“Hired Help.”)
“ABEL! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round.”
Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they
breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly
nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be
found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of
late years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite
basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by
California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of
New England. The “Granite State” being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of
that deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.
Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or
mule between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England
serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an
emperor and a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part
(be the same more or less) of the power that sways the destinies of the
Great Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is about to
polish. It is impossible to turn a fellow citizen whose vote may make
his master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or who may
be one or both himself, into a flunky. That article must be imported
ready-made from other centres of civilization. When a New Englander has
lost his self-respect as a citizen and as a man, he is demoralized, and
cannot be trusted with the money to pay for a dinner.
It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional emperor, this
continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when he goes into service,
and that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing. It
is always under protest that the hired man does his duty. Every act of
service is subject to the drawback, “I am as good as you are.” This is
so common, at least, as almost to be the rule, and partly accounts for
the rapid disappearance of the indigenous “domestic” from the basements
above mentioned. Paleontologists will by and by be examining the floors
of our kitchens for tracks of the extinct native species of serving-man.
The female of the same race is fast dying out; indeed, the time is not
far distant when all the varieties of young woman will have vanished
from New England, as the dodo has perished in the Mauritius. The young
lady is all that we shall have left, and the mop and duster of the last
Ahnira or Loizy will be stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras
as that famous head and foot of the lost bird are stared at in the
Ashmolean Museum.
Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true American view of his
difficult position. He sold his time to the Doctor, and, having sold it,
he took care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor, on his
part, treated him, not like a gentleman, because one does not order a
gentleman to bring up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him
like a man. Every order was given in courteous terms. His reasonable
privileges were respected as much as if they had been guaranteed under
hand and seal. The Doctor lent him books from his own library, and gave
him all friendly counsel, as if he were a son or a younger brother.
Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and though he saw fit to
“hire out,” he could never stand the word “servant,” or consider himself
the inferior one of the two high contracting parties. When he came
to live with the Doctor, he made up his mind he would dismiss the old
gentleman, if he did not behave according to his notions of propriety.
But he soon found that the Doctor was one of the right sort, and so
determined to keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side, that he had
a trustworthy, intelligent fellow, who would be invaluable to him, if he
only let him have his own way of doing what was to be done.
The Doctor's hired man had not the manners of a French valet. He was
grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled,
but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the
evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could
properly do, would go to the door or “tend table,” bought the provisions
for the family,--in short, did almost everything for them but get their
clothing. There was no office in a perfectly appointed household, from
that of steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully
assume. His round of work not consuming all his energies, he must needs
cultivate the Doctor's garden, which he kept in one perpetual bloom,
from the blowing of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia.
This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen beds were so many cantos.
Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could
copy in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and
sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the
sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain
serving-man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped
God according to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's
Puritanism is always colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature
never shows him a black corolla.
He may or may not figure again in this narrative; but as there must
be some who confound the New England hired man, native-born, with
the servant of foreign birth, and as there is the difference of two
continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to
let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his
features in half-shadow into our background.
The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her cinnamon
color, cassia being one of the professional names for that spice or
drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an Englishman would
perhaps say, chestnut,--a genuine “Morgan” mare, with a low forehand, as
is common in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, well
ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears,--a first-rate
doctor's beast, would stand until her harness dropped off her back at
the door of a tedious case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in
three hours, if there was a child in the next county with a bean in
its windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was
not large, but she had a good deal of action, and was the Doctor's
show-horse. There were two other animals in his stable: Quassia or
Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he jogged
round the village.
“A long ride to-day?” said Abel, as he brought up the equipage.
“Just out of the village,--that 's all.--There 's a kink in her
mane,--pull it out, will you?”
“Goin' to visit some of the great folks,” Abel said to himself. “Wonder
who it is.”--Then to the Doctor,--“Anybody get sick at Sprowles's? They
say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin' some o' their frozen victuals.”
The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon would do well enough. He was
only going to ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.