OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES
WHAT a wonderful change has come over this great country of ours since
the days of our grandfathers! Look at our great cities, with their grand
buildings, and their miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric
cars, and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great stores lit by
brilliant electric lights, and huge workshops filled with rattling
wheels and marvelous machines! And look at our broad fields filled with
cattle or covered by growing crops, and divided by splendid highways and
railroads thousands of miles in length! Is it not all very wonderful?
"But has it not always been this way?" some very young persons ask. "I
have lived so many years and have never seen anything else."
My dear young friend, if you had lived fifty or sixty years, as many of
us older folks have, you would have seen very different things. And if
we had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and then come back
again to-day, I fancy our eyes would open wider than Governor Andros's
did when he saw that the charter was gone.
In those days, as I told you, when any one wanted to make a light, he
could not strike a match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must
hammer away with flint and steel, and then had nothing better than a
home-made tallow candle to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never
even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then used to cut off the
candle wick.
Some of you who live in old houses with dusty lofts under the roof, full
of worm-eaten old furniture, have, no doubt, found there odd-looking
wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of various kinds.
Sometimes these wheels are brought down stairs and set in the hall as
something to be proud of. And the old eight-day clocks stand there, too,
with their loud "tick-tack," buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they
had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels I speak of are the old
spinning wheels, with which our great-grandmothers spun flax into
thread. This thread they wove into homespun cloth on old-fashioned
looms. All work of this kind used to be done at home, though now it is
done in great factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores, instead
of spinning and weaving and sewing them in the great old kitchens before
the wood-fire on the hearth.
Really, I am afraid many of you do not know how people lived in the old
times. They are often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy you
will hardly think so when I have told you something more about them.
Would you think it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold room,
and go down and pump ice-cold water to wash your face, and go out in the
snow to get wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour before the
house began to warm up? That is only one of the things you would not
find pleasant. I shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about
how people lived in old times, and then you can say if you would like to
go back to them.
Would any boy and girl among you care to live in a little one-story
house, made of rough logs laid one on another, and with a roof of
thatch--that is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep out the
rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or two rooms, and some of them with
chimneys made of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that they
could not be set on fire. These were the oldest houses. Later on people
began to build larger houses, many of which were made of brick or stone.
But I am afraid there was not much comfort in the best of them. They had
no stoves, and were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big logs of
wood were burned. They made a bright and cheerful blaze, it is true, but
most of the heat went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little of
it got out into the room. In the winter the people lived in their
kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire for heat and light, and at bed-time
went shivering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you would have
enjoyed that?
They had very little furniture, and the most of what they had was rude
and rough, much of it chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. Some
of the houses had glass windows--little diamond-shaped panes, set in
lead frames--but most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which kept
out as much light as it let in.
All the cooking was done on the great kitchen hearth, where the pots
were hung on iron cranes and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did
not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. Mush and milk, or
pork and beans, were their usual food, and their bread was mostly made
of rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice books they wanted to
read often had to do so by the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell
you that books were very scarce things in those days.
If any of us had lived then I know how glad we would have been to see
the bright spring time, with its flowers and warm sunshine. But we might
have shivered again when we thought of next winter. Of course, the
people had some good times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the table
was filled with good things to eat, and election-day and training-day,
when they had outdoor sports. And they had quilting and husking-parties,
and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and picnics and other amusements. A
wedding was a happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a great
dinner. But after all there was much more hard work than holiday, and
nearly everybody had to labor long and got little for it. They were
making themselves homes and a country, you know, and it was a very
severe task. We, to-day, are getting the good of their work.
Down South people had more comfort. The weather was not nearly so cold,
so they did not have to keep up such blazing fires or shiver in their
cold beds. Many of the rich planters built themselves large mansions of
wood or brick, and brought costly furniture from England, and lived in
great show, with gold and silverware on their sideboards and fine
coaches drawn by handsome horses when they went abroad.
In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses, of the kind used in
Holland. In Philadelphia the Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses,
with wide orchards and gardens round them, where they raised plenty of
fruit. When any one opened a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden
anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of goods he had to sell.
In New England Sunday was kept in a very strict fashion, for the people
were very religious. It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh, on
Sunday, and everybody had to go to church. All who did not go were
punished. And, mercy on us, what sermons they preached in those cold old
churches, prosing away sometimes for two hours at a time! The boys and
girls had to listen to them, as well as the men and women, and you know
how hard it is now to listen for one hour.
If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did, and went off into a
snooze, they were soon wide awake again. For the constable went up and
down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This had a rabbit's foot
on one end of it and a rabbit's tail on the other. If he saw one of the
women asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her face. But if a boy
took a nap, down would come the rabbit's foot in a sharp rap on his
head, and up he would start very wide awake. To-day we would call that
sort of sermons cruelty to children, and I think it was cruelty to the
old folks also.
Do you think those were "good old times"? I imagine some of you will
fancy they were "bad old times." But they were not nearly so bad as you
may think. For you must bear in mind that the people knew nothing of
many of the things we enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain food
and coarse furniture and rough clothes and cold rooms, and were more
hardy and could stand more than people who sleep in furnace-heated rooms
and have their tables heaped with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and
meats.
But there was one thing that could not have been pleasant, and that was,
their being afraid all the time of the Indians, and having to carry
muskets with them even when they went to church. All around them were
the forests in which the wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might
be heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz out from the thick
leaves.
The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all the villages were
strong buildings called blockhouses, to which everybody could run in
times of danger. In these the second story spread out over the first,
and there were holes in the floor through which the men could fire down
on the Indians below. But it makes us tremble to think that, at any
time, the traveler or farmer might be shot down by a lurking savage, or
might be seized and burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the people
grew to hate the Indians and to kill them or drive them away.
There was much game in the woods and the rivers were full of fish, so
that many of the people spent their time in hunting and fishing. They
got to be as expert in this as the Indians themselves, and some of them
could follow a trail as well as the most sharp-sighted of the red men.
Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's novels of Indian life, and
know what a wonderful hunter and Indian trailer old Natty Bumppo was.
But we do not need to go to novels to read about great hunters, for the
life of Daniel Boone is as full of adventure as that of any of the
heroes of Indian life.
Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this country has ever known. He
lived much later than the early times I am talking about, but the
country he lived in was as wild as that found by the first settlers of
the country. When he was only a little boy he went into the deep woods
and lived there by himself for several days, shooting game and making a
fire to cook it by. He made himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and
lived in it like an Indian, and there his father and friends found him
when they came seeking him in the woods.
Years afterwards he crossed the high mountains of North Carolina and
went into the great forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild
animals lived. For a long time he stayed there by himself, with the
Indians hunting and trying to kill him. But he was too wide awake for
the smartest of them all.
One time, when they were close on his trail, he got away from them by
catching hold of a loose grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and
then running on. When the Indians came to the place they lost the marks
of his footprints and gave up the chase. At another time when he was
taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, and slipped away from
them without one of them waking up.
Many years afterwards, when he and others had built a fort in Kentucky,
and brought out their wives and children, Boone's daughters and two
other girls were carried off by Indians while they were out picking wild
flowers.
Boone and other hunters were soon on their trail, and followed it by the
broken bushes and bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young girls
had left behind them. In this way they came up to the Indians while they
were eating their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and rescued the
girls. These young folks did not go out of the fort to pick wild flowers
after that.
Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and would have been burned alive
if an old woman had not taken him for her son. The Indians painted his
face and made him wear an Indian dress and live with them as one of
themselves. But one day he heard them talking, and found that they were
going to attack the fort where all his friends were. Then he slipped
out of the village and ran away. He had a long journey to make and the
Indians followed him close. But he walked in the water to hide his
footsteps, and lived on roots and berries, for fear they would hear his
gun if he shot any game. In the end he got back safe to the fort. He
found it in bad condition, but he set the men at work to make it strong,
and when the Indians came they were beaten off.
Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and kept going farther west to
get away from the new people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.
He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all the rest of his life
hunting, and the Indians looked on him as the greatest woodsman and the
most wonderful hunter the white men ever had.