Chapter 7

The light of other days was simply a home-made tallow candle, and as matches were not then invented, careful housewives never suffered the kitchen-fire, even in the hottest days of summer, to die out entirely. The frequent sight of a child running to the nearest neighbor's, with a long-handled iron fire-shovel in hand, to "borry a few coals ter start the fire up," was looked upon as a sure sign of slack housewifery; and no woman might lay claim to the distinction of a good housekeeper who failed to renew her cedar broom as often as every other week.

Equal simplicity in dress prevailed, and a gown of bombazette--a very narrow, all-wool goods, worth from seventy-five cents to a dollar a yard,--was often worn for best during the owner's lifetime, and at her death bequeathed, with the fondly-cherished string of gold beads, to the favorite granddaughter, as a precious legacy.

For common wear, pressed home-made and home-dyed flannel in winter; and cotton and linen, woven in colored stripes or plaids, for summer, was considered plenty good enough, even for the doctor's and minister's wives. Under flannels were an unheard-of luxury. And one ceases to wonder at the frequency of hereditary consumption, in our own day, when he reads that fashionable city ladies, in the very depths of a Northern winter, walked the icy streets in thin cotton or silk stockings and low, pointed, high-heeled morocco shoes. Rubbers being then unknown, and the shoes of stout calf-skin, that their country cousins were only too glad to get, were disdained by these dainty dames as coarse and unlady-like.

A girl carded, spun, wove, bleached, and made her one white linen gown, lavishing upon it all her simple art of needlecraft, every seam and hem stitched by the old-time rule, "take up one thread and skip two," and, perhaps, embroidering a pattern of tiny sprays and eyelets upon the bosom and sleeves, to give it an air of special gentility.

Finished at last, this choice bit of girlish finery probably served its owner for a wedding-dress, and afterwards was cut up into slips for the babies.

Matrons, young as well as old, wore caps of plain white muslin, made after the same fashion as the round, sweeping caps that tidy housekeepers wear at the present day. The younger and gayer ones, who had no scruples of conscience on the subject, wore their caps adorned with bright ribbons, while the elderly and more sedate contented themselves with a plain band of black, across the front, and pinned primly at the back, without bow or knot.

After the death of Washington, in 1799, besides the band of crape that every citizen of the United States, by the desire of Congress, wore upon his left arm for thirty days, many of the loyal matrons provided themselves with mourning-cap ribbons, upon which was stamped, in white letters, upon a black ground:

"General George Washington, Departed this life on the 14th of December, 1799, Æ. 68,"

--a fac-simile of the inscription upon the coffin-plate of that illustrious and well-beloved chief. The wool and flax were home productions, but the cotton was brought, in a raw state, from the West Indies.

It was first picked over very carefully, to remove the seeds and stray bits of foreign rubbish, then "batted," that is, made into small pats, each large enough to be carded into a roll, which was spun into thread upon either a wool or linnen wheel. This "batting" usually fell to the lot of the children of the family, who probably found the monotonous task as little to their taste as their grandchildren do, when required to wash the dishes or saw wood for the cooking-stove.

Woven plain, by the skilful hands of the housemother, and bleached upon the young grass under the blossoming apple boughs, the cloth served for the underwear of the family, and was regarded as one of the few luxuries of the frugal household,--the raw cotton costing over fifty cents a pound, to say nothing of the time and labor required to convert it into cloth.

On account of the scarcity of cotton, our modern "comfortables" were a thing unheard of, and, for a substitute, woollen quilts, stuffed with wool, and closely quilted, often in the most elaborate patterns, were used in all New England households. These quilts were often few and thin in many a poor home, where the elders had hard work to shield their flock of little ones from the bitter cold of winter, in spite of the immense fires that even the poorest were able to provide where any amount of fuel could be had for the cutting.

I have heard a story of a good lady who lived at that time in a town not a hundred miles from Boston, which gives one some idea of the straits to which our grandparents were often reduced in those days:--

Watching one bitterly cold night with a sick neighbor, she heard, at midnight, the little children crying with cold in the loft overhead, and leaving her sleeping patient, she went upstairs, and tried to find an extra quilt or blanket to spread over them. But in vain, for in that poor home there was not so much as a shoulder-blanket that could be spared. At last, in utter desperation, she spread over the shivering little ones a _side of leather_, that she found rolled up under the eaves.

"It kept out the cold, anyhow," she said, as she told the story years afterwards. "And the poor little things stopped their cryin', and cuddled down as contented an' comfortable as a nestful o' kittens."

If there was little of poetry or romance in the lives of those hard-working, hard farming men and women of a past generation, there was no lack of the patient diligence and simple, unquestioning faith, that give strength to weakness, and sweeten toil with the steadfast belief that, to the faithful heart and willing hand God's blessing never fails.

One of the favorite proverbs at that time is significant, as proverbs usually are, of the character of the people:--

"Begin your web, and God will supply you with thread."

While still another suggests that well-known element in the New England character that the Scotch aptly call "canny":--

"A wise man will bend a little rather than be torn up by the roots."

Extravagance was more than a fault, it was an actual sin, in the eyes of these prudent, simple-living folk, and you may have heard before the story of the ingenious housewife, who, tired of the blank bareness of her yellow-painted floors, conceived the bold idea of manufacturing a carpet for it herself:

A large square of sail-cloth served her for a canvas, and upon this she painted, with the few colors that she could procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind that she was familiar with,--blue roses and green lilies having the preference, as making more show than their humbler sisters. This, when finished, she covered with a thick coat of varnish, thus making a very good substitute for the more modern oil-cloth.

Of course everybody, from far and near, came to look, and wonder, and admire; and among them a good old deacon, who, after critically surveying the wonderful work, turned to the proud artist, and, with a look half of amazement, half of pitying reproach, upon his honest, weather-beaten face, asked solemnly:--

"Sister ----, do you expect to have _all this_ and _heaven_ too?"

To-day, Boston is sometimes jestingly styled the "Hub of the Universe," but at the beginning of the present century it was, soberly speaking, the Hub of New England, for from it spokes projected into every part, however distant, of that region.

As in past ages all roads led to Rome, so seventy-five or eighty years ago all roads led to or from Boston. In an old Farmer's Almanac, printed in 1817, I find, among other things quaint and curious, four closely-printed pages devoted to "Roads to the Principal Towns of the Continent from Boston, with the distances and names of Innkeepers." Beginning with: "From Boston to Newport, over Seekonk, through Rehoboth, 69 miles," and ending with "Down the Ohio, to the mouth of the Muskinqum, 524 miles,"--a tolerably long ride in those days of the old-fashioned stage coach.

Naturally, this Umbilicus of the Western World set the fashions in theology, literature, dress, and manners for all New England, and any one who had made a trip to Boston was venerated as a kind of travelled wonder, and forever after regarded as an authority upon all mooted points of general interest.

It has been said, on what authority I am unable to state, that "all good Americans go to Paris when they die." But in those days of Boston's supremacy an aspiring dame in one of our Maine villages, finding herself upon her death bed, expressed as her one last wish, that she "might be permitted to go to heaven by the way o' Boston."

Evidently the poor soul had pined in vain all her life for a sight of its splendors, and could think of nothing so near akin to heaven as a peep at this earthly Paradise on her way there.

I might go on indefinitely to call up pictures, heroic, quaint, or pathetic, of these earnest-hearted men and women, who toiled, suffered, and planned, for the future, that we, their children, have entered into the fulness of. But time forbids, and I can only say, in closing this paper, that it will be well for us, if, in these days of national prosperity and power, when Liberty, proudly triumphant, stands like

"A bearded man Armed to the teeth,"

ready to hold his own alike against traitors at home and envious despotisms abroad, we do not forget with what a world of self-sacrifice and patient toil our forbears laid the foundations of this great, free government; nor should we deem it a light thing to have been born citizens of a Republic a thousand times grander, nobler, and, God grant! far more enduring, than those of heathen Greece and Rome, that have long since fallen to decay, and now lie buried beneath the melancholy dust of centuries.

Let the words of the great poet whose name stands at the head of this paper speak like a word of warning to every heart within their reach:--

"And they who founded in our land The power that rules from sea to sea, Bled they in vain, or vainly planned, To leave their country great and free? Their sleeping ashes from below Send up the thrilling murmur, No!"

TRUST.

BY ARTHUR ELWELL JENKS.

Once let us feel the trust a child bestows Upon the guardian of its life, each day Would set serenely on our troubled souls! To help but one of these, or bring again To lip and eye the smile so full of peace,-- Reflection of some tender mother's love,--

Ah, such were service, that, in future years, Shall shine upon our devious pathway, as The evening star lights up the western sky! O ye who labor for the children's sake,-- Setting these jewels for immortal life,-- The "Well-done!" of the Master shall be yours!

NEW ENGLAND CHARACTERISTICS.

BY LIZZIE M. WHITTLESEY.

"We constantly," as Ruskin affirms, "recognize things by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of these. We recognize our books by their bindings, our friends by the mere accidents of the body, the sport of climate, and food, and time."

Applying this principle to New England, we unconsciously recognize her first by her mere outward, incidental properties.

By the waving of her hair in the "Pine-Tree State," by the frown of her massive brows in the "Granite" and "Green Mountain," by the glancing brightness of her smile in the "Old Bay," by her lithe grace of limb in "Little Rhoda," and her firm step and erect carriage in the "Land of Steady Habits;" while to all alike belong--

"Her clear, warm heaven at noon, the mist that shrouds Her twilight hills, her cool and starry eves, The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds, The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves."

Next to the physical traits of a friend we are attracted by those of a social nature; and, still keeping the analogy, the same is true of a people, and preëminently so of New England.

The characteristics of our four Northern cities have been thus distinctively classified and labelled:--

Washington stops between the polka and the waltz to ask, "Can you dance?" New York shows us her silks and laces, and politely whispers, "What are you worth?"

Philadelphia traces back our genealogy, and questions, "Who was your grandfather?" While Boston lifts her eye-glass, and, surveying our mental cranium, inquires, "What do you know?"

The social traits of New England proper are so combined with her business character that they are with difficulty separated, and both are best defined by foreign visitors.

It was an Englishman who said, "Go ahead is the grand doctrine of New England;" and we see that this principle, plainly enforced and practically carried out, builds her cities, founds her public libraries, carries on her immense commerce, and increases public traffic.

Without this quality, coupled with her independence and disregard for romantic associations, the Yankee would never make pilgrimages to the Old World for the sole and evident purpose of placarding the pyramids, and introducing his invention for removing stains at some half-ruined cathedral whose famous "spot of blood" is cherished with reverent care.

"New England excels," according to an English cousin, "in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, politician, historian, and minister, Barlow.

It is this quiet independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving herself equally efficient in each.

Here is found that shrewd, stirring common-sense which is New England's strong point. Here is hinted, also, that philosophic humor which is the one ray lightening her intense realism.

As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the more refined periods of the lecturer, flits charmingly in and out of the sympathetic essays of Holmes, keeps us in a perpetual chuckle over the mirthful pages of Irving, and embodies itself in the quaint good-nature of an indolent, contemplative Sam Lawson.

For nowhere is this genial quality found in such purity as among the true, rustic Yankees, whose clear-cut, homely phrases and sharp localisms are not as entirely extinct as is supposed. Country life has a way all its own of preserving the best traits of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty expressions and strong metaphors which led Dickens to say, "In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness the Yankee people unquestionably take the lead."

In the country, too, as if growing and blossoming under the influence of the warm, unobstructed sunshine, is the sturdy growth of genuineness, hearty, coöperative sympathy, and cheery hospitality, the latter having its highest exponent in New England's distinctive festival, Thanksgiving. The dear old holiday may well be called the cradle of New England graces, for it bears much the same relation to the development of her social traits that the old Greek and Roman games bore in developing characteristics of strength and bravery.

To return to the criticism of foreigners. The absence of historic records and relics in New England has often been a matter of contempt, and an amusing story is told by J. T. Fields of a stiff, conventional Englishman who called on the poet Longfellow at one of his busiest hours, and scanning him closely, gravely remarked: "We were doing the sights, sir, and as there are no ruins in New England, we decided to come and see you!"

We smile at the strange idea, but is there not in it a tacit admission that New England's men and women of letters are her best characteristics? Is it not to her glory that hers is _not_ a country of ruins but one of noble, earnest, _living_ men and women?--men like Dr. Hale, instilling by the quiet weapon of the pen strong, true lessons of benevolence and truth; men like Longfellow, singing, pure, earnest songs of high endeavor and noble attainment; men like Whittier, whose simple, touching strains move so grandly on the side of right and justice.

Women like Mrs. Stowe, who, in her great strength of mind and character, wrote that wonderful book, which, inspired by zeal, and fired by a terrible earnestness, filled New England once with something of her own noble enthusiasm. She could do the grand work then, because her country needed it, thus illustrating that strong New England trait, latent power, a power of which we know nothing till it is called out by some mighty need. There have been earnest purpose, determined will, pure motive, and unselfish heroism in New England; but their depth and strength have never been "guessed" till manifested in some great crisis.

Her contests are those of heart and intellect; and her weapons, hard study and earnest thought.

In spite of popular philippics her traits do not change much from the summary of them made fifty years ago, "Impatience with wrong, quarrel with precedent, love of education, and faith in God."

Ah! now we touch the true characteristics of New England, lying in the deep ocean of her history, unmoved by the lighter traits sparkling upon the surface.

That is a true boast of Jonathan to John:--

"We aint so weak and poor, John, With twenty million people, And close to every door, John, A school-house and a steeple."

And this is but the outgrowth of that short formula of the brave founders of school and church: "Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work;" so that New England's present traits are directly traceable to Puritan influence.

Our educational institutions had substantial foundation-stones of self-sacrifice and far-seeing purpose, nobly laid by that score of sturdy men, dedicating, for the first academy, a peck of corn, or a shilling in cash, or a few treasured volumes.

The Sabbath has been called the "poem of New England," and it is that always, whether rung out by the city's chiming bells or whispered in the sacred repose of the country church. But it was never so truly a poem as on that first New England Sabbath, when the church was a weather-beaten ship, its support the lashing waves, and the worshippers "a handful of sad, stern men and women kneeling in their spray-stiffened garments to thank God for freedom to worship him."

New England's best traits, then, are but her rightful inheritance; traits "lineally descended" from her founders, softened and purified in the transmitting many times, as in the case of their sectional loyalty. "They seemed to shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than that which their fathers travelled, lest they should miss them at their journey's end."

And in these days, thank God! religious toleration is creeping over the forbidding rock of New England theology, much as the delicate vines of the May-flower crept over and beautified the hard, unyielding soil.

Thus New England stands, in her freedom, love of education, and all those homely domestic traits which make her the comfortable, clever, strong, and tender mother she is, while under and through and over all her traits runs, like a strain of restful music, her great, all powerful, far-reaching faith.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A great stride of advancement has been taken in the cultivation of that rarest of supernal graces, Christian charity, since the ancient patriarchs of New England fell asleep. Occasionally opportunity is given us of measuring "with the eye" the distance which has been travelled. More than a hundred and fifty years ago Dr. Cotton Mather spoke of Rhode Island as "the Gerizzim of New England, the common receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land." The island itself, as a portion of God's creation, he was willing to think worthy of all praise. He seems to have felt regarding it as Bishop Heber felt about India when he wrote his immortal missionary hymn:--

"And every prospect pleases, And only man is vile."

"The island is, indeed, for the fertility of its soil, the temperateness of its air, etc., the best garden of all the colony, and were it free from serpents I would call it the Paradise of New England." As things were, however, the good old man could only say regretfully, "_Bona terra, mala gens_." He evidently fancied that the serpent was not a native of the original home of human innocence, or else his special affection for the people of Rhode Island led him to wish for them an exemption from exposures which God had not thought necessary to the safety and happiness of Adam. The serpent was an honorable member of the animal community in Paradise before Ithuriel's "spear of heaven-tempered steel" discovered Satan, in the shape of a toad, breathing into the ear of the sleeping "Mother of Mankind" deadly insinuations of disobedience and rebellion, just as freedom in religion--the serpent so unworthily abhorred by New England Puritanism--was a divinely chartered and precious privilege of mankind long before the founding of Rhode Island colonies or the birth of Roger Williams. The vagaries and fantasies of freedom, its excesses, outrages, and crimes, are something fearful to contemplate, but freedom is, has been, and must ever continue to be, the essential condition of human power and excellence. It has ever been the madness of men--and madness that could not claim the poor excuse of method--to think of cutting down the tree of liberty, and still hope to retain the benefits and blessings of its shade.

The statistics of marriages, as compared with those of population, would seem to indicate that there is an increasing unwillingness on the part of men or women, or both, to take upon themselves the responsibilities of wedded life. Whether because of the increased expense of living due to the development of luxurious tastes, and the selfishness which results; or the difficulties in the way of securing remunerative and constant employment; or because of other reasons, the sly god seems to have lost something of his former power. Perhaps the chief cause lies with the young men, who dare neither to face the cares of matrimony themselves, nor to ask others to do so. Whatever there is of cowardice in this matter, we do not believe that it can, as a rule, be charged upon the women of America, without regard to their station in life. It is claimed that in Massachusetts, of every 1,000 inhabitants in 1850-1860, 21 married, now only 17; that in Connecticut, while the population has increased 56 per cent during the last decade, marriages have increased but 34 per cent; that in Providence, R.I., while the number capable of marrying was in the last decade 115 percent greater than in the decade preceding the war, the number who married was only 77 per cent greater; and that in Ohio, while, in 1850-1880, the inhabitants had increased 37 per cent, the number of marriages had advanced only 26 per cent.

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