they had been busy with the care of their fathers’ horses, Elam had
occupied every moment in telling to Cotton all that he could remember
of a wonderful story he had read in New Haven. Two months previously
he had ridden with his father to that town, and in the tap-room of
the “ordinary” at which they had “put up” during their stay there had
lain a pile of about forty books, which a sea-captain had left to be
sold to any chance traveller, or to townspeople who might be inclined
to purchase them. There were several copies of Tate and Brady’s new
Psalms, which some of the New England Puritans wished to use instead
of the loved old Bay Psalm-book, two or three Bibles, half a dozen
volumes of sermons, a Dutch Psalm-book, which was not Dutch at all, but
a collection of English songs and ballads, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” a
few prayer-books, and then there was a wonderful book which Elam did
not have time to finish, though he had not wasted a moment. It thrilled
and filled him with adventurous longings, and was called “Robinson
Crusoe.” This was the first and only story-book he had ever seen, and
as he retold the wonderful tale to Cotton, the desire to run away out
into the great world, to cross the ocean and see some strange sights
and lead a different life from that on a Narragansett farm, grew strong
in both boys’ breasts.
At last Elam, having a fertile though unexercised imagination,
developed a plan of action. They would leave home and meet at the
old meeting-house, where they would spend several weeks of idleness,
roaming the woods by day and sleeping in the noon-house by night, and
when everyone in town was tired of searching for them, then they would
make their way to the sea-shore without fear of capture, and get on
board a ship and sail off somewhere. They could hide in the wood on
the Sabbath days, and as the meeting-house stood on a lonely road in a
great wood on the top of a high hill, there would be but few passers-by
on week-days, and hence few chances of discovery. And now I must
explain about the noon-house, which was to be their sleeping-place, for
none of those queer old buildings now exist in New England.
By the side of the barn-like church were three long, low, mean,
stable-like log buildings, which could hardly be stables, since at one
end of each hut was a rough stone chimney. These were noon-houses,
or “Sabba-day houses.” One had been built by Elam and Cotton’s
grandfather, and was used by the families of his children. Until
the early years of this century, only two or three meeting-houses
throughout New England contained stoves. All through the long, bleak,
winter weeks, through fierce “nor’-westers” and piercing frosts, the
lonely churches stood, growing colder and colder, until when they were
opened upon the Sabbath the chill and damp seemed almost unbearable.
The women brought to church little iron foot-stoves filled with hot
coals. Upon these stoves they placed their feet, and around them the
shivering children sat at their mothers’ feet and warmed their chilled
hands. But by the time the long service was over--for often the
minister preached two hours and prayed an hour, and some of the Psalms
took half an hour to sing--you can easily see that the warmth would all
have died out of the little foot-stove, and the mothers and children
would be as cold as the fathers, which is saying a great deal.
Now these half-frozen Baptists and Puritans and Episcopalians could
hardly have remained to attend an afternoon service and lived through
it, so they built houses with chimneys and fireplaces near the church
where they could go and make a fire and get warm and eat their lunch,
and when they asked permission to put up such a building they said it
was to “keep their duds and horses in.”
And, surely enough, at one end of the noon-house were usually several
stalls for the horses, who doubtless also enjoyed the warmth that came
from the fireplace at the end of the room. The “duds” were the saddles
and pillions on which the church attendants had been seated on their
ride to church, and the saddle-bags which were full of good things to
eat. Sometimes a few cooking-utensils to warm the noonday food were
kept in the noon-house, and often hay for the horses and a great load
of logs to burn in the fireplace, and sometimes a barrel of “cyder,” to
drink at the nooning.
Frequently a large noon-house was built by several farmers in company,
and I am afraid the children did not then enjoy their Sunday noontimes,
for some old deacon or elder usually read a sermon to them between the
morning and afternoon services, and they had to sit still and listen.
So you see that Elam and Cotton had very comfortable quarters to sleep
in when they ran away to the noon-house on the Monday following the
opening of my story. Each arrived about an hour before sunset, laden
with all the food that he had been able to capture before leaving home.
Cotton had a great piece of salt-pork and a dozen eggs, some of which
had had a rather disastrous journey in his coat-pockets. Elam had a
great crushed mass of dough-nuts and brown bread. This was not all of
their provisions for their sojourn, for on each successive Sunday for
five weeks previously both boys had crowded their great pockets with
russet apples and their saddle-bags with cold corn-bread and brown
bread, and they had starved themselves at each nooning in order to save
their food and thus provide for the coming day of need; and they had
concealed their treasures in an empty corn-bin at the horses’ end of
the house. Cotton felt sure that they had food enough to last them for
three weeks--rather dry and conglomerated, to be sure, but still good
enough for boys of healthy appetites and simple Puritan tastes. Elam
also had brought a flint and tinder-box with him, and with their aid
and that of some light “candle-wood” he soon had a blazing fire upon
the hearth, the coals of which he carefully covered up to save till
morning, and then the two Robinson Crusoes climbed upon the hay and
fell asleep.
The story of the first day spent by the runaways in their retreat would
be the story of all the days, which were not as pleasure-filled as
they had hoped. They had no hut to build, no goats to tame, no savages
to fight and dread. They rose early in the morning, for the habits of
their daily life were strong, and they did not dare have a fire much
after daybreak, lest the smoke from the chimney should be discovered by
some rare passer-by. They ate their breakfast of brown bread and cheese
and apples and drank a little of the hard cider. As the weather was
fortunately warm, they lolled on the stones behind the noon-house while
Elam told over and over again the story of Robinson Crusoe and tales
of the Indians that he had heard from his grandfather. They fished,
with some success, in a little brook which ran through the woods, and
one day they caught a rabbit in a trap which Cotton had set, and which
he had learned how to make from old Showacum, a “praying Indian” who
lived in the village. These trophies of their skill they of course
skinned and cleaned and cooked, and though they were hungry--for they
were hungry all the time--the unsalted fish and game did not seem very
appetizing to them. They found a treasure one day in the woods--a store
of nuts which had been forgotten or neglected or reserved until spring
by some kindly squirrels--and with a few cakes of toothsome maple-sugar
they had some variety of diet.
But alas, they also had healthy young appetites, and on Saturday night
Cotton awakened to a fact whose approach had been plainly looming up
before Elam for some time--that their three weeks’ supply of food was
all gone. A half-decayed apple was their sole supper. A drink of the
sour cider seemed only to make their hunger harder to bear, but at last
they fell asleep. Perhaps the pangs of his gnawing stomach made Elam
sleep more lightly than on previous nights, perhaps the equally keen
pangs of his awakened conscience may have made him restless, but at
midnight he suddenly sprang to his feet with an exclamation of horror
at a sound which he recognized at once as the howl of a wolf. He jumped
to the fire, wakening Cotton, who tumbled out of his nest of hay with
a bewildered and wretched expression and an impatient cry of, “Oh, why
did you wake me up when I am so hungry; pray let me sleep if you do
or not,” when nearer and louder still rose the mournful howl of the
wolf. With trembling hand Cotton heaped the light wood on the blaze
which Elam had started with the old leather bellows, and then threw
log after log on the hearth until the blaze roared up the chimney. Of
course, the wolves--for they could hear more than one--could not get
into the noon-house, as window and shutter were fast, but the boys
were so wretched with hunger, so homesick, so lonesome, that they
hardly stopped to reason, and, trembling with fear, Cotton seized an
iron “loggerhead” which his father kept in the noon-house, and thrust
it into the coals to heat to a red-hot pitch, when it could be used
as a weapon. A “loggerhead” was a bar of iron which was used as a
stirring-stick in making “flip.” Deacon Fayerweather always brought to
church each winter Sunday in his saddle-bags three or four bottles of
home-brewed beer and a bottle of Jamaica rum, from which, with the aid
of the loggerhead, he made a famous jug of flip for the minister and
deacons at the nooning.
And now the peaceful loggerhead was the only weapon the two wretched
boys possessed, and, indeed, all they needed, for in a short time
the howls of the wolves grew fainter and fainter and at last were no
longer heard. All thought or power of sleep had, however, vanished
from the brains of the terrified young Crusoes at this experience of
the pleasures of adventure. All wish for final escape to the sea-shore
had also disappeared, and now their only longing was to return home.
All the remaining hours of the night they sat by the fire, while Elam,
romantic in spite of hunger, fright, and disappointment, made known his
plans for the following day. Toward morning they let the fire die down
and expire, and when the sun was fully risen they left their sheltering
noon-house and hid in the woods not far from the meeting-house,
trembling, however, at every sound as they thought of their dread
night-visitors.
As nine o’clock drew near there approached the church on every side, on
foot and on horseback, the members of the congregation. All knew of the
mysterious disappearance of Cotton and Elam, for the country had been
widely and quickly scoured for them. Among the worshippers came Deacon
and Mistress Fayerweather and Goodman Noyes and his wife, for all felt
it a godly duty, even in time of deep affliction, not to neglect the
public worship of God on the Sabbath. Despairingly did the sad parents
hope to hear some news of their lost boys, who had apparently vanished
from the face of the earth, for neither in farm-house nor in field,
neither on the road nor at the toll-gate, neither by traveller nor by
hunter, had they been seen. The very simplicity of their plan had been
its safety. Forty years previously the whisper of kidnapping by the
Indians would have added terror to the parents’ grief, but those days
were happily over.
After sad greetings had been exchanged and the minister had entered the
pulpit, the congregation seated itself for its usual Sunday-morning
service. The opening half-hour prayer was ended, the church attendants
had let down their slamming pew-seats (for the seats in those old
New England meeting-houses always turned up on hinges to allow the
pew occupants to lean against the walls of the pew during the long
prayer), the minister had read with trembling voice a note which had
been sent to him, “desiring the prayers of the congregation for two
families in great inconveniency and distress,” when a door on the
leeward side of the church slowly opened and two pale, dishevelled, and
most wretched-looking youngsters crept slowly and shamefacedly in. The
habit of constant self-repression and self-control, characteristic of
the times, was all-powerful, even in this intense moment of crisis for
the families of Fayerweather and Noyes. The deacon flushed scarlet,
but did not move from his raised seat in front of the congregation.
A faint murmur swept over the entire assembly at the appearance of
Cotton and Elam, but was at once repressed. The boys walked calmly on
to their accustomed seats on the gallery stairs, under the supervision
of the tithingman. That zealous officer rapped sharply on the head
with his long staff two or three of the occupants of one of the “boys’
pews,” who had turned around and stared, and whispered noisily at the
appearance of the runaways. The old minister, being slightly deaf,
had heard no ripple of commotion, and, not having glanced at the late
comers, proceeded to offer a pathetic prayer for the lost ones, “whom
God held in the hollow of his hand,” a prayer that brought to Elam and
Cotton a realizing sense of their selfishness and wickedness, and which
worked a lesson that influenced them through life. The parson then
gave out his text: “He will have charge over thee concerning thee,” and
worked his way on in his accustomed and somewhat monotonous fashion,
though with many allusions to the two wanderers, until at fourteenthly
came the long-deferred end. Nor was there any murmur of feeling
heard (though the mothers’ eyes were filled with tears), when Deacon
Fayerweather, in a slightly trembling voice, lined out the Psalm:
O give yee thanks unto the Lord
because that good is hee,
Because his loving-kindness lasts
in perpetuitee.
I’th’ desart in a desart way
they wandered: no towne finde
to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty
their Soul within them pinde.
Then did they to Jehovah cry
when they were in distresse
Who did them set at liberty
out of their anguishes.
In such a way as was most right
he led them forth also
That to a citty which they might
inhabit they might go.
I wish I could say that the boys’ parents, being so glad to get the
wanderers home, permitted them to go unpunished, but alas! early New
Englanders believed firmly that “foolishness is bound up in the heart
of a child,” and never spared the rod; and, as “sloathefulnes” and
disobedience to parents were specially abominated, such high-handed
rebellion as this of Elam and Cotton could hardly be allowed to pass by
without being made a public example. Then, too, unfortunately for the
boys, the warmth of joy at recovering the lost ones had time through
the two hours of sermon to cool down and change into indignation. So
at the close of the service Deacon Fayerweather, after rather coldly
greeting his son and nephew, asked the advice of the minister upon
so important a subject, who gave as his opinion that the gravity
of the offence, the necessity of the lesson to other youths in the
congregation, and the conveniency of circumstances seemed to point
out plainly, and was furthermore upheld by Scripture, that public
chastisement should be given upon the spot, and that Elder Rogers
was best fitted, both by age, dignity, and strength, to administer
both rebuke and punishment. And with promptness and despatch and
thoroughness the decree was carried out; both boys were “whipped with
birchen rods” while standing upon the horse-block before the church.
But though the colonial fathers were stern and righteously
disciplinarian, the colonial mothers were loving and tender, as are
mothers everywhere and in all times, and Mistress Fayerweather and
Mistress Noyes each bore off her weeping boy to the noon-house and
filled his empty stomach well with dough-nuts and pork and peas and
pumpkin-bread, until, with comfort and plenty within, external woes and
past terrors were forgotten.
THE DOCTOR’S PIE-PLATES
Many of my cherished china treasures, having no historical association
and being of comparatively coarse ware, would be of little value on
the shelves of a collector, and also of little interest to the general
observer; but they are endeared to me by the remembrance of the
circumstances under which they were found, or by some story connected
with their past owner or their past history.
I have a set of dark-blue Staffordshire plates, known as the “Doctor’s
Pie-plates,” which are resplendent with an interest that does not
come from their glorious color, rich as it is, nor from the wit of
the humorous scenes they represent. The plates, named, respectively,
“Dr. Syntax’s Noble Hunting-party,” “Dr. Syntax Upsets the Beehives,”
“Dr. Syntax Painting the Portrait of His Landlady,” “Dr. Syntax
Taking Possession of His Rectory,” and “Dr. Syntax Star-gazing,” are
printed from a set of pictures drawn by Thomas Rowlandson, one of
the most celebrated designers of humorous and amusing subjects of his
day. They were drawn and engraved to illustrate a book published by
William Combe, in 1812, called “Dr. Syntax’s Tour in Search of the
Picturesque.” A second tour, “In Search of Consolation,” appeared in
1820. This was also illustrated by Rowlandson. A third tour, “In Search
of a Wife,” was printed the following year. These books had an immense
and deserving popularity. Not only did these blue Staffordshire plates
appear, copying the amusing designs from the Dr. Syntax illustrations,
but a whole set of Derby figures were modelled--Dr. Syntax Walking, In
a Green-room, At York, At the Bookseller’s, Going to Bed, Tied to a
Tree, Scolding the Landlady, Playing the Violin, Attacked by a Bull,
Mounted on Horseback, Crossing the Lake, Landing at Calais, etc., and
also were sold in large numbers.
The “Doctor’s Pie-plates” did not, however, receive their name on
account of the presence of the laughable figure of Dr. Syntax in
their design, but from a far different and more serious and deeply
felt reason. They were once used as pie-plates; or, rather, I should
say more exactly and truthfully, were used _once_ as pie-plates, and
the story of that solitary pie-episode in their history, with the
succeeding results of their one period of use in that capacity, will
explain their fresh, unused condition, and show why I prize them so
highly, and reveal also the reason why I call them the “Doctor’s
Pie-plates.” The name has a deep significance; the pie-plates are
captured trophies of past war, sad emblems of hopeless rebellion,
never-fading ceramic proofs and emblems of the selfishness, the tyranny
of man.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, an American gentleman
married in England an English lady of some wealth. They brought
to America with them in a sailing-vessel, as part of the bride’s
wedding-outfit, a gayly painted, richly mounted travelling-coach. In
this great coach they rode in grand style with four post-horses from
Boston to Albany, New York, and Philadelphia, and back to the little
town in Narragansett, which was ever after their home. In due time
they died, and left to their only son, a physician, all their worldly
goods, including the old coach, and the far less desirable inheritance
of a high and stubborn temper, and a firm and deep-seated veneration
for English customs, manners, traditions, and productions, which would
be worthy an Anglomaniac of the present day. He, however, made one
unfortunate and incomprehensible deviation from his Anglo-worship when
he married an American wife. As years went on, the Doctor grew more and
more overbearing and dictatorial, especially in his household (as some
English husbands are also said to be), and in the matter of food and
of cooking--those unfortunate hobbies of an ill-tempered man--he took,
perhaps, the most violent stand. Never did any other wife have to hear
so often the words, “as my mother used to cook it,” and “they don’t
do it so in England,” or have to listen so frequently to acrimonious
expressions of dislike of American cooks and cooking. Pork and beans,
“cracker johnny-cake,” Indian-pudding, even the purely Dutch dough-nuts
were banished from his board; for not only did he refuse to eat these
New England dishes himself, but would not let his wife and daughters,
either. He also became unjust enough bumptiously to denounce as
“American” and “taboo” any food (no matter of what nationality) which
did not suit his fancy or which chanced to disagree with him.
On an unlucky day, having eaten too greedily of mince-pie (for he had
a fine English appetite), he passed his universal banishing dictum
on that darling of New England hearts and stomachs--_the pie_. From
thenceforth on feast-days only English plum-pudding was served for
dessert. To the New England wife, accustomed to see at least _four_
kinds of pie offered to “company,” if one made pretence even of being
truly hospitable and housewifely, the lonely pudding was a great
and almost unbearable source of grief and mortification, and many
a struggle did she make (trying to imitate her forefathers of old)
against the English yoke, but in vain; pieless and barren for years was
her table. But reinforcing troops at last came to her rescue; for three
daughters were grown, and, brave and strong with youth, they dared to
rebel more openly and recklessly than their browbeaten mother.
In 1830 all the Doctor’s relatives, far and near, were invited to eat
“Thanksgiving dinner” with him and his family; for he was hospitable
enough, in his own fashion; in all, thirty were to sit down at his
board. On the day before Thanksgiving, mother, daughters, and “help”
were all busy at work from early morning in the great pantry and
kitchen, making careful preparation for the coming dinner, and brisk
sounds of chopping and pounding and mixing were heard, and savory
smells and spicy vapors filled the house. Toward the close of the
day, when their work was nearly done, they suddenly heard, to their
terror, the sound of the Doctor’s cane (for he was badly crippled with
that typical English disease, the gout) thump, thumping through the
halls and rooms to the kitchen, an apartment he seldom visited. With
palpitating hearts but firm countenances they stood in a hollow square
for strength, as does any determined band, while he walked past them to
the “buttery,” where were placed in military rows twenty-six of those
hated abominations, pies--mince-pies, pumpkin and apple and cranberry,
and, the crowning dainty of all, “Marlboro’” pies. Their only hope of
salvation was that in the dull, fading November light the tyrant might
not discover the forbidden pastry; and, indeed, he did not appear to
do so, for he merely glanced scowlingly around, and, without speaking,
hobbled back to his office. Once more they breathed freely, and the
eldest daughter said, cheerfully: “Now, girls, nothing can happen; if
he had seen them we should have had to give them away; but he won’t
know anything about it now until they are brought on the table with the
pudding, and he will be most through his bottle of port then--but oh,
what shall we do when the company goes?”
Poor souls! they slept for one night the happy, unconscious sleep of
the victorious, the hospitable, and awoke on Thanksgiving morn to
find every pie vanished from the pantry-shelf. Every pie? Yes, and
every pie-plate, too!--twenty-six of the new English blue-and-white
stone-ware plates. At first they really believed, in their simplicity,
that a thief must have entered from outside and stolen them; but why
should the marauder take pies, and no other food? Then, too, there
was not a foot-print on the light snow which had fallen early in the
evening. No; the Doctor must have stolen his wife’s pies! But where
could he have hidden the pie-plates? For weeks, yes, for years, they
searched in every nook and corner; through the hay in the barns, behind
the logs of wood in the sheds, in old barrels and boxes in the cellar,
in closets, in trunks, under the eaves in the attic; and they even
peered out on the roof behind the peaks of the gable-windows, but no
pie-plates could they find. The grim old Doctor kept his silence, until
his daughters grew at last to think that some thief must have entered
in spite of apparent impossibility.