THE POGANUC PARSONAGE.
The parsonage was a wide, roomy, windy edifice that seemed to have
been built by a succession of after-thoughts. It was at first a model
New England house, built around a great brick chimney, which ran up
like a light-house in the center of the square roof. Then came, in
course of time, a side-wing which had another chimney and another
suite of rooms. A kitchen grew out on another side, and out of the
kitchen a sink-room; and out of the sink-room a wood-house, and
out of the wood-house a carriage-house, and so on with a gradually
lessening succession of out-buildings.
New England houses have been said by a shrewd observer to be
constructed on the model of a telescope; compartment after
compartment, lessening in size, and all under one cover.
But in the climate where the business of one half of the year
is to provide fuel for the other half, such a style of domestic
architecture becomes convenient. During the long winter months
everything was under cover, giving grand scope for the children to
play.
When the boys were graciously disposed to Dolly, she had a deal of
good fun with them in the long range of the divers sheds. They made
themselves houses, castles and fortresses in the wood-pile, and
played at giving parties and entertainments, at which Spring and the
cat also assisted in silent and subsidiary parts.
Sometimes they held town-meetings or voting-days, in which the
Democrats got their dues in speeches that might have struck terror to
their souls had they heard them. At other times they held religious
meetings, and sung hymns and preached, on which occasions Dolly had
been known to fall to exhorting with a degree of fervor and a fluency
in reciting texts of Scripture which for the time produced quite an
effect on her auditors, and led Nabby, who listened behind the door,
to say to Mrs. Cushing that 'that air child was smarter than was good
for her; that she'd either die young or else come to suthin' one of
these days'--a proposition as to which there could not rationally be
any difference of opinion.
The parsonage had also the advantage of three garrets--splendid
ground for little people. There was first the garret over the
kitchen, the floors of which in the fall were covered with stores
of yellow pumpkins, fragrant heaps of quinces, and less fragrant
spread of onions. There were bins of shelled corn and of oats, and,
as in every other garret in the house, there were also barrels of
old sermons and old family papers. But most stimulating to the
imagination of all the features of this place was the smoke-house,
which was a wide, deep chasm made in the kitchen chimney, where the
Parson's hams and dried beef were cured. Its door, which opened into
this garret, glistened with condensed creosote, a rumbling sound was
heard there, and loud crackling reverberated within. Sometimes Dolly
would open the door and peer in fearfully as long as her eyes could
bear the smoke, and think with a shudder of a certain passage in John
Bunyan, which reads:
"Then I saw in my dream that the shepherds had them to another place,
in a bottom, where was a door in the side of a hill; and they opened
the door and bid them look in. They looked in, therefore, and saw
that within it was dark and smoky; they also thought that they heard
a rumbling noise as of fire and a cry of some tormented, and that
they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, What means
this? The shepherds told them, This is a by-way to Hell, a way that
hypocrites go in at, namely, such as sell their birthright with Esau;
such as sell their Master with Judas; such as lie and dissemble with
Ananias and Sapphira his wife."
Dolly shivered when she thought of this, and was glad when Nabby
would come up behind and, with her strong hands, seize and whirl her
away, remarking,
"Dolly Cushing, _what_ won't you be into next, I want ter know?"
And then she would proceed to demonstrate the mundane and earthly
character of the receptacle by drawing from it a very terrestrial and
substantial ham.
Garret number two was over the central portion of the original
house. There were vast heaps of golden corn on the cob, spread
upon sheets. There were piles of bed-quilts and comforters, and
chests of blankets. There were rows and ranges of old bonnets and
old hats, that seemed to nod mysteriously from their nails. There
were old spinning-wheels, an old clock, old armchairs, and old
pictures, snuffy and grim, and more barrels of sermons. There also
were the boys' cabinets of mineralogical specimens; for the Academy
teacher was strong on geology, and took his boys on long tramps with
stone-hammers on their shoulders, and they used to discuss with great
unction to Dolly of tourmaline, and hornblende, and mica, and quartz,
and feldspar, delighted to exhibit before her their scientific
superiority.
This garret was a favorite resort of the children, and the laws
of the Parsonage requiring everything to be always in order were
conveniently mitigated and abridged in favor of this one spot, where
it was so convenient to let the whole noisy brood range when their
presence disturbed the order below.
There the boys whittled and made windmills and boats, and
rabbit-traps, and whistles with which they whistled grievously at
unexpected and startling moments, and this always led to their mother
telling them that she was "astonished" at them, or to her asking, How
many times she must say whistling was _not_ allowed in the house?
Perhaps among other subjects of speculative inquiry it may have
occurred to Mrs. Cushing to wonder why nature, having gifted boys in
their own proper lungs with such noise-producing power, should also
come to their assistance with so many noise-producing instruments.
There were all the squash-vines in the garden offering trumpets ready
made; there was the elder-bush, growing whistle-wood by the yard; and
then the gigantic whistles that could be manufactured from willow,
and poplar, and black alder were mysteries distressing to contemplate.
One corner of the garret was reserved safe from the rummaging of the
children, and there hung in order the dried herbs, which formed
the pharmacopoeia of those early days. There were catnip, and
boneset, and elder-blow, and hard-hack, and rosemary, and tansy, and
pennyroyal, all gathered at the right time of the moon, dried and
sorted and tied in bundles, hanging from their different nails--those
canonized floral saints, which when living filled the air with odors
of health and sweetness, and whose very mortal remains and dry bones
were supposed to have healing virtues. Some of Dolly's happiest hours
were those long sunny, joyous, Saturday afternoons in which many of
these stores were gathered, when she rushed through the lush, long
grass, along the borders of mossy old stone fences, and pulled down
starry constellations of elder blossoms, and gathered pink spires
of hard-hack, till her little arms could scarcely clasp around the
bundle. Then she would rush home panting and energetic, with torn
dress, her sunbonnet off on her shoulder, and curls all tangled
from the wrestles with blackberry bushes which had disputed the way
with her. This corner of the garret always filled Dolly's head with
visions and longings for the late, slow-coming spring, which seemed
far off as the dream of Heaven.
Then those barrels of sermons and old pamphlets! Dolly had turned
and turned them, upsetting them on the floor, and pawing helplessly
with her little pink hands and reading their titles with amazed
eyes. It seemed to her that there were some thousands of the
most unintelligible things. "An Appeal on the Unlawfulness of a
Man's Marrying his Wife's Sister" turned up in every barrel she
investigated, by twos or threes or dozens, till her soul despaired
of finding an end. Then there were Thanksgiving sermons; Fast-day
sermons; sermons that discoursed on the battle of Culloden; on the
character of Frederick the Great; a sermon on the death of George the
Second, beginning, "George! George! George is no more." This somewhat
dramatic opening caused Dolly to put that one discourse into her
private library. But oh, joy and triumph! one rainy day she found at
the bottom of an old barrel a volume of the "Arabian Nights," and
henceforth her fortune was made. Dolly had no idea of reading like
that of our modern days--to read and to dismiss a book. No; to read
was with her a passion, and a book once read was read daily; always
becoming dearer and dearer, as an old friend. The "Arabian Nights"
transported her to foreign lands, gave her a new life of her own;
and when things went astray with her, when the boys went to play
higher than she dared to climb in the barn, or started on fishing
excursions, where they considered her an incumbrance, then she found
a snug corner, where, curled up in a little, quiet lair, she could at
once sail forth on her bit of enchanted carpet into fairy land.
One of these resorts was furnished by the third garret of the house,
which had been finished off into an arched room and occupied by her
father as a study. High above all the noise of the house, with a
window commanding a view of Poganuc Lake and its girdle of steel-blue
pines, this room had to her the air of a refuge and sanctuary. Its
walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the friendly, quiet
faces of books, and there stood her father's great writing-chair,
on one arm of which lay open always his "Cruden's Concordance" and
his Bible. Here Dolly loved to retreat and niche herself down in a
quiet corner, with her favorite books around her. She had a kind of
sheltered, satisfied feeling as she thus sat and watched her father
writing, turning his books, and speaking from time to time to himself
in a loud, earnest whisper. She vaguely felt that he was about some
holy and mysterious work above her little comprehension, and she was
careful never to disturb him by question or remark.
The books ranged around filled her, too, with a solemn awe. There
on the lower shelves were great enormous folios, on whose backs she
spelled in black letters, "Lightfooti Opera," a title whereat she
marveled, considering the bulk of the volumes. And overhead, grouped
along in friendly and sociable rows, were books of all sorts and
sizes and bindings, the titles to which she had read so often that
she knew them by heart. "Bell's Sermons," "Bonnett's Inquiries,"
"Bogue's Essays," "Toplady on Predestination," "Boston's Fourfold
State," "Law's Serious Call," and other works of that kind she had
looked over wistfully, day after day, without getting even a hope
of something interesting out of them. The thought that her father
could read and could understand things like these filled her with a
vague awe, and she wondered if ever she should be old enough to know
what it was all about. But there was one of her father's books which
proved a mine of wealth to her. It was a happy hour when he brought
home and set up in his book-case Cotton Mather's "Magnalia," in a new
edition of two volumes. What wonderful stories these! and stories,
too, about her own country, stories that made her feel that the very
ground she trod on was consecrated by some special dealing of God's
providence.
When the good Doctor related how a plague that had wasted the Indian
tribes had prepared the room for the Pilgrim Fathers to settle
undisturbed, she felt nowise doubtful of his application of the
text, "He drave out the heathen and planted them."
But who shall describe the large-eyed, breathless wonder with which
she read stories of witchcraft, with its weird marvels of mysterious
voices heard in lonely places, of awful visitations that had
overtaken sinners, and immediate deliverances that had come in answer
to the prayers of God's saints? Then, too, the stories of Indian
wars and captivities, when the war-whoop had sounded at midnight,
and little children like her had awakened to find the house beset
with legions of devils, who set fire to the dwellings and carried
the people off through dreary snow and ice to Canada. No Jewish
maiden ever grew up with a more earnest faith that she belonged to a
consecrated race, a people especially called and chosen of God for
some great work on earth. Her faith in every word of the marvels
related in this book was full as great as the dear old credulous Dr.
Cotton Mather could have desired.
But the mysterious areas of the parsonage were not exhausted with
its three garrets. Under the whole house in all its divisions
spread a great cavernous cellar, where were murky rooms and dark
passages explored only by the light of candles. There were rows
of bins, in which were stored the apples of every name and race
harvested in autumn from the family orchard: Pearmains, Greenings,
Seek-no-furthers, Bristers, Pippins, Golden Sweets, and other
forgotten kinds, had each its separate bin, to which the children
at all times had free access. There, too, was a long row of cider
barrels, from whence, in the hour of their early sweetness, Dolly had
delighted to suck the cider through straws for that purpose carefully
selected and provided.
Not without a certain awe was her descent into this shadowy Avernus,
generally under the protecting wing of Nabby or one of the older
boys. Sometimes, with the perverse spirit which moves the male
nature to tyrannize over the weaker members, they would agonize her
by running beyond her into the darker chambers of the cellar, and
sending thence Indian war-whoops and yells which struck terror to her
soul, and even mingled their horrors with her dreams.
But there was one class of tenants whose influence and presence in
the house must not be omitted--and that was the rats.
They had taken formal possession of the parsonage, grown, bred, and
multiplied, and become ancient there, in spite of traps or cats or
anything that could be devised against them.
The family cat in Dolly's day, having taken a dispassionate survey of
the situation, had given up the matter in despair, and set herself
quietly to attending to her own family concerns, as a sensible cat
should. She selected the Doctor's pamphlet closet as her special
domestic retreat. Here she made her lair in a heap of old sermons,
whence, from time to time, she led forth coveys of well-educated,
theological kittens, who, like their mother, gazed on the rats with
respectful curiosity, and ran no imprudent risks. Consequently, the
rats had a glorious time in the old parsonage. Dolly, going up the
kitchen stairs into the back garret, as she did on her way bedward,
would see them sitting easy and _dégagés_ on the corners of boxes and
bins, with their tails hanging gracefully down, engaged in making
meals on the corn or oats. They ramped all night on the floor of the
highest garret over her sleeping room, apparently busy in hopping
with ears of corn across the garret and then rolling them down
between the beams to their nests below. Sometimes Dolly heard them
gnawing and sawing behind the very wainscot of her bed as if they had
set up a carpenter's shop there, and she shrunk apprehensively for
fear they were coming through into her bed. Then there were battles
and skirmishes and squealings and fightings, and at times it would
appear as if whole detachments of rats rolled in an avalanche down
the walls with the corn they had been stealing. And when the mighty
winter winds of Poganuc Mountain were out, and rumbled and thundered,
roaring and tumbling down this chimney, rattling all the windows and
creaking all the doors, while the beams of the house wrenched and
groaned like a ship at sea, and the house seemed to shake on its very
foundations,--then the uproar among the rats grew higher and jollier,
and, with all put together, it is not surprising that sometimes Dolly
put the bed-clothes over her head in fear, or ran and jumped into
Nabby's warm arms for protection.
We have dwelt thus long on the old parsonage because it was a silent
influence, every day fashioning the sensitive, imaginative little
soul that was growing up in its own sphere of loneliness there.
For Mrs. Cushing had, besides Dolly, other children who engaged her
thoughts and care. The eldest a son, studying for the ministry;
the second a daughter, married and settled in a distant part of
the state; another son working as teacher to pay his past college
expenses; another son in college, whose bills, clothing, books, and
necessary expenses formed constant items of thought, study, and
correspondence; so that, with the two boys in the academy and our
little Dolly, she had heart and hands full, and small time to watch
all the fancies and dreams that drifted through that little head as
clouds through summer skies. Satisfied that the child was healthy,
and that there was no positive danger or harm to be fallen into,
she dismissed her from her thoughts, except in the way of general
supervision.
Yet every day, as the little maiden grew, some quaint, original touch
was put to the forming character by these surroundings.
As to Dolly's father, he was a worthy representative of that wise and
strong Connecticut clergy that had the wisdom immediately to face a
change in the growth of society, to lay down gracefully a species of
power they could no longer wield, and to take up and exercise, and
strengthen themselves in, a kind of power that could never be taken
from them. Privileged orders of society are often obstructionists,
because they do not know, in the day of it, the things that belong to
their peace.
The Connecticut and New England clergy did not thus err. When the
theocracy had passed away, they spent no time lamenting it. They let
the cocked hat, gold-headed cane, gown and bands go down stream;
they let all laws protecting their order go by; and addressed
themselves simply to the work of leading their people, as men with
men, only by seeking to be stronger, wiser, and better men. To know
more, to have more faith in the Invisible and Eternal, to be able
to argue more logically to convince and to persuade--these were now
their ambition. Dr. Cushing was foremost in this new crusade of
earnestness. He determined to preach more and preach better than
ever he had done before, and consequently in his wide parish, which
covered a square of about ten miles, he was every day preaching,
visiting, attending prayer-meetings. Often his wife was with him,
and this gave Dolly many hours when she was free to follow her own
little pursuits, and to pick up at the chimney-corner some of the
traditionary lore of the period.