_Cap'n Ben has an iron door-sill_
We did not take full possession of our place immediately. Whatever we
had in the way of household effects was in a New York City flat, and one
must have a few pots and tin things, even for the simple life. Fortune
was good to us: the Westbury household offered us shelter until we were
ready to make at least a primitive beginning, and one could not ask
better than that. Mrs. Westbury was a famous cook, and Westbury's
religion was conveyed in the word plenty. The hospitality and bounty of
their table were things from another and more lavish generation. The Joy
promptly gave our hosts titles. She called them Man and Lady Westbury,
which somehow seemed exactly to fit them.
Each morning we went up to see what we could find to do, and we never
failed to find plenty. I don't remember distinctly as to all of
Elizabeth's occupations, but I know she has a mania for a broom and a
clothesline. I carry across the years the impression of an almost
continuous sweeping sound--an undertone accompaniment to my discussion
with carpenter and painter--and I see rows of little unpacked dresses
swinging in the sun.
One of my own early jobs was to clean the cellar. It was a sizable
undertaking, and I engaged Old Pop's Sam to help me. It was a cellar of
the oldest pattern, with no step, having an entrance on a level with the
road, the same being a "rollway" wide enough to admit barrels of cider
and other produce. I don't know how many had been rolled into it during
the century or so before we came, but after a casual look I decided that
very few had been rolled out. The place was packed to the doors with
barrels, boxes, benches, and general lumber of every description.
[Illustration: _They formed a board of appraisal. All of them knew that
cellar and were intimately acquainted with its contents_]
About the time we got started an audience assembled. Old Nat, who was
taking a day off, and 'Lias Mullins, who had a weakness in his back and
took most of his days off, drifted in from somewhere and sat on the wall
in the shade to give us counsel. Then presently W. C. Westbury drove up
and became general overseer of the job. They formed a board of
appraisal, with Westbury as chairman. All of them knew that cellar and
were intimately acquainted with its contents.
I had thought the old collection of value only as kindling, but as we
brought out one selection after another I realized my error.
"That," said 'Lias Mullins, "is Uncle Joe's pork-barrel. It's wuth a
dollar fifty new, an that one's better 'n new."
"I used to help Uncle Joe kill, every year," nodded Old Nat, "an' to put
his meat away. I remember that bar'l as well as can be. I'll take it
myself, if you don't want it.
"Better keep your barrel," Westbury said. "You'll be wanting a pair of
pigs next, and then you'll need it." He looked into it reflectively
and sounded it with his foot. "Many a good mess of pork that old
barrel's had in it," he said.
The board's ruling being unanimous, the barrel was set aside. Uncle
Joe's ham-barrel came next, and was likewise recognized, carefully
examined, and accepted by the board. Then two cider-barrels, which awoke
an immediate and special interest.
For cider is the New England staple. Its manufacture and preparation are
matters not to be lightly dismissed. Good seasoned cider-barrels have a
value in no way related to cooperage. It is the flavor, the bouquet,
acquired through a tide of seasons, from apples that grow sweet and rich
through summer sun and shower and find a spicy tang in the first October
frost. Gathered and pressed on the right day; kept in the right
temperature, the mellow juice holds its sweetness and tone far into the
winter, and in the oaken staves leaves something of its savor to the
contents of another year.
"That's the best cider-cellar I know of," said 'Lias Mullins, "and Uncle
Joe allus had the best bar'ls; but they wa'n't used last year, an I'm
turrible 'fraid they've gone musty."
"Shouldn't be su'prised," agreed old Nat, mournfully. "An' it's a great
pity."
"Bet you a quarter apiece they're as sweet as ever," proposed Chairman
Westbury. He took out a great jack-knife and carefully pried out the
bungs. "Smell 'em, 'Lias," he said, yielding precedence to the oldest
member.
'Lias Mullins carefully steadied himself with his cane, bent close to
the bung-hole of one of the barrels, and took a long and apparently
agreeable whiff. Then after due preparation he bent close to the other
bung-hole and took another and still longer whiff.
"Seems to me that one's just a leetle bit musty," he said.
"Now, Nat, it's your turn," said Westbury.
Whereupon old Nat, gravely and after due preparation, took a long whiff
of first one barrel, then a still longer one of the other barrel.
"Seems to me it's _t'other_ one that's a _leetle trifle_ musty," he
said.
W. C. Westbury took two short business-like whiffs at each bung.
"Sweet as a nut, both of 'em," he announced, definitely.
That settled it; Westbury was acknowledged authority. Sam rolled out two
vinegar-barrels, both pronounced good. Following there came what seemed
at least a hundred apple-barrels, potato-barrels, turnip-barrels,
ash-barrels, boxes, benches, sections of shelving, and a general heap of
debris, some of it unrecognizable even by 'Lias Mullins, oldest member
of the board.
"It was a Meeker habit to throw nothing away," commented Westbury, as he
looked over the assortment. "No matter what it was, they thought they
might want it, some day. You'll find the same thing when you get to the
attic."
At this moment Sam discovered in a dark corner a heap of flat slabs
that, brought to light, proved to be small tombstones. Westbury grinned.
"Those were put over the cemetery fence," he said, "whenever the
relatives bought bigger ones. Uncle Joe brought a lot of them home to
cool his milk on."
I looked at them doubtfully. They were nothing but stones, and they had
served their original purpose. Still, it had been a rather particular
purpose and they were carved with certain names and dates. I was not
sure that their owners might not sometime--some weird fall evening,
say--take a notion to claim them.
They opened the door of history to Westbury. He began to recall
connections and events, and related how a certain Hezekiah Lee, whose
name was on one of them, had decided, some fifty years before, to give
up farming and go to counterfeiting. His career from that moment had
been a busy one; he had been always traveling one way or the other
between affluence and the penitentiary. His last term had been a long
one, and when he got out, styles in national currency had changed a good
deal and Uncle Hezekiah couldn't seem to get the hang of the new
designs. So he took to preaching, and held camp-meetings. He lived to
be eighty-seven, and people had traveled forty miles to his funeral.
I said I would keep Uncle Hezekiah's headstone. In the end we made an
inside walk of the collection, for the old cellar had a dirt floor and
was not always dry, but we laid them face down. When we had raked and
swept, and brushed and put back the articles accepted by the board, and
all was trim and neat, Westbury looked in.
"Looks nice," he said, and added, "that's what you've got now, but by
and by you'll have your mess of old truck, too, and the next man will
cart a lot of it to the wood-pile, just as you're carting it now."
I said I thought we would begin our career with a coat of whitewash.
Westbury noticed something sticking out from an overhead beam, and drew
out a long-handled wrought-iron toasting-fork. Looking and prying about,
we discovered an old pair of brass snuffers, and a pair of hand-made
wrought-iron shears. The old things were pretty rusty, and I could see
that Westbury did not value them highly, but I would not have traded
them for the pork-barrel and the ham-barrel and all the other barrels
and benches reserved from Uncle Joe's collection. 'Lias Mullins,
inspecting them, became reflective:
"Them's from away back in old Ben Meeker's time," he said, "or mebbe
furder than that. The' ain't been no scissors made by hand in this
country since my time, an' a good while before. I guess old Ben was a
good hand to have things made. I've heard my father tell that when he
was a boy Cap'n Ben, as they called him, one day found his door-sill
split, an' went to the blacksmith shop an' had one made out of iron.
Father said it was a big curiosity, and everybody went to look at it.
That would be fully a hundred years ago, when the' wasn't so much to
talk about. He said that the biggest piece of news in Brook Ridge for a
good while was that Cap'n Ben had an iron door-sill. It was around there
at the side door. I've seen it many a time, an' for all I know it's
there yet."
We went around there. Sure enough! Cap'n Ben's iron door-sill was still
in place. Brown at the ends, bright and thinner where the step came, it
remained as firmly fixed as when, a hundred years before, it had
supplied the latest bit of gossip to Brook Ridge.