Part 3

In March we make soap, before the labors of the garden are great. The forests are being obliterated from this fertile tract, and many use what some call _consecrated_ lye; formerly, the ash-hopper was filled, and a good lot of egg-bearing lye run off to begin the soap with, while the weaker filled the soft-soap kettle, after the soap had “come.” The chemical operation of soap-making often proved difficult, and, of course, much was said about luck. “We had bad luck making soap.” A sassafras stick was preferred for stirring, and the soap was stirred always in one direction. In regard to this, and that other chemical operation, making and keeping vinegar, there are certain ideas about the temporary incapacity of some persons,—ideas only to be alluded to here. If the farmer’s wife never “has luck” in making soap, she employs some skilful woman to come in and help her. It is not a long operation, for the “Dutch” rush this work speedily. If the lye is well run off, two tubs of hard soap and a barrel of soft can be made in a day. A smart housekeeper can make a barrel of soap in the morning, and go visiting in the afternoon.

Great are the household labors in harvest; but the cooking and baking in the hot weather are cheerfully done for the men, who are toiling in hot suns and stifling barns. Four meals are common at this season, for “a piece” is sent out at nine o’clock. I heard of one “Dutch” girl’s making some fifty pies a week in harvest; for if you have four meals a day, and pie at each, many are required. We have great faith in pie.

I have been told of an inexperienced Quaker housewife in the neighboring county of York, who was left in charge of the farm, and during harvest these important labors were performed by John Stein, John Stump, and John Stinger. She also had guests, welcome perhaps as “rain in harvest.” To conciliate the Johns was very important, and she waited on them first. “What will thee have, John Stein?” “What shall I give thee, John Stump?” “And thee, John Stinger?” On one memorable occasion there was mutiny in the field, for John Stein declared that he never worked where there were not “kickelin” cakes in harvest, nor would he now. _Küchlein_ proved to be cakes fried in fat; and the housewife was ready to appease “Achilles’ wrath,” as soon as she made this discovery.

We made in one season six barrels of cider into apple-butter, three at a time. Two large copper kettles were hung under the beech-trees, down between the spring-house and smoke-house, and the cider was boiled down the evening before, great stumps of trees being in demand. One hand watched the cider, and the rest of the family gathered in the kitchen and labored diligently in preparing the cut apples, so that in the morning the “schnits” might be ready to go in. (_Schneiden_, to cut, _geschnitten_.)

One bushel and a half of cut apples are said to be enough for a barrel of cider. In a few hours the apples will all be in, and then you will stir, and stir, and stir, for you do not want to have the apple-butter burn at the bottom, and be obliged to dip it out into tubs and scour the kettle. Some time in the afternoon, you will take out a little on a dish, and when you find that the cider no longer “weeps out” round the edges, but all forms a simple heap, you will dip it up into earthen vessels, and when cold take it “on” to the garret to keep company with the hard soap and the bags of dried apples and cherries, perhaps with the hams and shoulders. Soap and apple-butter are usually made in an open fireplace, where hangs the kettle. At one time (about the year 1828) I have heard that there was apple-butter in the Lancaster Museum which dated from Revolutionary times; for we do not expect it to ferment in the summer. It dries away; but water is stirred in to prepare it for the table. Sometimes peach-butter is made, with cider, molasses, or sugar, and, in the present scarcity of apples, cut pumpkin is often put into the apple-butter.

Soon after apple-butter-making comes butchering, for we like an early pig in the fall, when the store of smoked meat has run out. Pork is the staple, and we smoke the flitches, not preserving them in brine like the Yankees. We ourselves use much beef, and do not like smoked flitch, but I speak for the majority. Sausage is a great dish with us, as in Germany.

Butchering is one of the many occasions for the display of friendly feeling, when brother or father steps in to help hang the hogs, or a sister to assist in rendering lard, or in preparing a plentiful meal. An active farmer will have two or three porkers killed, scalded, and hung up by sunrise, and by night the whole operation of sausage and “pudding” making, and lard rendering, will be finished, and the house set in order. The friends who have assisted receive a portion of the sausage, etc., which portion is called the “metzel-sup” (or soop). The metzel-sup is very often sent to poor widows and others.

_We_ make scrapple from the skin, a part of the livers, and heads, with the addition of corn-meal; but, instead, our “Dutch” neighbors make _liverwurst_ (“woorsht”), or meat pudding, omitting the meal, and this compound, stuffed into the larger entrails, is very popular in Lancaster market. Some make _pawn-haus_ from the liquor in which the pudding-meat was boiled, adding thereto corn-meal. The name is properly _pann-haas_, and signifies, perhaps, panned-rabbit. It is sometimes made of richer material.

These three dishes, just before mentioned, are fried before eating. I have never seen hog’s-head cheese in “Dutch” houses. If the boiling-pieces of beef are kept over summer, they are smoked, instead of being preserved in brine. Much smear-case (_schmier-käse_), or cottage cheese, is eaten in these regions. Children, and some grown people too, fancy it upon bread with molasses; which may be considered as an offset to the Yankee pork and molasses.

In some Pennsylvania families smear-case and apple-butter are eaten to save butter, which is a salable article. The true “Dutch” housewife’s ambition is to supply the store-goods for the family as far as possible from the sale of the butter and eggs.

We have also Dutch cheese, which may be made by crumbling the dry smear-case, working in butter, salt, and chopped sage, forming it into pats, and setting them away to ripen. The _sieger-käse_ is made from sweet milk boiled, with sour milk added and beaten eggs, and then set to drain off the whey. (_Ziegen-käse_ is German for goat’s milk cheese.)

“Schnits and knep” is said to be made of dried apples, fat pork, and dough-dumplings cooked together.

“Tell them they’re good,” says one of my “Dutch” acquaintances.

Knep is from the German, _knöpfe_, buttons or knobs. In common speech the word has fallen to nep. The “nep” are sometimes made from pie-crust, or sometimes from a batter of eggs and milk, and may be boiled without the meat; but one of my acquaintances says that the smoke gives a peculiar and appetizing flavor.

Apple-dumplings in “Dutch” are _aepel-dumplins_; whence I infer that like _pye-kroosht_ they are not of German origin.

In the fall our “Dutch” make _sauer-kraut_. I happened to visit the house of my friend Susanna when her husband and son were going to take an hour at noon to help her with the kraut. Two white tubs stood upon the back porch, one with the fair round heads, and the other to receive the cabbage when cut by a knife set in a board (a very convenient thing for cutting kohl-slaw and cucumbers). When cut, the cabbage is packed into a “stand” with a sauer-kraut staff, resembling the pounder with which New Englanders beat clothes in a barrel. Salt is added during the packing. When the cabbage ferments it becomes acid. The kraut-stand remains in the cellar; the contents not being unpalatable when boiled with potatoes and the chines or ribs of pork. But the smell of the boiling kraut is very strong, and that stomach is probably strong which readily digests the meal.

Sometimes “nep” or dumplings are boiled with the salt meat and sour-krout. A young teacher, who was speaking of sour-krout and nep, was asked how he spelt this word. He did not know, and said he did not care, so he got the nep.

“As Dutch as sour-krout,” has become a familiar saying here. In Lehigh County, if I mistake not, I heard the common dialect called “sour-krout Dutch.”

Our “Dutch” make soup in variety, and pronounce the word short, between _soup_ and _sup_. Thus there is Dutch soup, potato soup, etc.; scalded milk and bread is “bread and milk soup,” bread crumbed into coffee “coffee soup.”

Noodel soup (_nudeln_) is a treat. Noodels may be called domestic macaroni. I have seen a dish in which bits of fried bread were laid upon the piled-up noodels, to me unpalatable from the quantity of eggs in the latter.

Dampf-noodles, or _gedämpfte nudeln_, are boiled, and melted butter is poured over them.

The extremely popular cakes, twisted, sprinkled with salt, and baked crisp and brown, called pretzels (_brezeln_), were known in Pennsylvania long before the cry for “ein lager, zwei brezeln” (a glass of lager and two pretzels), was heard in the land.

One of my “Dutch” neighbors, who visited Western New York, was detained several hours at Elmira. “They hadn’t no water-crackers out there,” he complained. “Didn’t know what you meant when you said water-crackers; and they hain’t got pretzels. You can’t get no pretzels.”

Perhaps not at the railroad stations.

We generally find excellent home-made wheat bread in this limestone region. We make the pot of “sots” (or rising) overnight, with boiled mashed potatoes, scalded flour, and sometimes hops. Friday is baking-day. The “Dutch” housewife is very fond of baking in the brick oven, but the scarcity of wood must gradually accustom us to the great cooking-stove.

One of the heavy labors of the fall is the fruit-drying. Afterward your hostess invites you to partake, thus: “Mary, will you have pie? This is snits, and this is elder” (or dried apples, and dried elderberries). Dried peaches are peach snits.

A laboring woman once, speaking to me of a neighbor, said, “She hain’t got many dried apples. If her girl would snits in the evening, as I did!—but she’d rather keep company and run around than to snits.”

The majority keep one fire in winter. This is in the kitchen, which with nice housekeepers is the abode of neatness, with its rag carpet and brightly polished stove. An adjoining room or building is the wash-house, where butchering, soap-making, etc., are done by the help of a great kettle hung in the fireplace, not set in brick-work.

Adjoining the kitchen, on another side, is a state apartment, also rag-carpeted, and called “the room.” The stove-pipe from the kitchen sometimes passes through the ceiling, and tempers the sleeping-room of the parents. These arrangements are not very favorable to bathing in cold weather; indeed, to wash the whole person is not very common, in summer or in winter.

Will you go up-stairs in a neat Dutch farm-house? Here are rag carpets again. Gay quilts are on the best beds, where green and red calico, perhaps in the form of a basket, are displayed on a white ground; or the beds bear brilliant coverlets of red, white, and blue, as if to “make the rash gazer wipe his eye.” The common pillow-cases are sometimes of blue check, or of calico. In winter, people often sleep under feather-covers, not so heavy as a feather-bed. In the spring there is a great washing of bedclothes, and then the blankets are washed, which during winter supplied the place of sheets.

HOLIDAYS.

I was sitting alone, one Christmas time, when the door opened and there entered some half-dozen youths or men, who frightened me so that I slipped out at the door. They, being thus alone, and not intending any harm, at once left. These, I suppose, were Christmas mummers, though I heard them called “bell-schnickel.”

At another time, as I was sitting with my little boy, Aunt Sally came in smiling and mysterious, and took her place by the stove. Immediately after, there entered a man in disguise, who very much alarmed my little Dan.

The stranger threw down nuts and cakes, and, when some one offered to pick them up, struck at him with a rod. This was the real bell-schnickel, personated by the farmer.

It will hardly be supposed that Bell-schnickel and Santa Claus are the same; but the former is Peltz-nickel[5] or Nicholas dressed in fur. St. Nicholas’ day, the 6th of December, is in Advent.

On Christmas morning the cry is, “Christmas-gift!” and not, as elsewhere, “A merry Christmas!” Christmas is a day when people do not work, but go to meeting, when roast turkey and mince-pie are in order, and when the “Dutch” housewife has store of cakes on hand to give to the little folks.

We still hear of barring-out at Christmas. The pupils fasten themselves in the school-house, and keep the teacher out to obtain presents from him.

The first of April (which our neighbors generally call Aprile) is a great occasion. This is the opening of the farming year. The tenant farmers and other “renters” move to their new homes, and interest-money and other debts are due; and so much money changes hands in Lancaster, on the first, that pickpockets are attracted thither, and the unsuspicious “Dutch” farmer sometimes finds himself a loser.

The movings, on or about the first, are made festive occasions; neighbors, young and old, are gathered; some bring wagons to transport farm utensils and furniture, others assist in driving cattle, put furniture in its place, and set up bedsteads; while the women are ready to help prepare the bountiful meal. At this feast I have heard a worthy tenant farmer say, “Now help yourselves, as you did out there” (with the goods).

Whitsuntide Monday is a great holiday with the young “Dutch” folks. It occurs when there is a lull in farm-work, between corn-planting and hay-making. Now the new summer bonnets are all in demand, and the taverns are found full of youths and girls, who sometimes walk the street hand-in-hand, eat cakes and drink beer, or visit the “flying horses.” A number of seats are arranged around a central pole, and, a pair taking each seat, the whole revolves by the work of a horse, and you can have a circular ride for six cents.

On the Fourth of July we are generally at work in the harvest-field. Several of the festivals of the church are held here as days of rest, if not of recreation. Such are Good Friday, Ascension-day, etc. On Easter, eggs colored and otherwise ornamented were formerly much in vogue.

Thanksgiving is beginning to be observed here, but the New Englander would miss the family gatherings, the roast turkeys, the pumpkin-pies. Possibly we go to church in the morning, and sit quiet for the rest of the day; and as for pumpkin-pies, we do not greatly fancy them. Raisin-pie, or mince-pie, we can enjoy.

The last night of October is “Hallow-eve.” I was in Lancaster one Hallow-eve, and boys were ringing door-bells, carrying away door-steps, throwing corn at the windows, or running off with an unguarded wagon. I heard of one or two youngsters who had requested an afternoon holiday to go to church, but who had spent their time in going out of town to steal corn for this occasion. In the country, farm-gates are taken from their hinges and removed; and it was formerly a favorite amusement to take a wagon to pieces, and, after carrying the parts up to the barn-roof, to put it together again, thus obliging the owner to take it apart and bring it down. Such “tricks” as are described by Burns in the poem of “Hallow-e’en” may be heard of occasionally, continued perhaps by the Scotch-Irish element in our population.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Over twenty years ago I was circulating an anti-slavery petition among women. I carried it to the house of a neighboring farmer, who was a miller also, and well to do. His wife signed the petition (_all_ women did not in those days), but she signed it with her mark. I have understood that it is about twenty years since the school law was made universal here, and that our township of Upper Leacock wanted to resist by litigation the establishment of public schools.[6] It is the school-tax that is onerous. Within about twenty years a great impetus has been given to education by the establishment of the county superintendency, of normal schools, and of teachers’ institutes. I think it is within this time, however, that the board of directors met, in an adjoining township, and, being called upon to vote by ballot, there were afterward found in the box several different ways of spelling the word “no.”

At the last institute, a worthy young man at the blackboard was telling the teachers how to make their pupils pronounce the word “did,” which they inclined to call _dit_; and a young woman told me that she found it necessary, when teaching in Berks County, to practise speaking “Dutch,” in order to make the pupils understand their lessons. It must be rather hard to hear and talk “Dutch” almost constantly, and then to go to a school where the text-books are English.

There is still an effort made to have German taught in our public schools. The reading of German is considered a great accomplishment, and is one required for a candidate for the ministry among some of our plainer sects. But the teacher is generally overburdened in the winter with the necessary branches in a crowded, ungraded school. Our township generally has school for seven months in the year; some townships have only five; and in Berks County I have heard of one having only four months. About thirty-five dollars a month is paid to teachers, male and female.

My little boy of seven began to go to public school this fall. For a while I could hear him repeating such expressions as, “Che, double o, t, coot” (meaning good). “P-i-g, pick.” “Kreat A, little A, pouncing P.” “I don’t like chincherpread.” Even among our “Dutch” people of more culture, _etch_ is heard for _aitch_ (h), and _chay_ for jay (j), and these are relics of early training.

The standard of our county superintendent is high (1868), and his examinations are severe. His salary is about seventeen hundred dollars. Where there is so much wealth as here, it seems almost impossible that learning should not follow, as soon as the minds of the people are turned toward it; but the great fear of making their children “lazy” operates against sending them to school. Industrious habits will certainly tend more to the pecuniary success of a farmer than the “art of writing and speaking the English language _correctly_.”

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

My dear old “English” friend, Samuel G., had often been asked to stay and eat with David B., and on one occasion he concluded to accept the invitation. They went to the table, and had a silent pause; then David cut up the meat, and each workman or member of the family put in a fork and helped himself. The guest was discomfited, and, finding that he was likely to lose his dinner otherwise, he followed their example. The invitation to eat had covered the whole. When guests are present, many say, “Now help yourselves;” but they do not use vain repetitions, as the city people do.

Coffee is still drunk three times a day in some families, but frequently without sugar. The sugar-bowl stands on the table, with spoons therein for those who want sugar; but at a late “home-coming” party I believe that I was the only one at the table who took sugar. The dishes of smear-case, molasses, apple-butter, etc., are not always supplied with spoons. _We_ dip in our knives, and with the same useful implements convey the food to our mouths. Does the opposite extreme prevail among the farmers of Massachusetts? Do they always eat with their forks, and use napkins?

On many busy farm-occasions, the woman of the house will find it more convenient to let the men eat first,—to get the burden of the harvest-dinner off her mind and her hands, and then sit down with her daughters, her “maid” and little children, to their own repast. But the allowing to the men the constant privilege of eating first has passed away, if indeed it ever prevailed. At funeral feasts the old men and women sit down first, with the mourning family. Then succeed the second, third, and fourth tables.

Among the children of well-to-do parents, the unmarried daughter will sometimes go into the service of the married one, receiving wages regularly, or allowing them to accumulate. An acquaintance of mine in Lancaster had a hired girl living in his family who was worth twelve thousand dollars in cash means, her father having been a rich farmer. Among our plain farmers, such persons are considered more praiseworthy than the reverse.

I lately asked a lawyer in Northampton County why certain persons had allowed the Lutheran and Reformed farmers, men of very little school learning, to outstrip them in the pursuit of wealth. He answered that all the tendency of the education of these last was saving. “In old times,” he continued, “when we had no ranges nor cooking-stoves, but a fire on the hearth, I used to hear my mother say to her daughters that they must not let the dish-water boil, or they would not be married for seven years.” On the same principle, when a young “English” girl whom I knew told a young “Dutchman” that she was going to make bread, he said, “I’m coming for a handful of your dough-trough scrapings;” the idea being that there should be no scrapings left.

Mr. S., of Lehigh County, says, “We make money in Pennsylvania by saving; in New York, they make money by paying out.”

Mrs. E., of the same county, says, “We Pennsylvanians are brought up to work in the house and to family affairs, but the Eastern girls are brought up more in the factories, and they don’t know anything about housework. Many have been married, and lived here in this town (Allentown), of whom I have heard speak, who have not lived happily, because they were not used to keep house in the way that their husbands had been accustomed to. They were very intelligent, but not accustomed to work, and their families would get poor, and stay poor.” Mrs. R.’s daughter added, that “the New England men, the Eastern men, milk and do all the outside work.”

The writer thinks, nevertheless, that New England women will not be willing to admit that they do not understand housework, and are not eminently “faculized.”

We Lancaster “Dutch” are always striving to seize Time’s forelock. We rise, even in the winter, about four, feed the stock while the women get breakfast, eat breakfast in the short days by coal-oil lamps, and by daylight are ready for the operations of the day. The English folks and the backsliding “Dutch” are sometimes startled when they hear their neighbors blow the horn or ring the bell for dinner. On a recent pleasant October day the farmer’s wife was churning out-of-doors, and cried, “Why, there’s the dinner-bells a’ready. Mercy days!” I went in to the clock, and found it at twenty minutes of eleven. The “Dutch” farmers almost invariably keep their time half an hour or more ahead, like that village in Cornwall where it was twelve o’clock when it was but half-past eleven to the rest of the world. Our “Dutch” are never seen running to catch a railroad train.

We are not a total-abstinence people. Before these times of high prices, liquor was often furnished to hands in the harvest-field.

A few years ago a meeting was held in a neighboring school-house to discuss a prohibitory liquor law. After various speeches the question was put to the vote, thus: “All those who want leave to drink whiskey will please to rise.” “Now all those who don’t want to drink whiskey will rise.” The affirmative had a decided majority.