_There is work about making apple-butter_
Perhaps I am making it all sound too easy and comfortable. The past has
a way of submerging its sorrows. With a little effort, however, I can
still recall some of them. Our transition period was not all picnic and
poetry. There were days of stress--hard, nerve-racking days when it
seemed that never in the wide world would things get into shape--as
when, for instance, the new kitchen range arrived and would not go
through any of the kitchen doors; when our grandfather clock had been
found an inch too tall for any of our rooms; when our big fireplace had
poured out smoke until we were blind and asphyxiated. Any one of these
things would be irritating, and coming together, as they did, one
gloomy, chilly morning, they had presented an aspect almost of failure.
Then, being resolute and in good health, we proceeded to correct
matters. We stripped the range for action, took out a sash, and brought
it in edgewise through a window. We mortised down an inch into the
flinty oak floor and let in the legs of the old clock so that its top
ornament would just clear the ceiling.
The fireplace problem was more serious. We knew that the chimney was big
enough, for we could look up it at a three-foot square of sky, and our
earlier fires had given us no trouble. We solved the mystery when we
threw open an outside door to let out the smoke. The smoke did not go
out; it rushed back to the big fireplace and went up the chimney, where
it belonged. We understood, then--in the old days air had poured in
through a hundred cracks and crevices. Now we had tightened our walls
and windows until the big chimney could no longer get its breath. It
must have a vent, an air-supply which must come from the outside, yet
not through the room.
Here was a chance for invention. I went down cellar to reflect and
investigate. I decided that a stove-pipe could be carried from a small
cellar window to the old chimney base, and by prying up the thick stone
hearth we could excavate beneath it a passage which would admit the pipe
to one end of the fireplace, where it could be covered and made sightly
by a register. Old Pop came with his crowbar and pick, and Westbury
brought the galvanized pipe and the grating. It was quite a strenuous
job while it lasted, but it was the salvation of our big fireplace, and
I was so proud of the result that I did not greatly mind the mashed foot
I got through Old Pop's allowing the thousand-pound stone hearth to rest
on it while he attended to another matter.
I have given the details of this non-smoke device because any one buying
and repairing an old house is likely to be smoked out and might not
immediately stumble upon the simple remedy. I know when later, at the
club, I explained it to an architectural friend, he confessed that the
notion had not occurred to him, adding, with some shame, that he had
more than once left a considerable crack under a door as an air-supply.
Imagine!
So these troubles passed, and others in kind and variety. Those were
busy days. We were doing so many things, we hardly had time to enjoy the
fall scenery, the second stage of it, as it were, when the goldenrod and
queen's-lace-handkerchief were gone, the blue wild asters fading, and
leaves beginning to fall, though the hilltops were still ablaze with
crimson and gold. Once we stole an afternoon and climbed a ridge that
looked across a valley to other ridges swept by the flame of autumn. It
was really our first wide vision of the gorgeous fall colorings of New
England, and they are not surpassed, I think, anywhere this side of
heaven.
We gathered our apples. We had a small orchard of red Baldwins across
the brook, and some old, scattering trees such as you will find on every
New England farm. These last were very ancient, and of varieties
unknown to-day. One, badly broken by the wind, we cut, and its rings
gave it one hundred and fifty years. Putnam's soldiers could have hooked
apples from that tree, and probably did so, for it was not in plain view
of the house.
We put the Baldwins away and made cider of the others, it being now the
right moment, when there was a tang of frost in the morning air. We
picked up enough to fill both of Uncle Joe's cider-barrels, Westbury and
I hauled them to the mill, and the next day Elizabeth was boiling down
the sweet juice into apple-butter, which is one of the best things in
the world.
There is work about making apple-butter. It is not just a simple matter
of putting on some juice and letting it boil. Apples must go into it,
too, a great many of them, and those apples must be peeled and sliced,
and stirred and stirred eternally. And then you will find that you need
more apples, more peeling and slicing, and more stirring and stirring,
oh yes, indeed. Elizabeth stirred, I stirred, and Lazarus, our small
colored vassal, stirred. I said if I had time I would invent an
apple-butter machine, and Elizabeth declared she would never undertake
such a job again, never in the world! But that was mere momentary
rebellion. When it was all spiced and done and some of it spread on
slices of fresh bread and butter, discontent and weariness passed, and
next day she and Lazarus were making pickles and catsup and apple jelly,
while Old Pop and I were hauling all the flat stones we could find and
paving the wide space between the house and the stone curb which already
we had built around the well. Oh, there is plenty to do when one has
bought an old farm and wants to have all the good things, and the
livable things; and October is the time to do them, when the mornings
are brisk, and the days are balmy, and evening brings solace by the open
fire.