Part 3

It is very evident to me, as I remember it, that my aspirations were by no means satisfied with an interest in these small specimens, such as ducks, hens, turkeys, geese, dogs, cats, etc., of which I had no lack. This not including canaries, of which I received from time to time a number as gifts; but I had no pleasure in them, and although doubtless the most inhuman thing that could have been done, I invariably opened the cage door and let them out.

But all that farm land, the three great barns and accompanying yards, called for cattle. A small herd of twenty-five fine milch cows came faithfully home each day with the lowering of the sun, for the milking and extra supper which they knew awaited them. With the customary greed of childhood I had laid claim to three or four of the handsomest and tamest of them, and believing myself to be their real owner, I went faithfully every evening to the yards to receive and look after them. My little milk pail went as well, and I became proficient in an art never forgotten.

One afternoon, on going to the barn as usual, I found no cows there; all had been driven somewhere else. As I stood in the corner of the great yard alone, I saw three or four men—the farm hands—with one stranger among them wearing a long, loose shirt or gown. They were all trying to get a large red ox onto the barn floor, to which he went very reluctantly. At length they succeeded. One of the men carried an axe, and stepping a little to the side and back, raised it high in the air and brought it down with a terrible blow. The ox fell, I fell too; and the next I knew I was in the house on a bed, and all the family about me, with the traditional camphor bottle, bathing my head to my great discomfort. As I regained consciousness they asked me what made me fall? I said “some one struck me.” “Oh, no,” they said, “no one struck you,” but I was not to be convinced and proceeded to argue the case with an impatient putting away of the hurting hands, “then what makes my head so sore?” Happy ignorance! I had not then learned the mystery of nerves.

I have, however, a very clear recollection of the indignation of my father (my mother had already expressed herself on the subject), on his return from town and hearing what had taken place. The hired men were lined up and arraigned for “cruel carelessness.” They had “the consideration to keep the cattle away,” he said, “but allowed that little girl to stand in full view.” Of course, each protested he had not seen me. I was altogether too friendly with the farm hands to hear them blamed, especially on my account, and came promptly to their side, assuring my father that they had not seen me, and that it was “no matter,” I was “all well now.” But, singularly, I lost all desire for meat, if I had ever had it—and all through life to the present, have only eaten it when I must for the sake of appearance, or as circumstances seemed to make it the more proper thing to do. The bountiful ground has always yielded enough for all my needs and wants.

I had been eleven years old the Christmas before. Great changes had taken place during the two or three preceding years. My energetic brothers had outgrown farming, sold their two farms on the hill, and come down and bought of my father all his water power on the French River, as well as all obtainable timber land in the vicinity. The staunch old up-and-down saw still stood in its majesty for the handling of the forest giants too massive for a lesser power, but it was surrounded by a cordon of belted “circulars,” whirling with a speed that quite obscured their motion, screaming, screeching and throwing out the product of their work in all directions; shingles, laths, thin boards, bolters and slitters. New dams had been thrown across the shifty, flighty stream, to be swept away in the torrents of the spring freshets and floating ice, but replaced at once with an obstinate manliness and enterprise that scarcely admitted of an interruption in the work.

In a new building along the side of the dam, the great burr-stones of that date ground out the wholesome grain of all the surrounding country, and where I had first seen it under the control of the one lone sawyer, now fifty of the strongest working men that could be procured, and great four-horse teams covered the once quiet mill-yard. The entire line of factories above had caught the inspiration, and the French River villages of North Oxford were models of growth and activity.

One sister had married and settled in her home near by, and a wife had come into my eldest brother’s home. Mrs. Larned, the widow to whose assistance my father had gone in her early desolation, had found her children now so well grown as to make it advisable to remove to one of the factory villages, where she became a popular boarding house keeper, and her children operatives in the mill.

Thus, I was again left to myself. The schools were not the best, but all that could be done for me, in or out of them, was done. I had been especially well taught to sew and liked it, but knitting was beyond me. I could not be held to it, and it was given up.

Through the confirmed invalidism of my elder sister, Dorothea, I lost her beautiful guidance, but the watchful care of my younger sister, now Mrs. Vassall, was truly pathetic. She never lost sight of my welfare, and her fine literary taste was a constant inspiration.

While thus in the midst of my various pursuits and vocations, an accidental turn in my wheel of fortune changed my entire course (for a time at least) and how much bearing, if any, it may have had on the future, I have never been able to determine. I have spoken of the younger of my two brothers, of the firm of S. & D. Barton, as a fine horseman. He was more than that. In these days he would have been an athlete. The two men were but two years apart in age, of fine disposition and excellent physical strength, integrity and courage; of fine disposition and equable temper; yet neither of them men with whom an opponent would carelessly or tauntingly covet an encounter. The younger, David, from his physical activity and daring, was always selected for any feat of danger to be performed.

These were days when even buildings were “raised by hand.” All the neighborhood was expected to participate in a “raising.” Upon one occasion, an uncommonly large barn, with what was then still more uncommon, a cellar beneath, was to be raised. The rafters must be affixed to the ridgepole, and David Barton was assigned to this duty. While in its performance, a timber on which he was standing, having been weakened by an unobserved knot, suddenly gave way, and he fell directly to the first floor, striking on his feet on another timber near the bottom of the cellar. Without falling he leaped to the ground, and after a few breathless minutes declared himself unhurt, but was not permitted to return aloft. It was spoken of as a “remarkable adventure,” “a wonderful escape,” etc., and for a few days all went well, with the exception of a slight and quite unaccustomed headache, which continued to increase as the July weather progressed. At length he showed symptoms of fever; the family physician was called, and here commenced a system of medical treatment quite unknown to our physicians of the present day, other than as results of historical research and milestones of scientific advancement.

He was pronounced in a “settled fever,” which must not be “broken up,” and could only be held in check by reducing the strength of the patient. He had “too much blood,” was “too vigorous,” “just the patient for a fever to ‘go hard with,’” it was said. Accordingly, the blood was taken from time to time, as long as it seemed safe to do so. The terrible pain in the head continued and blisters were applied to all possible places, in the hope of withdrawing the pain. Sleepless, restless, in agony both physical and mental, his case grew desperate. He had been my ideal from earliest memory. I was distressed beyond measure at his condition. I had been his little protégée, his companion, and in his nervous wretchedness he clung to me. Thus, from the first days and nights of illness, I remained near his side. The fever ran on and over all the traditional turning points, seven, fourteen, twenty-one days. I could not be taken away from him except by compulsion, and he was unhappy until my return. I learned to take all directions for his medicines from his physician (who had eminent counsel) and to administer them like a genuine nurse.

My little hands became schooled to the handling of the great, loathsome, crawling leeches which were at first so many snakes to me, and no fingers could so painlessly dress the angry blisters; and thus it came about, that I was the accepted and acknowledged nurse of a man almost too ill to recover.

Finally, as the summer passed, the fever gave way, and for a wonder the patient did not. No physician will doubt that I had given him poison enough to have killed him many times over, if suitably administered with that view. He will also understand the condition in which the patient was left. They had certainly succeeded in reducing his strength.

Late in the autumn he stood on his feet for the first time since July. Still sleepless, nervous, cold, dyspeptic—a mere wreck of his former self. None were so disturbed over his condition as his kind-hearted, and for those days, skillful physicians, who had exhausted their knowledge and poured out their sympathy and care like water, on the patient who, for his manliness and bravery, they had come to respect, and for his suffering learned to love with a parent’s tenderness.

It now became a matter of time. Councils of physicians for twenty miles around sat in judgment on the case. They could only recommend; and more blisters, setons and various methods of external irritation for the withdrawal of internal pain followed, from month to month and season to season. All these were my preferred care.

I realize now how carefully and apprehensively the whole family watched the little nurse, but I had no idea of it then. I thought my position the most natural thing in the world; I almost forgot that there was an outside to the house.

This state of things continued with little change—a trifling gain of strength in my patient at times—for two years, when, entirely unexpected, the most tabooed and little known of all medical treatments, restored him to health. It is to be remembered at that date there was no homeopathy, no hydropathy, no sanitariums, no Christian Science, nothing but the regular school of allopathic medicine. Medical practitioners, baffled by lack of science, surrounded by ignorance on all such subjects and more or less of superstition, struggled manfully on toward the blessed light of the scientific knowledge of to-day, which they have so richly attained.

It was not to be wondered at that the slightest departure from the beaten track, under these conditions, was held as unpardonable and punishable quackery; and that the first “ism” that broke through the defense fought the fight of a forlorn hope. There are young physicians of good historical knowledge to-day, who have never learned that “Thompsonianism” was that “ism”; that Dr. Samuel Thompson fought that fight, and that they are pursuing many excellent methods which are the result of his thought; that it was he who first advanced the theory (in this country at least,) that fever was not the foe, but the friend of the patient; that it was simply unequal animal warmth and vigor—that people did not have too much blood any more than they had too much bone, and could as ill afford to lose it; that if the blood were too thick, or too thin, or of a bad quality, taking away a portion of it would not rectify or purify the remainder. That a blister was not likely to soothe a nervous patient to sleep, or to extract a pain, save by creating a greater. But that a better way to treat disturbances was to open the pores generally, by a vapor bath—designated “Thompson’s Steam Box,” and greatly to be feared. He and his few followers were known as “Steam Doctors”—and the public warned against them.

It happened that one of his disciples, a “Steam Doctor,” residing in a neighboring town (I will write his name in grateful remembrance—Dr. Asa McCullum), had watched this remarkable case with interest and pity, convinced that the right remedies had not reached it.

He ventured at length to approach my father on the subject; then my brother, who was willing to attempt anything short of suicide. The result was the removal of the patient to the home asylum of the doctor for treatment. In three weeks he was so far restored as to return home and take his place in his business, like one come back from the dead. I remember the greetings—the tears of gladness on the blessed face of our family physician when he came to welcome him home: “And so, David, something good has come out of Nazareth.”

I was again free; my occupation gone. Life seemed very strange and idle to me. I wondered that my father took me to ride so much, and that my mother hoped she could make me some new clothes now, for in the two years I had not grown an inch, had been to school one-half day, and had gained one pound in weight.

This singular mode of life, at so young an age, could not have been without its characteristic effects. In some respects it had served to heighten serious defects. The seclusion had increased the troublesome bashfulness. I had grown even more timid, shrinking and sensitive in the presence of others; absurdly careful and methodical for a child; afraid of giving trouble by letting my wants be known, thereby giving the very pain I sought to avoid, and instead of feeling that my freedom gave me time for recreation or play, it seemed to me like time wasted, and I looked anxiously about for some useful occupation.

As usual, my blessed sister, Mrs. Vassall, came to the rescue. Taking advantage of an all-absorbing love of poetry (which I always had) she made a weapon of it by providing me with the poetical works of Walter Scott, which I had not read, and proposed that we read them together. We naturally commenced with “The Lady of the Lake.” I was immediately transported to the Highlands and the Bonny Braes, plucking the heather and broom and guiding the skiff across Loch Katrine, listening to the sweet warning song of poor crazed Blanche of Devon, thrilling with, “Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu,” and trudging along with the old minstrel and Ellen to Sterling tower and the Court of Fitz-James. “Marmion” followed, and then all the train of English poetry that a child could take in.

My second individual ownership was “Billy.” His personality (which I never questioned), was represented by a high stepping brown Morgan horse, with glossy coat, slim legs, pointed ears, long curly black mane and tail, and weighing nearly nine hundred pounds.

Although a good driver, his forte was the saddle. His gait (or rather, I should say, gaits) was first a delightful single-foot; but which he had the faculty of changing to a rack, or pace or trot, as occasion or haste seemed to call for; and as a last resort, he could cover them all by something one does not like to name; but we only used that gait on extraordinary occasions. My father had purchased and given Billy to me when about ten years old. The same figures will do for us both.

I had three or four neighboring girl associates who also had their own or family horses, and our riding parties were the events of the season. Anticipating the deep, forbidding snows of the winter in New England, we had the custom of celebrating Thanksgiving day by a final party for the season. Even this was cold and had often some traces of snow.

On the present occasion there were but three of us, Martha, Eveline and myself. Martha had a fine sorrel trotter, Eveline a spirited single-footer. The day was cold and threatening. Our ride was to Worcester, some ten miles. When about three miles from home, on our return, a blinding snowstorm set in, literally a gale. This either frightened or excited Eveline’s horse, which, mastering the situation by a quick toss of the head, and catch of the bit (a trick he evidently understood), dropped his single-foot as something adapted to ladies and little girls, and fell to using all the feet he had, the best he knew. Awed by her peril, but powerless to aid, we could only follow our fleeing comrade to be ready to help when she should fall, as we were sure she must. The gale mercilessly increased; so did our speed. We kept nearly alongside, every horse upon the “dead run.”

We must have presented a striking miniature picture of the veritable “Three Furies” on a rampage. A country road and no one passing. Martha and myself each rushing directly past our own homes unobserved in the storm, till at length we rounded the curve that brought the flying horse in sight of his own stable. They had sighted the coming cavalcade. The gates were thrown wide open, and a man stationed on either side to catch both horse and rider when they should enter.

Seeing the worn-out girl once safely in her father’s arms, we turned away, with an entirely new chapter added to our very limited stock of equestrian knowledge. We were all alive and unharmed, and I alone am here now to tell the little stories of childhood’s terrifying dangers and miraculous escapes.

We were midway between the two district schools, a long mile and a half from either, and it frequently chanced that a season or two of indifferent schools followed each other in train. The experiment of sending me away to school was not to be repeated, and accordingly I was undertaken at home. My mathematical brother, Stephen, took charge of that department, and Mrs. Vassall the other needful studies, while my former patient, brother David, the equestrian of early days, now grown strong and well, kept to his rule of practical teaching. I recall vividly the half impatient frown on his fine face when he would see me do an awkward thing, however trivial. He detested false motions; wanted the thing done rightly the first time. If I started to go somewhere, go, and not turn back; if to do something, do it. I must throw a ball or a stone with an under swing like a boy and not a girl, and must make it go where I sent it, and not fall at my feet and foolishly laugh at it. If I would drive a nail, strike it fairly on the head every time, and not split the board. If I would draw a screw, turn it right the first time. I must tie a square knot that would hold, and not tie my horse with a slip noose and leave him to choke himself. These were little things, still a part of the instructions not to be undervalued. In the rather practical life which has sometimes fallen to me, I have wondered if they were not among the most useful, and if that handsome frown were not one of my best lessons.

At length there came a school that could be utilized, and my family instructors were relieved. The school to the north of us was undertaken by Mr. Lucian Burleigh, a younger member of the noted Burleigh family, and brother of William H. Burleigh, the poet. It seemed very strange to me to be in school again. I had been so long accustomed to govern myself, in a manner, that I wondered how any one should need others to govern them. If scholars came there to learn, why should they try, or want, to do anything else? There is no doubt that I seemed equally unaccountable and prudish to them.

The quick perceptions of the teacher at once comprehended the conditions, and he treated me with the greatest consideration and kindness; advising such changes and additions as seemed suitable, and most in accord with the studies I had taken with me; even, as I could later see, forming some new classes in branches outside of the customary routine of the public school; as elementary astronomy, ancient history, and the “Science of Language”; his own literary and scholarly tastes pointing significantly to the latter. If Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and Pollok’s “Course of Time” were ever dissected, transposed, analyzed and “parsed” by any class of vigilant youths, it was then and there.

The winter passed all too soon. A mile and a half through the snow had been only a pleasure. Our faithful, brotherly teacher left us, never to return; but the still brotherly friendship between teacher and pupil remained unbroken until his summons came.

After a busy summer a similarly good fortune awaited me in the next winter term of school. Mr. Jonathan Dana, one of Oxford’s most scholarly men and a teacher of note, commenced the winter school to the south of us. I have no words to describe the value of his instruction, nor the pains he took with his eager pupil. I had been far too thoroughly drilled to require time for the customary classes of the public school, but did require instruction in branches forbidden in their lawful curriculum.

In spite of the labor of a school of sixty pupils of all ages, with no assistant, I was permitted to take philosophy, chemistry and elementary Latin—all to be taught outside of school hours. With no laboratory at hand, I have often marveled at the amount of experimental instruction he found it possible to give me. So generally appreciated was the excellence of the school that the term was continued beyond the customary three months. My grateful homage for my inestimable teacher and his interest in his early pupil, became memories of a lifetime, and the social acquaintance was never interrupted until the late summons came to him, white haired and venerable, to go up higher.

My family were all gratified by my progress and my deportment as a student, but I was still diffident, timid, non-committal, afraid of giving trouble and difficult to understand. My physical growth had not met their expectations nor their hopes. I grew slowly and was still a “little girl” in appearance. This went to show how positive the early check had been, and how slowly the repairs were made, for it was said that I gained an inch in height between the ages of twenty and twenty-one.

The firm of my brothers, S. & D. Barton, had added to their ever increasing business the manufacture of cloth. A factory had been erected and a partnership entered into with Messrs. Paul and Samuel Parsons, two elegant gentlemen among the earlier manufacturers of satinet in this country, and the new factory was known as “The Satinet Mill of North Oxford.” A very superior article of cloth was made, the operatives almost entirely American, and very largely from families of the neighborhood or surrounding country. Occupations for women were few in those days, and often the school and music teacher, weary of the monotonous life, sought change in the more remunerative loom of the factory. I name this as a matter of history, as the North Oxford Mills were the third, if not the second after Slater, who produced the first spindle and power looms in America, at the risk of his life.