FOLK-LORE TALES IN THE OLD COLONIAL KITCHEN.
The New England Kitchen was a double house in colonial style, such
as was once to be seen on the roads running between Boston and the
coast towns. Across the promenade was the specimen building of the
Co-operative Society of Philadelphia. A little way beyond it, the
Irish village presented a curious contrast, and the Blarney Castle
rose in the sunny air.
In the kitchen of the typical old-time New England cottage the homely
food of the descendants of the Pilgrims was served,—brown bread and
baked beans, pumpkin pies, doughnuts and cheese, home-made relishes.
The waiters were dressed in colonial costumes, and sometimes wore
calashes. The reception-room of the house was furnished after the
manner of the Plymouth Colony.
[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND KITCHEN.]
The Marlowes were made welcome here, and used to take their suppers in
the kitchen, after becoming foot-weary. When the supper was over, they
would linger among the New England people, who daily gathered here,
and relate colonial wonder-tales.
One of these tales well fitted the unique room. It was told by Mr.
Marlowe, and we give it here:—
THE OLD COACH DOG, OR, THE PHANTOM INN.
The scene to which we introduce the reader on this Thanksgiving Eve
was in the old Winslow house at Green Harbor, now Marshfield, Mass.
No house in America, we may safely say, ever had so many colonial
legends of Thanksgiving Day as this.
“Silas,” said I, one night to an old stage-driver, “tell us the story
of the dog that said ‘Silas!’”
The company eagerly demanded the tale.
It was a strange room. In one corner were bushel baskets heaped with
corn. Uncle Silas shelled corn, as he said, “for company,” on other
than holiday or Sunday evenings.
Over the corn baskets were strings of dried apples, pumpkins, and red
peppers. Near the fireplace were rennets of cheese, and under the
rafters were candle-poles.
The fireplace revealed great fore-sticks, apple-tree wood, which made
an especially hot fire, and was used on Thanksgiving Eves, and at
special times.
Apples in rows were toasting on the hot hearth.
The family consisted of an old couple, named White, and their sons
and sons’ wives and children from towns near Boston, and a few
invited guests.
Uncle Silas caught up his chair and lifted it in the jumping way of
the old colonial time to a place nearer the fire. A shutter banged,
and he cast his eyes mysteriously toward the window. The room grew
very still.
“The clouds are scudding over the moon,” he began,—and I will tell
the tale as he told it, as nearly as I remember,—“the wind is
rising—I can hear it in the tops of the trees. Many’s the time I have
gone down in the old stage-coach on nights like this, and leaped from
the seat and snatched the mail-bag from the boot, and when I said
‘Silas,’ there would creep out of the boot that old coach dog.
“That dog was given to me by a sailor, who was about to go to sea
from the old North River. He was a pup then.
“I never knew a dog that seemed to think so much of his master as
that dog did of me. His eyes were never off of me.
“I taught him a number of tricks, such as to stand up on his hind
legs and beg, which he did by uttering a sharp, pitiful cry. While
begging one day, he made a sound like ‘Silas.’ I repeated it, and he
uttered it again.
“After that I would hold back from him his food until he had made
that sound. ‘Say Silas,’ I would say, and after a time he would utter
the word, or what sounded like it.
“The old stage-coaches had great leather boots that covered the
driver’s legs, and in cold and stormy days could be raised so high
as to protect nearly the whole body. Under the boot I carried the
mail-bags, and such packages as we to-day send by express.
“The mail-coach was sometimes robbed, when the boot was known to
cover valuables. I carried my own money in a large wallet in a side
pocket of a great gray coat, and money for others in the same way.
“I drove the stage for ten years, but I was never molested or robbed;
and in those ten years my dog Silas always slept at my feet among the
mail-bags.
[Illustration: MRS. PRESTON, NEW ENGLAND KITCHEN, MIDWAY.]
“While I was driving the stage there was some strange things that
happened in the old Dedham woods. Several travellers who had gone
through those woods at night had met with strange adventures.
“They had seen a window and a light in a lonely place a little
distance from the way, and heard the ringing of a bell like a
supper-bell.
“Two of them had turned in toward the window, but as they attempted
to approach it, it seemed to draw back into the heart of the woods.
After walking toward it for a considerable distance, it seemed to
them no nearer, and they had become alarmed, and suddenly turned and
fled, believing it to be a ghost.
[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND GIRLS AND THEIR CHAPERON, FROM THE NEW
ENGLAND KITCHEN.]
“One traveller, who had entered the road at dusk, had never been
heard of again.
“After these events any one who saw the window at night took to his
heels, and at last few persons would go through the woods after dark,
except in a carriage or in company.
“The Dedham woods began to bear a bad reputation, but the dark
events that had happened there were assigned to ghosts, and the
vanishing window and light were spoken of as the ‘Phantom inn that
travelled away.’
“Was I ever afraid when riding alone in the old Dedham woods? I
always speak plainly, and I must say that I sometimes was. A sort of
shadow of a fear would come over me.
“I never believed in ghosts or haunted houses after my early years.
Yet a superstitious nature clings to me. It has often made me feel
creepy, until I stopped to reason. It stands to reason that dead
folks don’t appear with leather boots on, and hats and buttons and
clothes woven in looms.
“The Dedham woods used to be a lonely place. It is mostly farms now.
They stretched then away toward the coast. There were no towns like
Hyde Park then; no Ponkapoag with villas; no costly summer homes.
“The sunlit spaces between the trees were full of bluejays, that
would eye the coach with outstretched necks. I can seem to see them
now.
“The Indian-pipe used to grow by the wayside, and back of it wild
roses and green brakes and clematis, which bloomed and feathered
late. The horses liked to slack up in summer, and walk under the cool
shadows of the trees.
“Oh, those were lonely roads in winter. The winds used to whistle
like this—woo-oo-oo. Just as though they were spinning—woo-oo-oo.
They seemed to catch the spirit of the sea, which was not many miles
away—woo-oo-oo; like that.
“People began to move away to York State. They called it up ‘country’
then. The Mohawk valley seemed as far away at that time as the
prairies do now.
“I had a good offer to go to Albany and take a stage-route from there
to Buffalo. I caught the up ‘country’ fever, and resolved to go.
“I may seem weak, but one of my greatest regrets on parting was that
I would have to leave my old friend Silas, and I might never see him
again.
“One day as I was stopping at the old Scituate inn, just before
setting out for Albany, I met a stranger there. He called himself
Searle. I shall never forget the eyes of that man. There seemed to be
a hidden spirit, not himself, looking through them. They reminded me
at once of the travelling window and light, or the Phantom inn.
“But Silas, the dog—I never met such a mystery as when the dog’s
eyes first met those of that man. It used to be said in old New
England times that dogs would see ghosts coming, and start up and
howl, before people could see them. That dog seemed to see something
mysterious in that man’s eyes.
“He leaped into the air when Searle appeared, and said ‘Silas.’
He then shook all over, dropped on his feet, and ran around me,
whining in a fearful tone. What did it mean? I have thought of it an
hundred times—what did it mean?
“‘Goin’ up country, I hear,’ said Searle.
“‘Yes, I have concluded to take the Albany route,’ said I. ‘There is
more money in it.’
“‘Goin’ to take your dog here along with you? He’s a fine one.’
“‘No,’ said I; ‘I’ll have to go by the way of New York, and up the
river to Albany, and I must leave him behind. If I were going by the
way of Springfield I would take him along. I set a store by that dog.’
“‘Don’t want to sell him, do ye?’
“There came a strange light into the man’s eyes. I cannot describe
it. It made me think of the travelling window in the woods again.
“I hesitated.
“‘Stranger,’ said I at last, ‘where do you live?’
“‘Oh, in a lonely place down by the Dedham ponds. They say it’s
getting dangerous there, and I want a dog. I need one. Say, as you’re
goin’ off, what will you take for him?’
“‘I don’t know; I wouldn’t sell him for anything if I didn’t have to.’
“‘I’ll give you ten dollars for him. That is high, but I’m lonely
like, and they say them woods are getting dangerous. What do you say?’
“‘You may have him.’
“I felt somehow that I had done an unworthy thing,—that I had sold my
dog to an unworthy master. That dog had such a true nature that he
would never have tricked me with any act.
“How should I part with Silas? I felt my head ache at the thought
of it—the dog had been so faithful. I decided I would have Searle
put a rope on his collar, and would leave him in the evening in the
office of the inn with him, and so steal away from him unknown. I did
so,—and if ever I felt like a coward, it was then.
“Five years passed, when one November day I received a letter. My old
friends, the Whites, had remembered me, and they invited me to spend
Thanksgiving with them at Green Harbor.
“Wife’s folks lived in the old town of Dedham, and she urged me to
accept the invitation, as she wished to go with me to Dedham. Her
folks were getting old—but, poor woman, they outlived her.
“So I secured a driver to take my place for a few weeks, and we set
out together for Boston and Dedham. One day, late in November, I
left my wife among her folks, and set out, intending to walk over
to Weymouth to see some friends, and there to take the stage for
Marshfield.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF STATUE SOUTH OF MANUFACTURES BUILDING.]
“I had expected to start in the morning and make a day of it, but
I was delayed until the afternoon. It was delightful Indian summer
weather, and I did not mind a night walk, as I could rest in Weymouth.
“‘Don’t stop at the Phantom inn,’ said my wife, as we parted.
[Illustration: IRISH VILLAGE,—BLARNEY CASTLE.]
“‘I sha’n’t stop at no phantom inns,’ said I, ‘if I expect to reach
Randolph to-night. There will no acorns sprout under my feet.’
“‘But,’ said my wife’s mother, ‘they do tell strange stories still
about those woods. Are you armed?’
“‘Yes, as much as I ever am.’
“‘But you used to keep a dog.’
“I stalked away, laughing.
“Nightfall overtook me on the border of the old Dedham woods.
“I remember the strange mysterious feeling that came over me as
I entered the shadow of the pines of that lonely road among the
skeleton trees. I stopped and looked back.
“As I stood listening, there came a vivid impression that somehow I
was in the companionship of the old coach dog, as I used to be. I
could feel my heart shrink as I recalled how meanly I had treated
him, and I eased my conscience with the reflection that I had done as
well for him, and myself, as I could.
“That a dog might make his presence felt in some way by electrical
force is possible I cannot say, but I repeat it,—I seemed to feel
that the old coach dog was somewhere near me in these woods, and had
a sense that I was there.
“I entered the lonely way, when another strange thing began to haunt
me. It was the eyes of Searle. I had never forgotten them. I could
almost see them again now. Every rattle in the savin bushes seemed to
bring them back again.
“As I walked along with a witch-hazel stick for a cane, a great light
rose like a fire among the tops of the gray rocks and skeleton trees.
It was a full hunter’s moon coming up from the sea. After a time it
went into a cloud, but the way was still clear. It was almost as
still as death.
“Occasionally a timid rabbit would cross the way; once a white rabbit
leaped out before me, and I felt my heart beat, and thought again
of the old coach dog, Searle’s dreadful eyes, and the tales of the
Phantom inn, at which I used to laugh when I drove the cape stage.
“The way grew more lonely, amid the oaks and the russet leaves,
savins, pines, and rocks. In places the road was strewn with fallen
nuts, and at some points with rustling leaves. Once the eyes of a
white owl confronted me on a decaying limb—I thought again of Searle.
“I hurried on, hoping to reach Randolph before midnight, when
suddenly I heard a sound that stopped my feet at once and sent
a chill over me. It was a hollow tone, like the ringing of a
supper-bell, such as used to be common in the farmhouses and inns.
“I looked in the direction of the sound, when I saw a little way from
the road a window and a light among the trees. I stopped nervously.
“‘Is it imagination,’ I asked myself. ‘Is it a dream of the old
story? Shall I run, or turn toward the bell?’
“I was frightened and my heart beat, but I am not a man to run. After
hesitating for a few moments I turned into the wood in the direction
of the window and the light, and found a path there which I began to
follow cautiously.
“I walked to the place where I had first heard the bell and seen the
window and the light, but the window and the light were apparently
as far away now as when I started from the road. As I watched I could
see it move back, but I could hear nothing.
“I stopped again. The window and the light soon seemed to stop.
Should I run? No. I would shout. So I cried out, ‘Hullo!’
“The rocks answered my loud call with many echoes. A startled
partridge rose on whirring wings from some wild alder-bushes near me.
Then all was still, or—did I imagine it?—I thought I could hear the
low piteous suppressed whine of a dog. The light vanished.
“I knew not what to do. I was unarmed. I went forward very slowly and
cautiously, when the path grew soft, and the earth began to crumble
beneath my feet. I paused and listened.
“A cry pierced the hollow air. How can I describe it? It thrilled
every nerve in my body. I can hear it now; it seemed as though all
the intensity of a human heart was in it—it said, it shrieked as the
cry of some pent-up force,—it said,—
“‘Silas!’
“I knew the voice. It was a warning tone. I knew that dog’s tone of
warning. I stepped back and listened again.
“I heard a struggle down in the distance. Where was I? It came to me.
I was on the border of a ledge of rocks. Below me was a pond. Had I
taken a few steps more I would have gone over into the water.
“I felt that the way led to a false projection over the water. I had
been drawn toward a trap to destroy me. I felt the situation then as
clearly as I can see it now.
“My every nerve quivered with terror, but my will grew stronger than
ever before. I never knew how strong or how weak I was till then.
“As I stood listening, a fearful oath rose from the pond. Then all
was still. I looked up to the sky. It was the only object that seemed
friendly. The clouds parted below the hunter’s moon, and a wide
silvery light swept over the scene. I was surely on a projecting edge
of rock, or platform, over a pond.
“Suddenly I heard a sound in the bushes. It was a patter of feet. A
dog came bounding out of the savins toward me. He rose up, springing
as it were into the air, shook his paws, and cried,—I can hear it
now,—
“‘Silas!’
“It was my old coach dog.
“I hurried back to the road, followed by the dog. Was it a dream?
What had happened?
“At near midnight I came to my old friend’s farmhouse at Randolph,
and roused the family. Before any one could speak I pointed to the
dog.
“‘Tell me, for heaven’s sake, what is that?’ I cried.
“‘That is a dog,’ said my old friend, the farmer,—‘your old coach
dog. What did you think it was? Where did you find him?’
“We went the next morning to the scene of my night’s adventure. One
of the first things that we saw was the dead body of Searle, floating
on the pond.
[Illustration: SCENE IN OLD VIENNA.]
“The light in the window of the Phantom inn had allured me to the
edge of a broad, false precipice, and I was just about to fall over
into the pond when my old coach dog’s warning word had saved me. The
dog had evidently dragged his dark-minded master over the rocky cliff
into the pond.
“Searle had carried the window and light in his hand, and with
covered feet had moved back to allure travellers.
“‘Silas?’ Yes, I must answer that question. What became of him? I
took him back to Albany with me. He was an old dog then, and used to
repeat that word in his distress. He said it more than once on the
day that he died.”
Another story, related by Mr. Marlowe, which was quite appropriate to
the place, was as follows:—
THE GREAT CHESHIRE CHEESES.
The Masons, whose history I used to hear, were among the founders
of New Providence, the vanished village of the autumnal Berkshire
Hills. I well recall the stories of Elder Leland that I used to hear
in my old Swansea home, and especially the awful ghost-story that the
courtly evangelist used to relate confidentially to a few friends. No
Rhode Island farmer’s boy of thirty years ago will ever forget that,
and any allusion to it would make, in those days, young feet nimble
in dark chambers and on lonesome roads.
Times have, indeed, changed. No ghost-story, however vivid, would be
likely to make a Rhode Island boy nervous to-day.
I recall also the more cheerful story of the great Cheshire Cheese,
as we used to hear it, and have often repeated, in my young churning
days, the New Providence receipt for turning cream into butter under
the miracle-working influence of the old-time dasher:—
“Come, butter, come;
Peter stands at the gate,
Waiting for the butter-cake,
Come, butter, come.”
The rhyme of this persuasive ditty is not perfect, and I am unable
to say who “Peter” was, though the name sounds Apostolic; but the
Cheshire and Rhode Island farmers’ wives could all declare that this
brief invocation gave a wonderful efficacy to the churn-dasher.
I shall never forget my first excursion into Cheshire to visit the
once famous farms of New Providence, and the graves of Elder Leland
and the heroes of Bennington. It was a glimmering September day, such
as brings the tourist of New York to Lenox, not far away.
The sky was an over-sea of gold. The Housatonic lay, here like a
mirror of glass in the brown woodland pastures, there purling amid
purple gentians over mossy dams.
The wrecks of old orchard trees dotted the landscape; fading
beech-trees, with their bark perforated by the long bills of the
golden-winged woodpeckers; aftermath in alluvial meadows; cornfields
with orange banners on the uplands, and, over all, Greylock,
green-wooded and maple-tinted, looking down the valley.
Graveyards—like little villages of the dead—with mossy stones,
touched the heart and fancies, and the town at last came full in
view, with its white spire and faded inn.
“Where is New Providence?” I asked of an old man who had stopped to
rest on the cool russet sward under a leafy maple, where the locusts
were singing in the bright air.
“There is no New Providence any more,” said he. “It is all gone: the
hotels, the stores, the churches, all—there is not a house left.
There is where it _was_.”
He pointed toward a sunny slope. How beautiful was the situation!
But there was not so much as a house or an orchard. Shades of Oliver
Goldsmith! Could it be possible that here in New England was a
veritable Deserted Village?
“The inhabitants of New Providence all sleep in a little graveyard
under the hill,” said the stranger, filling his pipe. “That was once
New Providence Purchase, and was settled from Providence Plantations.
It is now called Stafford Hill.
“Old Captain Joab Stafford, the hero of Bennington, is buried in the
old graveyard, near the road. You can see his grave as you pass by.”
New Providence began in a pleasant joke. Old generous Captain
Stafford, who was brought wounded at last from Bennington to his
pleasant home and tavern, built his house in New Providence Purchase
before he brought his wife from Rhode Island.
When his fine house was completed, he went after Mrs. Stafford, but
refused to give her any description of his new place. Across the
Connecticut on horseback they hastened toward the mountains.
“Now as we ride along,” said he, “and notice the new settlements,
tell me when we come to just such a house as you would like.”
They rode through Cheshire, once called the Kitchen, and at last the
good woman lifted her eyes to a bowery hill almost in the shadow of
Greylock.
“How beautiful!” said she. “There is just such a home and place as I
should like to have. If I could only live there, I would be perfectly
satisfied.”
“You shall live there,” said her gallant husband. “That is our home.”
Out of that vanished house he was borne down the hill to his last
resting-place in the valley below, and poets and orators spoke his
praise.
Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1754, came to
Cheshire when quite a young man. He was on one occasion called upon
to speak from the pulpit, when the pastor was absent. There came to
him a flow of words and ideas which astonished his hearers much
and himself more, and he felt that he was allotted to be a preacher.
He was a Baptist-Quaker, like Roger Williams.
[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW, MANUFACTURES BUILDING.]
It has been asserted that his influence made Madison President. He
travelled to a distance of many thousand miles, preaching; crowds
followed him everywhere, and queer stories of his eccentricities were
repeated by every fireside.
Among the old Cheshire humorists and the old story-tellers of the
tavern at New Providence, and the half-way inn at Cheshire on the
old Boston and Albany stage-route, were gallant Captain Stafford,
the Bennington hero, Freelove Mason, the jolly mistress of the first
regular stage-route hostelry, William Brown, or “Sweet Billy,”—the
“Artemas Ward” of Berkshire,—Elder John Leland, whose jokes were
echoed ever by the sounding-board over his tall pulpit, and the rich
old farmers by the name of Mason, Brown, Wood, and Cole, and the
stage-drivers.
The story of the great Cheshire Cheese was once a New England
wonder-tale, but was seldom correctly told, in all of its essential
details. The making of it furnishes a picture of the early humor
of the village, than which few pastoral scenes can be more
pleasing, or more widely in contrast with many of the grim Puritan
legends. Cheshire has a cheese-factory now; then every farm had a
cheese-press. There was joy among the industrious dames of Cheshire,
when the old stage-driver of the Berkshire Hills blew his horn, and
swung his hat, and shouted, “Hurrah for President Jefferson!” The
buxom dairy-women had been well-schooled in Democratic politics by
Elder Leland, himself an intimate friend of Jefferson, and a disciple
of the broad principles of the Declaration.
“Toot, toot for Jefferson!” rung out the horn and voice of
Cameralsman, the lusty stage-driver, as he passed through the thrifty
Mason farms.
“Jefferson it is!” said Freelove Mason, the ruddiest dame of the
Berkshire Hills; “and how shall we celebrate our victory like free
and honest people that we are?”
“How?” said the Cheshire dames. “We will make the biggest cheese
ever pressed in America,—such an one as the farmers have been joking
about,—and send it to the new President for a present. Every cow in
Berkshire shall furnish the milk for the curd.”
I need not say that the great cheese was made. All the Yankee world
knows that. The summer of bobolinks and morning-glories that followed
the political spring of happiness in Cheshire saw a great gathering
of curds on a certain day, and all the kirtled dames met at Elisha
Brown’s, and compounded the mammoth gift to the President.
It was pressed in a cider-mill, and if it did not require four horses
to draw it, it is said that that number was harnessed to the vehicle
that brought it from the press, where it had been pressed for ten
days. It weighed one thousand two hundred and thirty-five pounds, was
carried to the Hudson and shipped to Washington. Elder Leland went
with the great cheese, “preaching,” as he said, “all the way.”
The stately correspondence between Leland and Jefferson, in offering
and accepting the gift, is still preserved. Those were the days
when every voter supposed himself to be a born king by right of the
Constitution, and it took the old formal style of writing to express
the sentiments of the new monarchs. Jefferson’s letter, accepting
the great cheese, was worthy of the author of “When in the course of
human events.”
Elder Leland, tall and courtly, was well adapted to the dramatic part
of the occasion. A grander commoner never entered the Republican
court. Jefferson had often met the great revival preacher in
Virginia, for Leland depopulated towns to listen to his fiery
eloquence wherever he went. His calling to the ministry, like Saint
Paul’s, had come, as he believed, in the form of a voice out of the
skies, and his tongue, to use the old Hebrew simile common in the old
days, had been “touched by a burning coal from the altar.”
There are few preachers like Leland to-day. Eloquent as the old
Methodist field preachers, elegant and courtly as a Camille
Desmoulins, witty as a Swift or Steele, and far in advance of his
times in the liberality of his opinions, a theological disciple
of Roger Williams and Samson Mason, and a political follower of
Jefferson, he was not only a remarkable preacher, but one of the most
noted men of his time. He labored as a winter revivalist in Virginia
for many years, before he made his home in Cheshire.
It was one of the humors of the time to relate events of a pleasing
character in the style of the Hebrew Chronicles, and the Chronicle of
the Cheshire Cheese was once well-known in the story-telling town. It
began:—
“And Jacknips said unto the Cheshirites, ‘Behold, the Lord hath put
a ruler over us that is after our own hearts. Now let us gather
together our curds, and carry them into the valley of Elisha, unto
his wine-press, and there make a great cheese, that we may make a
thank-offering unto the great man.’ Now this saying pleased the
Cheshirites, so they did as Jacknips had commanded.”
The great Cheshire Cheese was shared by the President with the
governors of several States, to whom samples were sent. The story
of it was a great advertisement of Berkshire County; and it was
resolved to make a still larger cheese, which should weigh sixteen
hundred pounds.
[Illustration: SPANISH BUILDING.]
Elder Leland’s church was famous for its psalmody. He himself wrote
many hymns, among them the almost Ambrosian tone-picture,—
“The day is past and gone.”
He used sometimes to ascend the pulpit singing.
There was one of the numerous Brown family of Cheshire who was a
famous singer in his day, and to him we will assign a popular story
of the time. His voice not only filled the church, but went out of
the window. His bass notes were deep and full,—“foot-notes,” he
called them,—and it was his special pride to inform the people in the
then masterpiece of country-church choir music how
“The angel of
The angel of
The Lord came down.
And glory shone around,
And glory
And g-l-o-r-y, etc.”
During the great winter revivals in Elder Leland’s church, Singer
Brown was all eyes, ears, and voice. But the dairy-making season that
produced the sweet butter and mammoth cheeses for which Cheshire
became famous was very trying to his eyelids, during the long Sunday
sermons, and the tithing-man often had a sore trial to keep his
attention steady after the “sixthly” or “seventhly.”
It was all so restful in the old church,—the bobolinks singing in
the clover outside, the red-breasted robins in the tall trees! The
cool breezes came into the windows from the hayfields, over which the
cloud-shadows passed.
Then, too, even fiery Elder Leland’s voice had a far-away sound when
he came to the usual part of a New England sermon about the Jews in
Jerusalem, and still more dreary was it when the Jews were in Babylon.
Singer Brown, on such occasions, would become oblivious of both the
Jews and the Gentiles, and would have to be waked by the vigilant
tithing-man.
Elder Leland himself had a genius for waking people on such restful
and balmy days. Once, when a farmer under the gallery had fallen
asleep and tipped back his head, with his mouth stretched open from
ear to ear, some very imaginative boys in the gallery stuck a pin
into a bean and lowered it down by a string to the open mouth, like a
bucket into a well.
When the tall Elder saw it he didn’t rebuke the boys, but seizing the
Bible, slammed it down on the pulpit with a cannon shake, at the same
time calling out to the poor man: “Wake up! wake up!”
The industrious farmer’s slumbers were broken by these gentle
circumstances, and he was enabled to follow the wanderings of the
Jews during the rest of the sermon.
But Singer Brown, on one Sunday, fell asleep beside the old bass-viol
amid such scandalous consequences that the tithing-man, the clerk,
and the venerable deacons never forgave him.
It all is supposed to have happened in the summer of 1803, the
third year of the reign of the universal Kings under the good King
Commoner, Thomas Jefferson, when ambitious people of Cheshire had put
their heads together to make a bigger cheese than the one that had
been made for their chosen President. The history of this cheese is
often confused with the Jeffersonian present.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “ILLINOIS.”]
One Sunday morning in June, Goody Brown gave to her consort, Singer
Billy, the long-necked pitcher, and sent him to the neighbors for
milk. Billy went from house to house, but was refused.
“Not to-day, Billy,” said every one; “we are saving our milk for the
big cheese, you know.”
After Billy had wandered about amid the dews to the Masons’, the
Waggoners’, and others, without success, although all the pantries
were overflowing, he obtained a pint of milk at last from a
Federalist, who was not in full sympathy even with the enterprises of
the community.
It was now church time, and he was to sing bass to “The Lord
descended from above” that day, in his view a stupendous performance.
So he took his milk-pitcher along with him to the church, and up into
the choir-loft.
A red curtain hung on rings ran before the singers in the choir.
The music books were placed on racks, and the choir was directly
over the high pulpit, the deacon’s seat, and the clerk’s pew. A huge
sounding-board hung over the pulpit, which was a kind of mahogany
pen, with stairs on each side, and doors. The top of the pulpit
reached almost to the choir.
Singer Billy sang well that morning the sonorous music of William
Billings of Stoughton, and touched the “foot-notes” with impressive
clearness.
Then he felt that his work was over, and began to be oblivious to
the truth that was being proclaimed under the sounding-board. The
old deacons, too, after all the excitements of mowing, milkings, and
the preparations for making of the new cheese, were not in the most
receptive mood, but felt the world gliding away from them in various
ways.
The clerk fell quite asleep, and wandered away in the far regions
of air beyond the solid continents of all theologies. Even the
tithing-man had dropped his rod.
In this hour, when watchfulness had ceased, disaster came, and
brought a scandal upon the descendants of the heroic Samson Mason,
and upon all.
A dog came trotting up the choir stairs. He, too, had found milk
scarce that morning, and smelling Singer Billy’s pitcher near the red
curtain, looked around and found that Billy and most of the singers
were quite indifferent to current events. He ran his head down the
long neck of the pitcher toward the pint of milk in the great hollow
below.
But while the descent of his head into the pitcher was easy, the
withdrawing of it was otherwise. His head would not come out. He put
up his inefficient paws and rubbed the outside of the pitcher; he
moved to and fro, backward and forward. At last, not knowing where
he was going, he passed quite under the red curtain, and finally
succeeded in pushing the pitcher over the balcony.
There was an alarming crash in the deacon’s pew. Was ever anything
so extraordinary? It was not a centaur that had come down, half
horse and half man, but a yet more marvellous beast, half dog and
half pitcher. The pitcher was broken to fragments; the dog howled
pitifully; the clerk and the deacons all awoke at once, and the
tithing-man leaped to his feet.
Singer Brown, too, suddenly came down from the blissful
clover-gardens of dreamland, and looking over the curtain on the
scene of mystery and disaster below, comprehended at a glance all
that had happened. He prophetically calculated the future, and
quickly slipped down the stairs, and out of the church.
When questioned about the matter, he said, with unusual dignity,—
“What but humiliation could you have expected from a people whose
hearts had turned to the worship of cheeses?”
I stood recently in the old Cheshire churchyard by the grave of good
Elder Leland, and read with a tender reverence the following simple
inscription, on his tombstone, which had been prepared by himself:—
“Here lies John Leland of Cheshire, who labored to promote piety and
to vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men.”
His “Evening Hymn” is his true monument, but he will long be a figure
in the history of that quaint past.
“TRIP-TRIP-TO-DEE-DEE.”
THE SCHOOLMASTER’S STORY.
A hand was raised in the reading-class.
“Well?” I asked.
“What became of _that_ man?”
“I do not know, James. This reading lesson is a humorous story.”
I was a teacher when the unexpected question was asked me. The second
class in reading used a book, long ago out of print, that was called
the “Introduction to the American Common School Reader and Speaker.”
Some of my readers may recall it. It contained a single humorous
selection, entitled “A Melting Story.” It was this selection that had
been read, when my honest pupil, James, asked the question,—
“What became of _that_ man?”
“That man” was the unhappy subject of the reading-book story. One
cold winter’s night he had slipped into a country store while the
keeper had gone out to close the blinds, and had stolen a pound ball
of butter, and put it into his hat, and replaced the hat, with the
butter ball in the top of the crown, on his head. The storekeeper
saw the act, and determined to punish the thief in as cunning a way
as the theft had been committed. He rushed into the store, confronted
the butter stealer, and compelled him to sit down by the stove. He
filled the stove with wood, and began to talk in a lively manner,
and, adding seasoned wood to the roaring fire, made the place so hot
that the butter melted in the thief’s hat, and ran down over his face
and shoulders.
The thief, thus detained, made many excuses to get away, but the
storekeeper would not accept them, but held him in torture, his face
and hair dripping with the butter. At last, when the butter had
thoroughly oiled his woful guest, he rose and said: “I say, Seth, the
fun that I have had out of you to-night will well pay me for that
pound of butter. I shall not charge it,” or words with this meaning.
This selection of reading was very popular in old schools forty years
ago.
I well recall the class that read this selection. It stretched across
the platform in a zigzag row. Some of the boys were tall, some short,
and the girls who stood at the head read much better than the boys.
The days usually began to grow long, and the snows to melt and drip
from the icicles on the roof, when we reached this selection, which
was near the end of the book. The windows looked out on the long
snowscapes, broken by icy woods and green savin trees. At a little
distance the simple church spire was seen gleaming under the blue
sky, and the dark slate-stones in the churchyard were a constant
reminder of the mortality of us all.
The pupils brought their dinners in tin dinner pails, and often
shared their sweet-breads with each other. Some of the pupils were
very poor, and could only bring corn bread for the noon lunch.
James’s father was a prosperous farmer, and provided him with
generous lunches, and he used to share them with the poor boys and
girls. I had learned to love him for these acts of generosity. James
was as honest as he was generous. He had a very sympathetic nature,
and it was this that prompted him to ask with a serious face while
the rest of the class were laughing,—
“What became of _that_ man?”
The question haunted me for the half hour that the reading exercise
continued, though I had regarded the story as a fiction. Just before
I dismissed the class I said,—
“James, I should think from your tone of voice and serious look that
you rather sympathized with the thief.”
“If we knew all things in people’s hearts, we should pity everybody,”
he said. “The Bible says that if a man be overtaken in a fault,
those that have spiritual strength should restore him. I would never
have published a story like that. I would have given the man a chance
to regain his self-respect. Wouldn’t you?”
I can see him now,—his manly, handsome face, clear blue eyes, high
color, and intensity of expression. Five years afterwards he entered
Andover Seminary, and the feathery palms of a missionary graveyard
under a tropic sky wave over his dead body now.
The pupils dropped their slates, and the class lowered their books
to hear what I would say. I hesitated. The schoolroom grew painfully
still, the wood roared on the fire of the stove, and the evergreen,
or creeping-jenny, that had been turned around the stove-pipe,
crackled and fell.
“I should feel that it was a duty that I owe to the public safety to
expose a thief,” I answered. “Wouldn’t you, James?”
“I had rather change an evil-doer into an honest man,” he replied.
“In that case he might never steal again. I”—he hesitated. There was
the same painful stillness in the room.
“What, James?”
“I have heard that that man is still living in Maine, and that after
that joke he lost all regard for respectability, and became a beggar.
I do not know that the report is true, but a man from Portland told
my father so in my hearing.” The stillness continued. He added:
“Governor Winthrop forgave a thief who robbed his woodpile, by
sending for him and offering to give him the wood he needed.”
The term drew to its close. Washington’s Birthday passed, the bell
ringing out in the little white steeple. The March days grew long and
bright, with occasional flurries of snow; the bluebirds came fluting
into the gray orchards; the woodpeckers tapped the hollow trees, and
the wild geese passed over, honking like flying trumpets or mellow
horns in the sky. Early April brought examination day. The grave
committee came, making my little principality tremble; heard the
classes recite, read, and spell, made a “few remarks,” and then the
winter school was over.
I can see those old pupils now, as they stood in the yard about the
door in the late April afternoon, their faces bright in the western
sunlight. I never met them again as I saw them then.
I parted with James with peculiar reluctance, as he was one of the
most high-minded boys that I had ever met, and had a heart to feel
and a hand to help.
On examination day the “Melting Story” was read, which elicited from
one of the members of the committee the rugged remark:—
“That’s a good one; served him right; it wouldn’t ha’ been improper
for the boys to laugh after a story like that, would it, teacher?”
“No,” I answered. “I allow them to laugh in such a case.”
But the class did not laugh. James’s inquiries in regard to the
narrative had changed the spirit of all the young readers.
The impression that James had made haunted me. It seemed to me that
the story was incomplete, and I carried the sympathetic inquiry of my
pupil in my mind: “What became of _that_ man?”
One blue April day, a few years after the incident that had occurred
in my dear old class, I was walking the streets of a great seaport
city in Maine, when a very strange scene met my eye.
Two boys came, as it were, flying from a narrow street into a public
square, each screaming at the top of his voice,—
“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Who stole the butter?”
My eye followed them in lively curiosity, and at once the old story
in the reading-book and James’s inquiry came rushing back to my mind.
I had heard that there were two stories of this kind, and which one
had given rise to the popular reading-book narrative could hardly be
determined except by the author, of whom I knew nothing.
What followed caused me to stand still. A poor, wretched-looking old
man, with a basket on his arm, came hobbling and jumping out of the
same street, with a cobblestone in one hand. He was evidently chasing
the boys. As he entered the square, the boys turned around and cried
again,—
“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Who stole the butter? Who stole the butter?”
The old man came to a halt, and, with wild eyes and a frantic
movement, threw the stone at the boys. They dodged the revengeful
missile, and skipped away, calling,—
“Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee! Trip-Trip-to-dee-dee!”
A well-dressed stranger stopped near to see the odd episode.
“Who is that old man?” I asked.
“Oh, that is Trip-Trip-to-Day-Day. He is a character here. The boys
torment him. They like to have him chase them. There are few boys in
this part of the city that he has not chased.”
“What is his occupation?” I continued.
“Oh, a common beggar. He is almost the only street beggar in this
city. He lives, I think, in some old hut outside of the place, and
comes here begging each morning, with his basket on his arm. Look at
him.”
I looked. The running and the vengeful throwing of the stone had
exhausted him, and he had just sunk down in a heap, as it were, on a
seat in the square.
The old question that James had asked came to me again with
irresistible force. I crossed the street to the square, and sat down
on the long bench beside the half-animated bundle of rags.
The old man peered into my face.
“I—am—all exhausted,” he said; “’gin out—I can’t do as I used to do.”
“It’s a fine day,” I said.
“Yes—ha—a fine day for fine folks. Ha—all days are pretty much the
same to me. Are you a stranger here?”
“Yes; what is your name?”
“Seth—ha—Seth. That is my name. What’s yourn?”
“Why do the people here allow the boys to trouble an old man like
you? I thought people were civil here,—that this was a Christian
city.”
“You did, did ye, stranger? Ha, you thought that the people were
civiller, ha? Well, they be generally, as a rule, but not to old
Seth. Well, never mind. I shall get through by and by. I shall
have to throw rocks at ’em while I live, and can hobble about, ha.
Stranger, I’ll tell you how it was. It may seem strange to you that
one thing like that should ruin a man’s life, but it has mine. I’d
been careless about living on the square for some time, when it
happened—that joke that crippled me for life.”
He caught his breath convulsively with a halting “Ha,” and then
continued:—
“It was a terrible cold night when I went into that store, and found
that the store-keeper had gone out to shut up the blinds. I was all
alone, and there came over me the impulse to profit by the chance.
Somethin’ seemed to whisper to me: ‘Here is your luck, make the most
of it.’ Stranger, there was once a time when I would have no such
temptation if I’d gone into an empty shop with an open drawer of
uncounted dollars.
“I saw the balls of butter in the cool corner of the store. I seized
one. My conscience began to burn, and I threw water upon it by
saying: ‘I’ll pay for it at some other time!’ Men cool conscience in
that way.
“The storekeeper came back with a queer look on his face. He did not
appear nat’ral. He was too friendly. He made me sit down close to the
stove. I could feel my heart beat under my coat. When a person is
dealing unfair with you, you feel it in the air. I could feel in the
air that something was wrong.
“Well, the stove roared; it turned red. The place was close, and
I was so nervous that I began to perspire. Then all at once—how
the thing struck me like a death-shot!—the butter began to melt. I
could feel it trickling down my hair, and dropping into my back. I
thought of the old hymn about the holy oil and Aaron’s beard. I
wished that the butter in my hat was like that. I hoped still that
the storekeeper did not suspect me, but I felt that he did. The
butter was shaping itself to my head. I dared not take off my hat. I
wondered if the butter were soaking through it. I tried to move back,
but there was no room. Then I felt the oil creeping down the back of
my head. It would soon flow over my forehead. I leaped up; I said: ‘I
must go—I ain’t well—let me out—I must go.’ But the storekeeper stood
before me, and made me sit down again. Had I been right and strong
within, I could not have done it. But a conscience-stung man will do
anything,—he is a coward, and his heart is wax.
[Illustration: COLUMBIAN FOUNTAIN, AND COURT OF HONOR.]
“I sat down, with a feeling as though I was stifled. The butter kept
on melting; it ran down over my face, and I wiped it off with my
mittens and comforter. I never before dreamed how much oil there was
in a pound of butter. Would it ever cease to flow?
“Well, the storekeeper let me go at last, and told me of the fun that
my punishment had given him. Stranger, I deserved the punishment; I
acknowledge it was just. But I wished that he had taken some other
way, and given me a chance. I was not wholly bad; I might not have
been where I am now.
“The next day all the people in the town were laughing at me.
Stranger, there is nothing that kills a man like ridicule, and since
that time I’ve cared for nothing but to trip, trip about, and do
chores, and beg, and throw stones at the boys. Stranger, I sometimes
wish that I was young again when I hear the robins sing. But the
spring stalk never blooms twice. Stranger, I was to blame. Ah, well,
my glass is almost run; it can never be turned again.”
On one side of the square, across the street, was an orchard-yard,
and some low, budding peach-trees. Into the boughs of this yard
robins came chirping and singing while the old man was speaking, and
when he became silent the birds sang again. The old man listened to
the first song of the robin, and, turning to me, said:—
“Robins? It’s spring again. I’m glad the winter is over. I like to
hear the robins when they first begin to sing. About the only friends
I’ve got is the robins.”
“How is that, my friend?”
“Stranger—ha—you’ve read about old Bible times? They used to stone
people who stole in those days. They don’t do so now, but it’s just
as bad—wrongdoers throw stones at themselves. All my troubles began
with stealing a pound of butter. I began to throw stones at myself,
and the world only followed me.”
The sun grew warm. The purple sea rolled afar, here and there white
with flying sails and with the long breakers that churned on rocks
and ledges. A robin seemed to catch the inspiration of the day, and
her voice quivered with thrilling joy and flute-like heraldings.
“Just hear that bird,” said the old man. “I’d like to have a robin
sing over me after I am gone. No one cares for me, and I seem to have
lost interest in everything. Well, I’m rested now, and I must travel
on.”
He rose and hobbled away, his face turned upward toward the sun. When
he had gone a little distance, he stopped to hear the spring robin
sing again. He seemed to catch a moment of happiness; then his face
fell, and he went on.
I inquired in regard to the history of this man at the hotel.
“He has no friends, and lives all alone,” said the clerk. “There’s a
piece in the reading-book about him, or a man like him; you may have
seen it.”
“Is it called ‘A Melting Story’?” I asked.
“Yes; I think that is the title of it.”
“A Melting Story!” The last scene of all was indeed a melting story,
and one that left not only tears in my eyes, but a lesson in my
experience!
Ten years had passed, and I was again in the same port city, and
visited the same neighborhood. The memory of my old class came back
to me, and with it the thought of “Trip-Trip-to-Dee-Dee.” I made
inquiry of a friend about the old man.
“His journey is over at last,” was the answer. “He was very old when
he died,—over an hundred, I think. He lived alone, and I have heard
that he died alone. He used to think the robins came to sing to him.
“The joke of the pound of butter ruined him, and followed him to the
end of his life.
“Wherever he used to go, the air was sure to ring with the shout:
‘Who stole the butter?’
“One day he went hobbling out of town. ‘I shall never come back
again,’ he said. ‘They have stoned me to death with their cries. Old
Seth is going where he will have peace, and the robins will sing over
him, when the spring comes to the harbor. Old Seth is now going for
good to the robins.’
“The prophecy was true. When we go out to ride I will show you where
he used to live.”
That afternoon we rode in sight of the sea. My friend turned into
a quiet way at last. We came to a hut, and near it was a heap of
stones, and over the door was a robin’s nest.
“They say he used to live there. I do not know. But for a
generation he was a wellnigh homeless wanderer in these roads and
streets. The inhumanity shown to that poor old witless man is
something more than a melting story. A single evil report may follow
a man to the death of his self-respect, and much that is good in his
heart and soul. I pity the lips that taunt a man like that.”
I thought of the old reading-class and of James, and I read in
James’s question the lesson that it had intended to imply. My dear
old pupil was right, at least, in the charity of his thought, and I
shall always love his memory in association with the curious history
of “Trip-Trip-to-Dee-Dee.”