BOYS AND GIRLS OF COLONIAL DAYS
Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
[Illustration: “THE YOUNGEST SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION”]
BOYS AND GIRLS OF COLONIAL DAYS
BY
CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY
Author of
“What To Do for Uncle Sam,” “Boys and Girls Of
Pioneer Days” and other stories
ILLUSTRATED BY
ULDENE SHRIVER
1925
A. FLANAGAN COMPANY
CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY A. FLANAGAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
The Pink Tulip
Big Hawk’s Decoration
The Soap Making of Remember Biddle
The Beacon Tree
The Jack-O’-Lantern Witch
The Iron Stove
A Boston Tea Party
The Deacon’s Grasshopper
Patience Arnold’s Sampler
The Star Lady
The Flag of Their Regiment
The Boy Who Had Never Seen An Indian
Dick, the Youngest Soldier
Betsy’s Guest
ILLUSTRATIONS
“The Youngest Soldier of the Revolution”
Amsterdam
“The Kettle Bubbled and Sang a Cheerful Welcome to Love”
Jan and his Dog Cart
“The Log Cabin was but a Rough Home”
“‘I Tied Master Biddle’s Queue to his Chair’”
“He Pointed Toward his Tribe’s Camping Place”
“‘Shall I be Alone for Thanksgiving Day, Mother, Dear?’”
“Remember Brought Pails of Water”
“The Indian, Helping himself to a Huge Handful of the Soap, Washed
his Hands Solemnly”
“Hannah Dipped the Wicks for a Second in the Melted Tallow”
The Town Crier
“The Little White Boy ... Had Printed Strange Characters”
“He Beat the Heavy Oak Panels with his Half-frozen, Brown Little
Hands”
“‘Do You Know who the Witch Is, Desire?’ He asked”
“Granny Hewitt Loved the Boys and Girls”
“The Jack-0’-Lantern Witch”
“They Took their Homeward Way through the Snow”
The First Stove
“The Wayward Little Girl, Perched High upon the Dunce’s Stool”
Colonial Furniture
“Susan Deliberately Tipped her Cup, Throwing the Tea, Untasted,
on the Grass”
“He Perched himself upon a Stool beside his Work Bench”
Faneuil Hall, Boston
“‘Give me the Key, I Say’”
Patience Arnold’s Sampler
“‘I Could Hear but not be Seen’”
Colonial Spinning Wheel and Clock
Colonial Silver
“‘It Is Hard, William, To Be a Girl ... with Nothing To Do but Sit
at Home’”
“‘My Cooking Has Been Done on Sticks over the Fire’”
“Eli Stepped Out ... Alone and Unprotected”
Two of the Farm Hands
“Little Mistress of the Mansion”
BOYS AND GIRLS OF COLONIAL DAYS
THE PINK TULIP
Peering over the edge of the boat rail, Love strained her weary, blue
eyes for a glimpse of land. The sun, a ball of soft, gold light, showed
now through the haze, and suddenly, like a fairy place the city
appeared. There were tall, shining towers, gold church spires, pointed
roofs with wide, red chimneys where the storks stood in one-legged
fashion, and great windmills with their long arms stretched out to catch
the four winds. Amsterdam, in Holland, it was, the haven of this little
boat load of Pilgrims.
Love Bradford, ten years old, flaxen haired, and as winsome as an
English rose in June, wrapped her long, gray cloak more closely about
her and turned to one of the women.
“Do you think that my father may have taken another boat that sailed
faster than this and is waiting for me on the shore, Mistress Brewster?
The last words that he said to me when he left me on the ship were ‘Bide
patiently until I come, Love; I will not be long.’ That was many days
ago.”
Mistress Brewster turned away that the little girl might not see the
tears that filled her eyes. Love’s father, just before the ship that
bore the Pilgrims from England had sailed, had been cast into prison by
the King, because of his faith. Love was all alone, but Mistress
Brewster did not want her to know of her father’s fate.
“Perhaps your father will meet you some day soon in Holland. Surely, if
he said that he would not be long, he will keep his word. See, Love, see
the little boy of your own age down there in the fishing boat.”
Love looked in the direction in which the woman pointed. A plump, rosy
little boy with eyes as blue as Love’s own and dressed in full brown
trousers and clumsy wooden shoes sat on a big net in one end of the
boat. He looked up as the sails of the little fishing craft brought it
alongside the boat that bore the wanderers from England. At first he
dropped his eyes in shyness at sight of the little girl. Then he lifted
them again and, as his eyes met hers, the two children smiled at each
other. It was like a flash of sunshine piercing the gray haze that hung
over the sea.
There were friends waiting on the shore for all save Love. Older
brothers these were, fathers and other relatives who had made the
pilgrimage from England a few months before and had homes ready for them
all. They climbed a long hill, very flat on the top, and reached by a
flight of steps. Then they were as high as the trees that lined the
beach and could look over the narrow streets, the tidy cottages with
their red roofs, and the pretty gardens. There were many little canals,
like blue ribbons, cutting the green fields.
“Welcome to Amsterdam!” said a Dutch housewife, in wide white cap and
apron, who met them. She put her hand on Love’s yellow hair. “And in
which house are you going to live, little English blossom?” she asked
kindly.
Love looked up wonderingly into her face and there was a whispered
consultation between Mistress Brewster and the Amsterdam woman. “Poor
little blossom! She shall come home with me. There is always room for
one more in the stork’s nest,” the Dutch woman said kindly. She took
Love’s hand and led her away from the others, and along the canal.
The house where they stopped was very odd indeed. It was made of red and
yellow bricks and it stood on great posts sunk deep into the ground.
Opening the white door that fairly shone, it was so clean, they were in
the kitchen. Such a kitchen it was, so cosy and so quaint! The floor was
made of white tiles and there was a queer little fireplace. It looked
like a big brass pan filled with coals, and there was a shining copper
kettle hung over it by a chain from the ceiling. The kettle bubbled and
sang a cheerful welcome to Love. There were stiff white curtains at the
windows and, on the sill of one, was a row of blossoming plants. Blue
and white dishes and a pair of tall candlesticks stood on a shelf. Love
could see a bright sitting room beyond and another room where there was
a strange bed built in the wall, and stretching almost from the floor to
the ceiling.
“Jan, Jan,” the woman called. “Come in from the garden and offer your
new little English sister a seed cake. You may have one yourself, too.
You have long wished for a playmate and here is one come to live in the
house with you.”
The door opened slowly and in came Jan. He did not look up at first.
Then his eyes caught Love’s. It was the little boy of the fishing boat.
His dear mother it was who had offered to take care of lonely little
Love.
[Illustration: “THE KETTLE BUBBLED AND SANG A CHEERFUL WELCOME TO LOVE”]
“You may help me drive the dogs that draw the milk wagon,” Jan said to
Love the next morning after they had become very well acquainted over
their breakfast of milk and oatmeal cakes.
“And so I can help to earn money for your kind mother,” Love said with
shining eyes.
Jan had two dogs and a little two-wheeled cart to which he harnessed
them every morning. Into the cart his mother put two shining pails of
milk and a long handled dipper for measuring. To-day she put in some
round, white cheeses and golden balls of butter. Off started the cart
along the narrow street with Love running gaily along one side and Jan
clattering along in his wooden shoes on the other side. The dogs knew
where to stop almost as well as Jan did for they had made the trip so
many times. The cheese and butter were soon gone, and every one had a
pleasant smile for the little English lass. At one cottage, a Dutch
housewife brought out a strange, earth-colored bulb that she put in
Love’s hands. Then, smiling down into the little girl’s wondering face,
she said:
“It is a rare one indeed. I give it to you that you may plant it and
tend it all winter. When the spring comes, you will have a finer one
than any child in all Amsterdam.”
Love thanked the woman but she puzzled over the hard, dry bulb as she
and Jan walked home beside the empty milk cart. “It looks like nothing
but an onion. What good is it, Jan?”
Jan’s eyes twinkled. “I know, but I won’t tell,” he said. “I want you to
be surprised next spring. Come, Love, we will plant it in the corner of
the garden that the sun shines on first in the spring. Then we will
wait.”
As Jan dug a hole and Love planted the bulb, his words repeated
themselves in the little girl’s lonely heart. She remembered, too, what
her dear father had said last to her, “Wait patiently until I come,
Love.” Would her patience bring the hard bulb to life or her father
back, Love wondered sorrowfully.
The days passed, with blue skies and the bright sun shining down upon
the canal, and then grew shorter. The storks flew south, and Love was
very happy. Her days with Jan were busy, merry ones. She, too, had
wooden shoes now; and Jan’s mother had made her a warm red skirt and a
velvet girdle and a little, green, quilted coat. Love looked like a real
little Dutch girl as she skated to school, with her knitting in her
school bag to busy her fingers with when it was recess time.
There was never any place in England, Love thought, so merry and gay as
the frozen canal in front of her new home in Holland. Everybody was on
skates; the market women with wooden yokes over their shoulders, from
which hung baskets of vegetables; and even a mother skating and holding
her baby in a snug nest made of a shawl on her back. The old doctor
skated, with his pill bag on one arm, to see a sick patient at the other
end of the town; and long rows of happy children glided by, holding each
other’s coats and twisting and twining about like a gay ribbon.
“Are you not glad, Love, that you came here to Holland to be my sister?”
Jan asked as, holding her hand in his, he skated with Love to school.
“I am glad, Jan,” Love laughed back. “I feel as if it were a story book
that I am living in, and you and your dear mother and our house and the
canal were the pictures in it. But, oh, Jan, I wish very much that I
could see my father—so tall and brave and strong!” Then she stopped. “We
must be hastening, Jan,” she said, “or we shall be late for school.” But
to herself, Love was saying, “Be patient.”
Spring came early that year in Amsterdam. The ice melted and the canals
were once more blue ribbons of water. The sails of the windmills
whirred, and the housewives scrubbed their sidewalks until the stones
were clean enough to eat from. The storks built again in the red
chimneys and, everywhere, the tulips burst into bloom. Love had never
seen such beautiful flowers in all her life. There was no garden in all
Amsterdam so small or so poor as not to have a bed of bright red and
yellow tulips.
With the first sunshine, Love went out to the garden where she and Jan
had planted the ugly, hard bulb. How wonderful; her patience had been
rewarded! There were two tall, straight green leaves and between them,
like a wonderful cup upon its green stem, a great, beautiful tulip. It
was larger than any of the others. It was not red or yellow like the
others, but pink, like a rose, or a sunrise cloud, or a baby’s cheek.
“Come, Jan; come, mother,” cried Love, and then the three stood about
the pink tulip in admiration.
“It is the most beautiful tulip in all Amsterdam,” said Jan.
“It is worth money,” said his mother. “Some one would pay a good price
for the bulb.”
Love remembered what Jan’s mother had said. As the days passed and the
pink tulip opened wider and showed a deeper tint each day, a plan began
to form in the little girl’s mind. She knew that there was not very much
money in Jan’s home to which she had been so kindly welcomed. She knew,
too, that nothing was so dear to the people of Holland as their tulips.
Strange tales were told; how they sold houses, cattle, land, everything
to buy tulip bulbs.
[Illustration: JAN AND HIS DOG CART]
One Saturday when Jan was away doing an errand for his mother, Love dug
up her precious pink tulip and planted it carefully in a large flower
pot. With the pot hugged close to her heart, she went swiftly away from
the house, down the long steps, and as far as the road that led along
the coast of the sea below the dike. Here, where great merchant ships
from all over the world anchored almost every day, Love felt sure that
some one would see her tulip and want to buy it.
There was such a crowd,—folk of many nations busy unloading
cargoes,—that at first no one saw the little girl with the flower in her
arms. Up and down the shore she walked, a little frightened but brave.
She held the flower high, and called in her sweet voice, “A rare pink
tulip. Who will buy my pink tulip?”
Intent on holding the flower carefully, she came suddenly in front of a
man who had been walking in lonely fashion up and down the shore. She
heard him call her name eagerly.
“Love! Love! Oh, my little Love!”
Looking up, Love almost dropped the tulip in her joy. Then she set it
down and rushed into his arms.
“Father, dear father! Oh, where have you been so long?” she cried.
It was a story told between laughter and tears. Goodman Bradford, only a
short time since released from prison, had come straight to Amsterdam,
but he had been able to find no trace of Love. Mistress Brewster had
gone on with the Pilgrims to America, and there was no one to tell
Goodman Bradford where his little daughter was. Now, he could make a
home for her and reward Jan’s mother.
“I was patient,” Love said, “as you bade me be, and see,” she cried as,
hand in hand, they reached the quaint little cottage where Jan and his
mother stood at the door to greet them, “in good time they both came to
me—the pink tulip, and my father.”
BIG HAWK’S DECORATION
“See to it, Preserve, that you win a colored ribbon from the
schoolmaster to-day,” Mistress Edwards said as she turned from her task
of polishing the pewter platter to look at the boy who stood in the
doorway of the log cabin.
[Illustration: “THE LOG CABIN WAS BUT A ROUGH HOME”]
“This is the day, I hear, on which the good-conduct ribbons are given
out for the month, brightly dyed ones for the boys and girls whose
lessons have been well learned, and black for the dunces. There is no
chance of your coming home to me to-night without a ribbon of merit, is
there?” The Colonial mother crossed the room and put her hands on her
lad’s shoulder, looking anxiously into his honest brown eyes.
“No, mother,” Preserve answered. “At least I have hopes of winning a
ribbon. Not once this month have I failed in my sums, and I can read my
chapters in the Bible as well as any child in school.”
“That is good!” Mistress Edwards said, pulling the boy’s long, dark
cloak more closely about him and smoothing the cloth of his tall hat.
Preserve Edwards was a Puritan lad of many years ago. The log cabin that
he was leaving to walk two miles through the clearing and across the
woods to school was but a rough home. A few straight chairs and a hard
settle, made of logs and standing by the fireplace, a deal table and the
few pewter utensils, were almost the only furnishings of the living
room. In one corner stood an old musket. Mistress Edwards looked toward
it now in fear.
“Do you come home as soon as school is out, Preserve. I pray you do not
linger on the way to play hare and hounds with the other boys and girls
of the village. Remember, my boy, that your father is away with the
horse these two days to fetch back a piece of linsey-woolsey cloth and
some flour from Boston for me. He is not likely to come home for some
days yet, and I am full of strange dread at what I saw in the cornfield
this morning.”
“What did you see, mother?” Preserve’s eyes opened wide with wonder.
“It was not so much what I saw, but what it portended for us,” Mistress
Edwards said. “It was only a flash of color, like painted feathers,
among the withered stalks of corn. It minded me of Big Hawk’s headdress.
If he were to find out that we were alone, one helpless woman and a boy
of twelve here, I think it would go badly with us.”
Preserve laughed bravely. Then he reached up to kiss his mother
good-bye.
“It was no more than a red-winged blackbird that you saw,” he said, “or
perhaps it was a bright tanager. The birds are getting ready to flock,
now, for they feel the autumn chill in the air. But I will hurry
home—with my ribbon,” Preserve added.
Then he ran down the little path to the gate in the paling that
surrounded the cabin, his speller under his arm, and his high-heeled,
buckled shoes making the dry leaves scatter as he went.
It was a long road and a lonely one to the log schoolhouse. Preserve
took his way through the cornfield where the dried stalks, rattling in
the cold wind, made him think of the songs that he had heard Big Hawk
and his tribe sing the last time they attacked the little Colonial
settlement. That had been some months since, now, and Preserve could
find no traces of footprints or any other marks of Indians in the
cornfield.
“My mother had a fear for nothing,” Preserve said to himself. He went
through a bit of woods, next, and pulled a small square of bark from one
of the many birch trees that stood there, so white and still. It was for
Preserve to write his sums upon in school, and as he hurried on he
repeated his tables over and over to be sure that he knew them well.
There were log cabins scattered here and there, and from these came
other boys and girls who followed Preserve on the way to school.
Deliverance Baxter joined Preserve. She wore a long, scant, gray frock,
and her yellow hair was tucked tightly inside a close, white cap. A
white kerchief was folded neatly around her neck, and she, also, wore
big buckles on her black slippers. Her eyes twinkled roguishly, though,
as she chatted to Preserve.
“There is no doubt at all, Preserve, but that you will wear home the
long streamers of red ribbon on your cape this afternoon. I have been
quite as perfect as you in my lessons for the month, but, woe is me, I
did a great wrong yesterday. You know that Master Biddle, our
schoolmaster, has just purchased a new wig from Boston town. The queue
in the back is so unusually long and tied with such a large bow that it
caught my eye when I was getting the pile of copy books from behind his
desk. I know not, Preserve, what witchery was in my fingers, but I tied
Master Biddle’s queue to his chair. When he stood up, why, his wig was
greatly disarranged; and I must needs stay after school until dusk,
sitting on the dunce’s stool. I am most sorry, and will never be so
witch-like again. You see I stand small chance of the ribbon, now,
Preserve.”
[Illustration: “‘I TIED MASTER BIDDLE’S QUEUE TO HIS CHAIR’”]
The boy laughed, but he took the little girl’s hand comfortingly in
his. Reaching in his lunch bag, he took out a red apple and slipped it
into the big pocket that hung at her side.
“You were always a bit roguish in spite of your Puritan dress and sober
living, Deliverance,” he said. “Never mind about the ribbon. If I should
win it, why, there is all the more chance of its being yours the next
time. Here we are! See to it, Deliverance, that you tie no more queues
to-day. Oh, see how finely Master Biddle is dressed for giving out the
prizes!” Preserve said as they reached the schoolhouse door and took
their places behind the rude desks, built of boards and resting on pegs
in the floor.
Other children were quietly taking their places in the little
schoolroom, the smaller ones perched on hard benches made of logs. They
all looked in awe at the schoolmaster, who stood on a platform, facing
them. He wore a smart velvet coat with long tails, and inside it could
be seen a waist coat which was very long and a fine white shirt with
stiffly-starched ruffles. His knee breeches were of velvet like his
coat, and there were silver buckles at the knees as well as on his
shoes. A stiffly-ironed stock was wound about his neck, and worn to keep
his head stiff and straight as became the dignity of the times. Above
all was his white powdered wig, neatly braided in the back.
Looking at Master Biddle alone was enough to make the children of the
Colonies sit up very straight and recite their lessons as well as they
could. There was a prayer first, and then the boys and girls recited
their reading, spelling, and arithmetic. Their pencils were thick
plummets of lead and their copy books were made of foolscap paper, sewed
in the shape of books and carefully ruled by hand. At eleven o’clock
came recess, and at the end of the afternoon the awarding of the
good-conduct ribbons.
“For perfect deportment,” Master Biddle announced as he pinned a bow of
blue ribbon to one boy’s cape.
“For poor lessons!” he said, sadly, as he fastened a black bow to
another. Then he held up a red bow with especially long, streaming ends.
“For perfect deportment, and for perfect lessons,” he said, as he
fastened the red ribbon bow to Preserve Edward’s cape.
To-day it would seem but a small prize, but in the eyes of these Puritan
boys and girls of so many years ago, the bow of ribbon, its streamers of
red gayly flying over the long cape of a boy or the dull linsey-woolsey
frock of a little girl, was a mark of great honor indeed. Ribbons were
scarce and high in price in those days. Colors for children were almost
forbidden, and for their elders as well. So Preserve walked out of the
school door at the end of the day with his head very high and started
home as proudly as any soldier wearing a decoration for bravery.
He did not notice how the dusk was settling down all about him. The
trees on either side, made dark shadows and there was no sound except
the whir of a partridge’s wing or the rattle of a falling nut. He did
not hear the soft footfall behind him until Deliverance, breathless and
her face white with fear, was upon him. She laid a soft hand on his
shoulder and whispered in his ear:
“I beg you, Preserve, to let me walk with you. I know that it is not far
to my cabin, but all the way through these woods I have heard strange
sounds and I fancy, even now, that I see shapes behind the trees and
bushes.”
Preserve took the timid little girl’s hand and tried to laugh away her
fears.
“So was my mother afraid this morning, at nothing,” he said. “She was of
a mind that she saw Indians—Oh!” the boy’s voice was suddenly hushed.
Towering in the path in front of the children, like a great forest tree
dressed in its gorgeous cloak of gaudy autumn leaves, stood the Indian
chief, Big Hawk. He wore his war paint and his festival headdress of
hawk’s feathers. Slung over his blanket were his bow and a quiver full
of new arrows. It seemed little more than a second before the edges of
the path and the deep places among the trees on either side were alive
with the Indians of Big Hawk’s tribe.
[Illustration: “HE POINTED TOWARD HIS TRIBE’S CAMPING PLACE”]
Big Hawk looked at the frightened children, indicating with gestures
what was his plan. He pushed back the white cap from Deliverance’s pale
forehead and laid his hand on the little girl’s sunny hair. Then he
pointed toward his tribe’s camping place in the west. He wanted to take
Deliverance there and hold her for a ransom. To Preserve he made
gestures showing that he wished him to lead the way to the Edwards’
cabin that they might plunder it before going back that night.
Deliverance clung, crying, to Preserve. He tried to be brave, but it was
a test for a man’s courage, and he was only a boy.
It was a second’s thought and a strange whim of a savage that saved the
two. The wind of the fall blowing through the trees caught the ends of
Preserve’s ribbon of honor and sent them, fluttering like tongues of
flame, against the dark of the tree trunks. The color caught Big Hawk’s
eye, and he touched the bow on Preserve’s cloak with one hand.
Quick as a flash a thought came to Preserve. He drew back from Big
Hawk’s touch and put his own hands over the ribbon as if to guard it.
“Heap big chief!” Preserve’s voice rang out, brave and clear. Then,
after waiting a second, he unpinned the red bow and held it, high,
before Big Hawk’s face.
“Big Hawk, heap bigger chief!” he said, as he went boldly up to the
Indian and fastened the ribbon on his blanket. Then he motioned to Big
Hawk to return to his camp and show the rest of the tribe his new
decoration. A slow smile overspread Big Hawk’s painted face. Then he
turned and, motioning to his braves to follow him, went silently back
through the woods, leaving Preserve and Deliverance alone, and safe.
Deliverance was the first to speak.
“My heart does beat so fast I can scarcely breathe, Preserve. Oh, but
you are a brave boy! What shall we do now?” the little girl asked.
“Run!” said Preserve, without a moment’s hesitation. “We had best run
like rabbits, Deliverance!”
Hand in hand, the two scampered along, Preserve helping the little girl
over the rough places, until the light from a candle in Deliverance’s
cabin was in sight. Her father had come home early, and when the
children told him of their adventure, he set out to warn the rest of the
settlers of the danger so bravely averted, and put them on guard against
the Indians.
Preserve went on home, alone. His mother stood in the cabin door,
anxious because he was so late.
“No ribbon? Oh, my lad, why have you disappointed me!” she said when she
saw him.
“Big Hawk wears my decoration,” Preserve said, as he told his story.
“But I think that Master Biddle would have rather that little Mistress
Deliverance, for all her witching ways, had his red bow,” he finished,
laughing.
THE SOAP MAKING OF REMEMBER BIDDLE
“It may chance that you will not be able to return by Thanksgiving Day?”
Remember Biddle asked with almost a sob in her voice.
A little Puritan girl of long ago was Remember, dressed in a long
straight gown of gray stuff, heavy hobnailed shoes and wearing a white
kerchief crossed about her neck. She stood in the door of the little log
farm-house that looked out upon the dreary stretch of the Atlantic coast
with Plymouth Rock raising its gray head not so very far away.
No wonder Remember felt unhappy. Her mother was at the door, mounted
upon their horse, and ready to start away for quite a long journey as
journeys were counted in those days. She was going with a bundle of
herbs to care for a sick neighbor who lived a distance of ten miles
away. It had been an urgent summons, brought by the post carrier that
morning. The neighbor was ill, indeed, and the fame of Mistress Biddle’s
herb brewing was well known through the countryside.
She leaned down from the saddle to touch Remember’s dark braids. The
little girl had run out beside the horse and laid her cheek against his
soft side. Her father was far away in Boston, attending to some
important matters of shipping. Her mother’s going left Remember all
alone. She repeated her question, “Shall I be alone for Thanksgiving
Day, mother, dear?” she asked.
[Illustration: “‘SHALL I BE ALONE FOR THANKSGIVING DAY, MOTHER, DEAR?’”]
Her mother turned away that the little daughter might not see that her
eyes, as well, were full of sorrow.
“I know not, Remember. I sent a letter this morning by the post carrier
to Boston telling your father that I should wait for him at Neighbor
Allison’s, and if I could leave the poor woman he could come home with
me. I hope that we shall be here in time for Thanksgiving Day, but if it
should happen, Remember, that you must be alone; take no thought of your
loneliness. Think only of how much cause we have for being thankful in
this free, fertile land of New England. And keep busy, dear child. You
will find plenty to do in the house until my return.”
Throwing the girl a good-bye kiss, Mistress Biddle gave the horse a
light touch with her riding whip and was off down the road, her long,
dark cloak blowing like a gray cloud on the horizon in the chill
November wind.
For a few moments Remember leaned against the beams of the door
listening to the call of a flock of flying crows and the crackling of
the dried cornstalks in the field back of the house. Beyond the
cornfield lay the brown and green woods, uncut, save by an occasional
winding Indian trail. The neighboring cabins were so far away that they
looked like toy houses set on the edge of other fields of dried
cornstalks. Looking again toward the woods Remember shivered a little.
She saw in imagination, a tall, dark figure in gay blanket and trailing
feather headdress stalk out from the depths of the thicket of pines and
oaks. Then she laughed.
“There hasn’t an Indian passed here since early in the summer,” she said
to herself. “Mother would not have left me here alone if she had not
known that I should be quite safe. I will go in now and play that I am
the mistress of this house, and I am getting it ready for company on
Thanksgiving Day. It will be so much fun that I shall forget all about
being a lonely little girl.”
It was a happy play. Remember tied one of her mother’s long aprons over
her dress to keep it clean, and began her busy work of cleaning the
house and making it shine from cellar to ceiling. She sorted the piles
of ruddy apples and winter squashes and pumpkins in the cellar, and
rehung the slabs of rich bacon and the strings of onions. As she touched
the bundles of savory herbs that hung about the cellar walls, Remember
gave a little sigh.
“I see no chance of these being used in the stuffing of a fat turkey for
Thanksgiving,” she said to herself. “It may be that I shall have to eat
nothing but mush and apple sauce for my dinner, and all alone. Ah,
well-a-day!” She began to sing in her sweet, child voice one of the
hymns that she had learned at the big white meeting-house:
“The Lord is both my health and light;
Shall men make me dismayed?
Since God doth give me strength and might,
Why should I be afraid?”
As she sang, Remember lifted a bucket of soft soap that stood on the
cellar floor and tugged it up to the kitchen. Then she went to work with
a will.
Several days passed before Remember had cleaned the house to her
satisfaction. On her hands and knees she scoured the floors, her rosy
hands and arms drenched with the foaming soapsuds. Afterward she
sprinkled sand upon the spotless boards in pretty patterns as was the
fashion in those days. She swept the brick hearth with a broom made of
twigs, and she scoured the pewter and copper utensils until they were as
bright as so many mirrors. She washed the wooden chairs until the bunch
of cherries painted upon the back of each looked bright enough to pick
and eat. She dusted the straight rush-bottomed chairs and the settle
that stood by the side of the fireplace. Even the tall clock in the
corner had its round glass face washed. Then Remember stood in the
center of the kitchen looking at the good result of her work.
“My mother, herself, could have done no better!” she thought. Then she
looked at the keg that had held their precious store of soft soap. There
was no soap to be bought in those long-ago days; the Puritans were
obliged to make their own.
“I have used up all the soap. Oh, what will my mother say at such waste?
What shall I do?” Remember said, in dismay.
She sat down by the fire and thought. Suddenly she jumped up. A happy
plan had come to her.
“I will make a mess of soap,” Remember said to herself. “I have helped
mother to make soap many a time and I can do no more than try. It is yet
some days until Thanksgiving and I should be sadly idle with nothing
more to do, now that the house is put so well in order.”
The soap-making barrel, a hole bored in the bottom, stood in a corner of
the cellar; it was light enough so that Remember could easily handle it
and she was strong for her twelve summers and winters. In the bottom of
the barrel she put a layer of clean, fresh straw from the shed and over
this she filled the barrel as far as she could with wood ashes. Then she
rolled, and tugged, and lifted the barrel to a high bench that stood by
the kitchen door, taking care that the hole was just above a large,
empty bucket. Then Remember brought pails of water and, standing on a
stool, poured the water into the barrel until it began to drip down
through the ashes and the straw into the bucket below. It looked rather
dirty as it filtered down into the bucket but Remember took good care
not to touch it with her fingers for she knew that it had turned into
lye. Late in the afternoon Remember took out a hen’s egg and dropped it
into the bucket to see what would happen.
[Illustration: “REMEMBER BROUGHT PAILS OF WATER”]
“It floats!” she said. “Now I am sure that I made the lye right and I
can attend to the grease to-morrow.”
Remember had to start a huge fire the next day and she got out the great
black soap kettle, filled it with the lye and hung it over the fire.
Into this she put many scraps of meat fat and waste grease that her
mother had been saving for just such a soap-making emergency as this. It
bubbled and boiled and Remember carefully skimmed from the top all the
bones and skin and pieces of candle wicking that rose, as the lye
absorbed the grease, and cooked it into a thick, ropy mixture. It looked
very much like molasses candy as it boiled and after a while Remember
knew that it was done. She lifted the kettle off the fire and poured the
thick, brown jelly, that was now good soft soap, into big earthenware
crocks to cool.
“I made the soap quite as well as my mother could,” Remember said to
herself with a great deal of satisfaction as she put the crocks, all
save one, in the cellar. This one she kept for use in the kitchen.
“There’s not another thing that I can think of to do,” Remember said
now. She looked out of the window at the bleak, bare fields behind which
the November sun was just preparing to set in a flame-colored ball.
“Here it is the afternoon before Thanksgiving Day and mother and father
are not home yet, and we haven’t anything in the house for a
Thanksgiving dinner!” She looked toward the woods now. What was that?
A speck of color that she could see in the narrow footpath between the
trees suddenly came nearer, growing larger and brighter all the time.
Remember could distinguish the gaudy blanket, bright moccasins, and
feather headdress of an Indian. Stalking across the field, he was fast
approaching their little log house which he could easily see from the
woods and which seemed to offer him an easy goal. Remember covered her
face with her hands, trying in her terror to think what to do.
The bolt on the kitchen door was but a flimsy protection at best.
Remember knew that the Indian would be able to wrench it off with one
tug of his brawny arm. She knew, too, that it had been the custom of the
Indians who were encamped not far off to take the children of the
colonists and hold them for a high ransom.
“The white face takes our lands; we take the papoose of the white face,”
they had threatened, and they were cruel indeed to the children whom
they held, especially if their parents were a long time supplying the
necessary ransom. But it had been so long now since an Indian had been
seen in their little settlement, that Remember’s mother had felt quite
safe in leaving her.
Remember looked now for a place to hide. There was none. The cellar
would be the first place, she knew, where the Indian would look for her.
The tall clock was too small a space into which to squeeze her fat
little body; and there was no use hiding under the bed for she would be
dragged out at once. Remember turned, now, hearing a footstep. The
Indian, big, brown, and frowning had crossed the threshold and stood in
the center of the room. His blanket trailed the floor; over his shoulder
was slung a pair of wild turkeys he had killed.
Remember trembled, but she faced him bravely.
“How!” she said, reaching out a kind little hand to him. The Indian
shook his head, and did not offer to shake hands with the little girl.
Instead, he pointed to the door, motioning to her that she was to follow
him.
Remember’s mind worked quickly. She knew that Indians were fond of
trinkets and could sometimes be turned away from their cruel designs by
means of very small gifts. She ran to her mother’s work basket and
offered him in succession a pair of scissors, a case of bright, new
needles, a scarlet pincushion, and a silver thimble. Each, in turn, the
Indian refused, shaking his head and still indicating by his gestures
that Remember was to follow him.
Now he grasped the little girl’s hand and tried to pull her. There was
no use resisting. But just as they reached the door the Indian caught
sight of the crock of soft soap—dark, sticky, and strangely fascinating
to him. He stuck one long brown finger in it and started to put it in
his mouth, but Remember reached up and pulled his hand away. She shook
her head and made a wry face to show him that it was not good to eat.
“How?” he questioned, pointing to the soap.
Remember pulled from his grasp. Pouring a dipperful of water in a basin,
she took a handful of the soap and showed the Indian how she could wash
her hands. As he watched a look, first of wonder, and then of pleasure,
crept into his face. He smiled and looked at his own hands. They were
stained with earth and sadly in need of washing. Remember refilled the
basin with water and the Indian, helping himself to a huge handful of
the soap, washed his hands solemnly as if it were a kind of ceremony.
[Illustration: “THE INDIAN, HELPING HIMSELF TO A HUGE HANDFUL OF THE SOAP,
WASHED HIS HANDS SOLEMNLY”]
As Remember watched him, her heart beat fast indeed. “As soon as he
finishes he will take me away,” she thought.
Slowly the Indian dried his hands on the towel she gave him. Then he
picked up the crock of soft soap. He set it on his shoulder. Pointing to
the pair of turkeys that he had laid on the table to show that he was
giving them to Remember in exchange for the soap, he strode out of the
door and was soon lost to sight in the wood’s path.
Remember dropped down in a chair and could scarcely believe she was
really safe. A quick clatter of hoofs roused her. She darted to the
door.
“Father, mother!” she cried.
Yes, it was indeed they; her father riding in front with her mother in
the saddle behind.
“Just in time for Thanksgiving!” they cried as they jumped down and
embraced Remember.
“And I’m here, too, and we have a pair of turkeys for dinner,” Remember
said, half smiles and half tears, as she told them her strange
adventure.
THE BEACON TREE
“If you will but help me, Hannah, as a little girl of ten should, with
the candle dipping you will forget to fret all the day long about the
home coming of father and Nathaniel,” Mistress Wadsworth said, laying a
kind hand on the bent head of the little daughter.
All through the long, gray afternoon Hannah had looked out of the
diamond-shaped panes of the window, past the fields of dried cornstalks
that looked as if they were peopled with ghosts in their garments of
snow, and toward the forest of pointed, green firs beyond. She turned
from the window now, as her mother spoke to her, and looked up bravely,
trying to smile.
“You are quite as anxious about dear brother Nathaniel and father as I
am,” she said. “It is now two weeks since they started away with the
sledge to bring us back the wood for the winter. Father said that it
would take him no longer than ten days at the utmost. Brother Nathaniel
is only twelve, and young for so hard a journey. There have been storms,
and there are Indians—” a sob caught the little girl’s voice.
It was Mistress Wadsworth’s turn to look out now with saddened eyes
through the window and into the falling twilight of the New England
winter.
“Your father said that he would be home for Christmas Day,” she said,
“and he will keep his word unless some ill befalls them. In the
meantime, we will make the candles. Then the house will be brighter to
welcome them than when we burn only pine knots. To-night, Hannah, we
will measure the candle wicking for we shall be busy the greater part of
to-morrow with the dipping.”
As the two, both mother and little daughter dressed in the long,
straight frocks of dark homespun and the white caps that were worn in
those long-ago days, bent over the pine table after supper, they looked
very much alike. The fire in the great brick fireplace had a sticky,
pitchy lump of fire wood upon the top. It was a pine knot, and the only
light in the room. It flickered upon the bright rag rugs of the floor
and the painted chairs with their scoured rush seats and on the green
settle, making a pleasant, cheerful glow. They tried not to hear the
wind that howled down the chimney, or think of the beloved father and
little brother who were so far away in a bleak lumber clearing.
Measuring the wicks for the tallow candles was so painstaking a task
that Mistress Wadsworth did it herself; Hannah, standing beside her,
only watched. She stuck an old iron fork straight up in the soft wood of
the table some eight inches from the edge. Around it she threw half a
dozen loops of the soft candle wicking. She cut these loops off evenly
at the edge of the table. Then she measured and cut more until she had
made several dozen, all exactly the same length. As she worked, they
talked together of what Hannah most loved to hear about, Christmas in
her dear mother’s girlhood home, merry England.
“They had polished brass sconces fastened everywhere to the walls,”
Mistress Wadsworth said. She could almost see the bright scene in the
dim shadows cast by the pine knots. “In every sconce there would be tall
white candles. We burned more candles in a night then than we can afford
to burn in a month now,” she sighed.
“And there was a fir tree from the forest brought into the hall for the
children,” Hannah continued, for she knew the story well. “There were
candles on the tree, lighted and shining. Oh, it must have been a pretty
sight to see the children dance about the Christmas tree and sing their
carols! We never have Christmas trees with candles in this new land, do
we mother? Why?” she asked.
“The Governor decrees that we shall not continue the customs of the land
that we have left so far behind,” Mistress Wadsworth replied, but with
another sigh. “And now to bed, little daughter, for we shall be busy
indeed on the morrow.”
When morning came, Hannah found that her mother had worked after she had
gone to bed, twisting and doubling each candle wick and slipping through
the loop a candle rod. This rod was a stick like a lead pencil but over
three times as long. Six wicks hung from each rod. They looked, Hannah
thought, as if they were so many little clothes lines. Then the big iron
kettle filled with clean white tallow was swung on a heavy iron hook in
the fireplace. As the tallow melted, Mistress Wadsworth directed Hannah
as she tipped down two straight backed chairs and placed two long poles
across them like the sides of a ladder with no rungs. Across these were
laid the candle rods with their hanging wicks. Then the kettle was taken
from the fire and set on the wide hearth, and the pleasant task of the
candle dipping was begun.
One at a time, Hannah took the candle rods carefully by their ends and
dipped the wicks for a second in the melted tallow. Then she put it back
between the chairs to dry and took up another rod, dipping the wicks in
the same way. When the last wicks had been dipped, the first ones were
dry enough to dip again. With each dipping, the candles grew plump and
straight and white. One candle rod, though, Hannah dipped only once in
every three times. When her mother noticed this she said, “Little
daughter, you are neglecting six of the candles. See how small they
are!”
[Illustration: “HANNAH DIPPED THE WICKS FOR A SECOND IN THE MELTED
TALLOW”]
Hannah ran over, threw her arms about her mother’s neck and whispered
something in her ear. Mistress Wadsworth shook her head at first; then
she smiled.
“It can do no harm that I see,” she said. “It will be only a child’s
play before Christmas and no cause for the Governor’s displeasure. Yes,
little daughter, if you wish. If it brings joy to your sorrowful heart,
I shall be glad.”
When the candle dipping was over and the precious candles were laid away
to be burned only if the father and little Nathaniel came home, Hannah
slipped six, as small as Christmas tree candles, from one rod and
wrapped them carefully in a bit of fair white linen. They were her
little candles, to be used as she wished.
The days, white with snow and very cold, wore on until it was only a
week before the blessed Christmas day. There were slight preparations
for it in the little New England settlement where Hannah lived for it
was not thought fitting to be merry and gay at Christmas time these
centuries ago. But at the small white meeting-house Hannah and the other
little colonist children practised a carol to be sung on Christmas Day.
“Shout to Jehovah, all the earth,
Serve ye Jehovah, with gladness;
Before him bow, singing with mirth.”
The children sang it as it was pitched by the elder’s tuning fork, and
the tune was slow and dirge like. The tears came again to Hannah’s eyes
as she tried to sing, for no word had come as yet of father and
Nathaniel. A runner to the village brought word a few days before of
attacks by the Indians on near-by parties of wood cutters. Could they
have encountered the party with whom were father and Nathaniel, she
thought?
[Illustration: THE TOWN CRIER]
But Hannah’s secret kept her happy! A few days before Christmas she went
to a near-by bit of woodland. She carried the old hatchet that Nathaniel
had left at home, and she looked over the young fir trees until she
found one that was well shaped, tiny, and as green as green could be.
She chopped and hacked at the roots until she cut down the little tree.
Then she tugged it home. As she held its prickly needles close to her
warm cloak she whispered, “You are not to bear gifts, little Christmas
tree, because that would not be right; only candles to light the way
home for dear father and brother Nathaniel.”
At last it was three days before Christmas and evening in the little New
England village. The town crier had taken his way through the narrow
main street early in the afternoon,—a dismal enough looking figure in
his long, black cloak and tall, black hat, and ringing his bell.
“Lost, in all probability, lost,” he called. “This Christmas time,” and
then he gave the toll of names of the men and boys who had started out
so many weeks before on the ill-fated lumber trip and from whom no word
had come. As he reached the names, “Goodman Wadsworth, little Nathaniel
Wadsworth,” Mistress Wadsworth cowered in front of the fire, her bowed
head in her hands. But Hannah kissed her gently for comfort, and took
out the little tallow candles that she had dipped. Then she set up the
tiny fir tree, with the lighted Christmas candles, in front of the
window that looked out upon the main street.
Now the village was black with the night. The fires were low, and the
barred doors and windows shut in Hannah’s and her mother’s sadness. The
long street was white with snow. A few glimmering stars shed a fitful
path of light down it, but the houses were like so many tightly-closed
eyes. They could hardly be seen at all.
[Illustration: “THE LITTLE WHITE BOY ... HAD PRINTED STRANGE CHARACTERS”]
It was almost ten o’clock when an Indian boy, little Fleet-as-an-Arrow,
like a flash of color in the dark of the night, darted down the street.
He was wrapped from head to foot in his scarlet blanket. He was panting.
His bare limbs were cold. He had come a long, long way without food
since morning, but he did not stop running now that he was nearing his
goal. The dim little town frightened him, though. He had never been in
so strange a place before. The home that little Fleet-as-an-Arrow knew
was a wide plain with a background of forests; his house was a painted
wigwam; and his light was a camp fire. But he pressed against his heart
a bit of white birch bark upon which a little white boy of his own age,
brought to the camp a captive with a band of prisoners, had printed
strange characters. It was not like the picture writing of the tribe,
but it must be important for all that, Fleet-as-an-Arrow knew. The
little white boy, whom this little Indian boy had grown to love like his
own brother, had begged him to carry the writing to his mother.
“Go to the North,” he had said. So Fleet-as-an-Arrow had watched the
moss on the trees and followed the north star. Here he was, but how
could he tell in which of all these strange wigwams the mother of his
little white friend lived?