WITHOUT NORMAN
It seemed suddenly as if Chicago took a great leap. Perhaps the whole
country was more prosperous. But everybody was full of business, and
immigrants were pouring in at the rate of ten a day, the newspaper
announced. They were of all kinds. Some from Virginia, many from the
two States south of us, hardy people with an uncouth dialect and new
ways that were more or less picturesque. The men had been great hunters
and could hardly adapt themselves to any employment at first. The women
were used to all kinds of household work. They hetcheled flax and it was
very entertaining to me to see the mass swept across the sharp wires and
the person drawing her body back with a monotonous croon, then starting
forward again. The soft silvery stuff was laid in a pile by itself, and
how beautiful it looked. The rough and coarse strands were for common
uses.
I could spin quite well now, but I used to love to watch these other
spinners with their deft motions. The big wheel fairly fascinated me,
and the nimble running back and forth. The great dye tubs, too, with
their yellows and browns, blues, and reds and the long hanks of yarn
hung out in the sun, dipped over and over to darken them until they made
some really handsome shades.
Besides these people there came quite a colony of French in our
neighborhood. I was glad of this, though it seemed as if their "jabber"
was too intricate to be taken up by any native tongue. Their attire
was much more picturesque than that of the Kentucky women, and they
disported themselves in brighter colors. A short skirt, a bodice laced
up both front and back, and above this a white body with sleeves,
the neck drawn in with a ruffle and tied with a bright ribbon. White
stockings and low shoes with a great buckle, though some of the older
people had these laid by as mementoes of their younger days. The church
was at quite a distance and a priest came over and held service in the
morning for them in a little log house. I used to love to watch them
going to and fro with prayer book and rosary and happy, smiling faces,
always chattering.
There were Germans, too. We seemed fair to be a conglomerate town. All
along the lake, houses were stretching up north and down to the southern
end. The shipyard was a scene of activity; indeed, most people were very
busy. Wheat fields and cornfields increased and cattle were multiplying.
Everything rushed through the summer; indeed, it seemed as though one
could see the corn grow; and was there ever a prettier sight than when
it tasselled out and blossomed in the soft yellow. It was like a great
army. I used to look at it sometimes until I could believe it was a
giant host advancing, and I would shrink back in fright.
We had a school on our side that summer, and what with that and Mrs.
Chadwick, I did not go to the Haynes' as often as before. Ben and Homer
came over frequently. Homer was a big fellow, almost as tall as Dan,
and quite a favorite with the girls as well. There were many pleasure
parties for the grown-up ones—rowing, when the lake was not too rough,
and sailing parties. Some of the more venturesome ones took an excursion
over to Black Rock.
Our nearest French neighbors were the Piagets, and the two girls, Sophie
and Nanette, soon became very friendly. Nanette was a little younger
than I, Sophie, nearly two years older, bright, vivacious girls, who
had some accomplishments beyond our ken. We sewed patchwork, but it was
difficult to get pieces, though now and then a quilt was made of blue
and white. But Sophie could make fringe with an ingenious knot in it,
and she could knit edging. That set all us girls crazy to learn.
They talked rather broken English and were very eager to perfect
themselves. And after screwing my courage up many degrees I confessed I
would like to learn French. What work we made of it, and how we laughed
at the German tongue! You began to hear it quite often in the street.
M'liss had taken up her abode with us. Jed Hatch had gone lumbering up
the lake, above where Milwaukee now stands, where there was some fine
timber that could be rafted down in auspicious weather. They had what
we should now call a logging camp. Father wondered how they had ever
persuaded Jed to join them, but I think M'liss had a strong hand in it.
So she brought little Joe, who was now quite a respectable baby. Mrs.
Chadwick had more than once said to father some woman ought to come in
and take charge, and M'liss thought she made a good bargain hiring out
her house for a certain amount of repairs.
M'liss brought her big wheel, the little one I had already, but when I
would have spun she turned me away with a gentle push and—
"Oh, you jest g'lang. Ther' be time er nough nex' winter, when you can't
run out en play en skip round. En ther's so little work to do I'm main
afeared I'll git rickets by so much sittin' still."
Then M'liss was in her element cooking, and father enjoyed that.
Sophie was very eager to see Chicago. They had lived inland many miles
from Kaskaskia, and as I came to know afterward, had a hard struggle
with poverty.
"I think everybody has come from somewhere else," she said one day, when
I had been telling about the Haynes, the Wrights, and ourselves.
"Why, of course," I said, "people don't grow in new countries like
trees. They have to come from somewhere else," and she laughed.
It was true enough. When we arrived at a time when we would have
liked a Mayflower or a Holland Mynheer, Virginia Cavaliers, or Spanish
Dons, behold we had no ancestry that had risen out of the foam or been
transplanted by fabled Deity. Only sturdy, courageous, hard-working
pioneers who had seen an objective point and seized it and dreamed of
being a connecting link between the East and the West and then worked
mightily to make the dream come true.
We rambled about the old places. The Ouilmette cabin had fallen into
ruins, but the memory of the trader and his Indian wife still hung about
it. We went over to the fort, that began to show signs of neglect. Here
were the unmarked graves of those who had perished and we trod softly.
Grass and a few wild flowers were springing up over them. Mrs. Heald
and her beautiful horse stirred Sophie as it had me.
"If you came out here and stayed until midnight, don't you suppose you
could see her go riding down to escape the Indians?"
I shuddered. "I don't believe I should want to be here at midnight," I
said, rather awestricken.
"Wouldn't you try a charm to see your future husband?" she queried.
"I don't imagine I shall ever have a husband," I said, with a curious
kind of assurance about the future. I seemed to belong altogether to
father.
"Oh, I wouldn't stay single for anything," she cried, "and here, where
you don't need to have a dot, it must be easy to get a husband."
"A dot?" I repeated in perplexity.
"Why, yes. In France, _Ma mère_ had to have some money beside a string
of gold beads and two rings and some bed and table linen. Papa's mother
would hardly consent then. You have to get the permission of the parents
on both sides, and then you have two marriages."
"How queer! Why, it is almost like buying your wife," I said, and I felt
my eyes open wide.
"And now we are poor enough," and she sighed. "I don't know whether
Nanette and I could have any dot. Then you generally go in a convent
and become a sister, but I shouldn't like to be shut up and only visit
poor people and those in trouble. There is a convent in New Orleans and
in Canada."
I did not think I should like convent life either. The Piaget girls went
to the Catholic Church in state, and the priest was Father Shoffer. It
was moved to the rear of St. Mary's Cathedral afterward and used as a
school-room, but children of all denominations went to school together.
The Methodist Church had been moved across the river two years before on
scows, the first building of any account to be moved intact. Everybody
had thronged to see the wonderful achievement.
We used to wander by the edge of the great lake, often picking up shells
in the sand. I had quite a collection, some beautiful ones Norman had
given me. Homer had made me a box that I covered with them, arranging
the choicest ones on the top in a figure as near to a rose as I could
get it.
Ben used to walk with us sometimes. The magnificence of the lake down
here, where there was no business and nothing but the swelling waves
to ruffle its bosom, always filled me with a kind of reverent awe. The
great space ending—where? To my childish mind it was like the ocean that
I had never seen. I could not truly believe there were villages and wide
stretches of ground on the other side. I liked its immensity. Several
times we had been here on a moonlight evening, when it was silvered over
and set with tiny gems. All at the west and south stretched the dusky,
blurring expanse, but to the eastward one could imagine that one could
sail into the heaven that touched the farther boundary of the great
inland sea. That wonderful angelic blue with its myriad stars! Were they
worlds in which the souls of the redeemed lived again? I wanted to talk
all my new thoughts over with Norman. I seemed to have acquired so many
in this brief while.
There was another great excitement about this time. Was it really four
years since the last Presidential election? The town was all astir
again. The same candidates were put up. Dan Hayne did a good deal
of electioneering, though it was not in such a very eager manner. I
believe most of the people felt very sore about the canal that was to
open the Mississippi to us, which dragged along to little purpose. Then
the postal regulations were so inefficient, and there was a complaint
about many things, confusing State and general government. The Kentucky
people were all for General Jackson, and some of the old men declared
they'd vote for him as long as they lived whether he was alive or not.
The two papers indulged in sharp rejoinders, and occasionally stretched
the point of truth, at least each accused the other of doing it. Father
pinned his faith upon the American.
People were very busy, too, with the abundant harvests. Such splendid
yield of wheat as there had been! And to think of all this labor done
by hand! One would have been smartly ridiculed if he had predicted the
day of mowers and reapers and great grain elevators run by steam. Many
a moonlight night men turned out and worked until they almost dropped,
some did stop in their tracks and take a brief nap on a fragrant bed,
with the stars for watchers. For the winter was coming, when Nature took
her rest and locked our little world with her icy chains.
There was beef and pork packed to send away, piles of hides, bushels of
grain, and the prominent business men left politics to care for itself
awhile. The river and the docks were thronged and piled high, we thought
then. Ben was much interested in this, and now had gone in Norman's
place, though Mr. Hubbard's business was growing larger every year, and
new warehouses were pushing in.
But we children went to school, and at home followed the useful
arts—spinning, sewing, knitting and cooking. We had little time for the
fripperies of life. They were to come later.
I did not forget my reading with Mrs. Chadwick, though I was growing
very fond of the girls and girls' play. Jed Hatch had not come back,
so M'liss remained with us. There was a great stir about the copper
mines in northern Michigan, and the lead at Galena. Then coal was being
discovered here and there, and men's wits were put to work in inventing
labor-saving and money-saving machines.
We did not care much about these, though the neighbors who stopped at
the garden gate or sat awhile on the stoop talking to father wondered
a little if this or that could not be done, and sometimes laughed at
father when he predicted great things for the future of Chicago. We did
not look much like it in those days, though people were beginning to
build brick houses and replace their old log structures with frame. Many
of the streets were simply staked out. And when the Wrights built their
really pretty mansion down near what was the end of Madison Street, they
were laughed at as going out on the prairie.
Good water seemed a serious question. There were so few springs good
for anything. We caught rain water in the wet season and filtered it,
putting it in bottles for time of need, when after a good shaking up
it answered very well. The water from the lake was fine if taken from
a little distance out or farther up. The river was simply dreadful.
One of the best springs had an odd story. The children used often
to congregate about it and drink their fill. I used to wonder if it
tasted as good to the stag at Monan's rill as to the thirsty children.
It was called Colonel Baubein's punch bowl. Half a dozen years or so
before, the State ordered that the militia of Cook County should be duly
organized, and officers elected. There was quite a rivalry, but Mr. John
Baubein was elected over all opposition, and it was resolved to have a
fine celebration. At the base of a small bluff the spring made a natural
basin. This was dammed up across the outlet and a keg of brandy poured
in. Six dozen lemons, four packages of loaf sugar were added, and the
whole stirred with a new clean stick. Most of the town turned out, and
sitting around swapped stories and drank punch until they absolutely
lowered the novel punch bowl and went home in a high state of hilarity.
For days after one and another stole down, happy even in getting a taste
of the weaker stimulant.
It was delightful water long after that, and the two Baubein brothers
were famous men in old Chicago.
Champaign squibs and songs had a new impulse just then. Even the
children who could made rhymes to the glory of Tippecanoe. And then
there was a sudden and well-nigh unexpected rejoicing—William Henry
Harrison gained the day by a handsome majority.
Father was deeply delighted, though he did not exactly crow over his
opponents.
"You'll see now," he said, "this will be the beginning of good times.
Four years from now you will hardly know yourselves." No one could have
imagined then his reign would be so brief.
"If there could be more money, more money," cried everybody. The canal
was given up for better times, but the lake was left. And when one
looked over the list of enterprising citizens and found the hides and
wheat, the corn and pork and beef, the beans, salt, the furs, and the
lead, there was no need of feeling really discouraged. "Rome wasn't
built in a day," was a favorite saying of father's.
Mrs. Hayne and I had good long letters from Norman. Mine were written at
intervals and finished at Detroit, that, like some of the other towns,
had a rather romantic history. It had been French and English, it had
been a great trading place in the pioneer days; it had been turned over
to the United States by treaty, then given up to the English by General
Hull at the same time the order had been sent for the evacuation of Fort
Dearborn. It had been destroyed by fire and rebuilt on a more generous
plan, and bid fair to be a fine city.
But with all these interesting matters Norman's heart did not waver,
and he was looking steadily forward. One year was almost gone. He had
been very busy and happy, had proved of great service to Mr. Le Moyne,
and had acquired much knowledge. He could talk French quite well, and
was learning to read correctly. It seemed as if most of the northern
world was French. Now they were to go to Montreal and Quebec. Would I
find some histories or books and read up about those famous cities and
the heroes who had fought and died for them? And would I tell him all
about myself? Was I growing tall? And did my hair keep its beautiful
light tint, and he hoped I would care for my complexion. He had seen
some such beautiful girls, some splendid Indian maidens, so lovely he
did not wonder white men married them. Did Ben come often, and did I
like him very much? But I must not put any one in his place.
He could write ever so much more—and there were pages and pages in the
letter, but there were so many things to do, and this letter would go
by private hands, with some other matters consigned to Newberry & Dole.
For postage was very high and increased with additional miles.
I read it to father, and he was very much pleased, but he made one
little growl. There are some voices that express disapprobation that
way, and it is really more amusing than unkind.
"Like Ben Hayne! Why, he's nothing but a big, soft-headed boy. Homer's
smarter in his little finger than Ben's whole body."
"Ben is very nice and kind," I said honestly, "but Norman is the best
of all."
He gave a chuckle at that. "You mark my words, Homer will be a rich man
some day. I don't know about the rolling stones, though it did seem an
excellent thing for Norman. But he will never come back here and settle
in Chicago."
Long afterward that sentence recurred to me.
I took my letter over to Mrs. Hayne. Hers was a good deal on the same
lines, only there were more to ask about. She made a different comment.
"Why shouldn't you like Ben!" she exclaimed, rather tartly. Then as she
looked at me I felt hot all over. "Ben's a nice boy an' he'll make a
nice man if he gets the right kind of wife. He will do quite as well as
Norman, you'll see if he doesn't. I dare say Norme will get so stuck up
with fine people an' talkin' French that he'll hardly look at us when
he gets back. I'm most sorry I consented to have him go."
"But he will be back in another year." I did not think he could change
so very much in that time.
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," and she tossed her head.
There was not another girl in school who had a letter from a friend or
who was asked to write one. My secret was too precious to be bruited
abroad. I put it in my box of treasures and read it over when no one was
by. It seemed very silly to do this, and yet I took fervent pleasure in
it.
I was to write and have my letter go in a package Mr. Dole was to send.
So when I had it finished I went over to the warehouse, for I would not
trust it with Ben. I had some trouble to find Mr. Dole, and explained
the matter to him.
"Yes, yes," he said, "I shall be glad to do this for you. I think he
will be in Quebec before it reaches him, however."
"Thank you," I replied, with a little curtsy.