspected at once that these “jell-pots” with blue lettering of the names of drugs were Delft apothecary jars, and that the “ones with spouts” were the old jars, so rarely seen, that are identical in shape with the “siroop-pots” of Dutch museums. When the Dutch used these jars a century or more ago, they covered the open top with tightly tied oilskin and poured the contents from the spout, which at other times was kept carefully corked. By what strange, roundabout journey had these Delft jars strayed to that New England farm? We asked eagerly where we could see the despised “jell-pots.”

“Abiel’s house is about two mile from here by the road. I tell ye what ye can do. Ye may as well see ’em now’s ever. I’ll walk cross-lots an’ you drive there. Go on down the road a piece an’ turn the fust road ter the right. ’Tain’t much of a road--it’s kind of a lane. Go on to the fust house ye come to. I’d better come, ’cause mebbe Abiel wouldn’t let ye see ’em ef ye went alone.”

We left him and drove on and down through the narrow, grass-grown lane. When we reached the old gray farm-house we found it deserted and still, so we sat down on the stone doorstep and waited for Elam Chadsey, and soon he climbed over the stone wall before us.

“Ain’t Abiel at hum? All the better! We’ll go in ’n’ see the preserve-jars, an’ then he won’t know any city folks want ’em an’ won’t put the price up on ye.”

He prowled around the house, trying in vain to open first the doors and then the windows, but to his amazement he found all carefully locked.

“The ninny!” he said, indignantly, “he ain’t got nothin’ to steal! What did he lock up fur? I never heard of such a thing--lockin’ up in the daytime; it makes me mad. The dresser stan’s right in that room and them jars is on top of it; ef ye could only see in that window ye could look right at it, then ye’d know whether ye wanted ’em or not.”

“Isn’t there anything I could climb up on?” doubtfully I asked.

He searched in the wood-shed for a ladder, but with no success. At last he called out: “I guess ef you two’ll help me a little we can pull this around fur ye to stand on.”

“This” was a hen-coop or hen-house, evidently in present use as a hen-habitation. Its sides were about four feet high, and from them ran up a pointed roof, the highest peak of which was about five feet and a half from the ground.

“There,” he exclaimed, triumphantly, as he pushed it under the window, “ef ye can git up an’ stan’ on that ye can see in. Then”--vindictively--“we’ll leave it here fur Abiel to drag back himself, to pay him fur bein’ such a gump as to lock his doors. I guess it’ll hold ye, ef ye are pretty hefty.”

I may as well state the annoying fact that to be “pretty hefty” is a great drawback in searches after “antiques.” You cannot climb up narrow, steep ladders and through square holes into treasure-holding attic-lofts, as may a slender antique-hunter. You must remain patiently below and let her shout down, telling and describing what is above. It is such a trial to an explorer to have to explore by proxy, especially when you know you could discover more than anyone else could. I determined that “heft” should be no obstacle to me in this case, though the hen-house did look rather steep and high; and I bravely started to climb. I placed one knee, then the other, and then my feet upon the ledge at the edge of the roof, while Elam Chadsey pushed. He weighed about one hundred pounds, and was thin, wizened, and wrinkled to the last New England degree. He braced his feet firmly in the ground, set his teeth, and pushed with might and main. Alone I scaled the second height. I had barely set my feet firmly on the peak of the roof, had shaded my eyes from the sunlight with one hand, while I clung to the window-frame with the other, had caught one glimpse of a row of blue-and-white apothecary jars, when--crack!--smash! went the frail roof under my feet, and down I went--down into the hen-house!

In spite of my distress of mind and my discomfort of body, one impression overwhelmed all others--the anguish and consternation of Elam Chadsey. He darted from side to side, exactly like a distracted hen; he literally groaned aloud.

“Darn that gump of an Abiel Hartshorn! He’s the biggest fool in Rhode Island--lockin’ up his house jest ’cause he’s goin’ away, an’ gettin’ us in this fix. Wait, miss, keep still, an’ I’ll see if I can find an axe to chop ye out.”

Wait! keep still!--indeed I would--I couldn’t do otherwise. Off he ran to the wood-shed, and soon came back madder than ever; he fairly sizzled.

“Oh, the ninny! the big donkey! his axe is in the house. What do you s’pose he locked it up fur? He’s a reg’lar wood-chuck! I’ll tell him what I think on him. Ye ain’t hurted much, be ye, miss?”

“Oh, no,” I answered, calmly, “I’m all right as long as I keep still. But if I try to move there are several big and very sharp splinters that stick into me, and nails, too, I think--rusty nails, without doubt, which will probably give me the lock-jaw. Oh, Mr. Chadsey, do you suppose there are many eggs in this house?”

“Not many hull ones, I’ll bet. Oh, no”--very scornfully--“I s’pose Abiel took ’em into the house to lock ’em up--the ninny. He’s the biggest ninny I ever see. Do ye think, miss, if we could manage to tip the hen-house over, that we could drag you out?”

“No,” I answered, vehemently, “the splinters are all pointing downward, and if you try to pull me out they will all stick into me worse than they do now. I have got to be chopped out of this trap, and you must go home, or somewhere, or anywhere, and get an axe to do it. Take our horse, and drive there, and do be careful when you go around the corners, or the cart will upset--and do, oh, do hurry. You must both go, our pony is so queer and tricky, and Mr. Chadsey might have trouble with him. Now, don’t object, nothing can happen to me in my fortress.”

So, rather unwillingly, they drove off, Elam Chadsey muttering to himself, “that Abiel Hartshorn’s the biggest ninny in Rhode Island.”

I was alone in my hen-house. I was not at all uncomfortable--while I kept still--though I was “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d.” The true china-hunting madness filled my brain as I thought of the row of fine blue-and-white apothecary jars which would soon be mine, and other thoughts were crowded out. The calm and quiet of the beautiful day also soothed and cheered me in spite of myself. The wind sighed musically through the great ancient pine-tree that stood near the house. Flickering rays of glowing sunlight shone down on my head through the feathery foliage of the locust-trees that filled the door-yard. A great field of blossoming buckwheat wafted fresh balm in little puffs of pure perfume. Bees hummed and buzzed around me, and a meadow-lark sung somewhere near, sung and sung as if summer were eternal. A flood of light and perfume and melody and warmth filled me with sensuous delight in spite of my awkward imprisonment, and I fairly laughed aloud, and frightened the hens and chickens that had come clucking round me in inquisitive wonder at the removal and invasion of their home.

But my ill-timed and absurd sense of being in a summer paradise did not last long, for I heard in a few minutes the loud clatter of wheels coming down the lane from the opposite direction to that which had been taken by the hurrying pair. Of course, I could not see, for I had fallen with my face toward the house, and I did not like to try to turn around--it inconvenienced the splinters so. The sound came nearer and nearer, and at last I managed to move my head enough to see a country horse and wagon with two men. Then I leaned my face on my folded arms, and I hoped and prayed that they might drive past. But, to my horror, to my intense mortification, they turned and came up the driveway and underneath the shed of the Hartshorn house.

A great dog bounded around and stared at me. I heard around the corner the murmuring sounds of suppressed laughter and eager questioning, of which one sentence only came distinctly to my ears: “Queer sort of hens you keep, Hartshorn;” and then the two men came round the house.

I hardly know what I said; I think it was this: “If you are Mr. Hartshorn, I must beg your pardon for my sudden, impertinent, and most unexpected intrusion on the privacy of your--hen-house” (here we all three burst out laughing), “and I must ask if you will please get your axe and chop up your own hen-house in order to get me out.”

Never speak to me again of Yankee inquisitiveness! Without asking one question, Hartshorn ran into the house, brought out his hidden axe, and while the boards were firmly held by the other man (who, alas! was young and well-dressed, and who proved to be the city purchaser of the farm), Abiel carefully chopped and split. I heroically bore this undignified ordeal in silence, until at last I was released.

“Come into the house,” said Abiel, with wonderful hospitality to so impertinent an intruder; “ye must be a leetle tired of standin’; come in and sit down. Ye ain’t hurt much, air ye?”

“Oh, no,” I answered, “only some deep scratches; but let me explain to you”--and I did explain with much self-abasement how I came to be fixed in my absurd position.

In the meantime the distracted pair had obtained the axe and were on their way back to the scene of disaster. As soon as they were within a full view of the house my companion china-hunter burst forth: “Why, she is gone! Where can she be? Do you suppose she has fainted and sunk into the hen-house? No, I can see, it is empty; she has got out of it somehow.” Then she jumped out of the cart, ran up the path and through the open door, and found me sitting calmly talking with the well-dressed young man.

From the kitchen we soon heard sounds of violent and vituperative altercation.

“Abiel Hartshorn, yer the biggest fool I ever see. What did ye lock yer house up in the daytime fur?”

“To keep out jest such pryin’ haddocks as you and them be.”

“Ye ain’t got nothin’ in it, anyway.”

“Then what did you and her want to peek in fur?”

“Such a rotten old hen-house I never see.”

“’Tain’t made as a platform fur to hold a woman of her size.”

“She don’t weigh much.”

“She do, too. Ye ain’t no judge of heft, Elam; ye don’t weigh enough yerself.”

“What did yer lock up yer axe fur?”

“Ef I’d a-knowed yer’d a-wanted it so bad, I’d a-perlitely left it out fur ye.”

“Wal, I never heard of sech a thing as lockin’ up a house in the daytime, and yer axe, too--how could ye be such a fool? Say, Abiel, she looked funny though, didn’t she?”

All’s well that ends well. Abiel, having sold the farm, was glad to sell the roofless hen-house for two dollars, and he eagerly gave me the drug-pots. The former antique was never claimed, and the blue-and-white jars proved for many months too painful and too hateful a reminder to have in sight. Now they stand on table and shelf--pretty posy-holders, but severe and unceasing monitors. Their clear blue letters--“Succ: E, Spin: C,” and “U: Althæ,” and “C: Rosar: R,” etc.--speak not to me of drugs and syrups, of lohocks and electuaries; they are abbreviations of various Biblical proverbs such as “Every fool will be meddling,” “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness,” “Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” etc. And the little ill-drawn blue cherubs that further decorate the drug-pots seem always to wink and to smirk maliciously at me, and to hold their fat sides as though they were thinking of the first time they peeped at me and jeered at me out of the window of the gray old farm-house as I stood entrapped in my meddlesome folly in the sunlight under the beautiful locust-trees in old Narragansett.

I cannot tell a romantic story of a further acquaintance with the good-looking young man; I never saw him again, and I am sure I never want to. Still, I know, ah, too well I know, that he often thinks of me. On that susceptible masculine heart I made an impression at first sight. When he welcomes visitors to his country-home I know he often speaks of his first glimpse of the house--and of me. ’Tis pleasant to feel my memory will ever bring to one face a cheerful smile, and furnish a never-failing “good story”--nay, to three, for I know that Elam Chadsey and Abiel Hartshorn both keep my memory green; that to them my mishap was “argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest forever.”

THE DANCING TURKEY

In the States Papers office in London is a “propper ballad” entitled a “Sommons to New England,” which was written about 1680. It alluringly recites natural conditions in the colonies. One verse runs thus:

“There flights of foules doe cloud the light, Of turkies three score pound in weight As bigg as ostridges.”

All the early travellers in America confirm the vast weight of these wild turkeys--Josselyn said sixty pounds. The turkey has not grown larger by domestication, the wild birds are still finer and more beautiful than the tame ones. All foreign epicures agree that American turkeys are the best in the world. In America we make fine distinctions, even in American turkeys; tastes differ with localities. In some northern States no turkey is perfect unless stuffed with chestnuts--that is, as food. In Louisiana he is gorged with pecan-nuts. In South Carolina raw rice is your only prime turkey-food. In Virginia wild persimmons give the turkey a tang that gilds refined gold. The President of the United States, whoever he may be, feasts every Thanksgiving Day on a Narragansett turkey fattened on Narragansett grasshoppers--and I approve the President’s taste.

These Presidential turkeys, though great and fat, are not “as bigg as ostridges;” but a Narragansett turkey with whom I was acquainted--as Rosa Bonheur would say--fairly rivalled his ancestors of colonial days.