CHILDREN'S DILIGENCE
_For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do._
--_Divine Songs for Children. Isaac Watts, 1720._
Colonial children did not spend much time in play. "The old deluder
Sathan" was not permitted to find many idle hands ready for his
mischievous work. It was ordered by the magistrates that children
tending sheep or cattle in the field should be "set to some other
employment withal, such as spinning upon the rock, knitting,
weaving tape," etc. These were all simple industries requiring
slight paraphernalia. The rock was the hand distaff. It was simple
of manipulation, but required a certain knack of dexterity to
produce even well-twisted thread. Good spinners could spin on the
rock as they walked. Tape-weaving was done on a simple appliance,
the heddle-frame of primitive weavers, known as a tape-loom,
garter-loom, belt-loom, or "gallus-frame." On these small looms
girls wove scores of braids and tapes for use as glove-ties,
shoe-strings, hair-laces, stay-laces, garters, hatbands, belts,
etc., and boys wove garters and breeches-suspenders.
There was plenty of work on a farm even for little children; they
sowed various seeds in early spring; they weeded flax fields,
walking barefoot among the tender plants; they hetchelled flax and
combed wool.
All the work on the flax after the breaking was done in olden times
by women and children. It is said there are in all twenty different
occupations in flax manufacture, of which half can be easily done
by children. Much of the work in domestic wool spinning and weaving
was done by little girls. They could spin on "the great wheel" when
they were so small that they had to stand on a foot-stool to reach
up. They skeined the yarn on a clock-reel. They easily filled the
"quills" with the woollen yarn used in weaving bedspreads and set
the quills in the middle of the great pointed wooden shuttles.
They wound the white warp on the spools, and set the spools on
the scarne. They might, if very deft and attentive, help "set the
piece," that is, wind the warp threads on the great yarn-beam, pass
them through the eyes of the heddles or harness, and the spans of
the reed. Girls of six could spin flax. Anna Green Winslow, when
twelve years old, speaks often in her diary of spinning; and when
disabled from sewing by a painful whitlow on her finger, wrote that
"it is a nice opportunity if I do but improve it, to perfect myself
in learning to spin flax."
[Illustration: The Good Girl and her Wheel]
In the _Memoirs_ of the missionaries, David and John Brainerd, a
boy's busy life on a Connecticut farm is thus described:--
"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original
sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he
went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly
home to do "chores" at evening. His whole time out of school
must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in
fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the
swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the
vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be
reluctant and not often tired."
This constant employment of a farm boy's time lasted till our own
day; but now conditions have changed in Eastern farm life. The work
still is hard and incessant, but not so varied as of yore. Many
crops are obsolete; no flax is raised, and but little wool, and that
sold as soon as sheared. Little grain is raised and no threshing is
done by the flail. Vast itinerant threshing machines go from farm
to farm. Few farmers make cider, which gave so much work to the
boys in autumn. There is no potash or soap boiling. One of the most
delightful chronicles of obsolete farm industry is written by Hon.
George Sheldon and entitled _The Passing of the Stall-Fed Ox and the
Farmer's Boy_.
[Illustration:
9. THE LITTLE SEMPSTRESS
This pretty sempstress who can see
And not admire her industry
As thus upright she sits to sew,
Not stooping as some children do.
Illustration from _Plain Things for Little Folks_]
The sawing and chopping of wood was a never diminishing incubus;
this outdoor work on wood was continued within doors in the series
of articles fashioned for farm and domestic use by the boy's
jack-knife and the few heavy carpenter's tools at his command;
some gave to the farm boy the rare pennies of his spending money.
The making of birch splinter brooms was the best paying work. For
these the boy got six cents apiece. The splitting of shoe-pegs
was another. Setting card-teeth was for many years the universal
income furnisher for New England children. Gathering nuts was
a scantily paid-for harvest; tying onions a less pleasing one,
and chiefly followed in the Connecticut Valley. The crop of wild
cherries known as chokecherries was one of the most lucrative of
the boy's resources. They were much desired for making cherry-rum
or cherry-bounce, and would fetch readily a dollar a bushel. A
good-sized tree would yield about six bushels. J. T. Buckingham
tells of his first spending money being ninepence received from a
brush-maker for hog-bristles saved from slaughtered swine.
The story of various silk fevers which raged in America cannot
be given here, romantic as they are. From the first venture the
care of silkworms was held to be a specially suitable work for
children. It was said two boys, "if their hands be not sleeping in
their pockets," could care for six ounces of seed from hatching
till within fourteen days of spinning, when "three or four more
helps, women and children being as proper as men," had to assist in
feeding, cleansing, airing, drying, and perfuming them.
The _Reformed Virginia Silk Worm_ asserted:--
"For the Labour of a man and boy
They gain you Sixty pounds which is no toy."
Mulberry trees were planted everywhere and kept low like a hedge,
so children could pick the leaves. All the books of instruction of
the day reiterate that a child ten years of age could easily gather
seventy-five pounds of mulberry leaves a day, and make great wages.
But an old lady, now eighty years old, who made much sewing silk in
Connecticut in her youth, writes thus to me: "Girls picked most of
the leaves. It was very hard work and very small pay. They had ten
cents a bushel for picking. Some could pick three bushels a day."
The first thought of spring brought to the men of the New England
household a hard work--maple-sugar making--which meant vast labor in
preparation and in execution--all of which was cheerfully hailed,
for it gave men and boys a chance to be as Charles Kingsley said, "a
savage for a while." It meant several nights spent in the sugar-camp
in the woods, a-gypsying. Think of the delight of that scene: the
air clear but mild enough to make the sap run; patches of snow
still shining pure in the moonlight and starlight; all the mystery
of the voices of the night, when a startled rabbit or squirrel
made a crackling sound in its stealthy retreat; the distant hoot
of a wakeful owl; the snapping of pendent icicles and crackling of
blazing brush, yet over all a great stillness, "all silence and
all glisten." An exaltation of the spirit and senses came to the
country boy which was transformed at midnight into keen thrills
of imaginative fright at recollection of the stories told by his
elders with rude acting and vivid wording during the early evening
round the fire; of hunting and trapping, of Indians and bears, and
those delights of country story-tellers in New England, catamounts,
wolverines, and cats--this latter ever meaning in hunter's phrasing
wild-cats. Think of "a wolverine with eyes like blazing coals, and
every hair whistling like a bell," as he sprung with outspread claws
from a high tree on the passing hunter--do you think the boy sat
by the fire throughout the night without looking a score of times
for the blazing eyeballs, and listening for the whistling fur, and
hearing steps like that of the lion in _Pilgrim s Progress_, "a
great soft padding paw."
What forest lore the boys learned, too: that more and sweeter sap
came from a maple which stood alone than from any in a grove; that
the shallow gouge flowed more freely, but the deep gouge was richest
in sweet; and that many other forest trees besides the maple ran a
sweet sap.
I believe that in earliest colonial days boys also took part in a
joyful outing, a public custom known as perambulating or beating
the bounds. The memory of boundaries and division lines, of
commons, public highways, etc., was kept fresh in the minds of the
inhabitants by an old-time Aryan custom,--the walking around them
once a year, noting lines of boundary, and impressing these on
the notice and memory of young people. To induce English boys to
accompany these perambulations, it was customary to distribute some
little gratuity; this was usually a willow wand, tied at the end
with a bunch of points, which were bits of string about eight inches
long, consisting of strands of cotton or woollen yarn braided or
twisted together, ended by a tag of a bit of metal or wood. These
points were used to tie the hose to the knees of the breeches; the
waistband of the breeches to the jacket, etc. Long after points were
abandoned as a portion of dress the wands with their little knot of
points were given. Pepys wrote in 1661 that he heard that at certain
boundaries the boys were smartly whipped to impress the bounds upon
their memories.
[Illustration: Anne Lennod's Sampler]
"Beating the bounds" was a specially important duty in the colonies
where land surveys were imperfect, land grants irregular, and the
boundaries of each man's farm or plantation at first very uncertain.
In Virginia this beating the bounds was called "processioning."
Landmarks were renewed that were becoming obliterated; blazes
on a tree would be somewhat grown over--they were deeply recut;
piles of great stones containing a certain number for designation
were sometimes scattered--the original number would be restored.
Special trees would be found fallen or cut down; new marking trees
would be planted, usually pear trees, as they were long-lived.
Disputed boundaries were decided upon and announced to all the
persons present, some of whom at the next "processioning" would
be living and be able to testify as to the correct line. This
processioning took place between Easter and Whitsuntide, that lovely
season of the year in Virginia; and must have proved a pleasant
reunion of neighbors, a May-party. In New England this was called
"perambulating the bounds," and the surveyors who took charge were
called "perambulators" or "boundsgoers."
To either man or boy of to-day or any day it would seem an absurdity
to name hunting and fishing in a chapter dealing with boys'
diligence; for in the sports of the woods and waters colonial boys
doubtless found one of their greatest amusements. But these sports
were also hard work and were engaged in for profit as well as for
pleasure. The scattered sheepfolds and grazing pastures at first had
to be zealously guarded from wild animals; wolves were everywhere
the most hated and most destructive beasts. They were caught in
many ways; in wolf-pits, in log-pens, in log-traps. Heavy mackerel
hooks were tied together, dipped in melted tallow which hardened
in a bunch and concealed the hooks, and tied to a strong chain. If
the wolf swallowed the hooks without any chain attached, it would
kill him; but he might die in the depths of the forest and his head
could not be brought in to secure the bounty. In old town lists are
the names of many boys with "wolf-money set to their credit." A
wolf-rout or wolf-drive, which was like the old English "drift of
the forest," was a ring of men and boys armed with guns surrounding
a large tract of forest. The wary wolves scented their enemies afar
and retreated before them to the centre of a circle, and many were
killed. Squirrels and hares were hunted in the same way. Once a
year in many places they had shooting matches in which every living
wild creature was prey, and a prize was given to the one bringing
in the most birds' heads and animals' tails. This cruel wholesale
destruction of singing birds as well as game birds was carried on
almost till our own day.
Foxes were destructive in the hen yards. On a bright moonlight night
the hunters placed a load of codfish heads on the bright side of a
stone wall. The fish could be smelt afar, and when the keen foxes
approached they were shot by the hunters, hiding in the shadow.
Bears lingered long even in the vicinity of cities and were hunted
with dogs. The _History of Roxbury_ states that in the year 1725, in
one week in September, twenty bears were killed within two miles of
Boston.
In Virginia deer-hunting was a constant sport. They were "burnt
out," and in imitation of the Indian way of hunting under the blind
of a "stalking head," the English taught their horses to walk slowly
by the huntsman's side, hiding him as he approached the deer, who
were not afraid of horses. A diverting sport was what was called
"vermin-hunting." It was done on foot with small dogs, by moon or
starlight. Raccoons, foxes, and opossums were the chief animals
sought. Bounties were paid for the destruction of squirrels and
rattlesnakes. It is appalling to see the bounty lists of some New
England towns for snake rattles. Yet the loss of life was small from
snake bites. The boys profited by all these bounties, and worked
eagerly to secure them.
[Illustration: Colonel Wadsworth and his Son]
Wild turkeys were caught in turkey pens, enclosures made of poles
about twenty feet long, laid one above another, forming a solid wall
ten feet high. This was covered with a close pole and brush roof.
A ditch was dug beginning about fifteen feet away from the pen;
sloping down and carried under one side of the pen and opening up
into it through a board in which a hole was cut just large enough
for a turkey to pass through. Corn was strewn the whole length of
the ditch. The turkeys followed the ditch and the corn up through
the hole into the pen; and held their heads too high ever to find
their way out again. Often fifty captives would be found in the
morning.
Boys learned "to prate" for pigeons, that is, to imitate their
call. This was useful in luring them within gun-shot. A successful
method of pigeon-shooting was learned from the Indians. A covert
was made of green branches with an opening in the back by which the
hunter could enter. In front of this covert, at firing distance, a
long pole was raised up on two crotched sticks eight or ten feet
from the ground, set so that a shot from the booth would rake the
entire length of the pole; hence the crotch nearest the booth was a
trifle lower than the other, at the same angle that the gun barrel
would take. To lure pigeons from a flock to settle on this pole
live pigeons were used as decoys. They were temporarily blinded in
a cruel manner. A hole was pierced in the lower eyelid, a thread
inserted, and the eyelid drawn up and tied over the eye. A soft kid
boot or loop was put over one leg and a fine cord tied to it. The
pigeon called the long flyer had a long cord, and by his fluttering
attracted pigeons from a flock. The short flyer with shorter cord
lured pigeons flying low. The hoverer was tied close to the end of a
small pole set on an upright post. This pole was worked by a string,
and by moving the pigeon up and down it appeared to be hovering as
if to alight. The hunter, loudly prating, sat hidden behind his
three blind, fluttering, terrified decoys. Then came a beautiful
flash and gleam of color and life and graceful motion, as with a
swish of reversed wings a row of gentle creatures lighted on the
fatal pole. In a second came the report of the gun, and the ground
was covered with the fluttering, maimed, and dead bodies. Fifty-two
at one shot, a Lexington man named William Locke killed. Other
methods of pigeon-killing were by snaring them in "twitch-ups"; also
in a pigeon-bed, baited, over which a net was thrown on the feeding
birds.
By the seashore whole communities turned to the teeming ocean for
the means of life. Every fishing vessel that left the towns of Cape
Ann and Cape Cod carried, with its crew of grown men, a boy of
ten or twelve to learn "the art and mystery" of fishing. He had a
name--a "cut-tail." He cut a wedge-shaped bit from the tail of every
fish he caught, and in the sorting-out and counting-up at the close
of the trip his share of the profits was thus plainly indicated.
Long before these fishing industries were thoroughly organized the
early chroniclers told of the share of boys in fishing. Even John
Smith stirred up English stay-at-homes, saying:--
"Young boyes, girles, salvages or any others, bee they never
such idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame,
or either greate paine: hee is very idle that is past twelve
years of age and cannot doe so much; and shee is very old that
cannot spin a thread to catch them."
It was natural that boys born in seashore towns should turn to the
sea. They found in the incoming ships their sole connecting link
with the outside world. Romance, sentiment, mystery, deviltry,
haloed the sailor. He was ever welcome to the public, and ever a
source of interest whether in tarry working garb, or gay shore togs
of flapping trousers, crimson sash, eelskin and cutlasses, or
perhaps garbed like Captain Creedon, who appeared in Boston in the
year 1662 dressed, so says the letter of a Boston minister, "in a
strange habitt with a 4 Cornered Capp instead of a hatt and his
Breeches hung with Ribbons from the Wast downward a great depth one
over the other like the Shingles of a house." Naturally enough "the
boys made an outcry and wondered."
Can it be wondered that two centuries of New England boys, stirred
in their quiet round of life by similar gay comets and tales of
adventure, have had a passionate ichor in their veins of longing
for "the magic and the mystery of the sea," that they have eagerly
gone before the mast, and rounded the Horn, and come home master
seamen when in their teens. I know a New England family of dignity
and wealth in which six successive generations of sons have gone to
sea in their boyhood, some of later years running away from home to
do so. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1787,--so tells a newspaper
of that date,--were living a man and wife who had been married about
twenty years, and had eighteen sons, of whom ten were then at sea.