its principal road, stood the residence of my worthy sire, and a very
pretty residence it was. From the frequent addition of a new upper room
here, a new dormer window there, and an innovating skylight elsewhere,
the roof of the mansion had gradually assumed an alpine variety of juts
and peaks somewhat confusing to behold. Local tradition related that, on
a certain showery occasion, a streak of lightning was seen to descend
upon that roof, skip vaguely about from one peak to another, and finally
slink ignominiously down the water-pipe, as though utterly disgusted
with its own inability to determine, where there were so many, which
peak it should particularly perforate.
Such was the house in which I came to life a certain number of years
ago, entering the world like a human exclamation point between two of
the angriest sentences of a September storm, and adding materially to
the uproar prevailing at the time.
Next to my parents, the person I can best remember, as I look back, was
our family physician. A very obese man was he, with certain
sweet-oiliness of manner, and never put out of patience. I think I can
see him still, as he arose from his chair after a profound study of the
case before him, and wrote a prescription so circumlocutory in its
effect that it sent a servant half-a-mile to his friend the druggist for
articles she might have found in her own kitchen, _aqua pumpaginis_ and
sugar being the sole ingredients required.
The doctor had started business in our village as a veterinary surgeon,
but as the entire extent of his practice for six months in that line was
a call to mend one of Colt’s revolvers, he finally turned his attention
to the ailings of his fellows, and wrought many cures with sugar and
water latinised.
At first, my father did not patronise the new doctor, having very little
faith in the efficacy of sugar and water, without the addition of
certain other composites often seen in bottles; but the doctor’s neat
speech at a Sunday-school festival won his heart at last. The festival
was held near a series of small water-falls just out of the village, and
the doctor, who was an invited guest, was called upon for a few
appropriate remarks. In compliance with the demand, he made a speech of
some compass, ending with a peroration that is still quoted in my native
place. He pointed impressively to the water-falls, and says he—
“All the works of nature is somewhat beautiful, with a good moral. Even
them cataracts,” says he sagely, “have a moral, and seems eternally
whispering to the young, that ‘those what err falls.’”
The effect of this happy illustration was very pleasing, my boy;
especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that the
physician had the run of all the pious families—our own included.
It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about
six months old. Having just received from my father the amount of his
last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do
the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother’s lap, and
says he—
“How beautiful is babes! So small and yet so much like human beings,
only not so large. This boy,” says he fatly, looking down at me, “will
make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head.”
“Do you think so?” says my father.
“Indeed I do,” says the doctor. “The little fellow,” says he in a sudden
fit of abstraction, “has a long head, a very long head—and it’s as thick
as it is long.”
[Illustration: “AND IT’S AS THICK AS IT IS LONG.”]
There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, and
on the following Sunday my mother refused to look at his wife’s new
bonnet in church.
So far as I can trace back, we never had a literary character in our
family, save a venerable aunt of mine, on my mother’s side, who
commenced her writing career by refusing to contribute to the Sunday
papers, and subsequently won much fame as the authoress of a set of
copy-books. When this gifted relative found herself acquiring a
reputation she came in state to visit us, and so disgusted my very
practical father, by wearing slipshod gaiters, inking her right-hand
thumb-nail every morning, calling all things by European names, and
insisting upon giving our oldest plough-horse the romantic and literary
title of “Lord Byron,” that my exasperated parent incurred a most
tremendous prejudice against authorship, and vowed, when she went away,
that he never would invite her presence again.
I was only twenty years old at that time, and the novelty of my aunt’s
conduct had a rather infatuating effect upon me. With the perversity
often observable in youngsters before they have seen much of the world,
I became deeply interested in my literary relative as soon as my father
began speaking contemptuously of her pursuits, and it took very little
time to invest me with a longing and determination to be a writer.
Thenceforth I wore negligent linen; frequently rested my head upon the
forefinger of my right hand, with a lofty and abstracted air; assumed an
expression of settled and mysterious gloom when at church, and suffered
my hair to grow long and uncombed.
My bearing during this period of infatuation could hardly fail to
attract considerable attention in our village, and there were two
opinions about me. One was that I had been jilted; the other that I was
likely to become a vagabond and an actor. My father inclined to the
former, and left me, as he thought, to get over my disappointment in the
natural way.
My peripatetic spell had lasted about six weeks, when I formed the
acquaintance of the editor of the _Lily of the Valley_, who permitted me
to mope in his office now and then, and soothed my literary inflammation
by allowing me to write “puffs” for the village milliner.
While looking over some old magazines in the _Lily_ office one day, I
found in an ancient British periodical a raking article upon American
literature, wherein the critic affirmed that all our writers were but
weak imitators of English authors, and that such a thing as a Distinctly
American Poem, _sui generis_, had not yet been produced.
[Illustration: “IN THE SOLITUDE OF MY ROOM, THAT NIGHT, I WOOED THE
ABORIGINAL MUSE.”]
This radical sneer at the United States of America fired my Yankee
blood, and I vowed within myself to write a poem, not only distinctively
American, but of such a character that only America could have produced
it. In the solitude of my room, that night, I wooed the aboriginal muse,
and two days thereafter the _Lily of the Valley_ contained my
distinctive American poem of
“THE AMERICAN TRAVELLER.”
To Lake Aghmoogenegamook,
All in the State of Maine,
A man from Wittequergaugaum came
One evening in the rain.
“I am a traveller,” said he,
“Just started on a tour,
And go to Nomjamskillicook
To-morrow morn at four.”
He took a tavern bed that night,
And with the morrow’s sun,
By way of Sekledobskus went,
With carpet-bag and gun.
A week passed on; and next we find
Our native tourist come,
To that sequestered village called
Genasagarnagum.
From thence he went to Absequoit,
And there—quite tired of Maine—
He sought the mountains of Vermont,
Upon a railroad train.
Dog Hollow, in the Green Mount State,
Was his first stopping-place,
And then Skunk’s Misery displayed
Its sweetness and its grace.
By easy stages then he went
To visit Devil’s Den;
And Scrabble Hollow, by the way
Did come within his ken.
Then, _viâ_ Nine Holes and Goose Green,
He travelled through the State,
And to Virginia, finally,
Was guided by his fate.
Within the Old Dominion’s bounds,
He wandered up and down,
To-day, at Buzzard Roost ensconced,
To-morrow at Hell Town.
At Pole Cat, too, he spent a week,
Till friends from Bull Ring came,
And made him spend the day with them,
In hunting forest game.
Then with his carpet-bag in hand,
To Dog Town next he went;
Though stopping at Free Negro Town,
Where half a day he spent.
From thence into Negationburg
His route of travel lay,
Which having gained, he left the State
And took a southward way.
North Carolina’s friendly soil
He trod at fall of night,
And, on a bed of softest down,
He slept at Hell’s Delight.
Morn found him on the road again,
To Slouchy Level bound;
At Bull’s Tail, and Lick Lizzard, too,
Good provender he found.
But the plantations near Burnt Coat
Were even finer still,
And made the wondering tourist feel
A soft, delicious thrill.
At Tear Shirt, too, the scenery
Most charming did appear,
With Snatch It in the distance far
And Purgatory near.
But spite of all these pleasant scenes
The tourist stoutly swore
That home is brightest after all,
And travel is a bore.
So back he went to Maine straightway.
A little wife he took;
And now is making nutmegs at
Moosehicmagunticook.
In his note introductory of this poem the editor of the _Lily_ affirmed
that I had named none but veritable localities (which was strictly
true), and ventured the belief that the composition would remind his
readers of Goldsmith. Upon which his scorpion contemporary in the next
village observed that there was rather more smith than gold about the
poem.
Up to the time when this poem appeared in print, I had succeeded in
concealing from my father the nature of my incidental occupation; but
now he must know all.
He _did_ know all; and the result was that he gave me ten dollars, and
sent me to New York to look out for myself.
“It’s the only thing that will save him,” says he to my mother; “and I
must either send him off or expect to see him sink by degrees to
editorship and begin wearing disgraceful clothes.”
I went to New York; I became private secretary and speech-scribe to an
unscrupulous and, therefore, rising politician, and now I am in
Washington.
I had a certain postmastership in my eye when I first came hither; but
war’s alarms indicate that I may do better as an amateur hero.
_R. H. Newell_ (“_Orpheus C. Kerr_”).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_YAWCOB STRAUSS._
[Illustration: “BUT VEN HE VASH ASLEEP IN PED, SO QUIET AS A MOUSE.”]
I HAF von funny leedle poy,
Vot gomes schust to mine knee;
Der queerest schap, der createst rogue,
As efer you dit see.
He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings,
In all barts of der house;
But vot off dot? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He gets der measles und der mumbs,
Und eferyding dot’s oudt;
He sbills mine glass of lager bier,
Poots schnuff indo mine kraut.
He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese,—
Dot vas der roughest chouse;
I’d dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum,
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit,——
Mine gracious, dot vos drue!
I dinks mine hed vas schplit abart,
He kicks oup sooch a touse:
But never mind; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.
He asks me questions, sooch as dese:
Who baints mine nose so red?
Who vas it cuts dot schmoodth blace oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed?
Und where der plaze goes vrom der lamp
Vene’er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss?
I somedimes dink I schall go vild
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beaceful dimes enshoy;
But ven he vash asleep in ped,
So quiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, “Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss.”
_Charles Follen Adams._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE MINISTER’S WOOING._
“WAL, the upshot on’t was, they fussed and fuzzled and wuzzled till
they’d drinked up all the tea in the tea-pot; and then they went down
and called on the parson, and wuzzled him all up talkin’ about this,
that, and t’other that wanted lookin’ to, and that it was no way to
leave everything to a young chit like Huldy, and that he ought to be
lookin’ about for an experienced woman.
“The parson, he thanked ’em kindly, and said he believed their motives
was good, but he didn’t go no further.
“He didn’t ask Mis’ Pipperidge to come and stay there and help him, nor
nothin’ o’ that kind; but he said he’d attend to matters himself. The
fact was, the parson had got such a likin’ for havin’ Huldy ’round, that
he couldn’t think o’ such a thing as swappin’ her off for the Widder
Pipperidge.
“‘But,’ he thought to himself, ‘Huldy is a good girl; but I oughtn’t to
be a leavin’ everything to her—it’s too hard on her. I ought to be
instructin’ and guidin’ and helpin’ of her; ’cause ’tain’t everybody
could be expected to know and do what Mis’ Carryl did;’ and so at it he
went; and Lordy massy! didn’t Huldy hev a time on’t when the minister
began to come out of his study, and wanted to ten ’round and see to
things? Huldy, you see, thought all the world of the minister, and she
was ’most afraid to laugh; but she told me she couldn’t, for the life of
her, help it when his back was turned, for he wuzzled things up in the
most singular way. But Huldy, she’d jest say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and get him
off into his study, and go on her own way.
“‘Huldy,’ says the minister one day, ‘you ain’t experienced out doors;
and when you want to know anything, you must come to me.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ said Huldy.
“‘Now, Huldy,’ says the parson, ‘you must be sure to save the turkey
eggs, so that we can have a lot of turkeys for Thanksgiving.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ says Huldy; and she opened the pantry-door, and showed him
a nice dishful she’d been a savin’ up. Wal, the very next day the
parson’s hen-turkey was found killed up to old Jim Scroggs’s barn. Folks
say Scroggs killed it; though Scroggs, he stood to it he didn’t; at any
rate, the Scroggses, they made a meal on’t, and Huldy, she felt bad
about it ’cause she’d set her heart on raisin’ the turkeys; and says
she, ‘Oh, dear! I don’t know what I shall do, I was just ready to set
her.’
“‘Do, Huldy?’ says the parson: ‘why, there’s the other turkey, out there
by the door; and a fine bird, too, he is.’
“Sure enough, there was the old tom-turkey a-struttin’ and a-sidlin’,
and a-quitterin’, and a-floutin’ his tail feathers in the sun, like a
lively young widower, all ready to begin life over again.
“‘But,’ says Huldy, ‘you know _he_ can’t set on eggs.’
“‘He can’t? I’d like to know why,’ says the parson. ‘He _shall_ set on
eggs, and hatch ’em too.’
“‘Oh, doctor!’ says Huldy, all in a tremble; ’cause, you know, she
didn’t want to contradict the minister, and she was afraid she should
laugh—‘I never heard that a tom-turkey would set on eggs.’
[Illustration: “SHE FOUND OLD TOM A-SKIRMISHIN’ WITH THE PARSON.”]
“‘Why, they ought to,’ said the parson, getting quite ’arnest. ‘What
else be they good for? You just bring out the eggs, now, and put ’em in
the nest, and I’ll make him set on ’em.’
“So, Huldy, she thought there weren’t no way to convince him but to let
him try: so she took the eggs out, and fixed ’em all nice in the nest;
and then she come back and found old Tom a-skirmishin’ with the parson
pretty lively, I tell ye. Ye see, old Tom, he didn’t take the idee at
all; and he flopped and gobbled, and fit the parson: and the parson’s
wig got ’round so that his cue stuck straight out over his ear, but he’d
got his blood up. Ye see, the old doctor was used to carryin’ his p’ints
o’ doctrine; and he hadn’t fit the Arminians and Socinians to be beat by
a tom-turkey; and finally he made a dive and ketched him by the neck in
spite o’ his floppin’, and stroked him down, and put Huldy’s apron
’round him.
“‘There, Huldy,’ he says, quite red in the face, ‘we’ve got him now;’
and he travelled off to the barn with him as lively as a cricket.
“Huldy came behind, just chokin’ with laugh, and afraid the minister
would look ’round and see her.
“‘Now, Huldy, we’ll crook his legs, and set him down,’ says the parson,
when they got him to the nest; ‘you see he is getting quiet, and he’ll
set there all right.’
“And the parson, he sot him down; and old Tom, he sot there solemn
enough and held his head down all droopin’, lookin’ like a rail pious
old cock, as long as the parson sot by him.
“‘There: you see how still he sets,’ says the parson to Huldy.
“Huldy was ’most dyin’ for fear she should laugh. ‘I’m afraid he’ll get
up,’ says she, ‘when you do.’
“‘Oh no, he won’t!’ says the parson, quite confident. ‘There, there,’
says he, layin’ his hands on him as if pronouncin’ a blessin’.
“But when the parson riz up, old Tom, he riz up too, and began to march
over the eggs.
“‘Stop, now!’ says the parson. ‘I’ll make him get down agin; hand me
that corn-basket; we’ll put that over him.’
“So he crooked old Tom’s legs, and got him down agin; and they put the
corn-basket over him, and then they both stood and waited.
“‘That’ll do the thing, Huldy,’ said the parson.
“‘I don’t know about it,’ says Huldy.
“‘Oh yes, it will, child; I understand,’ says he.
“Just as he spoke, the basket riz right up and stood, and they could see
old Tom’s long legs.
“‘I’ll make him stay down, confound him,’ says the parson, for you see,
parsons is men, like the rest on us, and the doctor had got his spunk
up.
“‘You jist hold him a minute, and I’ll get something that’ll make him
stay, I guess;’ and out he went to the fence, and brought in a long,
thin, flat stone, and laid it on old Tom’s back.
“‘Oh, my eggs!’ says Huldy. ‘I’m afraid he’s smashed ’em!’
“And sure enough, there they was, smashed flat enough under the stone.
“‘I’ll have him killed,’ said the parson. ‘We won’t have such a critter
’round.’
“Wal, next week, Huldy, she jist borrowed the minister’s horse and
side-saddle, and rode over to South Parish to her Aunt Bascome’s,—Widder
Bascome’s, you know, that lives there by the trout-brook,—and got a lot
o’ turkey eggs o’ her, and come back and set a hen on ’em, and said
nothin’; and in good time there was as nice a lot o’ turkey-chicks as
ever ye see.
“Huldy never said a word to the minister about his experiment, and he
never said a word to her; but he sort o’ kep’ more to his books, and
didn’t take it on him to advise so much.
“But not long arter he took it into his head that Huldy ought to have a
pig to be a fattin’ with the buttermilk.
“Mis’ Pipperidge set him up to it; and jist then old Tom Bigelow, out to
Juniper Hill, told him if he’d call over he’d give him a little pig.
“So he sent for a man, and told him to build a pig-pen right out by the
well, and have it all ready when he came home with his pig.
“Huldy said she wished he might put a curb round the well out there,
because, in the dark sometimes, a body might stumble into it; and the
parson said he might do that.
“Wal, old Aikin, the carpenter, he didn’t come till ’most the middle of
the arternoon; and then he sort o’ idled, so that he didn’t get up the
well-curb till sundown; and then he went off, and said he’d come and do
the pig-pen next day.
“Wal, arter dark, Parson Carryl, he driv into the yard, full chizel,
with his pig.
“‘There, Huldy, I’ve got you a nice little pig.’
“‘Dear me!’ says Huldy; ‘where have you put him?’
“‘Why, out there in the pig-pen, to be sure.’
“‘Oh, dear me!’ says Huldy, ‘that’s the well-curb—there ain’t no pig-pen
built,’ says she.
“‘Lordy massy!’ says the parson; ‘then I’ve thrown the pig in the well!’
“Wal, Huldy, she worked and worked, and finally she fished piggy out in
the bucket, but he was as dead as a door-nail; and she got him out o’
the way quietly, and didn’t say much; and the parson he took to a great
Hebrew book in his study.
“Arter that the parson set sich store by Huldy that he come to her and
asked her about everything, and it was amazin’ how everything she put
her hand to prospered. Huldy planted marigolds and larkspurs, pinks and
carnations, all up and down the path to the front door; and trained up
mornin’ glories and scarlet runners round the windows. And she was
always gettin’ a root here, and a sprig there, and a seed from somebody
else; for Huldy was one o’ them that has the gift, so that ef you jist
give ’em the leastest of anything they make a great bush out of it right
away; so that in six months Huldy had roses and geraniums and lilies,
sich as it would take a gardener to raise.
“Huldy was so sort o’ chipper and fair spoken, that she got the hired
men all under her thumb: they come to her and took her orders jist as
meek as so many calves; and she traded at the store, and kep’ the
accounts, and she had her eyes everywhere, and tied up all the ends so
tight that there wa’n’t no gettin’ ’round her. She wouldn’t let nobody
put nothin’ off on Parson Carryl ’cause he was a minister. Huldy was
allers up to anybody that wanted to make a hard bargain, and, afore he
knew jist what he was about, she’d got the best end of it, and everybody
said that Huldy was the most capable girl they ever traded with.
“Wal, come to the meetin’ of the Association, Mis’ Deakin Blodgett, and
Mis’ Pipperidge come callin’ up to the parson’s all in a stew, and
offerin’ their services to get the house ready, but the doctor, he jist
thanked ’em quite quiet, and turned ’em over to Huldy; and Huldy she
told ’em that she’d got everything ready, and showed ’em her pantries,
and her cakes, and her pies, and her puddin’s, and took ’em all over the
house; and they went peekin’ and pokin’, openin’ cupboard doors, and
lookin’ into drawers; and they couldn’t find so much as a thread out o’
the way, from garret to cellar, and so they went off quite discontented.
Arter that the women set a new trouble a-brewin’. They begun to talk
that it was a year now since Mis’ Carryl died; and it r’ally wasn’t
proper such a young gal to be stayin’ there, who everybody could see was
a-settin’ her cap for the minister.
“Mis’ Pipperidge said, that so long as she looked on Huldy as the hired
gal, she hadn’t thought much about it; but Huldy was railly takin’ on
airs as an equal, and appearin’ as mistress o’ the house in a way that
would make talk if it went on. And Mis’ Pipperidge she driv’ ’round up
to Deakin Abner Snow’s, and down to Mis’ ’Lijah Perry’s, and asked them
if they wasn’t afraid that the way the parson and Huldy was a-goin’ on
might make talk. And they said they hadn’t thought on’t before, but now,
come to think on’t, they was sure it would; and they all went and talked
with somebody else, and asked them if they didn’t think it would make
talk. So come Sunday, between meetin’s there warn’t nothin’ else talked
about; and Huldy saw folks a-noddin’ and a-winkin’, and a-lookin’ arter
her, and she begun to feel drefful sort o’ disagreeable. Finally Mis’
Sawin, she says to her, ‘My dear, didn’t you never think folk would talk
about you and the minister?’
[Illustration: “‘NO; WHY SHOULD THEY?’ SAYS HULDY.”]
“‘No; why should they?’ says Huldy, quite innocent.
“‘Wal, dear,’ says she, ‘I think it’s a shame; but they say you’re
tryin’ to catch him, and that it’s so bold and improper for you to be
courtin’ of him right in his own house,—you know folks will talk,—I
thought I’d tell you, ’cause I think so much of you,’ says she.
“Huldy was a gal of spirit, and she despised the talk, but it made her
drefful uncomfortable; and when she got home at night she sat down in
the mornin’-glory porch, quite quiet, and didn’t sing a word.
“The minister he had heard the same thing from one of his deakins that
day; and when he saw Huldy so kind o’ silent, he says to her, ‘Why don’t
you sing, my child?’
“He hed a pleasant sort o’ way with him, the minister had, and Huldy had
got to likin’ to be with him; and it all come over her that perhaps she
ought to go away; and her throat kind o’ filled up so she couldn’t
hardly speak; and, says she, ‘I can’t sing to-night.’
“Says he, ‘You don’t know how much good your singin’ has done me, nor
how much good you have done me in all ways, Huldy. I wish I knew how to
show my gratitude.’
“‘Oh, sir!’ says Huldy, ‘_is_ it improper for me to be here?’
“‘No, dear,’ says the minister, ‘but ill-natured folks will talk; but
there is one way we can stop it, Huldy—if you’ll marry me. You’ll make
me very happy, and I’ll do all I can to make you happy. Will you?’
“Wal, Huldy never told me just what she said to the minister; gals never
does give you the particulars of them ’are things jist as you’d like
’em—only I know the upshot, and the hull on’t was, that Huldy she did a
consid’able lot o’ clear starchin’ and ironin’ the next two days; and
the Friday o’ next week the minister and she rode over together to Dr.
Lothrop’s, in Oldtown; and the doctor, he jist made ’em man and wife.”
_Harriet Beecher Stowe._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ALBINA McLUSH._
[Illustration: “I PRESSED THE COOL, SOFT FINGERS TO MY LIPS.”]