CHAPTER IX.

FOLK-LORE TALES IN THE OLD COLONIAL KITCHEN.

The New England Kitchen was a double house in colonial style, such as was once to be seen on the roads running between Boston and the coast towns. Across the promenade was the specimen building of the Co-operative Society of Philadelphia. A little way beyond it, the Irish village presented a curious contrast, and the Blarney Castle rose in the sunny air.

In the kitchen of the typical old-time New England cottage the homely food of the descendants of the Pilgrims was served,—brown bread and baked beans, pumpkin pies, doughnuts and cheese, home-made relishes. The waiters were dressed in colonial costumes, and sometimes wore calashes. The reception-room of the house was furnished after the manner of the Plymouth Colony.

The Marlowes were made welcome here, and used to take their suppers in the kitchen, after becoming foot-weary. When the supper was over, they would linger among the New England people, who daily gathered here, and relate colonial wonder-tales.

One of these tales well fitted the unique room. It was told by Mr. Marlowe, and we give it here:—

THE OLD COACH DOG, OR, THE PHANTOM INN.

The scene to which we introduce the reader on this Thanksgiving Eve was in the old Winslow house at Green Harbor, now Marshfield, Mass. No house in America, we may safely say, ever had so many colonial legends of Thanksgiving Day as this.

“Silas,” said I, one night to an old stage-driver, “tell us the story of the dog that said ‘Silas!’”

The company eagerly demanded the tale.

It was a strange room. In one corner were bushel baskets heaped with corn. Uncle Silas shelled corn, as he said, “for company,” on other than holiday or Sunday evenings.

Over the corn baskets were strings of dried apples, pumpkins, and red peppers. Near the fireplace were rennets of cheese, and under the rafters were candle-poles.

The fireplace revealed great fore-sticks, apple-tree wood, which made an especially hot fire, and was used on Thanksgiving Eves, and at special times.

Apples in rows were toasting on the hot hearth.

The family consisted of an old couple, named White, and their sons and sons’ wives and children from towns near Boston, and a few invited guests.

Uncle Silas caught up his chair and lifted it in the jumping way of the old colonial time to a place nearer the fire. A shutter banged, and he cast his eyes mysteriously toward the window. The room grew very still.

“The clouds are scudding over the moon,” he began,—and I will tell the tale as he told it, as nearly as I remember,—“the wind is rising—I can hear it in the tops of the trees. Many’s the time I have gone down in the old stage-coach on nights like this, and leaped from the seat and snatched the mail-bag from the boot, and when I said ‘Silas,’ there would creep out of the boot that old coach dog.

“That dog was given to me by a sailor, who was about to go to sea from the old North River. He was a pup then.

“I never knew a dog that seemed to think so much of his master as that dog did of me. His eyes were never off of me.

“I taught him a number of tricks, such as to stand up on his hind legs and beg, which he did by uttering a sharp, pitiful cry. While begging one day, he made a sound like ‘Silas.’ I repeated it, and he uttered it again.

“After that I would hold back from him his food until he had made that sound. ‘Say Silas,’ I would say, and after a time he would utter the word, or what sounded like it.

“The old stage-coaches had great leather boots that covered the driver’s legs, and in cold and stormy days could be raised so high as to protect nearly the whole body. Under the boot I carried the mail-bags, and such packages as we to-day send by express.

“The mail-coach was sometimes robbed, when the boot was known to cover valuables. I carried my own money in a large wallet in a side pocket of a great gray coat, and money for others in the same way.

“I drove the stage for ten years, but I was never molested or robbed; and in those ten years my dog Silas always slept at my feet among the mail-bags.

“While I was driving the stage there was some strange things that happened in the old Dedham woods. Several travellers who had gone through those woods at night had met with strange adventures.

“They had seen a window and a light in a lonely place a little distance from the way, and heard the ringing of a bell like a supper-bell.

“Two of them had turned in toward the window, but as they attempted to approach it, it seemed to draw back into the heart of the woods. After walking toward it for a considerable distance, it seemed to them no nearer, and they had become alarmed, and suddenly turned and fled, believing it to be a ghost.

“One traveller, who had entered the road at dusk, had never been heard of again.

“After these events any one who saw the window at night took to his heels, and at last few persons would go through the woods after dark, except in a carriage or in company.

“The Dedham woods began to bear a bad reputation, but the dark events that had happened there were assigned to ghosts, and the vanishing window and light were spoken of as the ‘Phantom inn that travelled away.’

“Was I ever afraid when riding alone in the old Dedham woods? I always speak plainly, and I must say that I sometimes was. A sort of shadow of a fear would come over me.

“I never believed in ghosts or haunted houses after my early years. Yet a superstitious nature clings to me. It has often made me feel creepy, until I stopped to reason. It stands to reason that dead folks don’t appear with leather boots on, and hats and buttons and clothes woven in looms.

“The Dedham woods used to be a lonely place. It is mostly farms now. They stretched then away toward the coast. There were no towns like Hyde Park then; no Ponkapoag with villas; no costly summer homes.

“The sunlit spaces between the trees were full of bluejays, that would eye the coach with outstretched necks. I can seem to see them now.

“The Indian-pipe used to grow by the wayside, and back of it wild roses and green brakes and clematis, which bloomed and feathered late. The horses liked to slack up in summer, and walk under the cool shadows of the trees.

“Oh, those were lonely roads in winter. The winds used to whistle like this—woo-oo-oo. Just as though they were spinning—woo-oo-oo. They seemed to catch the spirit of the sea, which was not many miles away—woo-oo-oo; like that.

“People began to move away to York State. They called it up ‘country’ then. The Mohawk valley seemed as far away at that time as the prairies do now.

“I had a good offer to go to Albany and take a stage-route from there to Buffalo. I caught the up ‘country’ fever, and resolved to go.

“I may seem weak, but one of my greatest regrets on parting was that I would have to leave my old friend Silas, and I might never see him again.

“One day as I was stopping at the old Scituate inn, just before setting out for Albany, I met a stranger there. He called himself Searle. I shall never forget the eyes of that man. There seemed to be a hidden spirit, not himself, looking through them. They reminded me at once of the travelling window and light, or the Phantom inn.

“But Silas, the dog—I never met such a mystery as when the dog’s eyes first met those of that man. It used to be said in old New England times that dogs would see ghosts coming, and start up and howl, before people could see them. That dog seemed to see something mysterious in that man’s eyes.

“He leaped into the air when Searle appeared, and said ‘Silas.’

He then shook all over, dropped on his feet, and ran around me, whining in a fearful tone. What did it mean? I have thought of it an hundred times—what did it mean?

“‘Goin’ up country, I hear,’ said Searle.

“‘Yes, I have concluded to take the Albany route,’ said I. ‘There is more money in it.’

“‘Goin’ to take your dog here along with you? He’s a fine one.’

“‘No,’ said I; ‘I’ll have to go by the way of New York, and up the river to Albany, and I must leave him behind. If I were going by the way of Springfield I would take him along. I set a store by that dog.’

“‘Don’t want to sell him, do ye?’

“There came a strange light into the man’s eyes. I cannot describe it. It made me think of the travelling window in the woods again.

“I hesitated.

“‘Stranger,’ said I at last, ‘where do you live?’

“‘Oh, in a lonely place down by the Dedham ponds. They say it’s getting dangerous there, and I want a dog. I need one. Say, as you’re goin’ off, what will you take for him?’

“‘I don’t know; I wouldn’t sell him for anything if I didn’t have to.’

“‘I’ll give you ten dollars for him. That is high, but I’m lonely like, and they say them woods are getting dangerous. What do you say?’

“‘You may have him.’

“I felt somehow that I had done an unworthy thing,—that I had sold my dog to an unworthy master. That dog had such a true nature that he would never have tricked me with any act.

“How should I part with Silas? I felt my head ache at the thought of it—the dog had been so faithful. I decided I would have Searle put a rope on his collar, and would leave him in the evening in the office of the inn with him, and so steal away from him unknown. I did so,—and if ever I felt like a coward, it was then.

“Five years passed, when one November day I received a letter. My old friends, the Whites, had remembered me, and they invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them at Green Harbor.

“Wife’s folks lived in the old town of Dedham, and she urged me to accept the invitation, as she wished to go with me to Dedham. Her folks were getting old—but, poor woman, they outlived her.

“So I secured a driver to take my place for a few weeks, and we set out together for Boston and Dedham. One day, late in November, I left my wife among her folks, and set out, intending to walk over to Weymouth to see some friends, and there to take the stage for Marshfield.

“I had expected to start in the morning and make a day of it, but I was delayed until the afternoon. It was delightful Indian summer weather, and I did not mind a night walk, as I could rest in Weymouth.

“‘Don’t stop at the Phantom inn,’ said my wife, as we parted.

“‘I sha’n’t stop at no phantom inns,’ said I, ‘if I expect to reach Randolph to-night. There will no acorns sprout under my feet.’

“‘But,’ said my wife’s mother, ‘they do tell strange stories still about those woods. Are you armed?’

“‘Yes, as much as I ever am.’

“‘But you used to keep a dog.’

“I stalked away, laughing.

“Nightfall overtook me on the border of the old Dedham woods.

“I remember the strange mysterious feeling that came over me as I entered the shadow of the pines of that lonely road among the skeleton trees. I stopped and looked back.

“As I stood listening, there came a vivid impression that somehow I was in the companionship of the old coach dog, as I used to be. I could feel my heart shrink as I recalled how meanly I had treated him, and I eased my conscience with the reflection that I had done as well for him, and myself, as I could.

“That a dog might make his presence felt in some way by electrical force is possible I cannot say, but I repeat it,—I seemed to feel that the old coach dog was somewhere near me in these woods, and had a sense that I was there.

“I entered the lonely way, when another strange thing began to haunt me. It was the eyes of Searle. I had never forgotten them. I could almost see them again now. Every rattle in the savin bushes seemed to bring them back again.

“As I walked along with a witch-hazel stick for a cane, a great light rose like a fire among the tops of the gray rocks and skeleton trees. It was a full hunter’s moon coming up from the sea. After a time it went into a cloud, but the way was still clear. It was almost as still as death.

“Occasionally a timid rabbit would cross the way; once a white rabbit leaped out before me, and I felt my heart beat, and thought again of the old coach dog, Searle’s dreadful eyes, and the tales of the Phantom inn, at which I used to laugh when I drove the cape stage.

“The way grew more lonely, amid the oaks and the russet leaves, savins, pines, and rocks. In places the road was strewn with fallen nuts, and at some points with rustling leaves. Once the eyes of a white owl confronted me on a decaying limb—I thought again of Searle.

“I hurried on, hoping to reach Randolph before midnight, when suddenly I heard a sound that stopped my feet at once and sent a chill over me. It was a hollow tone, like the ringing of a supper-bell, such as used to be common in the farmhouses and inns.

“I looked in the direction of the sound, when I saw a little way from the road a window and a light among the trees. I stopped nervously.

“‘Is it imagination,’ I asked myself. ‘Is it a dream of the old story? Shall I run, or turn toward the bell?’

“I was frightened and my heart beat, but I am not a man to run. After hesitating for a few moments I turned into the wood in the direction of the window and the light, and found a path there which I began to follow cautiously.

“I walked to the place where I had first heard the bell and seen the window and the light, but the window and the light were apparently as far away now as when I started from the road. As I watched I could see it move back, but I could hear nothing.

“I stopped again. The window and the light soon seemed to stop. Should I run? No. I would shout. So I cried out, ‘Hullo!’

“The rocks answered my loud call with many echoes. A startled partridge rose on whirring wings from some wild alder-bushes near me. Then all was still, or—did I imagine it?—I thought I could hear the low piteous suppressed whine of a dog. The light vanished.

“I knew not what to do. I was unarmed. I went forward very slowly and cautiously, when the path grew soft, and the earth began to crumble beneath my feet. I paused and listened.

“A cry pierced the hollow air. How can I describe it? It thrilled every nerve in my body. I can hear it now; it seemed as though all the intensity of a human heart was in it—it said, it shrieked as the cry of some pent-up force,—it said,—

“‘Silas!’

“I knew the voice. It was a warning tone. I knew that dog’s tone of warning. I stepped back and listened again.

“I heard a struggle down in the distance. Where was I? It came to me. I was on the border of a ledge of rocks. Below me was a pond. Had I taken a few steps more I would have gone over into the water.

“I felt that the way led to a false projection over the water. I had been drawn toward a trap to destroy me. I felt the situation then as clearly as I can see it now.

“My every nerve quivered with terror, but my will grew stronger than ever before. I never knew how strong or how weak I was till then.

“As I stood listening, a fearful oath rose from the pond. Then all was still. I looked up to the sky. It was the only object that seemed friendly. The clouds parted below the hunter’s moon, and a wide silvery light swept over the scene. I was surely on a projecting edge of rock, or platform, over a pond.

“Suddenly I heard a sound in the bushes. It was a patter of feet. A dog came bounding out of the savins toward me. He rose up, springing as it were into the air, shook his paws, and cried,—I can hear it now,—

“‘Silas!’

“It was my old coach dog.

“I hurried back to the road, followed by the dog. Was it a dream? What had happened?

“At near midnight I came to my old friend’s farmhouse at Randolph, and roused the family. Before any one could speak I pointed to the dog.

“‘Tell me, for heaven’s sake, what is that?’ I cried.

“‘That is a dog,’ said my old friend, the farmer,—‘your old coach dog. What did you think it was? Where did you find him?’

“We went the next morning to the scene of my night’s adventure. One of the first things that we saw was the dead body of Searle, floating on the pond.

“The light in the window of the Phantom inn had allured me to the edge of a broad, false precipice, and I was just about to fall over into the pond when my old coach dog’s warning word had saved me. The dog had evidently dragged his dark-minded master over the rocky cliff into the pond.

“Searle had carried the window and light in his hand, and with covered feet had moved back to allure travellers.

“‘Silas?’ Yes, I must answer that question. What became of him? I took him back to Albany with me. He was an old dog then, and used to repeat that word in his distress. He said it more than once on the day that he died.”

Another story, related by Mr. Marlowe, which was quite appropriate to the place, was as follows:—

THE GREAT CHESHIRE CHEESES.

The Masons, whose history I used to hear, were among the founders of New Providence, the vanished village of the autumnal Berkshire Hills. I well recall the stories of Elder Leland that I used to hear in my old Swansea home, and especially the awful ghost-story that the courtly evangelist used to relate confidentially to a few friends. No Rhode Island farmer’s boy of thirty years ago will ever forget that, and any allusion to it would make, in those days, young feet nimble in dark chambers and on lonesome roads.

Times have, indeed, changed. No ghost-story, however vivid, would be likely to make a Rhode Island boy nervous to-day.

I recall also the more cheerful story of the great Cheshire Cheese, as we used to hear it, and have often repeated, in my young churning days, the New Providence receipt for turning cream into butter under the miracle-working influence of the old-time dasher:—

“Come, butter, come; Peter stands at the gate, Waiting for the butter-cake, Come, butter, come.”

The rhyme of this persuasive ditty is not perfect, and I am unable to say who “Peter” was, though the name sounds Apostolic; but the Cheshire and Rhode Island farmers’ wives could all declare that this brief invocation gave a wonderful efficacy to the churn-dasher.

I shall never forget my first excursion into Cheshire to visit the once famous farms of New Providence, and the graves of Elder Leland and the heroes of Bennington. It was a glimmering September day, such as brings the tourist of New York to Lenox, not far away.

The sky was an over-sea of gold. The Housatonic lay, here like a mirror of glass in the brown woodland pastures, there purling amid purple gentians over mossy dams.

The wrecks of old orchard trees dotted the landscape; fading beech-trees, with their bark perforated by the long bills of the golden-winged woodpeckers; aftermath in alluvial meadows; cornfields with orange banners on the uplands, and, over all, Greylock, green-wooded and maple-tinted, looking down the valley.

Graveyards—like little villages of the dead—with mossy stones, touched the heart and fancies, and the town at last came full in view, with its white spire and faded inn.

“Where is New Providence?” I asked of an old man who had stopped to rest on the cool russet sward under a leafy maple, where the locusts were singing in the bright air.

“There is no New Providence any more,” said he. “It is all gone: the hotels, the stores, the churches, all—there is not a house left. There is where it _was_.”

He pointed toward a sunny slope. How beautiful was the situation! But there was not so much as a house or an orchard. Shades of Oliver Goldsmith! Could it be possible that here in New England was a veritable Deserted Village?

“The inhabitants of New Providence all sleep in a little graveyard under the hill,” said the stranger, filling his pipe. “That was once New Providence Purchase, and was settled from Providence Plantations. It is now called Stafford Hill.

“Old Captain Joab Stafford, the hero of Bennington, is buried in the old graveyard, near the road. You can see his grave as you pass by.”

New Providence began in a pleasant joke. Old generous Captain Stafford, who was brought wounded at last from Bennington to his pleasant home and tavern, built his house in New Providence Purchase before he brought his wife from Rhode Island.

When his fine house was completed, he went after Mrs. Stafford, but refused to give her any description of his new place. Across the Connecticut on horseback they hastened toward the mountains.

“Now as we ride along,” said he, “and notice the new settlements, tell me when we come to just such a house as you would like.”

They rode through Cheshire, once called the Kitchen, and at last the good woman lifted her eyes to a bowery hill almost in the shadow of Greylock.

“How beautiful!” said she. “There is just such a home and place as I should like to have. If I could only live there, I would be perfectly satisfied.”

“You shall live there,” said her gallant husband. “That is our home.”

Out of that vanished house he was borne down the hill to his last resting-place in the valley below, and poets and orators spoke his praise.

Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1754, came to Cheshire when quite a young man. He was on one occasion called upon to speak from the pulpit, when the pastor was absent. There came to him a flow of words and ideas which astonished his hearers much and himself more, and he felt that he was allotted to be a preacher. He was a Baptist-Quaker, like Roger Williams.

It has been asserted that his influence made Madison President. He travelled to a distance of many thousand miles, preaching; crowds followed him everywhere, and queer stories of his eccentricities were repeated by every fireside.

Among the old Cheshire humorists and the old story-tellers of the tavern at New Providence, and the half-way inn at Cheshire on the old Boston and Albany stage-route, were gallant Captain Stafford, the Bennington hero, Freelove Mason, the jolly mistress of the first regular stage-route hostelry, William Brown, or “Sweet Billy,”—the “Artemas Ward” of Berkshire,—Elder John Leland, whose jokes were echoed ever by the sounding-board over his tall pulpit, and the rich old farmers by the name of Mason, Brown, Wood, and Cole, and the stage-drivers.

The story of the great Cheshire Cheese was once a New England wonder-tale, but was seldom correctly told, in all of its essential details. The making of it furnishes a picture of the early humor of the village, than which few pastoral scenes can be more pleasing, or more widely in contrast with many of the grim Puritan legends. Cheshire has a cheese-factory now; then every farm had a cheese-press. There was joy among the industrious dames of Cheshire, when the old stage-driver of the Berkshire Hills blew his horn, and swung his hat, and shouted, “Hurrah for President Jefferson!” The buxom dairy-women had been well-schooled in Democratic politics by Elder Leland, himself an intimate friend of Jefferson, and a disciple of the broad principles of the Declaration.

“Toot, toot for Jefferson!” rung out the horn and voice of Cameralsman, the lusty stage-driver, as he passed through the thrifty Mason farms.

“Jefferson it is!” said Freelove Mason, the ruddiest dame of the Berkshire Hills; “and how shall we celebrate our victory like free and honest people that we are?”

“How?” said the Cheshire dames. “We will make the biggest cheese ever pressed in America,—such an one as the farmers have been joking about,—and send it to the new President for a present. Every cow in Berkshire shall furnish the milk for the curd.”

I need not say that the great cheese was made. All the Yankee world knows that. The summer of bobolinks and morning-glories that followed the political spring of happiness in Cheshire saw a great gathering of curds on a certain day, and all the kirtled dames met at Elisha Brown’s, and compounded the mammoth gift to the President.

It was pressed in a cider-mill, and if it did not require four horses to draw it, it is said that that number was harnessed to the vehicle that brought it from the press, where it had been pressed for ten days. It weighed one thousand two hundred and thirty-five pounds, was carried to the Hudson and shipped to Washington. Elder Leland went with the great cheese, “preaching,” as he said, “all the way.”

The stately correspondence between Leland and Jefferson, in offering and accepting the gift, is still preserved. Those were the days when every voter supposed himself to be a born king by right of the Constitution, and it took the old formal style of writing to express the sentiments of the new monarchs. Jefferson’s letter, accepting the great cheese, was worthy of the author of “When in the course of human events.”

Elder Leland, tall and courtly, was well adapted to the dramatic part of the occasion. A grander commoner never entered the Republican court. Jefferson had often met the great revival preacher in Virginia, for Leland depopulated towns to listen to his fiery eloquence wherever he went. His calling to the ministry, like Saint Paul’s, had come, as he believed, in the form of a voice out of the skies, and his tongue, to use the old Hebrew simile common in the old days, had been “touched by a burning coal from the altar.”

There are few preachers like Leland to-day. Eloquent as the old Methodist field preachers, elegant and courtly as a Camille Desmoulins, witty as a Swift or Steele, and far in advance of his times in the liberality of his opinions, a theological disciple of Roger Williams and Samson Mason, and a political follower of Jefferson, he was not only a remarkable preacher, but one of the most noted men of his time. He labored as a winter revivalist in Virginia for many years, before he made his home in Cheshire.

It was one of the humors of the time to relate events of a pleasing character in the style of the Hebrew Chronicles, and the Chronicle of the Cheshire Cheese was once well-known in the story-telling town. It began:—

“And Jacknips said unto the Cheshirites, ‘Behold, the Lord hath put a ruler over us that is after our own hearts. Now let us gather together our curds, and carry them into the valley of Elisha, unto his wine-press, and there make a great cheese, that we may make a thank-offering unto the great man.’ Now this saying pleased the Cheshirites, so they did as Jacknips had commanded.”

The great Cheshire Cheese was shared by the President with the governors of several States, to whom samples were sent. The story of it was a great advertisement of Berkshire County; and it was resolved to make a still larger cheese, which should weigh sixteen hundred pounds.

Elder Leland’s church was famous for its psalmody. He himself wrote many hymns, among them the almost Ambrosian tone-picture,—

“The day is past and gone.”

He used sometimes to ascend the pulpit singing.

There was one of the numerous Brown family of Cheshire who was a famous singer in his day, and to him we will assign a popular story of the time. His voice not only filled the church, but went out of the window. His bass notes were deep and full,—“foot-notes,” he called them,—and it was his special pride to inform the people in the then masterpiece of country-church choir music how

“The angel of The angel of The Lord came down. And glory shone around, And glory And g-l-o-r-y, etc.”

During the great winter revivals in Elder Leland’s church, Singer Brown was all eyes, ears, and voice. But the dairy-making season that produced the sweet butter and mammoth cheeses for which Cheshire became famous was very trying to his eyelids, during the long Sunday sermons, and the tithing-man often had a sore trial to keep his attention steady after the “sixthly” or “seventhly.”

It was all so restful in the old church,—the bobolinks singing in the clover outside, the red-breasted robins in the tall trees! The cool breezes came into the windows from the hayfields, over which the cloud-shadows passed.

Then, too, even fiery Elder Leland’s voice had a far-away sound when he came to the usual part of a New England sermon about the Jews in Jerusalem, and still more dreary was it when the Jews were in Babylon.

Singer Brown, on such occasions, would become oblivious of both the Jews and the Gentiles, and would have to be waked by the vigilant tithing-man.

Elder Leland himself had a genius for waking people on such restful and balmy days. Once, when a farmer under the gallery had fallen asleep and tipped back his head, with his mouth stretched open from ear to ear, some very imaginative boys in the gallery stuck a pin into a bean and lowered it down by a string to the open mouth, like a bucket into a well.

When the tall Elder saw it he didn’t rebuke the boys, but seizing the Bible, slammed it down on the pulpit with a cannon shake, at the same time calling out to the poor man: “Wake up! wake up!”

The industrious farmer’s slumbers were broken by these gentle circumstances, and he was enabled to follow the wanderings of the Jews during the rest of the sermon.

But Singer Brown, on one Sunday, fell asleep beside the old bass-viol amid such scandalous consequences that the tithing-man, the clerk, and the venerable deacons never forgave him.

It all is supposed to have happened in the summer of 1803, the third year of the reign of the universal Kings under the good King Commoner, Thomas Jefferson, when ambitious people of Cheshire had put their heads together to make a bigger cheese than the one that had been made for their chosen President. The history of this cheese is often confused with the Jeffersonian present.

One Sunday morning in June, Goody Brown gave to her consort, Singer Billy, the long-necked pitcher, and sent him to the neighbors for milk. Billy went from house to house, but was refused.

“Not to-day, Billy,” said every one; “we are saving our milk for the big cheese, you know.”

After Billy had wandered about amid the dews to the Masons’, the Waggoners’, and others, without success, although all the pantries were overflowing, he obtained a pint of milk at last from a Federalist, who was not in full sympathy even with the enterprises of the community.

It was now church time, and he was to sing bass to “The Lord descended from above” that day, in his view a stupendous performance. So he took his milk-pitcher along with him to the church, and up into the choir-loft.

A red curtain hung on rings ran before the singers in the choir. The music books were placed on racks, and the choir was directly over the high pulpit, the deacon’s seat, and the clerk’s pew. A huge sounding-board hung over the pulpit, which was a kind of mahogany pen, with stairs on each side, and doors. The top of the pulpit reached almost to the choir.

Singer Billy sang well that morning the sonorous music of William Billings of Stoughton, and touched the “foot-notes” with impressive clearness.

Then he felt that his work was over, and began to be oblivious to the truth that was being proclaimed under the sounding-board. The old deacons, too, after all the excitements of mowing, milkings, and the preparations for making of the new cheese, were not in the most receptive mood, but felt the world gliding away from them in various ways.

The clerk fell quite asleep, and wandered away in the far regions of air beyond the solid continents of all theologies. Even the tithing-man had dropped his rod.

In this hour, when watchfulness had ceased, disaster came, and brought a scandal upon the descendants of the heroic Samson Mason, and upon all.

A dog came trotting up the choir stairs. He, too, had found milk scarce that morning, and smelling Singer Billy’s pitcher near the red curtain, looked around and found that Billy and most of the singers were quite indifferent to current events. He ran his head down the long neck of the pitcher toward the pint of milk in the great hollow below.

But while the descent of his head into the pitcher was easy, the withdrawing of it was otherwise. His head would not come out. He put up his inefficient paws and rubbed the outside of the pitcher; he moved to and fro, backward and forward. At last, not knowing where he was going, he passed quite under the red curtain, and finally succeeded in pushing the pitcher over the balcony.

There was an alarming crash in the deacon’s pew. Was ever anything so extraordinary? It was not a centaur that had come down, half horse and half man, but a yet more marvellous beast, half dog and half pitcher. The pitcher was broken to fragments; the dog howled pitifully; the clerk and the deacons all awoke at once, and the tithing-man leaped to his feet.

Singer Brown, too, suddenly came down from the blissful clover-gardens of dreamland, and looking over the curtain on the scene of mystery and disaster below, comprehended at a glance all that had happened. He prophetically calculated the future, and quickly slipped down the stairs, and out of the church.

When questioned about the matter, he said, with unusual dignity,—

“What but humiliation could you have expected from a people whose hearts had turned to the worship of cheeses?”

I stood recently in the old Cheshire churchyard by the grave of good Elder Leland, and read with a tender reverence the following simple inscription, on his tombstone, which had been prepared by himself:—

“Here lies John Leland of Cheshire, who labored to promote piety and to vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men.”

His “Evening Hymn” is his true monument, but he will long be a figure in the history of that quaint past.

“TRIP-TRIP-TO-DEE-DEE.”

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S STORY.

A hand was raised in the reading-class.

“Well?” I asked.

“What became of _that_ man?”

“I do not know, James. This reading lesson is a humorous story.”

I was a teacher when the unexpected question was asked me. The second class in reading used a book, long ago out of print, that was called the “Introduction to the American Common School Reader and Speaker.” Some of my readers may recall it. It contained a single humorous selection, entitled “A Melting Story.” It was this selection that had been read, when my honest pupil, James, asked the question,—

“What became of _that_ man?”

“That man” was the unhappy subject of the reading-book story. One cold winter’s night he had slipped into a country store while the keeper had gone out to close the blinds, and had stolen a pound ball of butter, and put it into his hat, and replaced the hat, with the butter ball in the top of the crown, on his head. The storekeeper saw the act, and determined to punish the thief in as cunning a way as the theft had been committed. He rushed into the store, confronted the butter stealer, and compelled him to sit down by the stove. He filled the stove with wood, and began to talk in a lively manner, and, adding seasoned wood to the roaring fire, made the place so hot that the butter melted in the thief’s hat, and ran down over his face and shoulders.

The thief, thus detained, made many excuses to get away, but the storekeeper would not accept them, but held him in torture, his face and hair dripping with the butter. At last, when the butter had thoroughly oiled his woful guest, he rose and said: “I say, Seth, the fun that I have had out of you to-night will well pay me for that pound of butter. I shall not charge it,” or words with this meaning. This selection of reading was very popular in old schools forty years ago.

I well recall the class that read this selection. It stretched across the platform in a zigzag row. Some of the boys were tall, some short, and the girls who stood at the head read much better than the boys. The days usually began to grow long, and the snows to melt and drip from the icicles on the roof, when we reached this selection, which was near the end of the book. The windows looked out on the long snowscapes, broken by icy woods and green savin trees. At a little distance the simple church spire was seen gleaming under the blue sky, and the dark slate-stones in the churchyard were a constant reminder of the mortality of us all.

The pupils brought their dinners in tin dinner pails, and often shared their sweet-breads with each other. Some of the pupils were very poor, and could only bring corn bread for the noon lunch. James’s father was a prosperous farmer, and provided him with generous lunches, and he used to share them with the poor boys and girls. I had learned to love him for these acts of generosity. James was as honest as he was generous. He had a very sympathetic nature, and it was this that prompted him to ask with a serious face while the rest of the class were laughing,—

“What became of _that_ man?”

The question haunted me for the half hour that the reading exercise continued, though I had regarded the story as a fiction. Just before I dismissed the class I said,—

“James, I should think from your tone of voice and serious look that you rather sympathized with the thief.”

“If we knew all things in people’s hearts, we should pity everybody,” he said. “The Bible says that if a man be overtaken in a fault, those that have spiritual strength should restore him. I would never have published a story like that. I would have given the man a chance to regain his self-respect. Wouldn’t you?”

I can see him now,—his manly, handsome face, clear blue eyes, high color, and intensity of expression. Five years afterwards he entered Andover Seminary, and the feathery palms of a missionary graveyard under a tropic sky wave over his dead body now.

The pupils dropped their slates, and the class lowered their books to hear what I would say. I hesitated. The schoolroom grew painfully still, the wood roared on the fire of the stove, and the evergreen, or creeping-jenny, that had been turned around the stove-pipe, crackled and fell.

“I should feel that it was a duty that I owe to the public safety to expose a thief,” I answered. “Wouldn’t you, James?”

“I had rather change an evil-doer into an honest man,” he replied. “In that case he might never steal again. I”—he hesitated. There was the same painful stillness in the room.

“What, James?”

“I have heard that that man is still living in Maine, and that after that joke he lost all regard for respectability, and became a beggar. I do not know that the report is true, but a man from Portland told my father so in my hearing.” The stillness continued. He added: “Governor Winthrop forgave a thief who robbed his woodpile, by sending for him and offering to give him the wood he needed.”

The term drew to its close. Washington’s Birthday passed, the bell ringing out in the little white steeple. The March days grew long and bright, with occasional flurries of snow; the bluebirds came fluting into the gray orchards; the woodpeckers tapped the hollow trees, and the wild geese passed over, honking like flying trumpets or mellow horns in the sky. Early April brought examination day. The grave committee came, making my little principality tremble; heard the classes recite, read, and spell, made a “few remarks,” and then the winter school was over.

I can see those old pupils now, as they stood in the yard about the door in the late April afternoon, their faces bright in the western sunlight. I never met them again as I saw them then.

I parted with James with peculiar reluctance, as he was one of the most high-minded boys that I had ever met, and had a heart to feel and a hand to help.

On examination day the “Melting Story” was read, which elicited from one of the members of the committee the rugged remark:—

“That’s a good one; served him right; it wouldn’t ha’ been improper for the boys to laugh after a story like that, would it, teacher?”

“No,” I answered. “I allow them to laugh in such a case.”

But the class did not laugh. James’s inquiries in regard to the narrative had changed the spirit of all the young readers.

The impression that James had made haunted me. It seemed to me that the story was incomplete, and I carried the sympathetic inquiry of my pupil in my mind: “What became of _that_ man?”

One blue April day, a few years after the incident that had occurred in my dear old class, I was walking the streets of a great seaport city in Maine, when a very strange scene met my eye.

Two boys came, as it were, flying from a narrow street into a public square, each screaming at the top of his voice,—

“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Who stole the butter?”

My eye followed them in lively curiosity, and at once the old story in the reading-book and James’s inquiry came rushing back to my mind. I had heard that there were two stories of this kind, and which one had given rise to the popular reading-book narrative could hardly be determined except by the author, of whom I knew nothing.

What followed caused me to stand still. A poor, wretched-looking old man, with a basket on his arm, came hobbling and jumping out of the same street, with a cobblestone in one hand. He was evidently chasing the boys. As he entered the square, the boys turned around and cried again,—

“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Who stole the butter? Who stole the butter?”

The old man came to a halt, and, with wild eyes and a frantic movement, threw the stone at the boys. They dodged the revengeful missile, and skipped away, calling,—

“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee!”

A well-dressed stranger stopped near to see the odd episode.

“Who is that old man?” I asked.

“Oh, that is Trip-Trip-to-Day-Day. He is a character here. The boys torment him. They like to have him chase them. There are few boys in this part of the city that he has not chased.”

“What is his occupation?” I continued.

“Oh, a common beggar. He is almost the only street beggar in this city. He lives, I think, in some old hut outside of the place, and comes here begging each morning, with his basket on his arm. Look at him.”

I looked. The running and the vengeful throwing of the stone had exhausted him, and he had just sunk down in a heap, as it were, on a seat in the square.

The old question that James had asked came to me again with irresistible force. I crossed the street to the square, and sat down on the long bench beside the half-animated bundle of rags.

The old man peered into my face.

“I—am—all exhausted,” he said; “’gin out—I can’t do as I used to do.”

“It’s a fine day,” I said.

“Yes—ha—a fine day for fine folks. Ha—all days are pretty much the same to me. Are you a stranger here?”

“Yes; what is your name?”

“Seth—ha—Seth. That is my name. What’s yourn?”

“Why do the people here allow the boys to trouble an old man like you? I thought people were civil here,—that this was a Christian city.”

“You did, did ye, stranger? Ha, you thought that the people were civiller, ha? Well, they be generally, as a rule, but not to old Seth. Well, never mind. I shall get through by and by. I shall have to throw rocks at ’em while I live, and can hobble about, ha. Stranger, I’ll tell you how it was. It may seem strange to you that one thing like that should ruin a man’s life, but it has mine. I’d been careless about living on the square for some time, when it happened—that joke that crippled me for life.”

He caught his breath convulsively with a halting “Ha,” and then continued:—

“It was a terrible cold night when I went into that store, and found that the store-keeper had gone out to shut up the blinds. I was all alone, and there came over me the impulse to profit by the chance. Somethin’ seemed to whisper to me: ‘Here is your luck, make the most of it.’ Stranger, there was once a time when I would have no such temptation if I’d gone into an empty shop with an open drawer of uncounted dollars.

“I saw the balls of butter in the cool corner of the store. I seized one. My conscience began to burn, and I threw water upon it by saying: ‘I’ll pay for it at some other time!’ Men cool conscience in that way.

“The storekeeper came back with a queer look on his face. He did not appear nat’ral. He was too friendly. He made me sit down close to the stove. I could feel my heart beat under my coat. When a person is dealing unfair with you, you feel it in the air. I could feel in the air that something was wrong.

“Well, the stove roared; it turned red. The place was close, and I was so nervous that I began to perspire. Then all at once—how the thing struck me like a death-shot!—the butter began to melt. I could feel it trickling down my hair, and dropping into my back. I thought of the old hymn about the holy oil and Aaron’s beard. I wished that the butter in my hat was like that. I hoped still that the storekeeper did not suspect me, but I felt that he did. The butter was shaping itself to my head. I dared not take off my hat. I wondered if the butter were soaking through it. I tried to move back, but there was no room. Then I felt the oil creeping down the back of my head. It would soon flow over my forehead. I leaped up; I said: ‘I must go—I ain’t well—let me out—I must go.’ But the storekeeper stood before me, and made me sit down again. Had I been right and strong within, I could not have done it. But a conscience-stung man will do anything,—he is a coward, and his heart is wax.

“I sat down, with a feeling as though I was stifled. The butter kept on melting; it ran down over my face, and I wiped it off with my mittens and comforter. I never before dreamed how much oil there was in a pound of butter. Would it ever cease to flow?

“Well, the storekeeper let me go at last, and told me of the fun that my punishment had given him. Stranger, I deserved the punishment; I acknowledge it was just. But I wished that he had taken some other way, and given me a chance. I was not wholly bad; I might not have been where I am now.

“The next day all the people in the town were laughing at me. Stranger, there is nothing that kills a man like ridicule, and since that time I’ve cared for nothing but to trip, trip about, and do chores, and beg, and throw stones at the boys. Stranger, I sometimes wish that I was young again when I hear the robins sing. But the spring stalk never blooms twice. Stranger, I was to blame. Ah, well, my glass is almost run; it can never be turned again.”

On one side of the square, across the street, was an orchard-yard, and some low, budding peach-trees. Into the boughs of this yard robins came chirping and singing while the old man was speaking, and when he became silent the birds sang again. The old man listened to the first song of the robin, and, turning to me, said:—

“Robins? It’s spring again. I’m glad the winter is over. I like to hear the robins when they first begin to sing. About the only friends I’ve got is the robins.”

“How is that, my friend?”

“Stranger—ha—you’ve read about old Bible times? They used to stone people who stole in those days. They don’t do so now, but it’s just as bad—wrongdoers throw stones at themselves. All my troubles began with stealing a pound of butter. I began to throw stones at myself, and the world only followed me.”

The sun grew warm. The purple sea rolled afar, here and there white with flying sails and with the long breakers that churned on rocks and ledges. A robin seemed to catch the inspiration of the day, and her voice quivered with thrilling joy and flute-like heraldings.

“Just hear that bird,” said the old man. “I’d like to have a robin sing over me after I am gone. No one cares for me, and I seem to have lost interest in everything. Well, I’m rested now, and I must travel on.”

He rose and hobbled away, his face turned upward toward the sun. When he had gone a little distance, he stopped to hear the spring robin sing again. He seemed to catch a moment of happiness; then his face fell, and he went on.

I inquired in regard to the history of this man at the hotel.

“He has no friends, and lives all alone,” said the clerk. “There’s a piece in the reading-book about him, or a man like him; you may have seen it.”

“Is it called ‘A Melting Story’?” I asked.

“Yes; I think that is the title of it.”

“A Melting Story!” The last scene of all was indeed a melting story, and one that left not only tears in my eyes, but a lesson in my experience!

Ten years had passed, and I was again in the same port city, and visited the same neighborhood. The memory of my old class came back to me, and with it the thought of “Trip-Trip-to-Dee-Dee.” I made inquiry of a friend about the old man.

“His journey is over at last,” was the answer. “He was very old when he died,—over an hundred, I think. He lived alone, and I have heard that he died alone. He used to think the robins came to sing to him.

“The joke of the pound of butter ruined him, and followed him to the end of his life.

“Wherever he used to go, the air was sure to ring with the shout: ‘Who stole the butter?’

“One day he went hobbling out of town. ‘I shall never come back again,’ he said. ‘They have stoned me to death with their cries. Old Seth is going where he will have peace, and the robins will sing over him, when the spring comes to the harbor. Old Seth is now going for good to the robins.’

“The prophecy was true. When we go out to ride I will show you where he used to live.”

That afternoon we rode in sight of the sea. My friend turned into a quiet way at last. We came to a hut, and near it was a heap of stones, and over the door was a robin’s nest.

“They say he used to live there. I do not know. But for a generation he was a wellnigh homeless wanderer in these roads and streets. The inhumanity shown to that poor old witless man is something more than a melting story. A single evil report may follow a man to the death of his self-respect, and much that is good in his heart and soul. I pity the lips that taunt a man like that.”

I thought of the old reading-class and of James, and I read in James’s question the lesson that it had intended to imply. My dear old pupil was right, at least, in the charity of his thought, and I shall always love his memory in association with the curious history of “Trip-Trip-to-Dee-Dee.”