The other day when I went home your mother "jumped" me about two
things,--my going down to R's to lunch and my taking you to that 5 cent
show in Boston....
Heavy thunder showers here Thursday night, cloudy to-day. Pretty warm
the last three days. The Primus is a great success. It uses rather more
than one half cent's worth per hour. The Van B's with two Vassar girls
were just over here. The "Iceland Fisherman" is a sweet tender pathetic
story. One does not forget Yann: and what a picture of the life of those
fishermen! I did not know that France had such an industry. I paddled up
Black Creek again on Friday, but saw no ducks.... There were 35 people
here last week. Write what you conclude to do about your room. The woods
are nearly in full leaf now.
Your loving father--J. B.
Comparing the life of Father's boyhood with our life here at Riverby in
those days and again comparing that with the life to-day, one cannot
but wonder what will be the final outcome. In a primitive society every
individual knows everything about everything that he has in life; as
civilization becomes more complex we become more and more specialists,
more and more the thing that the economists call the "division of
labour" becomes operative, and individuals go through life to-day
knowing how to do but a very few of the things necessary to their
existence. The early or primitive civilization produced an independent
race, and individuals picturesque and unique in character. Father
noticed this. He loved the old-fashioned man or woman who was so
strongly individual and picturesque. I remember one such character, "Old
blind Jimmy" he was called, who went about the country with a staff, and
when Father saw him coming, one day "out home," he asked me to run with
my camera and station myself down the road and get a picture of old
blind Jimmy as he came along. I did so, and I knew at once that Jimmy
knew I was there. He must have heard me in some way, and surely must
have heard the purr of the focal plane shutter as I took his picture.
One day in the market place in Jamaica, West Indies, there was a
savage-looking man who looked the way you would imagine a pirate of the
Spanish Main would look, and Father was much interested in him and asked
me to get his picture--it took considerable manoeuvring, but I did get
him at last.
Much of the old order clung to us here at Riverby--Mother always made
buckwheat cakes, we got a sack of flour from "out home" and she set the
cakes to rise; I can hear the sound of the wooden spoon as she mixed
them up in the evening and then set them behind the stove. Now we get
the flour all ready to mix with water. No more running for buttermilk to
use in them, no more having them rise over the batter pitcher during
the night. Father always ate them, five or six. No day was begun in cold
weather without "pancakes." And "out home" they made their own soap,
but here Mother got a box of soap and carefully piled it up to dry and
harden. There was a pail in the cellar for "soap grease," into which was
put every scrap of fat or grease and saved until the day when the "soap
man" came around and bought it. Those were the days when potatoes were
less than fifty cents a bushel, eggs a dollar a hundred, and the very
finest roe shad could be had for twenty-five cents. And shad nets were
knit by hand. I can remember Father telling how the Manning family, who
lived below the hill, knit shad nets all winter. Now one can buy the net
already knit practically as cheaply as one can buy the twine. Sail boats
dotted the Hudson--sloops and schooners loitering up and down the river
or tacking noisily back and forth. I know they used to get becalmed and
tide-bound out here and the sailors would come ashore and raid fruit
orchards. Once some of them stole a sheep and took it out to the
schooner. The owner of the sheep came after the sailors with a search
warrant but the mischievous sailors pulled the anchor chain up taut and
tied the sheep to the chain and lowered away until the sheep, which they
had butchered, was under water and the search warrant even could not
find it.
"The little boat" referred to in the letter of July 24, 1893, and on
which Father shipped his peaches, was a small steamer that ran from
Rondout to Poughkeepsie and was more or less of a family institution
when the river was open. It landed when we hailed it, at the dock at
the bottom of our vineyard, and Father mostly went to town to do his
shopping on "the little boat." Once he went to get his garden seeds and,
coming back, a violent squall blew his basket with all his purchases
overboard. I can still remember how disgusted and ruffled he appeared
over it. At another time he was on this little boat when it landed
at Hyde Park and a team of horses, hitched to a big wagon loaded with
brick, were standing on the dock. They became frightened and began to
back, in spite of the efforts of the driver to stop them. In a moment
the rear wheels went over the edge of the dock and then when they felt
the terrible backward pull of the wagon they sprang ahead in a desperate
and vain effort to save themselves. Their hoofs beat frantically upon
the plank, throwing up a shower of splinters, and though they strained
every fibre of their bodies, they were drawn over to their death. Father
was much upset over it. It made a vivid impression on him. "But," he
said, "there was a priest who sat near me and who hardly saw it; he paid
no more attention than if nothing had happened," and I feel that all
priests suffered on that account in Father's estimation!
One of the ceremonies here at Riverby was the bringing in of the door
mat at night. Mother did this or told me to do it--I doubt that Father
would. It was brought in for fear of dampness or rain during the night,
which would wet the mat and shorten its usefulness. How different from
housekeeping nowadays!
Father always wore flannel shirts, of a dark gray, and these had the
unfortunate habit of shrinking about the neck, so in washing them they
were stretched and then dried over a milk pail--I can see them now,
hanging on the line with the pail protruding from the neck. I played a
cruel joke on Father one night; I was going out to the hired man's house
to play cards and asked Father to leave the door open for me, which he
did. It was very late when I returned, half-past nine or ten o'clock,
and as I did not want to disturb any one I crept in in my most stealthy
way and up to bed. In the morning Father asked me excitedly when I
got in. "You must have been mighty sly about it," he said, half
in admiration, half in reproach, when I told him, "for I lay awake
listening for you to come in and when it got to be after ten I got up to
come down and see what had become of you and I found you had come in."
It is ever true that many of the things that a man regards as important
a woman does not; and conversely, many things a woman takes seriously
are to a man a joke. The following gives a picture of the life here
then and sums up the difference between the point of view of Father and
Mother: