Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the book. Fifty or sixty
years off the date at the head of your letter is easy enough to the
"organ of number," but a severe strain on the imagination. It is
hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother talks
about--that golden age when people were not roasted alive in a
sleeping coach, but gently tipped over a toppling cliff by a drunken
stage-driver.
Grand old times were those in which boys politely took off their hats
to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing their fresh young hearts
afterward by making mouths at the back of his great-coat. Blessed
days! in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked with
starched dignity, and yet were not too good to drink peach-brandy and
cherry-bounce with folks; when Congressmen were so honorable that
they scorned bribes, and were only kept from killing one another by
the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms. It was in those old times of
the beginning of the reign of Madison, that the people of the
Hissawachee settlement, in Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the
corn-shuckin' down at Cap'n Lumsden's."
There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment that opens the
gayeties of the season. The shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage
of being set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and
quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that were to
follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and simple--parties
alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.
Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown ridge five or
six feet high. The Captain was not insensible to considerations of
economy. He knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long run
to have it husked by his own farm hands; the expense of an
entertainment in whiskey and other needful provisions, and the
wasteful handling of the corn, not to mention the obligation to send
a hand to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the gratuitous
labor. But who can resist the public sentiment that requires a man
to be a gentleman according to the standard of his neighbors?
Captain Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which were
oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his own corn would have
been to forfeit his respectability entirely. It would have placed
him on the Pariah level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who
had bought a place farther up the creek, and who dared to husk his
own corn, practise certain forbidden economies, and even take pay for
such trifles as butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf
which he had killed. The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee had been
a matter of serious debate. A man "as tight as the bark on a beech
tree," and a Yankee besides, was next door to a horse-thief.
So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's. The "women-folks"
turned the festive occasion into farther use by stretching a quilt on
the frames, and having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in
quilting and gossiping--the younger women blushing inwardly, and
sometimes outwardly, with hope and fear, as the names of certain
young men were mentioned. Who could tell what disclosures the
evening frolic might produce? For, though "circumstances alter
cases," they have no power to change human nature; and the natural
history of the delightful creature which we call a young woman was
essentially the same in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago,
that it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern times.
Difference enough of manner and costume--linsey-woolsey, with a rare
calico now and then for Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite
young girls--but these things are only outward. The dainty girl that
turns away from my story with disgust, because "the people are so
rough," little suspects how entirely of the cuticle is her
refinement--how, after all, there is a touch of nature that makes
Polly Ann and Sary Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and
Blanche, and Mabel.
It was just dark--the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire
among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek--when the
shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn.
The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at
the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck
out." Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size,
welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves. That is
to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but
brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a
something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his
enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain
Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became
an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be
questioned for a moment. He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,
Bill?" "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello,
Bob, I thought you had the shakes--got out at last, did you?" Under
this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious
superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself
appreciated.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.]
Let us understand ourselves. When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an
old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint. In his
native state his hereditary rank was low--his father was an
"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made
money by doubtful means. But such is the advantage of emigration
that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole
Virginny" was credential enough. Was not the Old Dominion the mother
of presidents, and of gentlemen? And so Captain Lumsden was
accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while
he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the
Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn
Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to
that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while
it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the
"Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro." Nothing smacks more
of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and
pronouncing. In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this
shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his
wife. For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a _prima facie_ lie.
But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal--little acorns
of fact grew to great oaks of fable.
How quickly a crowd gathers! While I have been introducing you to
Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a
cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as
if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out,
"Ho, Tom! Howdy, Stevens? Hello, Johnson! is that you? Did come
after all, eh?"
When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide
the heap. To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield,
a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he
said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who
also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked
glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing. Butterfield looked at the
corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap. Then he
shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of
the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge,
measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides
as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut,
while the young lads stared at him with awe. Jake Sniger strode away
from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to
examine anything minutely. He pointed to the left, and remarked to
his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the
left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,
and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint,
hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins." He
"'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in.
It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own
part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be
divided in the middle of the pile." Strange to say, Butterfield,
after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the
same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence
served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the
two judges.
So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle.
A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary
between the territories of the two parties. The next thing to be
done was to select the captains. Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring
an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing
his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves,
boys, choose for yourselves."
Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker. He
wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected
that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's
shuckin."
"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick
me. I'd like to lay him out wunst."
"He ain't yer."
"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake
Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly
through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail
fence, and cleared it at a bound.
"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of
Captain Lumsden. "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so
clean."
"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his
wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead. "We thought you
wuzn't a comin'. Here, you and Conkey choose up."
[Illustration: MORT GOODWIN.]
"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up
such a distinction to others.
"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.
"Not a bit of it," said Mort. "You don't appreciate kindness;
where's your stick?"
By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand
of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill
McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the
first choice of corn. The shuckers were thus all divided into two
parts. Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side.
Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a
desp'rate sight of nubbins." Then, at a signal, all hands went to
work.
The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of
fence-rails.
"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden, as he started the
whiskey bottle on its encouraging travels along the line of shuckers.
"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey. "Pull away, my sweats! work like
dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em all to thunder, er bust a biler, by
jimminy! Peel 'em off! Thunder and blazes! Hurrah!"
This loud hallooing may have cheered his own men, but it certainly
stimulated those on the other side. Morton was more prudent; he
husked with all his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,
"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the breath he spends in
noise we'll spend in gittin' the corn peeled. Here, you! don't you
shove that corn back in the shucks! No cheats allowed on this side!"
Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his own men, where he
could overlook them and husk, without intermission, himself; knowing
that his own dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of two
men. When one or two boys on his side began to run over to see how
the others were getting along, he ordered them back with great
firmness. "Let them alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work
hard at first, everybody will work hard at the last."
For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping husks with
unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked corn had grown smaller,
the crib was nearly full of the white and yellow ears, and a great
billow of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.
"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who sat next to Morton.
"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden," said Ben North,
with a chuckle.
Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never knew how near he came to
getting a whipping.
It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers. McConkey had drunk
rather freely, and his "Pull away, sweats!" became louder than ever.
Morton found it necessary to run up and down his line once or twice,
and hearten his men by telling them that they were "sure to beat if
they only stuck to it well."
The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the side led by Goodwin
would have given it up once if it had not been for his cheers; the
others were so near to victory that they began to shout in advance,
and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the battle,--for
Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work in a way that set them wild
by contagion, and for the last minute they made almost superhuman
exertions, sending a perfect hail of white corn into the crib, and
licking up the last ear in time to rush with a shout into the
territory of the other party, and seize on one or two dozen ears, all
that were left, to show that Morton had clearly gained the victory.
Then there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general
expression of good feeling. But Bill McConkey vowed that he "knowed
what the other side done with their corn," pointing to the husk pile.
"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can find more corn in
your shucks than you kin in mine." But Bill did not accept the wager.
After husking the corn that remained under the rails, the whole party
adjourned to the house, washing their hands and faces in the woodshed
as they passed into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the
other half block-house fortification.
The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial supper was set in
the apartment which was commonly used for parlor and sitting room,
and which was now pressed into service for a dining room. The ladies
stood around against the wall with a self-conscious air of modesty,
debating, no doubt, the effect of their linsey-woolsey dresses. For
what is the use of carding and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting
and sewing to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?
_CHAPTER II._