Susanna had helped at various household tasks ever since her arrival at
the Settlement, for there was no room for drones in the Shaker hive; but
after a few weeks in the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had been
assigned to her as her particular province, the Sisters thinking her
better fitted for it than for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or
the basket-weaving that needed special apprenticeship.
The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden
seeds in our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the
preparation of botanical medicines, raising, gathering, drying, and
preparing herbs and roots for market; and this industry, driven from
the field by modern machinery, was still a valuable source of income in
Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for Susanna, and she loved
them like friends, humoring their weakness, nourishing their strength,
stimulating, coaxing, disciplining them, until they could do no less
than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.
Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its
wholesome fragrances! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf
and bud, and the strong aromatic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or
her aching head, after the sleepless nights in which she tried to decide
her future life and Sue's.
The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps, and she soon learned to
know the strange ones--chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage,
boneset, lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew
the old acquaintances familiar to every country-bred child--pennyroyal,
peppermint or spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.
There was hoeing and weeding before the gathering and drying came; then
Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the
dried herbs and press them into quarter- and half-pound cakes ready for
Sister Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering
and labeling them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over,
Brother Ansel would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his
driving trip through the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but
Brother Issachar, who once took his place and sold almost nothing,
brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became a shining
light in the Community. (“Thus,” said Elder Gray, “does God teach us the
diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.”)
If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent in faith, Susanna thought
that their “works” would indeed bear the strictest examination. The
Brothers made brooms, floor and dish-mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and
indeed almost every trade was represented in the various New England
Communities. Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs,
policemen, constables, or soldiers, just as there were no courts or
saloons or jails. Where there was perfect equality of possession and no
private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see the cheery labor, often
continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the earnest desire
to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were hammering,
nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were
carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen,
straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not
forgetting their famous Shaker apple sauce.
Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the
early rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and
hardier than she had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled
with delicacies, yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently varied.
At first there had been the winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips,
beets, and parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker dinner of salt
codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk gravy. Each Sister served her
turn as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with flour, and the
wholewheat bread, cookies, ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels
of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate Shaker
from a too riotous devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for
every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory, and attractive.
Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as
they worked together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the
cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and pan and spoon might have
served as a mirror! Martha had joined the Society in her mother's arms,
being given up to the Lord and placed in “the children's order” before
she was one year old.
“If you should unite with us, Susanna,” she said one night after the
early supper, when they were peeling apples together, “you'd be thankful
you begun early with your little Sue, for she's got a natural attraction
to the world, and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, obedient
little soul; but when she's among the other young ones, there's a
flyaway look about her that makes her seem more like a fairy than a
child.”
“She's having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she'll do
better in time,” sighed her mother. “She came to me of her own accord
yesterday and asked: 'Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?'”
“I never put that idea into her head,” Martha interrupted. “She's a
visitor and can wear her hair as she's been brought up to wear it.”
“I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I
get up so early, Mardie,' she said, 'and it takes so long to unsnarl and
untangle me, and I get so hot when I'm helping in the hayfield, and then
I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it
seems like wasting both our times!' Her hair would be all the stronger
for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her age; but I could n't
put the shears to it when the time came, Martha. I had to take her to
Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little looking-glass as still
as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when the last one fell into
Abby's apron, she suddenly put her hands over her face and cried:
'Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after
this!'--She seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, slipping
away from her, all in an instant. I did n't let her know that I cried
over the box of curls last night!”
“You did wrong,” rebuked Martha. “You should n't make an idol of your
child or your child's beauty.”
“You don't think God might put beauty into the world just to give His
children joy, Martha?”
Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made,
from those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to
make any sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by
too many opposing theories of God's intentions.
“You know I never argue when I've got anything baking,” she said; and
taking the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the
oven door and delicately plunged it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the
straw as she withdrew it, she said: “You must talk doctrine with Eldress
Abby, Susanna, not with me; but I guess doctrine won't help you so much
as thinking out your life for yourself.
“No one can sing my psalm for me,
Reward must come from labor,
I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
God's mercy and his favor!”
Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many
hymns and tunes--some of them under circumstances that she believed
might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full
voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as
she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to
the great barn.
The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life,
although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.
Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful
earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and
seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated
the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell,
to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the
first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls
on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to
reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet
in height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy
slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several
burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain
room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling;
and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and
Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in
the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as
Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat
with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of
corncobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting
threads from her mother's work.
“My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie,” she said.
“I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we
ought to have asked him before we shingled me?--He does _despise_
unpretty things so!”
“I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think
best.'”
“He always says that when he does n't care what you do,” observed Sue,
with one of her startling bursts of intuition. “Sister Martha has a
printed card on the wall in the children's diningroom, and I've got
to learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the
others:--
“What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
“We often find left on the same China dish,
Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
Another's replenished with butter and cheese,
With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these.”
“You say it very nicely,” commended Susanna.
“There's more:--
“Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
We freely will forfeit whatever we've said,
And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread.
“There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker,” sighed Sue,
as she finished her rhyme.
“There's a great deal to learn everywhere,” her mother answered. “What
verse did Eldress Abby give you today?”
“For little tripping maids may follow God
Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,”
quoted the child. “Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?” she continued.
“Yes, dear.” “If I trip too much, might n't I fall?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Is tripping the same as skipping?”
“About the same.”
“Is it polite to trip an' skip when you're following God?”
“It could n't be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means
just a young one.”
“What is a maid?”
“A little girl.”
“When a maid grows up, what is she?”
“Why she's a maiden, I suppose.”
“When a maiden grows up, what is she?”
“Just a woman, Sue.”
“What is saintly feet?”
“Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have
always tried to do right.”
“Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?”
“He's a good, kind, hardworking man.”
“Is good, kind, hardworking, same as saintly?”
“Well, it's not so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I've asked you
before, don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every
instant; it is n't good for you, and it certainly is n't good for me!”
“All right; but 'less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don't see how I'll ever
learn the things I 'specially want to know?” sighed Sue the insatiable.
“Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last
evening?”
“Oh, do, Mardie!” cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and
looking up into her mother's face expectantly.
“Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some
one wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found
a Settlement in the western part of New York State. He and some other
Elders and Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at the house of
a certain Joseph Pelham to spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On
Monday morning, very tired, and wondering where to stay and begin his
preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to pray for guidance. When
he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-hearted, a young
quail came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit
afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing near by
show any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder
smoothed the young bird's feathers a little while and then let it go,
but he thought an angel seemed to say to him, 'The quail is a sign; you
will know before night what it means, and before tomorrow people will be
coming to you to learn the way to God.'
“Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph
Pelham's house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the
flock of Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see
more in signs than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve
or thirteen knocked at the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to
become a Shaker, and that her father and mother were willing.
“'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, and indeed she was the
first who flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.
“On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took
the little quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals
through which they traveled were clogged with ice. One night, having
been ferried across the Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked
for miles before they could find shelter. Finally, when they were within
three miles of their home, Elder Calvin shortened the way by going
across the open fields through the snow, up and down the hills and
through the gullies and over fences, till they reached the house at
midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged
beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail.”
Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining,
her hands clasped. “Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl,
Mardie! What became of her?”
“Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of
the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know
what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you
could walk for miles through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?”
“I don' know's I could,” sighed Sue; “but,” she added hopefully,
“perhaps I could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much
as ever I liked.” Then, after a lengthy pause, in which her mind worked
feverishly, she said, “Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I
won't do it any more tonight. If the old quail birds in the woods where
Elder Calvin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker birds, there
would n't have been any little quail birds, would there, because Shakers
don't have children, and then perhaps there would n't have been any
little Polly Reed.”
Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work.
“I'll go up and help you undress now,” she said; “it's seven o'clock,
and I must go to the family meeting.”