We crown the unconscious brew with wreath of bays
We press in pulseless hands the sweetest flowers.
When all unneeded any grace of ours
We find a voice for all the loving praise
For which, perhaps, through weary, unblessed days
The heart had hungered. We are slow to prove
The tenderness we feel, till some dark day
We can do naught but bow our head and pray
That Heaven may teach us how to show our love.
May it not be that on the other side
They wait for us, and, like us, long to make
The sad wrongs right, ready to give and take
The hand-clasps and the kisses here denied?
Carlotta Perry.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the Companion.
CUSPADORES.
There is probably no human weakness that awakens more derisive contempt
than a false assumption of superior knowledge. The vanity of young
people frequently leads them into ludicrous positions, and sometimes
even into serious difficulties, through a pretence of knowing things of
which they are really ignorant. The experience of one of my young
friends is a case in point.
Silvia Morden is a girl of sixteen. She is both bright and pretty. Her
worst fault was the one I have mentioned,--a most ridiculous mania for
wishing to appear well acquainted with all subjects.
The flattery of her companions at Miss Hall's "Young Ladies' Academy" no
doubt had something to do with this folly; for she was generous, end a
great favorite with her schoolmates. It often led her into difficulties,
as falsehood in any form always does, and Silvia was really becoming a
confirmed liar when the little episode I am about to relate, checked her
on the very brink of the precipice.
The craze for "high art decorations" had spread from the great city
centres to the country town of Atwood, where Silvia's parents lived. Of
course every one understands that "high art" becomes very much diluted
in its country progress, and when it appears in out-of-the-way places,
where the people are neither wealthy nor well read, it is apt to
degenerate into very _low_ art, indeed.
But the Atwood girls did what they could to follow the fashions. Old
ginger-jars were dragged down, covered with paint, and pasted over with
beetles, and birds, and flowers, in utter disregard of the unities. Here
Egyptian scarabaei were perched on an Alpine mountain; there a clay
amphora, of the shape of the Greeks or Romans, was adorned with gaudy
plates cut out of fashion magazines.
The merchants in Atwood, taking advantage of this _furore,_ sent for all
shapes of pottery, but they could not import the taste to decorate it.
Atwood, however, was satisfied with its own style of art, and that was
sufficient.
Silvia's decorations were rather better than those of her acquaintances.
She read everything she could on the subject, but, with her usual
self-conceit, refused to ask any questions of those who might have
enlightened her, and in fact, set herself up as an oracle on art
decorations.
One day, she saw in a city paper a list of articles for decoration,
among which were "cuspadores."
"What on earth is a 'cuspadore'?" she asked herself.
Of course, something lovely, she judged, from the name. It was
high-sounding, and seemed classical. She concluded it must be one of
those lovely vases she had read descriptions of, and she determined to
buy one that very evening, for of course Morris had them among his new
lot of potteries.
She went to school that morning with her head full of cuspadores. She
missed all her lessons, and got a bad mark for inattention, but the
thought of a cuspadore kept her from worrying over her misfortunes.
"I do hope Miss Hall isn't going to keep us all the afternoon bothering
over that rhetoric," she said to her friend Anna Lee. "I want to go up
town this evening, and must go, if it's dark when I get home."
"What are you so crazy to go up town for?" asked Anna.
"Oh, I want to go to Morris's store to get a cuspadore."
"Cuspa---what?" inquired her amazed companion. "What on earth is that?"
"You'll see when I get it," was the evasive answer.
"Oh, bother your mysteries! You needn't make a secret of it, Just tell
me what it is and what it's for."
With all her heart, Silvia wished that she could answer that question.
Thinking she could not be very far wrong, she ventured to say,--
"It's a lovely antique vase. I'm going to put a running border of roses
and pansies on it,--the sweetest pictures you ever saw,--and I'll put it
on the mantel for flowers."
"I never heard of them before," persisted Anna. "Where did you see them,
Sil?"
Another falsehood was required.
"I saw a great many pretty things when I was in the city last March, and
cuspadores were among them."
"Well, I'll wait and see yours," answered unsuspicious Anna. "If I like
it, I'll get one too. Now mind you show it to me first when you've
finished it."
As soon as school was dismissed, Silvia hurried through Atwood to the
store of Mr. Morris.
The clerk who came bowing to her was a young man for whom she had a
special dislike,--"a conceited idiot," she called him to her companions,
"with an offensive familiarity of manner." In reality, Tom Jordan was a
well-meaning young man, though rather silly, but his vanity and conceit
happened to jar upon the same marked characteristics in Miss Silvia.
"What shall I show you this evening, Miss Silvia?" rubbing his hands and
smiling blandly.
"Are none of the other clerks disengaged?" she asked, loftily.
The young man's smile faded away. "I'm afraid, Miss Morden, they're all
busy. Can I show you anything?"
"Have you any cuspadores among your new pottery?"
"What did you say?" asked Tom.
"I said cuspadores. I presume you know what they are."
Now Jordan didn't know any better than she what cuspadores are. But he,
too, had a reputation to support for knowing everything in his line of
business. He was not going to peril it at a counter full of gaping
customers by acknowledging his ignorance.
He would question her a little, to find out what it was.
He put his finger to his forehead, and shut his eyes, as if trying to
remember where the cuspadores were placed.
"What style do you wish? The fact is, there are so many different shapes
in vogue now."
"Oh, the most antique, of course. I doat on those queer antique things."
His head in a whirl, Tom rushed into the back room, leaving Silvia
conversing with some acquaintances who had come in. From the back room
he ran into an office where the book-keeper, who was lately from
Philadelphia, was absorbed over a column of figures.
"Ralston, what under the sun is a cuspadore?" he cried.
"It's a spittoon,--a spit-box,--you ninny! If you interrupt me again,
I'll shy mine at your head!"
"Whew!" whistled Tom. "Who'd have thought that 'toploftical' young miss,
with her airs and graces, used tobacco? I s'pose she rubs, or maybe she
smokes. One never knows, Ralston, what girls are up to."
"But I know what I'll be up to if you don't clear out!" cried the angry
book-keeper.
Tom rummaged the warehouse, and found a common earthenware spittoon,
which he dragged out in triumph.
"I wonder if she thinks she can buy spittoons by a new-fangled name," he
muttered, "and nobody know what she wants 'em for? I'll let her know she
can't put her finger in my eye. That's why she wanted another clerk."
With a flourish and a smirk, Tom deposited the spittoon on the counter
under Silvia's astonished eyes.
"Here's a cuspadore, Miss Morden; not the very finest article, but it
serves every purpose. Cleans easy, too, and that's the great thing,
after all. Shall I send you a pair?"
Utterly astonished and struck dumb, Silvia stood gazing at the hideous
thing.
"And look here, Miss Morden," dropping his voice to a confidential
whisper, "we've got the finest lot of tobacco and the best snuff you
ever used. Oh, I know,--I'll not mention it. Young ladies, of course,
have their little secrets,--I understand that, and I'll be upon honor,
'pon my word I will."
"You insulting creature!" Silvia gasped.
Her look and tone caused Tom to back, and bump his head so violently
against a shelf that, for a minute, he was blind. When he recovered his
sight, Silvia had left the store, and the people at the counter were
gazing with wide-open eyes on the scene.
"What did you say to Miss Morden, that she flew off in such a rage?"
asked a tall, gaunt, spectacled old maid,--Miss James,--who was the
terror of the town for her ill-natured gossip and interfering ways.
"Upon my word, ma'am, I said nothing insulting," replied the angered
clerk. "Miss Silvia asked for a spittoon, and I showed her one. Of
course people do not want spittoons unless they use tobacco, do they? I
am sure I meant no harm. I only wanted to accommodate a customer."
"Of course, of course," said his grim listener. "Judge Morden and her ma
don't dream of their daughter's goings-on, I'm sure of that. I'm a
friend, and they'll know it before I'm an hour older."
She stalked out of the store, and down to Judge Morden's house. Without
ringing, she marched into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Morden was at
work.
"Clara Morden," she said, in her sharpest tones, for she was an old
acquaintance of the lady, "how have you brought up your daughter, that
she's disgracing you?"
"Disgracing! Are you talking of Silvia?"
Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on
her visitor.
"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and
that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole
town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and whether
she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it. You
always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and
again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."
Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.
"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia
about it when she comes in."
"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen
people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon,
and then got mad with the clerk about something."
The explanation Silvia was compelled to make that evening, though it
acquitted her of the first charge, left a most painful impression upon
her mother that the habit of falsehood had grown upon her daughter.
"I will not add to your punishment by re-proof," she said, gravely,
"because I foresee the mortification that this is going to bring to you.
No explanation will convince half the gossips in town that you have not
the filthy habit of using tobacco, and the story will cling to you for
years."
"That's harsh and unjust!" Silvia cried, hotly. "It was a mistake
anybody might have made."
"Yes, anybody who pretends to know what you are ignorant of. There is a
strong likeness in the family of lies, and it is neither hard nor unjust
that we should be punished for them. Your humiliation I hope may prove a
salutary lesson."
It did. Silvia is rarely tempted now to her old pretences of superior
knowledge. The cuspadore story brought her such pain and mortifition
that the scars remain yet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the Companion.
IN THE BACKWOODS.
In Five Chapters.--Chap. I.
By C. A. Stephens.
We were boiling down "salts" that winter in Black Ash Swamp,--not epsom
salts, but an extract from the lye of wood ashes. The ashes were boiled
much as maple sap is boiled in order to obtain sugar.
I do not know whether the reader ever heard of such a thing. It was one
of many ventures which Edward Martin, Vet Chase and myself made when we
were boys up in the Maine backwoods in order to obtain a little money.
Black Ash Swamp was four or five miles up Mud Stream, a small tributary
of the Penobscot. It was situated on "wild" land, as it was called, and
was full of yellow ash, black ash and elm.
We had gone there early in November. Our first work was to fell the
great ash-trees and cut them up so that the wood could be burned in
ricks. Many of the trees were very old, nearly lifeless, and punky at
the heart; but they made an abundance of ashes.
There is no wood in the world from which such quantities of ashes can be
secured; and that is the reason, I suppose, why the tree is called
_ash._ Nor is there another tree whose ashes make so strong a lye. It
was for this reason that we came here to make "salts."
We brought up on our raft twenty old flour-barrels, to be used as
leach-tubs. These were set up in a semi-circle round our boiling-place,
which was a long stone "arch." A pole and lumber-shed served us as a
camp.
We used to sit there evenings, and by the light of the fire under the
boiling kettles of lye, try to read Aesop's fables in Latin, and I never
to this day take up my old Latin reader without seeming to hear the
steady drip-drop of those twenty leach-tubs.
Making salts was hard work for us, though not much harder than
translating some of those fables; but one needs to work to keep warm in
Northern Maine in December.
In the forenoons we would all three cut and split the ash into
fire-wood, then burn it and boil the ashes. Sometimes we burned eight or
ten cords in a single rick, which made from seven to ten barrels of
ashes. Then we poured water into the barrels, and set earthen pans or
pots underneath to catch the lye as it drained through.
When our four iron kettles,--hung with "hooks" to a long pole over our
arch,--were all boiling, there was a strong odor, and the steam made our
eyes smart. It took a lively fire, and we made a good many ashes in the
arch.
When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and general
appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is very
strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint compared
with peppermint tea.
We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor, to
be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we obtained
from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid way of
getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were determined to
earn something so that we could prepare for college.
But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these
"salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails
themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a single
accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the
"salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a
horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the
saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not
only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found
well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very
rapidly.
All through November, December and January we worked industriously, and
studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have been unhealthy and
dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and water-holes frozen
solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it lay in a great
valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were covered by dense
growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the great fires which
we built every afternoon warmed up the whole swamp.
Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm.
Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley.
The winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot
deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.
One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It thawed
for two days, and then became cold on the following night. Next morning,
while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and baking biscuits in
our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east of our camp,
sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and breaking through
the crust.
We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through the
tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain had
roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he
looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.
He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then
he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and
would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which we
kept loaded, and ran after him.
[Illustration (woods-1) Shooting the Bear]
Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.
Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and
fanned the air with his paws.
Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.
But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently
not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would have
passed it by.
We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain
grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.
So we cut the body up, hair and all,--for his hide absolutely stuck to
his bones,--and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced
trying out our bear's grease.
The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off
anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The
Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and _nihil Mehurcule_ is still mixed
up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.
By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the scraps into the
fire, and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as
they burned. The whole swamp was full of it.
The hot fat was then poured off into a tin pail, and hung in a little
spotted maple near one end of our camp-shed. We used to hang all our tin
dishes and ladles here, for the maple had low limbs, which we had cut
off so as to leave the stubs for pegs.
Underneath this tree was the great box--an old grain-box from a
logging-camp--in which we stored our "salts" as it was made.
In the night.--it must have been after midnight, for the fire was
out--I was roused from sleep by Ed, who was moving about the shed. I
thought at first that he was walking in his sleep,--for he was a
somnambulist,--and gave him a shake.
"Sh!" whispered he. "There's something sniffing round the arch."
We both peered sharply, but it was so dark that we could see nothing.
"It's the mate to that old bear, I guess," Ed whispered. "He's lonely,
and wants company."
"More likely he has smelled the fat," said I, "and intends to steal it."
"Perhaps so," said Ed. "I thought we should draw some beast or other to
us. Sh! I believe I can see him. Keep still! I'll teach him not to steal
from his neighbors."
Ed reached for the gun, which at night always lay loaded at the head of
our bunk.
Cocking the gun, he took aim and fired.
There was a yell almost as loud as the report, and it startled me a good
deal worse. I once heard a vicious hound when shot make almost just such
a noise. It was really a blood-curdling sound.
Vet had been sound asleep. The gun and the yell brought him suddenly to
his feet.
"What is it?" he screamed. "What's the matter?"
"Matter?" exclaimed Ed; "that was a wolf! An ugly customer, too."
The creature had ran yelping away, and now the whole swamp resounded to
its cries, as it crossed the frozen stream and ran for the
mountain-side. What we took for the echoes at first, came back amazingly
distinct from the mountains all about us. "Why," cried Vet, "those cries
are other wolves answering him!"
It is strange what a distance the smell of burned bones and scraps will
be carried to the noses of carnivorous beasts. A hunter in the woods
better not burn such refuse unless he wants to draw dangerous game about
him. It may be a wild opinion, but I haven't a doubt that the odor of
those bones drew wolves twenty-five miles off to us that night.
As soon as Vet spoke, Ed and I both knew there must be other wolves
howling. It made us feel almost frightened, there, in the dead of night,
for we soon found that the creatures were drawing together and coming
nearer, large numbers of them. Ed loaded the gun again.
"But what good will that do if there's a pack of 'em?" Vet exclaimed.
If we had had a log camp with a door, we shouldn't have felt uneasy; but
our open shed would not afford us safety. There was no time to be lost,
for the wolves were racing and scurrying about the swamp, not half a
mile away.
"I'm going into that old stooping hemlock!" said Vet, and he ran for it.
This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It
leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of
the stream.
Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the
first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two
big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our
flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled
after Vet.
We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as comfortably as
we could. There was no wind, and the temperature could not have been
below freezing, much.
We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by,
and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,--going and coming,
here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like hounds
hunting a track.
Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We
could hear them eating, too, the bones, scraps and offal we hand thrown
out,--quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.
[Illustration (woods-2) Trying Oil]
Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They dragged
off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag about
the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple. This
was so near that we could see them better. They tore down the tin
dishes, and still kept leaping up.
"Good-by, candles!" muttered Ed. "They're after that pail of bear's
grease."
Pretty soon, we heard the pail go down, _thump!_ into the box of
"salts," that was, as I have said, underneath it. Then there was a great
rush and snapping of the whole pack--twenty to thirty of them, we
thought--as they licked it up from among the salts.
They hurried hither and thither around the camp for ten or fifteen
minutes longer, then dropped off, one after another, in response to
howlings further down the stream.
The next morning, we saw where they had upset the bear-fat into the
"salts." The oil had not cooled, and of course it soaked down into the
loose salts. In their eagerness to get the warm grease, the rabid brutes
had eaten grease and salts together.
"Well," said Ed, "some of 'em will be troubled with dyspepsia after
this, that's certain."
This was Wednesday. Friday morning, Vet and I set off to go to the
settlement. We followed down Mud Stream five miles, to where it entered
the Penobscot. Here there was, or had recently been, open water, now
only partly frozen over.
We could not get upon the river at the forks, and had to follow up the
bank thirty or forty rods. We had gone only a few steps when we came
upon a dead wolf, lying close down to the water's edge, among brush and
drift-stuff.
"Here's one of our friends!" cried Vet, laughing.
We hauled the carcass up to the top of the bank. It was a good-sized
wolf, as large as a fox-hound. We felt pretty happy, for the State then
paid a bounty of eight dollars on wolf-scalps; and the hide--if we could
get it off--would bring two or three dollars more.
Well, we had not gone four rods further when we came upon another wolf,
curled up, dead, near the water. And--to cut the story short--we found
eight dead wolves lying along that strip of open water.
The "salts" had proved a fatal meal for them.
We were not long going for Ed, and then we skinned the lot. But it was a
tough job. We could not help cutting the hides considerably, and in
consequence of this, we obtained but eleven dollars for these. We got
seventy-six dollars in all, however, and this was a large amount for us
in those hard, self-denying days.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For the Companion.
IN THE MINING REGIONS.
At the Station.
The cars stopped at a rude station. A little girl standing by a cow was
the only human being to be seen. The girl was barefoot; her white hair
looked as if it had not been touched by any comb for a week.
Grandly the hills stretched out, summit after summit. Here and there
could be seen a little home, plain enough and poor enough, but made
beautiful by its emerald setting.
"Do you work in the mills?" I asked the child with the white head. She
stuck her forefinger in her mouth, looked shyly down, and shook her
head.
Aunt Sally.
"Is that your cow?" was the next question. She nodded this time, and
looked up at us with pleasant blue eyes.
"Can you show as where the mine is?"
"Yes, I can," she said, brightening at the small bit of money I held
out, "It's yenter,--coom an' I'll tell ye."
We followed her to a fissure in the side of the hill, a place of rough
beams, and bare of verdure. It seemed singularly deserted, for it wanted
nearly half an hour to working time. We looked into the shaft with a
shudder. It led in a slanting direction into the deep earth, and it
seemed like going into a grave to enter it.
"Poppy goes down ther," said the girl. "He an' the other men are mad
'cause they have to stay there so long."
"Could we got a breakfast round hers, anywhere?" my friend asked of the
child.
"Oh, yes, Aunt Sally, down there;" stud she pointed to a little
clearing, dazzlingly white amidst the pretty garden spots. The girl
volunteered to go with us.
The child led us into a small clean room, where were milk-pans, shining
like silver.
Aunt Sally was a small, tidy body, with a bright English face of the
best type, straight as an arrow, and with an eye that meant business.
"Them miners is a hard set," she said, as she bustled about us, getting
bread and coffee. "You see, there's so many nations mixed. There's
Irish, and German, and Swiss, and patience knows what else, and they get
among themselves if they think things don't go right, and talk and talk,
and git discontented and ugly.
"I'll 'low it's a hard life, 'specially for the women and children,
though there aint but few o' _them_ work about here. But then, though
they work a good while, yet they have a good bit of daylight, after all.
The men as don't drink are, as a general rule, the easiest to git along
with. There go some of 'em now."
The Murdered Miner.
A group of low-browed, sturdy follows passed the door, laughing and
talking, seemingly contented, and after breaking our fast, we followed
them.
A woman was walking ahead of us, with, a child in her arms, a little
girl of six or seven years tugging at her skirt. They were a very quiet
trio.
I noticed that the woman wore a bit of black crape on her hat, and
there was something in her face that inclined me to stop and speak to
her.
"You look young to have two children," I said.
"Yes'm; I aint twenty yet," she said, shifting the great boy to the
other arm.
"And you are in mourning."
"Yes'm. I've lost Jim. He was a good husband, a real steady man; never
drunk nor nothin'. Him and me'd knowed each other ever sence we were
little uns. We was raised in Edinburgh, miss, and come over when we was
married. Then Jim got sick, and it cost all we brought to cure him. So
we came up here a year ago, and was doing quite well, miss."
"Was it an accident in the mines?" I ventured to ask.
"Oh, no, miss, it was a cruel murder; he was killed by them Molly
Maguires!" and her lips trembled, and the tears started to her eyes.
[Illustration (mine-1) In the Mine]