linger about an old farm-house, to see if the old familiar objects
were all there. The clump of tall, nodding hollyhocks, many-hued, and
gorgeous in the sunlight; the lovely, evanescent morning-glories,
always reminding me of the clear eyes and silken locks of childhood;
the big tree, the pride of the homestead, under which it nestles, elm,
locust, maple or willow, it matters not; the hen, with her busy brood;
the old dog, of any breed Providence wills, lying with his nose
between his paws, lazily winking at the sun; the row of shining
milk-pans turned up against the wooden fence; the creaking well-sweep;
the old tub under the eaves; the neatly arranged wood-pile; the
honest, homely sun-flowers at the back door, and the scarlet
bean-blossoms; oh, how I love them all!
Let us go in; any excuse--a glass of water--will serve. They are not
ashamed to be caught working.
Bless you, no! One person is as good as another in New England, and
better, too. Observe how stainless are the steps, threshold and entry;
see the little mats, laid wherever a heedless foot might possibly mar
their purity. How white are the curtains and table-covers, and the
napkins pinned upon the backs of the chairs; see how nicely that patch
has been placed over the stain upon the wall-paper; look at that book
shelf hung in the corner. Surely some hand not devoid of daintiness,
arranged those pretty touches of color, in the scarlet cord and
tassels that support it, and the pretty little blue vase upon its top
shelf. Then there are picture-frames made of pine cones, quite as
pretty as any Broadway dealer could show; and the chairs, with their
flowered-chintz coverings, and now you look to see some sweet maiden
trip in, with pure eyes, and soft, smooth hair, and her name shall be
Mary. Nor are you disappointed; and as you look at her, as the
softened light comes in through the vine-leaves at the window, you see
how it is that flowers of beauty are wreathed round the rugged trunk
of New England asceticism. You see how no home, without a foundation
of thrift, can be anything like a home to this New England girl. You
can see how, in her married far-off abode, when reverses come, she is
not the woman to fold her hands and sit down and cry about it. You see
how she can make bread one minute, and ten to one, write a poem the
next; how she can trim a bonnet or row a boat; how she can cut and
make her own and her children's dresses, and keep her kitchen in a
state of polish, to make the haunter of Intelligence Offices stare
with wonder.
I adore it all! I know that wheresoever fortune, in its vagaries,
tosses a New Englander, male or female, that individual will always
come up like a cat, on its feet. Meantime, they can bear your gibes
at their time-honored dishes of "pork and beans," and "apple-dowdy,"
and "fish-balls" and "brown-bread." You can no more see "anything in
them" with all your tasting, than you could imitate the moral courage
of their makers in finding out what a thing will cost before they
order it home; and you will always manifest the same astonishment that
you do now, that these same economical, careful New Englanders are
always ready with open hearts and purses, whenever a fire lays waste a
city, when stormy winds send shipwrecked families upon their coasts,
or when any great philanthropic object challenges their pity or
assistance.
You can't understand it--how should you? You who think it "mean" and
"unlady-like" to inquire the price of a thing before you buy it, or to
decline buying it, not because you do not like it, but for the honest
and sensible reason that it is beyond your means. You can never solve
the problem how a just economy, and a generous liberality, can go hand
in hand, or how one legitimately follows the other and makes it
possible.
Then perhaps you smile when you see what a prominent place has Watts'
Psalms and Hymns, and the Bible upon the table yonder. Oh, if you
could hear the Sunday night singing in that little "_keeping-room_!"
"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green."
_You_ remember that hymn? You who had its lullaby sung to you,
countless starry nights by your own mother; _you_, who repeated it to
her in broken accents when she was dying--"Watts' Psalms and Hymns" is
to you as sacred as her memory. And the Bible? _You_ don't think, more
than myself, that mankind have furnished us anything better, as yet,
in the way either of morality or literature. You know that it is not a
mere lesson-book to that soft-eyed girl with the brown hair.
I pity a genuine New Englander, who migrates from a land in which
every inhabitant is born with a faculty of doing everything in the
best manner, and in the very "nick of time," and settles down among a
Penelope race, who weave their webs in the morning, only to find them
irretrievably unravelled every night. _Thriftless!_ You may think
there are worse qualities than this in a person's moral make-up. _I_
believe it to be the foundation of sand upon which any permanently
useful superstructure is impossible. Thriftless! The gods remove _me_
far from this aimless specimen of adult infancy, who crawls a mile on
all fours to pick up a straw; who, forgetting where he placed it the
moment after he gets it, makes a series of circuitous journeys in
search of it; who is constantly placing things on their tops that are
not self-supporting unless set upon their bottoms; and who, though
warned by repeated thumps and bumps, that there are better ways than
those he chooses to crawl in, still persists in scratching and
scarring himself, and driving you wild with wondering what mischief he
_can_ do next that he has not already done. _I_ say that a lunatic
asylum can be the only end of a New Englander who is forced into a
daily yoke-ship with your "thriftless" person.
New England! bless it! _Isn't_ it thorough? Does their sewing ravel
out? Do their shoes rip at the first wearing? Don't their children's
"bought" clothes hang together, at least till you get them home? Isn't
a New England-buttonhole exhilarating to the moral eyesight? Don't
their blinds keep fastened? Don't their doors shut without bringing
them "to" with a bang like the explosion of a Parrot gun? Haven't the
women sense "into" them? Don't the men know what they know? Haven't
their children a backbone, moral and physical? and haven't they a
right to boast of the "hub?" And as to their kitchens, my very soul
yearns for those shining tin pans and pewter pots, and immaculate
dishcloths. I am homesick for an old-fashioned "dresser," with the
kitchen spoons laid in a row after every meal. I long for a peep into
the kitchen closet, where the tea isn't in the coffee-thing, and the
starch mixed with the pepper; where the rolling-pin hangs up, white
and suggestive of flaky pie-crust; where the clothes-pins are shrouded
in a clean bag till next Monday's wash; where the lids of the coffee
and tea-pot are left open, for those vessels to air, and no
yesterday's "grounds" are permitted to repose over night; where--but
what's the use? Gotham is Gotham--Erin always _will_ be Erin--and New
England, God be praised! will always be New England; for were there
not _that_ leaven to infuse thrift through the veins of the
country----Well, you perceive that I am a New-Englander.
* * * * *
While in Brattleboro I obtained permission to write in the quiet empty
school-house, during the summer vacation. I thought while seated there
of the probable fate and fortunes of their absent occupants. How many
Senators, how many Presidents, how many Artists, how many Sculptors,
how many Authors, how many men, and women, of note, might make their
starting-point from that very school-house.
I should like to keep the statistics from this time had I leisure. You
must know that it is an article in my creed that a _New England
cradle_ is the safest and fittest to rock a baby in. In other words,
that a New England foundation is sounder and better than any other;
the superstructure may be laid elsewhere--I had almost said
anywhere--this being secured.
With these views, from which I am quite willing you should dissent,
should it so please you, I look around on these vacant seats of our
future men and women, with intense interest. "The war is over," I hear
people say; _I_ say it has just begun. The smoke of battle having
cleared a little, he that hath eyes to see, shall note the dead who
are to be carried out of sight, the maimed who are to be tenderly
cared for, and the vultures who are to be driven, at all costs, from
feeding on that which is as dear to us as our heart's blood. This work
these children will have to do. Pinafores and blouses they will not
wear forever. Balls, kites and dolls are but for now. _Earnest_ men
and women they must be, being New England born. Earnest for the
_Right_, I plead, as I glance at the Teacher's Desk. I do not know
him, who wields a power for which I would not exchange a monarch's
throne--who must face in this world, and account for in the next,
these boys and girls, who look to him for guidance and help; but
whoever he may be, I trust that he holds his office, for sublimity and
honor, second to none. I trust he looks beyond _to-day_, when he gazes
into those clear, bright eyes, where his teachings are mirrored like
the branches and blossoms in the clear, still lake beneath. I trust he
sees in those boys something beyond a trousers-tearing,
bird's-nest-robbing crew, _out_ of whose craniums must be thumped fun,
and _into_ whose craniums must be bored grammar. I trust he sees in
those girls something besides machines for sewing on buttons, and
frying "flap-jacks," and making cheese. I trust he does not expect to
run all these children, like a pound of candles, into the same shaped
and sized mould. I trust he knows a properly developed head when he
sees it, and believes in individuality of character, whether male or
female. I am glad to hear that he does not see only dollars and cents
in the glorious vocation he has adopted.
Schoolmaster! Why, Emperor, King, President, are nothing to it. There
is only one thing before it, and that is--"Mother." Let the world look
to it who are its schoolmasters. Let schoolmasters look to it that
they are God-appointed to their places. If a conscientious clergyman
need ask God's blessing on his Sunday message before delivering it to
his flock, so much the more need the schoolmaster take the shoes from
off his feet; because the place where he treads is holy ground.
Meantime, I sat there in the empty school-house, and watched the birds
flit in and out through the open window, while the breath of the
clover and the smell of the new-mown hay came pleasantly enough to my
city-disgusted nose. So now, dear children all, whoever you may be, I
leave you my hearty and sincere benediction for the pleasant hour in
your school-house, when _you_ had "a vacation" and I had none.
* * * * *
Now let me tell you a little story about a Green Mountain Sculptor.
The town of Brattleboro', wrapped in its mantle of snow, looked very
lovely one crisp, cold winter night. There were no operas, no
theatres, no racketing or frolicking of any sort going on. The snow
and the stars had it all their own way. I said it was "quiet," and
yet, from the windows of one pretty little white house, lights were
gleaming; and now a young man, warmly muffled to the ears, crosses the
threshold, and is joined by two or three young companions, who
commence gathering the snow in heaps in front of the house, while he
shapes it with his benumbed fingers into the form of a pedestal;
occasionally stepping back and looking at it, or slapping his hands
together to produce circulation. Now upon the pedestal he commences
modeling a figure; while his companions continue patiently to supply
him with fresh heaps of the pure white snow, one holding a lantern
while he proceeds with his work. Noiselessly and industriously they
toil, no policeman disturbing them with curious inquiries or a
threatened "station house." Occasionally they glide into the house,
where warm flannels, and warm beverages, and a good fire, and
"mother's" encouraging smile, await them, to inspire the party with
new energy. It is near daylight, and still our snow-sculptor toils on,
hour after hour, till, fair and lovely, stands before him, on this
night of the New Year, the form of a Recording Angel, writing upon a
scroll. Now, the party, taking one long look, quietly retire, leaving
the figure conspicuously standing at the meeting of two roads. The
stars gradually fade out, and Brattleboro' begins to be astir. First
comes the earliest riser of all, poor "crazy Jim," who never seems to
weary of wandering to and fro on the earth, and up and down on it. Dim
in his confused brain lie tangled memories of childhood's "angels." He
stands and gazes, awe-struck and wondering, while his busy, chattering
tongue is for the time quite still. Now a farmer from the mountains
glides over the snow with his fleet horse and sleigh, with tinkling
bells, and reins up, and shares crazy Jim's amazement. As the morning
wears on, the news flies that there is "an angel" among them.
Schoolgirls and boys forget that it is "past nine," and stand
spell-bound by the side of their parents, whose wonder at the
marvellous beauty of the figure is only equalled by their curiosity as
to the fingers that so cunningly shaped it. Had Brattleboro', with its
other natural marvels, furnished also a genius? Was Vermont, rich in
so many other treasures, to "keep" a sculptor? Artists were not wont
to swarm in Brattleboro' in mid-winter, how long soever might be the
list of "arrivals" during the balmy days of summer. There was no name
of distinction now on the hotel books. Who _could_ it be? And what a
pity such a beautiful thing should perish, and fade away with the
first warm rays of the sun. Among the crowd who gathered to wonder and
admire came an editor. This editor was intelligent, and what is more,
sympathetic and appreciative. He wrote a glowing account of the
"snow-angel." The paper containing it met the eye of rich old Nicholas
Longworth, of Cincinnati. He immediately sent an order to the young
sculptor, who was then modestly enjoying his first triumph from the
windows of his father's little white house, to perpetuate it for him
in marble, not forgetting to send with the order a generous check in
advance. _This_ was substantial praise. _This_ looked like beginning
the world right. For once, Fortune, too often churlish to genius,
seemed about to take it at once into her ample lap.
But our sculptor did not presume on this. He finished his beautiful
statue to the satisfaction of his patron, and with the proceeds went
to Italy, where he could more easily command the requisites of the
profession for which Nature had ordained him. One lovely creation
after another has succeeded the snow-angel, and are now cherished
household treasures in his native land and State. I am not a
Vermonter, unless strong love for its grand mountains and intelligent
people can make me one; still, though suffering under the disgrace of
not having been born in that glorious old State, I feel just as proud
of that young Green Mountain sculptor and his beautiful works, as if
its lovely valleys had cradled me.
So, lest other States begin to wrangle by and by as to the honor of
producing him, I wish to place it on record that Larkin G. Mead was
born and reared in _Vermont_, and nowhere else.
* * * * *
While in Vermont, it seemed to me that every State in the Union should
consider it a _religious duty_ to gather, in some shape, form or
place, every relic of the war with which the people of that State were
in any way connected. The golden moment of action in this regard will
pass, _is_ passing, with each fleeting day. Life presses heavily on
most of us. The shuttlecock of the present is so busy and swift, that
its whirr may well distract us from aught else. But think! to our
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren what these relics
would be. This coat, torn, blood-stained, bullet-riddled in so many
battles. This shoe, patched with improvised needle and thread in the
horrible prison pens of Andersonville and Libby. This--but time would
fall me to tell of the relics and memorials which every farm-house in
the country might yield, and which might so easily _now_ become a
nation's property and pride. I was particularly awake to this subject
because I lately saw, up here in Brattleboro', a private by the name
of Colt, with his right arm _now_ quite useless, who has in his
possession a fiddle manufactured by himself, while in camp, from a
maple stump, with no other tools than a jackknife, and a piece of
broken bottle, a gimlet and an old file, which he made into a chisel.
It was in Virginia, on the Potomac, below Washington, that his
regiment was located. "Boys," said one of them, as they lounged in
their tents at nightfall, when it will not do to think too long or too
much of the dear faces they might never more see--"boys, if we had a
fiddle here we might have some music." "I could play on it," says one,
(what _can't_ a Yankee do?) "So can I," said another. "Well," said our
hero, "the only way for us to have a fiddle is to _make_ one." No
sooner said than begun, at least. A maple stump was found, and comrade
after comrade, when off duty, watched its transformation to a fiddle
with the intensest interest. Some laughed, some cheered; praise, blame
or indifference were all alike to our indomitable private, who was
bound to get music out of that maple stump.
Still the fiddle grew. Still the chips flew. A good piece of wood was
desirable for what I shall designate as the _lid_;--the bottom and
sides being finished. Our private looked about. There was an old box
in camp, sent from prolific Vermont, with "goodies" for her valiant
boys. He seized upon the best part of it, and shaped it to its
purpose, polishing it smooth with the broken bit of glass. The pegs he
made from the horns of secesh cattle slaughtered by the rebels, when
they didn't dream our boys would rout them to take possession. The
strings for the fiddle-bow he made of hairs from the tail of the
General's horse. Just at this juncture in fiddle-progress, came a
pause. Where are the fiddle _strings_ to come from? Away there in
camp; even a Yankee might well stop, and scratch his head. Up comes an
officer, and gazes with dumb wonder on that improvised fiddle. When he
found his tongue, he offered our private to send to Washington by the
sutler for the desired strings. These were obtained, and straightway
fastened in their places. And now behold a pretty, delicate little
affair, in color resembling the satin wood-fans sent us from Fayal.
But did it have music in it? Most assuredly. There is the beauty of
it. The tone of our Yankee fiddle is irreproachable.
Now I ask, is that fiddle to become the property and pride of Vermont,
and be handed down, as it should, to its future sons and daughters,
with the name of its enterprising maker? As I sat in that low-roofed
wooden house, listening to his simple story, and looking first at the
fiddle, and then at his twisted and useless arm, and then at a little
fat roly-poly of a dimpled baby on the carpet, I thought--well, I
said, Fanny, thank God that you were born a Yankee; and now go home
and tell the world the history of that fiddle. And I have done it.
Now, millions of relics, most interesting, like this, lie scattered
all over the land. _Let each State garner its own._ It is due to the
brave fellows who, modest as brave, will never do it themselves. It is
due to these "_Privates_" to whom no splendid residences in our cities
are presented, ready furnished and victualled. Let _them_ have the
reward of remembrance and appreciation, _at least from a grateful
posterity_.
* * * * *
After leafy, lovely Vermont, to come back to the dusty city! To lose
October! the golden month of all the year in the country, that one may
come to town, to see that a dusty house is put in shining order:
that's what I call a trial. Of course, I anticipate your provoking
rejoinder--"What if you had no house to put to rights?" And now, if
you have done interrupting me, I will proceed to say, that to decide
between poultry, beef, mutton or veal for dinner; to make the
disgusting tour of closets and cupboards that have enjoyed a long
summer vacation in company with mice; instead of strolling "down to
the river" and watching the little boats glide on its polished
surface, or gaze at the mist lazily rolling off the mountain; while
sweet odors of flowers, and the fresh smell of grass, make breathing
itself a luxury, for which you can find no words of thanks--this
change, I say boldly, is not to _my_ taste. Not to mention, of a hot
morning, when you innocently thought hot mornings were quite gone till
next season, sitting in Intelligence Offices trying to decipher the
countenances of various applicants for the care of your kitchen-range,
or dining-room, or bed-chamber, when your tantalizing thoughts were
far away on delicious roads, shaded so thickly with trees that in the
hottest noon scarce a sun-ray penetrated, while the cool water dripped
from mossy rocks, or rushed foaming over them, with a glad free joy
that set you wild with longing. To fight rabid _city_ mosquitoes all
night, after a blessed freedom from the wretches all summer; to listen
to the shrieks of infuriated cats, in the intervals, instead of the
whisper of the soft leaves almost within your bed-room window; to hear
the ceaseless click, click, of the tireless street cars, instead of
the solitary musical "peep, peep" of some little bird; to be woke in
the morning, when exhausted nature craves so madly that one little
restoring-nap before breakfast, by the whooping of infuriated
milk-men, and the thumping and ringing of bakers; in short, after
kicking your heels like a colt in a pasture all summer, to be suddenly
noosed, caught and harnessed to a relentless dray-cart which keeps on
going up hill, regardless of your disgusted puffing and panting and
attempts at halting; well--I trust now you understand what my emotions
are on returning to this Pandemonium of a city, after a breezy,
care-free, delicious summer sojourn in the mountains.
What do I care for the "new style of bonnets," when I have found it so
much pleasanter to stroll out without any covering for the head? What
to me are "top-boots" with red and blue tassels and lacings, when any
old shoe served my turn if a lovely country tramp was in prospect?
What to me are new dresses? involving weary hunts for buttons, and
"bones," and hooks, and eyes, and cord, and tassels, and lace, and
bugles, and gimp, and facings, and linings, and last, but not least, a
"lasso" to catch a dress-maker?
That's what I said to myself as I sat down on my dusty travelling
trunk, with my hair full of cinders, and both fingers stuffed in my
ears to keep out the questions that were pouring into them about what
was to be done with this and that and t'other thing; and if I wanted
the windows cleaned first or last; this paint or that paint scrubbed.
Good heavens! said I, what is woman that she should be thus tormented?
That was the first onslaught, you see, and I am not naturally a
patient animal. But now that the wheels are greased and the household
machinery "whistles itself," it is a comfort to sit down again in my
own favorite little chair, which must really have been made for my
particular shoulders and back. It is a comfort to have a nail and a
closet and a shelf for everything, and see my worldly effects neatly
placed away from dust, each in its own niche, where I can find them on
the darkest night without the aid of a light. It is a comfort to have
many rooms, instead of two. It _is_ pleasant, after all, to feel that
you yourself have brought all this order out of chaos, although
man--ungrateful creature--gobbles up the results without any such
reflection.
After all, I'm going to be proud of myself, since nobody else will
praise me; I'm proud of myself, I say, as I take a cake of glycerine
soap to remove the working traces from my hands and put my fingers in
writing order. And then, after all, this had to be done; and one's
life can't be all play, and I must be woman enough to take my share of
the disagreeables, instead of shirking them like a great coward; for
all that, I like a tree better than a broomstick; a fine sunset better
than a gridiron; also I prefer a flower-garden to a sewing-machine, if
the truth _must_ out.
* * * * *