A NEW DEPARTURE.
Again the club was only a memory. It was like a walking-stick that, when
the mountain-tramp is over, the vacationist puts on the wall as a memento.
"How is your club getting along, Charlie?" asked Miss Bertha Barry, one
day, when she was calling at Aunt Stanshy's.
"We--we--don't meet," said Charlie, mournfully. Juggie was there, also,
calling on a once brother knight, and he, too, looked sad.
"Now I have an idea," said the teacher. "You know I like a good time as
well as any body, but I think if we have clubs, it is a good idea to make
them as useful as possible. If you meet again, remember, your name is
'Up-the-Ladder Club,' always to be climbing up, always to be advancing.
Now you can advance in this way; you can combine the literary element."
"Come-and-bine what?" asked Juggie.
"The literary element."
"De literal element?"
"Recitations and so on, I mean."
"We did have an entertainment," said Charlie, who was not disposed to
forget or disparage the glory of "departed days."
"But this is something different, and let me explain. Let us suppose that
we take the subject, 'Days of our Forefathers,' the times before or at the
Revolutionary War. One of you could be dressed as a farmer in those days,
and tell what farmers did; another as printer could tell what printers
did, and so on. That would give you an idea of those days, and make
something useful of your club."
The plan was popular with the boys of the club. When the subject was
proposed to Aunt Stanshy, she made the comment:
"Some sense in the idea. The boys will learn something."
"And then," said Miss Barry, "when Christmas comes, you can give a
Christmas entertainment, and ask an admission fee, and, won't you give the
money to the missions of our Church? That will be putting another round in
the ladder, and the 'Up-the-Ladder Club' will go higher still. I want you
to help other people all you can. I'll tell you what to do, and be with
you."
The boys agreed to their teacher's plan. Sid was specially enthusiastic.
Will Somers said he would help. Aunt Stanshy had promised to open the
rooms of her house, and one December night, when the sky was like the dark
face of an Oriental beauty, hung all over with golden jewelry, the White
Shields and their friends met at Aunt Stanshy's. How happy were the club
boys to find there a banner sent by Mr. Walton. He wrote that Tim Tyler
was coming to Sunday-school, and that they had previously secured four
scholars, and Tim should be counted the fifth. Happy knights to earn that
banner!
About eight Sid came into the front room dressed in a brown, broad-skirted
coat, also wearing small clothes, silver knee-buckles, and buckled shoes.
He took off his cocked hat, made a low bow, and holding out a diminutive
newspaper, yellow with age, began:
"I am a printer. I had the honor of printing the 'New Hampshire Gazette,'
which was started in Portsmouth in 1756, and is still published in that
good old city. In those days newspapers were not so numerous as now. When
the Revolutionary War closed there were forty-three papers in the country.
We did not give such crowded or so large sheets as are now published. My
paper, though, was so popular all the spare copies were taken, and I have
none by me this moment; but here is a copy of the 'New England Chronicle,'
that came out in Boston on the 4th of July, 1776. It has four pages, you
will see, measures ten inches by fifteen, say, and each page has three
columns. It was not easy work then to publish a paper. We had no
steam-presses, but hand-power had to do the work, and my arms ache to this
day. It was hard, too, at the time of the Revolutionary War, to get paper,
and before the war, too. In 1769 there was only one paper-mill in New
England, and that was at Milton, Mass. They had to advertise for rags, and
what they called the bell-cart went through Boston picking them up. Then
in towns like Salem, Charlestown, Portsmouth, they scraped all they could.
Ten years after, my brother-publisher, of the 'Massachusetts Spy,'
appealed to the 'fair Daughters of Liberty in this extensive country' to
save their rags, and so 'serve their country,' advising them to hang up a
bag in one corner of a room that the odds and ends might be saved. For a
pound of 'clean white rags' the ladies could get ten shillings! If you had
lived then, and had your mother's rags to-day, what heaps of money you
could have made! It was hard, too, for us newspaper men to get news. I was
looking yesterday at a copy of the 'Portsmouth Oracle,' published in 1805.
That was in this wonderful century. What did it say on the 26th of
January? 'News by telegraph?' and did it tell us what the Hottentots were
doing yesterday? No; it said, 'By the mails,' and had one item from Boston
two days old, two from New York nine days old, and one from Fredericksburg
about a trouble with the colored people, and that news was twenty-three
days old! Rags and news, those two things, how hard they were to get! And
then, ladies and gentlemen, how hard it was to get our pay! A brother
editor in New York, in 1777, told his customers he must charge them, for
'a quarter of news,' twelve pounds of beef, seven pounds of cheese, and so
on, or he must have their worth in money, and he tells them to bring in
the produce, or he will have to 'shut up shop.' I will now shut, also."
Making a low bow again, the wearer of small clothes retired. When Juggie's
turn arrived, he appeared, whip in hand.
"I'm de stage-driber. In de days ob our ancestors dar were no railroads,
but jest common roads. De fust canal was built in 1777. Dar was a big road
dat went from Bosson to mouf of Kennebec, one up into New Hampshire, and
den ta Canada, one to Providence, and one to New York, while New York had
two roads, norf and one souf. I was a stage-driber." (Here Juggie cracked
his whip and shouted, "Get up, Cæsar!") "I ran de 'Flyin' Machine' dat
went from New York to Philadelfy, and took only two days; and one spell I
took a stage from New York to Bosson in six days. What do you say to dat?
Don't it make yer eyes open? Who carried de mail, do you say? And haben't
you eber heard? De stage. In 1775 de mail went from Philadelfy to New
England ebery fortnight in winter, but dey improbed and went once a week,
and letter-writers could get an answer in free weeks, when before it took
six weeks. What progress! De worl' goes on, and--so do I."
Juggie left, and Governor Grimes appeared in the dress of a farmer,
carrying a shovel in one hand and a hoe in the other.
"I am a farmer, and was one in the old days. It is true I did not have so
many neighbors as people nowadays, and I went without things that farmers
now have. I didn't have newfangled cultivators, reapers, or such things.
But then what a stout house I lived in, a big, square house, and its frame
wasn't made of pipe-stem sticks! They were big, solid sticks of oak that I
had, and you could see them sticking out of the corners and down from the
ceiling. What chimneys I had, and the bricks came all the way from
England! I had none of your box stoves, but a big fire in the chimney
which you could see. My wife, Polly, had no carpets on the floor, but she
had rugs she made of rags. And my darter, Jerusha, what a cook she was!
She made pies--cooked 'em, I mean--in a brick oven, and she stewed her
chickens in pots hung on hooks from a swinging crane in the chimney. And
then I gave Jerusha a turn-spit, too, which she put before the fire, and I
gave her a tin kitchen. Polly had a spinning-wheel and Jerusha a
hand-loom, and that is where our cloth came from. I raised corn and grass
and potatoes, and we had plenty of apples, and what fun we had at huskin'
parties and apple parings! I took care of my horses, oxen, cows, and
sheep, pigs, too, and had to kill my own critters and cure the hams we
used. In those days we had to do many things ourselves, such as dip our
candles, and I made my eyes weak mending Jedidiah's shoes in the evening,
a candle near me, and the tall old family clock ticking in the corner."
Miss Barry was charming in her antique dress, as every White Shield
thought. It came down from her great-great-grandmother, Sally Tilton, who
was a famous belle in her day. The dress was hooped and ruffled,
"trailed," also, in the old style. Miss Barry's hair was powdered, and she
wore white satin shoes. She represented the "Daughters of Liberty," and
told about Emily Geiger, the South Carolina young lady who undertook to
carry a written message from General Greene to General Sumter, and when
the British took her, she ate up her letter! The enemy released her, not
finding her message. She went on and she did her errand, though, giving
the message from memory, as General Greene, fearful of a capture, had told
her the contents of the letter. Then Miss Barry told about some girls in
New York who gave a coat of molasses and flag-down to a young man
disrespectful to Congress. She gave an account of the young ladies in
Virginia, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.
Will Somers appeared in the dress of a revolutionary soldier, carrying on
his shoulder a musket that was a fire-lock, and slung at his side was a
powder-horn, while in his tinder-box were flint and steel. How many
battles this old Continental had been in, what victories he had won, and
what hardships he had endured! He was not slow to tell of them all.
The entertainment was voted a great success.
"There, Charles Pitt," declared Aunt Stanshy the next morning at the
breakfast-table, "I like that style of a club ever so much. It tells you
something."
"Yes," said Charlie, "I know a lot more than I did."
"I want you to have a good time in your club, but when it is all play and
nothing else, it aint just the thing."
"Yes, aunty," said the now matured and venerable Charlie. "And we're going
to have something else."
"What is it?"
He only winked and looked wise as an owl at midnight.
December was now hurrying away. The winter weeks followed one another
rapidly, and at last Charlie heard Mr. Walton say in church something
about a Christmas festival.
"Christmas is coming!" was Charlie's silent response.
What a Christmas it was! Two nights previous to it the club had an
entertainment in behalf of missions, as Miss Barry had suggested. Dressed
as that benevolent individual, Santa Claus, different members of the club
stepped forward and gave an account of Christmas in Germany, Christmas in
Russia, Christmas in Italy, and Christmas in Australia. The boys were
curious to see how much money they had made.
"Twenty dollars!" declared Sid, who counted the funds.
"There," said Miss Barry, "the Up-the-Ladder Club will put rounds under
the feet of boys in heathen lands, and help them climb up into the light
of a Saviour's presence."