THE GRIFFINS.
THOSE of our readers who are familiar with the Elm Island stories have
already known a good deal of the Griffin family in the persons of Joe
and Henry, with a slight introduction to Walter and Will.
Suppose, now, for the better understanding of Walter’s declaration,
“there’s a hard streak in all of us Griffins,” we accompany Parson
Goodhue (who is a great friend of the Griffins, and for whom Walter is
named) in one of his parochial visits to the homestead.
The good man, like most of the ministers of that day, had a farm of
eighty acres, kept a horse, sheep, three cows, and a yoke of oxen,
and did considerable work himself, always feeding his own cattle. He
had, in addition, a wood lot of fifty acres. The parishioners were in
the habit of getting together in the fall, cutting his year’s stock
of wood, and piling it up in the woods; when snow came they put their
teams together and hauled it to the door, when the boys and young men
assembled and cut it for the fire; on such occasions they came about
noon, and had supper and a grand time at the parsonage in the evening,
the girls coming about two o’clock, bringing with them abundant
supplies and preparing the repast.
The Griffin family consisted of eight persons—the parents and six
children, all boys, Joseph, Henry, Walter, William, Edmund, and
Winthrop. One hot forenoon, about eleven o’clock, and just after
haying, Parson Goodhue, in all the glory of the snow-white wig, silk
stockings, and polished silver shoe-buckles (which Lion Ben of Elm
Island had presented to him after his adventure with the wild gander),
was wending his way by a road that skirted the bank of the river,
to Edmund Griffin’s. He was mounted on a very finely proportioned,
snug built, calico-colored mare, a pacer. A large blue saddle-cloth
protected his garments from the hairs (as he was quite fastidious about
his dress), and he was provided with a capacious pair of saddle-bags,
long experience having convinced the good man that it was a most proper
precaution, when visiting the Griffins, to be well provided with
saddle-bags.
It is said, we know not with how much truth, that dappled horses are
of superior intelligence, and can more easily be taught all kinds
of tricks; and for this reason they are often found in the circus.
However this may be, one thing is sure—that Parson Goodhue’s mare was
intelligent enough, and vexed his soul to that extent he sometimes
feared she received diabolical aid. But Dapple, as he called her, was
such a capital roadster, carried him so easily, and was sound in wind
and limb, that the parson, who dearly loved a good animal, bore it
patiently.
In those days the doors of all out-buildings were universally fastened
with wooden latches, or buttons, as also a great proportion of the
doors of the dwellings.
There was not a door or gate upon the premises of her master, or
any of his neighbors, but Dapple could and would open, a fence she
could not get over, or a pair of bars she could not take down (unless
they were pinned), provided a sufficient motive presented itself.
Notwithstanding she had been reared from a colt in the family of a
clergyman, under the very droppings of the sanctuary, received the
best of instruction, and the best examples had been proposed for her
imitation, she would appropriate without the least scruple; in short,
though we grieve to say it, she was a downright, incorrigible, sneaking
thief; she was no respecter of persons or character, but would steal
from saint or sinner, rich or poor; she would even take from the widow
Hadlock and Aunt Molly Bradish (that good old soul, when she was
alive), walk right into poor Mrs. Yelf’s cornfield right before her
eyes, because she knew that Robert was at sea, and the old lady could
not get at her for rheumatism.
Parson Goodhue lived so near to the meeting-house that he and his
family always walked to meeting, thus Sabbath was a leisure day to
her; and even on that day, when all other horses and good people were
at meeting, and her good master was inculcating morality, she would
(if she could get loose) take the opportunity to commit trespass; in
short, she was the grief of her master and the pest of the parish, was
covered with scars she had received for her misdeeds, and would have
been killed had she belonged to any other person than Parson Goodhue,
whom everybody loved. She would back up against a door and turn the
buttons, would lift the latch or pull the string of one with her teeth,
and break or get off any yoke or clogs that were put on her. The
most singular part of the whole matter was, that she would sometimes
go for a month peaceably, in the pasture, and the good parson would
feel quite encouraged, hoping it was a radical reformation; when just
as he began to solace himself with this idea, and accord her larger
liberty, she would abuse it to act worse than ever. At one time Dapple
had gone quietly in the pasture for nearly six weeks, and the hopes
of her master were raised to the highest pitch. Adjoining the pasture
was a most excellent piece of wheat, just full in the milk, belonging
to Jotham Lancaster. Dapple had not been permitted for a long time to
go out of a Sabbath day; but her conduct had been so unexceptionable,
that her master determined to trust her, especially as there was a
high stone wall in good repair around the pasture. So, before going
to meeting, he turned her out; when he returned at noon, he found her
quietly feeding, and told Captain Rhines he verily believed Dapple had
got over her tricks.
“Hang her,” was his reply, “I wouldn’t trust her.”
When the parson came home at night, there she was, in that beautiful
field of wheat. If she had merely eaten what she wanted in one place,
it might have been borne; but she had gone all over it, trampling down
here and there, then lain down, and rolled in half a dozen places;
and when found, was quietly feeding out in the grass. She had, with
her teeth, flung off the top pole, pushed over the top rocks with her
breast, and then jumped over.
The next week John Rhines made a pair of iron fetters, to fasten one of
her hind legs to one of her fore ones, permitting her to scuffle along
and feed, but not to jump, and made a present of them to Mr. Goodhue,
saying, “She can’t jump with these, I know.”
Dapple now went quietly for some time. Captain Rhines said to her
master, “I guess you’ve got her this time.”
Vain delusion! she was probably meditating, in the “recesses of a mind
capacious of such things,” upon the means and methods of evading this
new device; that her meditations bore fruit was soon manifest. Parson
Goodhue, returning from meeting in the afternoon, found her in the
midst of his own corn. There was not a length of fence down; the bars
were all up, and pinned, so that she could not remove them with her
teeth. There was not a stone displaced in the wall, and the fetters
were fast to her feet. As her master took down the bars to lead her
out, he gazed upon her almost with fear; he was not superior to the
superstitions of his day, and was almost apprehensive of some satanic
agency.
The story got abroad; John and Fred determined to watch her. They shut
her up in the barn with nothing to eat, till she was very hungry, then
turned her into the pasture just at night, and concealing themselves,
kept watch. Dapple went to feeding, stopping every once in a while to
look around and listen; at length, seeing or hearing no one, she made
directly for the bars, and attempted to take them down with her teeth;
but they were pinned at each end. She then tried to push them over by
backing up against them; but they were braced by stakes nailed to the
posts, and set in the ground; she then put her head between the lower
bar and the one next to it above, sprung the two sufficiently to insert
her shoulders, then her whole body, and shoved herself through, coming
down whack on her side, while the bars sprung together as before; then
getting up and shaking herself, with a look of profound satisfaction,
was making for the corn, when she was accosted in not very flattering
terms by her observers. John said he never saw anybody look more silly,
or more worked, than she did.
It was a matter of great surprise to the neighbors, and the town talk,
that the mare never paid her respects to Joe Griffin, as in the fields
of all others (except Captain Rhines’s, where Tige kept watch and ward)
she ran riot; while Joe’s (whose land was new, just taken from the
forest, and raised splendid crops of corn and grain) were unmolested
by the common enemy; they were passed by to commit depredations on the
fields of Charlie Bell, that adjoined.
We will let our readers into the mystery. The second year after Joe
worked his place, he got up very early one morning, just as the day
broke, to go out gunning; there was Dapple in the corn for the first
time. As Joe had recently moved into the neighborhood, she probably,
as an old resident, felt it would be polite to call. Joe well knew
the character of his visitor, and what he might expect in future. He,
however, manifested not the least sign of anger; didn’t even throw a
stone, or hit her with a stake; but turned her out, put up the fence,
and went off gunning; not even mentioning the matter to his wife, who
had not yet risen.
Dapple, who had made up her mind to receive a pounding, thought Mr.
Griffin was one of the best of men, and resolved to cultivate his
acquaintance.
Three nights after, she paid him another visit, and going along the
fence, found the old gap but very indifferently mended; taking off
some small poles with her teeth, she cleared the great bottom log at
a jump; but the instant she touched the ground on the other side, it
gave way beneath her feet, and she found herself in a pit. Bitter were
her reflections; she accused herself of imbecility for not interpreting
aright such forbearance in a Griffin; and awaited, with fear and
trembling, the approach of morning. Just as the day broke, she heard
footsteps, and Joe made his appearance. A smile of satisfaction passed
over his face, as he gave one look, and disappeared, returning soon
with a shovel in one hand, and a bundle of long, tough beech withes
in the other. Then, standing on the edge of the pit, he began most
unmercifully to apply them, with all the strength and endurance of an
arm that had scarcely its rival in the community. On head, rump, and
ribs the horrible tempest fell. In vain poor Dapple kicked, and reared,
and ran round the pit, which was not large enough for her to get out of
reach of the blows. For an hour, without intermission, this terrible
scourging continued, when, reeking with perspiration, Joe threw down
the rod, and took up the shovel.
Dapple expected nothing less than to be buried alive, and with death
staring her in the face, remembered with compunction the manner in
which she had abused the kindness of the good old man, and despised all
his wise counsels. But her quick discernment soon discovered that Joe
was about to dig the earth at one end to an inclined plane to let her
out, and instantly all her remorse and resolutions for a better life
were at an end.
When he had graded the pit, as he thought, sufficiently, he
administered a few blows with the flat of the shovel, and an energy
that sent Dapple flying from the pit like a hen from a hawk, observing,
as he went leisurely to work to fill up the hole, “Much obliged to you,
neighbor, for this visit; call again the first opportunity.”
When Joe had filled up the pit, he flung some brush over, took the
pail, and went to milking, never mentioning the matter, even to his
wife, till years afterwards.
The mare never found opportunity to comply with Joe’s kind invitation.
He might have left his crops out of doors for all her.
Dapple mended her pace as she approached the rising ground on which the
Griffin homestead was located, for she had often proved the hospitality
of its stable and pastures. The buildings were situated on the summit
of a hill, which rose quite abruptly from the river. The blazing sun
poured down upon a house of enormous size, the lower rooms finished,
the rest a shell. Not a tree or a bush, save one old stub, stood near
it. There was not the least attempt at a garden, but, far out in the
field, in the midst of the corn, cabbage, beets, carrots, and onions
were growing, and peas now ripe in the pod.
On one side of the front door was a goose-pen; on the other a molasses
hogshead, into which an upright board conducted the rain water from the
eaves. The only approach to anything in the shape of plants was some
house leek (then considered a sovereign remedy for _corns_), in an old
skillet.
At a short distance from the end door was a small enclosure, made by
driving stakes into the ground, in which were roots of wormwood, tansy,
comfrey, lovage, and sweet agrimony, while an enormous hop-vine covered
a great part of the front of the house. All about the door-yard were
shingle bolts, bunches of shingles, old yokes, logs, sticks of hewn
timber, drags, sleds, with the stakes in, broken and whole, and a
brush-harrow was tipped up against the house, right under one of the
front windows, while between them the skin of a bear, recently killed,
was stretched and nailed to the clapboards.
Beside the end door stood a leech, that had been set up in the spring,
to make soap, and suffered to stand through the summer, as Mrs.
Griffin liked to have weak lye to scour with. Within a gun-shot of
the western end of the house stood the stub of a massive pine, which
had been broken off about twenty-five feet from the ground, and was
hollow, having the opening on the north-west side. In the cavity were
augers, planes, saws, chisels, shovels, axes, and canting dogs, thrown
together in most admirable confusion. The tools were of English make,
and evidently of excellent temper, but covered with rust. From the dead
limbs on the outside hung rusty scythes and a grain cradle. This was
the Griffin tool-chest. An eighth of a mile from the house, down under
the hill, was the well.
In the rough climate of New England, the inhabitants were solicitous
to place their buildings in a lee, either under the side of a hill,
the protection of a wood, or to dispose the buildings themselves in
such a manner as to give them a sheltered and sunny door and barn-yard.
But here the barn was a great distance from the house, the buildings
disposed without the least reference to shelter, as though the
occupants were insensible to wind or weather. Yet in other respects
everything betokened plenty and thrift; the walls were well built of
rocks of great size, and handsomely laid up; the barns were large, and
through the open doors the hay could be seen, brought so far over the
floors that the mows nearly touched each other, leaving barely room to
swing a flail.
An immense log crib, the top covered with boards and shingles, where
the long yellow ears of corn showed through the chinks, attested that
the thrifty owner kept a year’s stock of bread on hand. On a scaffold
of poles, laid over the high beams, bundles of last year’s flax were
visible, while the number of milking-stools, hanging on the barn-yard
fence, gave token of a large dairy.
To complete the picture, four great hogs were rooting in the chips
after thistle roots, and a white mare, with a sucking colt and two
half-grown ones, was standing in the shade, on the north side of the
house. As Parson Goodhue gained the summit of the hill, and was not
far from the old stub, he saw approaching some one whose form was
nearly concealed by a huge back-load of spruce poles, from twenty to
twenty-five feet in length, and bearing in one hand an axe. As he
flung the poles from his shoulder, and stood erect, he caught sight of
the minister.
“Halloo, parson! Good morning. Glad to see you. _Hot_—ain’t it?”
“Good morning, Edmund,” replied his visitor, apparently not the least
disconcerted by the rudeness of the reception, and extending his hand,
which the other enclosed in his great palm, and shook with a heartiness
that caused the good man to reel in his saddle.
“How are you, Elizabeth, and all the children?”
“Well, so’s to be crawling. Lizzy always keeps herself worked down.
‘Tain’t so much the work,—though we milk seven cows, for Lizzy’s a
master hand to turn off work, and real rugged,—but she’s forever
scrubbing and scouring. I tell her ‘tain’t a bit of use, but she will
do it. Then father’s a good deal of care.”
“How is the old gentleman?”
“He’s real strong at the stomach; eats and sleeps as well as ever he
did; but he sometimes has the rheumatics.”