Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the
dried herbs and press them into quarter and half-pound cakes ready for
Sister Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering
and labeling them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over,
Brother Ansel would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his
driving trip through the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but
Brother Issachar, who once took his place and sold almost nothing,
brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became a shining
light in the community. ("Thus," said Elder Gray, "does God teach us the
diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.")
If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent in faith, Susanna thought
that their "works" would indeed bear the strictest examination. The
Brothers made brooms, floor and dish mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and
indeed almost every trade was represented in the various New England
Communities. Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs,
policemen, constables, or soldiers, just as there were no courts or
saloons or jails. Where there was perfect equality of possession and no
private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see the cheery labor, often
continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the earnest desire
to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were hammering,
nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were
carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen,
straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not
forgetting their famous Shaker apple sauce.
Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the
early rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and
hardier than she had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled
with delicacies, yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently varied.
At first there had been the winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips,
beets, and parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker dinner of salt
codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk gravy. Each Sister served her turn
as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with flour, and the
whole-wheat bread, cookies, ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels
of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate Shaker
from a too riotous devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for
every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory, and attractive.
Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as they
worked together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the
cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and pan and spoon might have
served as a mirror! Martha had joined the Society in her mother's arms,
being given up to the Lord and placed in "the children's order" before
she was one year old.
"If you should unite with us, Susanna," she said one night after the
early supper, when they were peeling apples together, "you'd be thankful
you begun early with your little Sue, for she's got a natural attraction
to the world, and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, obedient
little soul; but when she's among the other young ones, there's a
flyaway look about her that makes her seem more like a fairy than a
child."
"She's having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she'll do
better in time," sighed her mother. "She came to me of her own accord
yesterday and asked: 'Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?'"
"I never put that idea into her head," Martha interrupted. "She's a
visitor and can wear her hair as she's been brought up to wear it."
"I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I
get up so early, Mardie,' she said,--'and it takes so long to unsnarl
and untangle me, and I get so hot when I'm helping in the hayfield,--and
then I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so
it seems like wasting both our times!' Her hair would be all the
stronger for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her age; but I
couldn't put the shears to it when the time came, Martha. I had to take
her to Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little looking-glass as
still as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when the last one fell
into Abby's apron, she suddenly put her hands over her face and cried:
'Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after
this!'--She seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, slipping
away from her, all in an instant. I didn't let her know that I cried
over the box of curls last night!"
"You did wrong," rebuked Martha. "You shouldn't make an idol of your
child or your child's beauty."
"You don't think God might put beauty into the world just to give His
children joy, Martha?"
Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made,
from those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to
make any sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by
too many opposing theories of God's intentions.
"You know I never argue when I've got anything baking," she said; and
taking the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the
oven door and delicately plunged it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the
straw as she withdrew it, she said: "You must talk doctrine with Eldress
Abby, Susanna, not with me; but I guess doctrine won't help you so much
as thinking out your life for yourself."
"No one can sing my psalm for me,
Reward must come from labor,
I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
God's mercy and His favor!"
Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many
hymns and tunes--some of them under circumstances that she believed
might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full
voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as
she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to
the great barn.
The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life,
although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.
Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful
earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and
seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated
the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell,
to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the
first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls
on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to
reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in
height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy
slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several
burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain
room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling;
and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and
Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in
the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as
Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat
with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of
corn-cobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting
threads from her mother's work.
"My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie," she said.
"I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we
ought to have asked him before we shingled me?--He does _despise_
un-pretty things so!"
"I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think
best.'"
"He always says that when he doesn't care what you do," observed Sue,
with one of her startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha has a
printed card on the wall in the children's dining-room, and I've got to
learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the
others:--
"What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
"We often find left on the same China dish,
Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
Another's replenished with butter and cheese,
With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these."
"You say it very nicely," commended Susanna.
"There's more:--
"Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
We freely will forfeit whatever we've said,
And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread."
"There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker," sighed Sue,
as she finished her rhyme.
"There's a great deal to learn everywhere," her mother answered. "What
verse did Eldress Abby give you to-day?"
"For little tripping maids may follow God
Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,"
quoted the child. "Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?" she continued.
"Yes, dear."
"If I trip too much, mightn't I fall?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Is tripping the same as skipping?"
"About the same."
"Is it polite to tripanskip when you're following God?"
"It couldn't be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means
just a young one."
"What is a maid?"
"A little girl."
"When a maid grows up, what is she?"
"Why--she's a maiden, I suppose."
"When a maiden grows up, what is _she_?"
"Just a woman, Sue."
"What is saintly feet?"
"Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have
always tried to do right."
"Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?"
"He's a good, kind, hard-working man."
"Is good-kind-hard-working same as saintly?"
"Well, it's not so very different, perhaps.--Now, Sue, I've asked you
before, don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every
instant; it isn't good for you, and it certainly isn't good for me!"
"All right; but 'less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don't see how I'll ever
learn the things I 'specially want to know?" sighed Sue the insatiable.
"Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last
evening?"
"Oh, do, Mardie!" cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and
looking up into her mother's face expectantly.
"Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some
one wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found a
Settlement in the western part of New York State. He and some other
Elders and Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at the house of a
certain Joseph Pelham to spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday
morning, very tired, and wondering where to stay and begin his
preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to pray for guidance. When
he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-hearted, a young
quail came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit
afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing near by show
any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder
smoothed the young bird's feathers a little while and then let it go,
but he thought an angel seemed to say to him, 'The quail is a sign; you
will know before night what it means, and before to-morrow people will
be coming to you to learn the way to God.'
"Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph
Pelham's house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the
flock of Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see
more in signs than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve or
thirteen knocked at the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to
become a Shaker, and that her father and mother were willing.
"'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, and indeed she was the
first who flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.
"On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took the
little quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals
through which they traveled were clogged with ice. One night, having
been ferried across the Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked
for miles before they could find shelter. Finally, when they were within
three miles of their home, Elder Calvin shortened the way by going
across the open fields through the snow, up and down the hills and
through the gullies and over fences, till they reached the house at
midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged
beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail."
Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining,
her hands clasped.
"Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl, Mardie! What became of
her?"
"Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of
the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know
what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you
could walk for miles through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?"
"I don' know's I could," sighed Sue; "but," she added hopefully,
"perhaps I could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much as
ever I liked." Then, after a lengthy pause, in which her mind worked
feverishly, she said, "Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I
won't do it any more to-night. If the old quail birds in the woods where
Elder Calvin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker birds, there
wouldn't have been any little quail birds, would there, because Shakers
don't have children, and then perhaps there wouldn't have been any
little Polly Reed."
Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work.
"I'll go up and help you undress now," she said; "it's seven o'clock,
and I must go to the family meeting."
VI
SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING
[Illustration]
It was the Sabbath day and the Believers were gathered in the
meeting-house, Brethren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate
benches, with the children by themselves in their own place. As the men
entered the room they removed their hats and coats and hung them upon
wooden pegs that lined the sides of the room, while the women took off
their bonnets; then, after standing for a moment of perfect silence,
they seated themselves.
In Susanna's time the Sunday costume for the men included trousers of
deep blue cloth with a white line and a vest of darker blue, exposing a
full-bosomed shirt that had a wide turned-down collar fastened with
three buttons. The Sisters were in pure white dresses, with neck and
shoulders covered with snowy kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their
white net caps, and a large white pocket handkerchief hung over the left
arm. Their feet were shod with curious pointed-toed cloth shoes of
ultramarine blue--a fashion long since gone by.
Susanna had now become accustomed to the curious solemn march or dance
in which of course none but the Believers ever joined, and found in her
present exalted mood the songs and the exhortations strangely
interesting and not unprofitable.
Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Albion Sisters, confessed that
she missed the old times when visions were common, when the Spirit
manifested itself in extraordinary ways, and the gift of tongues
descended. Sometimes, in the Western Settlement where she was gathered
in, the whole North Family would march into the highway in the fresh
morning hours, and while singing some sacred hymn, would pass on to the
Centre Family, and together in solemn yet glad procession they would
mount the hillside to "Jehovah's Chosen Square," there to sing and dance
before the Lord.
"I wish we could do something like that now!" sighed Hetty Arnold, a
pretty young creature, who had moments of longing for the pomps and
vanities. "If we have to give up all worldly pleasures, I think we might
have more religious ones!"
"We were a younger church in those old times of which Sister Tabitha
speaks," said Eldress Abby. "You must remember, Hetty, that we were
children in faith, and needed signs and manifestations, pictures and
object-lessons. We've been trained to think and reason now, and we've
put away some of our picture-books. There have been revelations to tell
us we needed movements and exercises to quicken our spiritual powers,
and to give energy and unity to our worship, and there have been
revelations telling us to give them up; revelations bidding us to sing
more, revelations telling us to use wordless songs. Then anthems were
given us, and so it has gone on, for we have been led of the Spirit."
"I'd like more picture-books," pouted Hetty, under her breath.
To-day the service began with a solemn song, followed by speaking and
prayer from a visiting elder. Then, after a long and profound silence,
the company rose and joined in a rhythmic dance which signified the
onward travel of the soul to full redemption; the opening and closing of
the hands meaning the scattering and gathering of blessing. There was no
accompaniment, and both the music and the words were the artless
expression of fervent devotion.
[Illustration: SUSANNA SAT IN HER CORNER BESIDE THE AGED TABITHA]
Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha, who would never dance
again before the Lord, though her quavering voice joined in the
chorus. The spring floor rose and fell under the quick rhythmic tread of
the worshipers, and with each revolution about the room the song gained
in power and fervor.
I am nev-er wea-ry bring-ing my
life un-to God, I am nev-er wea-ry
sing-ing His way is good. With the voice of an
an-gel with pow-er from a-bove, I would
pub-lish the bless-ing of soul-sav-ing love.
The steps grew slower and more sedate, the voices died away, the arms
sank slowly by the sides, and the hands ceased their movement.
Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how or why. Her cheeks were
flushed, her head bent.
"Dear friends," she said, "I have now been among you for nearly three
months, sharing your life, your work, and your worship. You may well
wish to know whether I have made up my mind to join this Community, and
I can only say that although I have prayed for light, I cannot yet see
my way clearly. I am happy here with you, and although I have been a
church member for years, I have never before longed so ardently to
present my body and soul as a sacrifice unto the Lord. I have tried not
to be a burden to you. The small weekly sum that I put into the treasury
I will not speak of, lest I seem to think that the 'gift of God may be
purchased with money,' as the Scriptures say; but I have endeavored to
be loyal to your rules and customs, your aims and ideals, and to the
confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, my dear Sisters and Brothers,
pray for me that I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is not the
flesh-pots that will call me back to the world; if I go, it will be
because the duties I have left behind take such shape that they draw me
out of this shelter in spite of myself. I thank you for the help you
have given me these last weeks; God knows my gratitude can never be
spoken in words."
Elder Gray's voice broke the silence that followed Susanna's speech. "I
only echo the sentiments of the Family when I say that our Sister
Susanna shall have such time as she requires before deciding to unite
with this body of Believers. No pressure shall be brought to bear upon
her, and she will be, as she ever has been, a welcome guest under our
roof. She has been an inspiration to the children, a comfort and aid to
the Sisters, an intelligent comrade to the Brethren, and a sincere and
earnest student of the truth. May the Spirit draw her into the Virgin
Church of the New Creation!"
"Yee and amen!" exclaimed Eldress Abby, devoutly: "For thus saith the
Lord of hosts: I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and
the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all
nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the
Lord of hosts."
"O Virgin Church, how great thy light,
What cloud can dim thy way?"
sang Martha from her place at the end of a bench; and all the voices
took up the hymn softly as the company sat with bowed heads.
Then Brother Issachar rose from his corner, saying: "Jesus called upon
his disciples to give up everything: houses, lands, relationships, and
even the selfishness of their own lives. They could not call their lives
their own. '_Lo! we have left all and followed thee_,' said Peter;
'fathers, mothers, wives, children, houses, lands, and even our own
lives also.' It is a great price to pay, but we buy Heaven with it!"
"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scattergood, devoutly. "To him that
overcometh shall the great prize be given."
"God help the weaker brethren!" murmured young Brother Nathan, in so low
a voice that few could hear him.
Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby, and Martha burst into one of
the most triumphant of the Shaker songs, one that was never sung save
when the meeting was "full of the Spirit":--
"I draw no blank nor miss the prize,
I see the work, the sacrifice,
And I'll be loyal, I'll be wise,
A faithful overcomer!"
The company rose and began again to march in a circle around the centre
of the room, the Brethren two abreast leading the column, the Sisters
following after. There was a waving movement of the hands by drawing
inward as if gathering in spiritual good and storing it up for future
need. In the marching and countermarching the worshipers frequently
changed their positions, ultimately forming into four circles,
symbolical of the four dispensations as expounded in Shakerism, the
first from Adam to Abraham; the second from Abraham to Jesus; the third
from Jesus to Mother Ann Lee; and the fourth the millennial era.
The marching grew livelier; the bodies of the singers swayed lightly
with emotion, the faces glowed with feeling.
Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering strength and fullness as the
Believers entered more and more into the spirit of their worship.
Whenever the refrain came in with its militant fervor, crude, but
sincere and effective, the singers seemed faith-intoxicated; and Sister
Martha in particular might have been treading the heavenly streets
instead of the meeting-house floor, so complete was her absorption. The
voices at length grew softer, and the movement slower, and after a few
moments' reverent silence the company filed out of the room solemnly and
without speech.
I am as sure that heav'n is mine As
though my vi-sion could de-fine Or
pen-cil draw the boun-da-ry line Where
love and truth shall con-quer.
"The Lord ain't shaken Susanna hard enough yet," thought Brother Ansel
shrewdly from his place in the rear. "She ain't altogether gathered in,
not by no manner o' means, because of that unregenerate son of Adam
she's left behind; but there's the makin's of a pow'ful good Shaker in
Susanna, if she finally takes holt!"
"What manner of life is my husband living, now that I have deserted him?
Who is being a mother to Jack?" These were the thoughts that troubled
Susanna Hathaway's soul as she crossed the grass to her own building.
VII
"THE LOWER PLANE"
[Illustration]
Brother Nathan Bennett was twenty years old and Sister Hetty Arnold was
eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers by their respective
parents ten years before, and, growing up in the faith, they formally
joined the Community when they reached the age of discretion. Thus they
had known each other from early childhood, never in the familiar way
common to the children of the world, but with the cool, cheerful,
casual, wholly impersonal attitude of Shaker friendship, a relation
seemingly outside of and superior to sex, a relation more like that of
two astral bodies than the more intimate one of a budding Adam and Eve.