TAVERN FARE AND TAVERN WAYS
In the year 1704 a Boston widow named Sarah Knights journeyed "by post,"
that is, went on horseback, in the company of the government postman, from
Boston to New York, and returned a few months later. She kept a journal of
her trip, and as she was a shrewd woman with a sharp eye and sharper
tongue, her record is of interest. She stopped at the various hostelries
on the route, some of which were well-established taverns, others
miserable makeshifts; and she gives us some glimpses of rather rude fare.
On the first night of her journey she rode late to "overtake the post,"
and this is the account of her reception at her first lodging-place:--
"My guide dismounted and very complasently shewed the door signing to
me to Go in, which I Gladly did. But had not gone many steps into the
room ere I was interrogated by a young Lady with these or words to
this purpose, viz., Law for mee--what in the world brings you here
this time-a-night? I never see a Woman on the Rode so Late in all my
Varsall Life! Who are you? Where are you goeing? Im scar'd out of my
witts.... She then turned agen to mee and fell anew into her silly
questions without asking mee to sit down. I told her she treated me
very Rudely and I did not think it my duty to answer her unmannerly
questions. But to get ridd of them I told her I come there to have the
Posts company with me to morrow on my journey."
She thus describes one stopping-place:--
"I pray'd her to show me where I must lodge. Shee conducted mee to a
parlour in a little back Lento, which was almost filled with the
bedstead, which was so high that I was forced to climb on a chair to
gitt up to ye wretched bed that lay on it, on which having Strecht my
tired Limbs and lay'd my Head on a Sad-coloured pillow, I began to
think on the transactions of ye past day."
At another place she complained that the dinner had been boiled in the
dye-kettle, that the black slaves ate at the table with their master, "and
into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand...." Again
she says:--
"We would have eat a morsell, but the Pumpkin and Indian-mixt Bread
had such an aspect, and the Bare-legg'd Punch so awkerd or rather
awfull a sound that we left both."
At Rye, New York, she lodged at an ordinary kept by a Frenchman. She thus
writes:--
"Being very hungry I desired a Fricassee which the landlord
undertaking managed so contrary to my notion of Cookery that I
hastened to Bed superless. Being shew'd the way up a pair of Stairs
which had such a narrow passage that I had almost stopt by the Bulk of
my Body; But arriving at my Apartment found it to be a little Lento
Chamber furnisht among other Rubbish with a High Bedd and a Low one, a
Long Table, a Bench and a Bottomless Chair. Little Miss went to
scratch up my Kennell whch Russelled as if shee'd bin in the Barn
among the Husks and supose such was the contents of the
Tickin--nevertheless being exceedingly weary down I laid my poor
Carkes never more tired and found my Covering as scanty as my bed was
hard. Anon I heard another Russelling noise in the room--called to
know the matter--Little Miss said she was making a bed for the men;
who when they were in Bed complain'd their Leggs lay out of it by
reason of its shortness--my poor bones complained bitterly not being
used to such Lodgings, and so did the man who was with us; and poor I
made but one Grone which was from the time I went to bed to the time I
riss which was about three in the morning Setting up by the fire till
light."
Manners were rude enough at many country taverns until well into the
century. There could be no putting on of airs, no exclusiveness. All
travellers sat at the same table. Many of the rooms were double-bedded,
and four who were strangers to each other often slept in each other's
company.
An English officer wrote of this custom in America:--
"The general custom of having two or three beds in a room to be sure
is very disagreeable; it arises from the great increase of travelling
within the last few years, and the smallness of their houses, which
were not built for houses of entertainment."
Mr. Twining said that after you were asleep the landlord entered, candle
in hand, and escorted a stranger to your side, and he calmly shared the
bed till morning. Thurlow Weed said that any one who objected to a
stranger as a bedfellow was regarded as obnoxious and as unreasonably
fastidious. Still Captain Basil Hall declared that even at remote taverns
his family had exclusive apartments; while in crowded inns it was never
even suggested to him that other travellers should share his quarters.
[Illustration: Ellery Tavern.]
Many old tavern account-books and bills exist to show us the price of
tavern fare at various dates.
Mr. Field gives a bill of board at the Bowen Inn at Barrington, Rhode
Island. John Tripp and his wife put up at the inn on the 11th of May,
1776.
_s._ _d._
"To 1 Dinner 9
To Bread and Cheese 7
To breakfast & dinner 1 3
To 1 Bowl Toddy 9
To Lodging you and wife 6
To 1-1/2 Bowl Toddy 1 1-1/2
To 1/2 Mug Cyder 1-1/2
To lodge self and wife 6
To 1 Gill Brandy 5-1/2
To breakfast 9-1/2
Mug Cyder 1-1/2
To 1/2 bowl Toddy 4-1/2
Dinner 8
To 15 Lb Tobacco at 6_d._ 7 6
To 1/4 Bowl Toddy 4-1/2
To 1/2 Mug Cyder 1-1/2
To Supper 6"
I suppose the quarter bowls of toddy were for Madam Tripp.
The house known for many years as the Ellery Tavern is still standing in
Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is a very good example of the overhanging
second story, as is shown in the front view of it given on page 79; and
also of the lean-to, or sloping-roofed ell, which is shown by the picture
on page 83 of the rear of the house. This house was built by Parson White
in 1707, and afterward kept as a tavern by James Stevens till 1740; then
it came into the hands of Landlord Ellery. As in scores of other taverns
in other towns, the selectmen of the town held their meetings within its
doors. There were five selectmen in 1744, and their annual salary for
transacting the town's business was five dollars apiece. The tavern
charges, however, for their entertainment amounted to L30, old tenor. It
is not surprising, therefore, to read in the town records of the following
year that the citizens voted the selectmen a salary of L5, old tenor,
apiece, and "to find themselves." Nevertheless, in 1749, there was another
bill from the Ellery Tavern of L78, old tenor, for the selectmen who had
been sworn in the year previously and thus welcomed, "Expense for
selectmen and Licker, L3. 18_s._" The Ellery Tavern has seen many another
meeting of good cheer since those days.
The selectmen of the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, met at the Blue
Anchor Tavern, which was established as an ordinary as early as 1652.
Their bill for 1769 runs thus:--
"The Selectmen of the Town of Cambridge to Ebenezer Bradish, Dr. 1769:
March, To dinners and drink L0. 17. 8
April, To flip and punch 2.
May, To wine and eating 6. 8
May, To dinners, drink and suppers 18.
May, To flip and cheese 1. 8
May, To wine and flip 4.
June, To punch 2. 8
July, To punch and eating 4.
August, To punch and cheese 3. 7
October, To punch and flip 4. 8
October, To dinners and drink 13. 8
Sundries 12.
--------
L4. 10. 7"
"Ordination Day" was almost as great a day for the tavern as for the
meeting-house. The visiting ministers who came to assist at the religious
service of ordination of a new minister were usually entertained at the
tavern. Often a specially good beer was brewed called "ordination beer,"
and in Connecticut an "ordination ball" was given at the tavern--this with
the sanction of the parsons. The bills for entertaining the visitors, for
the dinner and lodging at the local taverns, are in many cases preserved.
One of the most characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. It runs:--
L _s._ _d._
"To keeping Ministers 2. 4
2 Mugs tody 5. 10
5 Segars 3
1 Pint Wine 9
3 Lodgings 9
3 Bitters 9
3 Breakfasts 3. 6
15 boles Punch 1. 10
24 dinners 1. 16
11 bottles wine 3. 6
5 Mugs flip 5. 10
5 Boles Punch 6
3 Boles Tody 3. 6"
The bill is endorsed with unconscious humor, "This all paid for except the
Ministers Rum."
[Illustration: Lean-to of Ellery Tavern.]
The book already referred to, called _Notions of the Americans_, tells of
taverns during the triumphal tour of Lafayette in 1824. The author writes
thus of the stage-house, or tavern, on the regular stage line. He said he
stopped at fifty such, some not quite so good and some better than the one
he chooses to describe, namely, Bispham's at Trenton, New Jersey.
"We were received by the landlord with perfect civility, but without
the slightest shade of obsequiousness. The deportment of the innkeeper
was manly, courteous, and even kind; but there was that in his air
which sufficiently proved that both parties were expected to manifest
the same qualities. We were asked if we all formed one party, or
whether the gentlemen who alighted from stage number one wished to be
by themselves. We were shown into a neat well-furnished little
parlour, where our supper made its appearance in the course of twenty
minutes. The table contained many little delicacies, such as game,
oysters, and choice fish, and several things were named to us as at
hand if needed. The tea was excellent, the coffee as usual indifferent
enough. The papers of New York and Philadelphia were brought at our
request, and we sat with our two candles before a cheerful fire
reading them as long as we pleased. Our bed-chambers were spacious,
well-furnished, and as neat as possible; the beds as good as one
usually finds them out of France. Now for these accommodations, which
were just as good with one solitary exception (sanitary) as you would
meet in the better order of English provincial inns, and much better
in the quality and abundance of the food, we paid the sum of 4_s._
6_d._ each."
A copy is given opposite page 86 of a bill of the "O. Cromwell's Head
Tavern" of Boston, which was made from a plate engraved by Paul Revere.
This tavern was kept for over half a century by members of the Brackett
family. It was distinctly the tavern of the gentry, and many a
distinguished guest had "board, lodging, and eating" within its walls, as
well as the wine, punch, porter, and liquor named on the bill. It will be
noted that the ancient measure--a pottle--is here used. Twenty years
before the Revolutionary War, and just after the crushing defeat of the
British general, Braddock, in what was then the West, an intelligent young
Virginian named George Washington, said to be a good engineer and soldier,
lodged at the Cromwell's Head Tavern, while he conferred with Governor
Shirley, the great war Governor of the day, on military affairs and
projects. When this same Virginian soldier entered Boston at the head of
a victorious army, he quartered his troops in Governor Shirley's mansion
and grounds.
The sign-board of this tavern bore a portrait of the Lord Protector, and
it is said it was hung so low that all who passed under it had to make a
necessary reverence.
While British martial law prevailed in Boston, the grim head of Cromwell
became distasteful to Tories, who turned one side rather than walk under
the shadow of the sign-board, and at last Landlord Brackett had to take
down and hide the obnoxious symbol.
The English traveller Melish was loud in his praise of the taverns
throughout New York State as early as 1806. He noted at Little Falls, then
in the backwoods, and two hundred miles from New York, that on the
breakfast table were "table-cloth, tea tray, tea-pots, milk-pot, bowls,
cups, sugar-tongs, teaspoons, casters, plates, knives, forks, tea, sugar,
cream, bread, butter, steak, eggs, cheese, potatoes, beets, salt, vinegar,
pepper," and all for twenty-five cents. He said Johnstown had but sixty
houses, of which nine were taverns.
Another English traveller told of the fare in American hotels in 1807.
While in Albany at "Gregory's," which he said was equal to many of the
London hotels, he wrote:--
"It is the custom in all American taverns, from the highest to the
lowest, to have a sort of public table at which the inmates of the
house and travellers dine together at a certain hour. It is also
frequented by many single gentlemen belonging to the town. At
Gregory's upwards of thirty sat down to dinner, though there were not
more than a dozen who resided in the house. A stranger is thus soon
introduced to an acquaintance with the people, and if he is travelling
alone he will find at these tables some relief from the ennui of his
situation. At the better sort of American taverns very excellent
dinners are provided, consisting of almost everything in season. The
hour is from two to three o'clock, and there are three meals in the
day. They breakfast at eight o'clock upon rump steaks, fish, eggs, and
a variety of cakes with tea or coffee. The last meal is at seven in
the evening, and consists of as substantial fare as the breakfast,
with the addition of cold fowl, ham, &c. The price of boarding at
these houses is from a dollar and a half to two dollars per day.
Brandy, hollands, and other spirits are allowed at dinner, but every
other liquor is paid for extra. English breakfasts and teas, generally
speaking, are meagre repasts compared with those of America, and as
far as I observed the people live with respect to eating in a much
more luxurious manner than we do. Many private families live in the
same style as at these houses; and have as great variety. Formerly
pies, puddings, and cyder used to grace the breakfast table, but now
they are discarded from the genteeler houses, and are found only in
the small taverns and farm-houses in the country."
In spite of the vast number of inns in Philadelphia, another English
gentleman bore testimony in 1823 that he deemed the city ill-provided with
hostelries. This gentleman "put up" at the Mansion House, which was the
splendid Bingham Mansion on Third Street. He wrote:--
"The tavern-keepers will not receive you on any other terms except
boarded at so much a day or week; you cannot have your meals by
yourself, or at your own hours. This custom of boarding I disliked
very much. The terms are, however, very moderate, only ten dollars per
week. The table is always spread with the greatest profusion and
variety, even at breakfast, supper, and tea; all of which meals indeed
were it not for the absence of wine and soup, might be called so many
dinners."
[Illustration: Bill of Cromwell's Head Tavern.]
There lies before me a collection of twoscore old hotel bills of fare
about a half century old. They are of dates when stage-coaching had
reached its highest point of perfection, and the coaching tavern its
glory. There were railroads,--comparatively few lines, however,--but they
had not destroyed the constant use of coaches.
These hotels were the best of their kind in the country, such as the
United States Hotel of Philadelphia, Foley's National Hotel of Norfolk,
Virginia, Union Place Hotel and New York Hotel of New York, Union Hotel of
Richmond, Virginia, American House of Springfield, Massachusetts, Dorsey's
Exchange Hotel and Barnum's City Hotel of Baltimore, Maryland, the Troy
House, the Tremont House of Boston, Massachusetts, etc. At this time all
have become hotels and houses, not a tavern nor an inn is among them.
The menus are printed on long narrow slips of poor paper, not on
cardboard; often the names of many of the dishes are written in. They show
much excellence and variety in quality, and abundant quantity; they are, I
think, as good as hotels of similar size would offer to-day. There are
more boiled meats proportionately than would be served now, and fewer
desserts. Here is what the American House of Springfield had for its
guests on October 2, 1851: Mock-turtle soup; boiled blue-fish with oyster
sauce; boiled chickens with oyster sauce; boiled mutton with caper sauce;
boiled tongue, ham, corned beef and cabbage; boiled chickens with pork;
roast beef, lamb, chickens, veal, pork, and turkey; roast partridge;
fricasseed chicken, oyster patties, chicken pie, boiled rice, macaroni;
apple, squash, mince, custard, and peach pies; boiled custard; blanc
mange, tapioca pudding, peaches, nuts, and raisins. Vegetables were not
named; doubtless every autumnal vegetable was served.
At the Union Place Hotel in 1850 the vegetables were mashed potatoes,
Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, boiled rice, onions, tomatoes, squash,
cauliflower, turnips, and spinach. At the United States Hotel in
Philadelphia the variety was still greater, and there were twelve entrees.
The Southern hotels offered nine entrees, and egg-plant appears among the
vegetables. The wine lists are ample; those of 1840 might be of to-day,
that is, in regard to familiar names; but the prices were different.
Mumm's champagne was two dollars and a half a quart; Ruinard and Cliquot
two dollars; the best Sauterne a dollar a quart; Rudesheimer 1811, and
Hockheimer, two dollars; clarets were higher priced, and Burgundies.
Madeiras were many in number, and high priced; Constantia (twenty years in
glass) and Diploma (forty years in wood) were six dollars a bottle. At
Barnum's Hotel there were Madeiras at ten dollars a bottle, sherries at
five, hock at six; this hotel offered thirty choice Madeiras--and these
dinners were served at two o'clock. Corkage was a dollar.
[Illustration: Bill of Fare of City Hotel.]
Certain taverns were noted for certain fare, for choice modes of cooking
special delicacies. One was resorted to for boiled trout, another for
planked shad. Travellers rode miles out of their way to have at a certain
hostelry calves-head soup, a most elaborate and tedious dish if properly
prepared, and a costly one, with its profuse wine, but as appetizing and
rich as it is difficult of making. More humble taverns with simpler
materials but good cooks had wonderful johnny-cakes, delightful waffles,
or even specially good mush and milk. Certain localities afforded certain
delicacies; salmon in one river town, and choice oysters. One landlord
raised and killed his own mutton; another prided himself on ducks. Another
cured his own hams. An old Dutch tavern was noted for rolliches and
head-cheese.
During the eighteenth century turtle-feasts were eagerly attended--or
turtle-frolics as they were called. A travelling clergyman named Burnaby
wrote in 1759:--
"There are several taverns pleasantly situated upon East River, near
New York, where it is common to have these turtle-feasts. These happen
once or twice a week. Thirty or forty gentlemen and ladies meet and
dine together, drink tea in the afternoon, fish, and amuse themselves
till evening, and then return home in Italian chaises, a gentleman and
lady in each chaise. On the way there is a bridge, about three miles
distant from New York, which you always pass over as you return,
called the Kissing Bridge, where it is part of the etiquette to salute
the lady who has put herself under your protection."
Every sea-captain who sailed to the West Indies was expected to bring home
a turtle on the return voyage for a feast to his expectant friends. A
turtle was deemed an elegant gift; usually a keg of limes accompanied the
turtle, for lime-juice was deemed the best of all "sourings" for punch. In
Newport a Guinea Coast negro named Cuffy Cockroach, the slave of Mr.
Jahleel Brenton, was deemed the prince of turtle cooks. He was lent far
and wide for these turtle-feasts, and was hired out at taverns.
Near Philadelphia catfish suppers were popular. Mendenhall Ferry Tavern
was on the Schuylkill River about two miles below the Falls. It was
opposite a ford which landed on the east side, and from which a lane ran
up to the Ridge Turnpike. This lane still remains between the North and
South Laurel Hill cemeteries, just above the city of Philadelphia.
Previous to the Revolution the ferry was known as Garrigue's Ferry. A
cable was stretched across the stream; by it a flatboat with burdens was
drawn from side to side. The tavern was the most popular catfish-supper
tavern on the river drive. Waffles were served with the catfish. A large
Staffordshireware platter, printed in clear, dark, beautiful blue, made by
the English potter, Stubbs, shows this ferry and tavern, with its broad
piazza, and the river with its row of poplar trees. It is shown on page
93. Burnaby enjoyed the catfish-suppers as much as the turtle-feasts, but
I doubt if there was a Kissing Bridge in Philadelphia.
Many were the good reasons that could be given to explain and justify
attendance at an old-time tavern; one was the fact that often the only
newspaper that came to town was kept therein. This dingy tavern sheet
often saw hard usage, for when it went its rounds some could scarce read
it, some but pretend to read it. One old fellow in Newburyport opened it
wide, gazed at it with interest, and cried out to his neighbor in much
excitement: "Bad news. Terrible gales, terrible gales, ships all bottom
side up," as indeed they were, in his way of holding the news sheet.
The extent and purposes to which the tavern sheet might be applied can be
guessed from the notice written over the mantel-shelf of one taproom,
"Gentlemen learning to spell are requested to use last week's newsletter."
The old taverns saw many rough jokes. Often there was a tavern butt on
whom all played practical jokes. These often ended in a rough fight. The
old Collin's Tavern shown on page 97 was in coaching days a famous tavern
in Naugatuck on the road between New Haven and Litchfield. One of the
hostlers at this tavern, a burly negro, was the butt of all the tavern
hangers-on, and a great source of amusement to travellers. His chief
accomplishment was "bunting." He bragged that he could with a single bunt
break down a door, overturn a carriage, or fell a horse. One night a group
of jokers promised to give him all the cheeses he could bunt through. He
bunted holes through three cheeses on the tavern porch, and then was
offered a grindstone, which he did not perceive either by his sense of
sight or feeling to be a stone until his alarmed tormentors forced him to
desist for fear he might kill himself.
A picturesque and grotesque element of tavern life was found in those last
leaves on the tree, the few of Indian blood who lingered after the tribes
were scattered and nearly all were dead. These tawnies could not be made
as useful in the tavern yard as the shiftless and shifting negro element
that also drifted to the tavern, for the Eastern Indian never loved a
horse as did the negro, and seldom became handy in the care of horses.
These waifs of either race, and half-breeds of both races, circled around
the tavern chiefly because a few stray pennies might be earned there, and
also because within the tavern were plentiful supplies of cider and rum.
[Illustration: Mendenhall Ferry Platter.]
Almost every community had two or three of these semi-civilized Indian
residents, who performed some duties sometimes, but who often in the
summer, seized with the spirit of their fathers or the influence of their
early lives, wandered off for weeks and months, sometimes selling brooms
and baskets, sometimes reseating chairs, oftener working not, simply
tramping trustfully, sure of food whenever they asked for it. It is
curious to note how industrious, orderly Quaker and Puritan housewives
tolerated the laziness, offensiveness, and excesses of these
half-barbarians. Their uncouthness was endured when they were in health,
and when they fell sick they were cared for with somewhat the same charity
and forbearance that would be shown a naughty, unruly child.
Often the landlady of the tavern or the mistress of the farm-house,
bustling into her kitchen in the gray dawn, would find a sodden Indian
sleeping on the floor by the fireplace, sometimes a squaw and pappoose by
his side. If the kitchen door had no latch-string out, the Indian would
crawl into the hay in the barn; but wherever he slept, he always found his
way to the kitchen in good time for an ample breakfast.
Indian women often proved better helpers than the men. One Deb Browner
lived a severely respectable life all winter, ever ready to help in the
kitchen of the tavern if teamsters demanded meals; always on hand to help
dip candles in early winter, and make soap in early spring; and her strong
arms never tired. But when early autumn tinted the trees, and on came the
hunting season, she tore off her respectable calico gown and apron, kicked
off her shoes and stockings, and with black hair hanging wild, donned
moccasins and blanket, and literally fled to the woods for a breath of
life, for freedom. She took her flitting unseen in the night, but twice
was she noted many miles away by folk who knew her, tramping steadily
northward, bearing by a metomp of bark around her forehead a heavy burden
in a blanket.
One Sabbath morning in May a travelling teamster saw her in her
ultra-civilized state on her way home from meeting, crowned, not only with
a discreet bonnet, but with a long green veil hanging down her back. She
was entering the tavern door to know whether they wished her to attack the
big spring washing and bleaching the following day. "Hello, Teppamoy!" he
said, staring at her, "how came you here and in them clothes?" Scowling
fiercely, she walked on in haughty silence, while the baffled teamster
told a group of tavern loafers that he had been a lumberman, and some
years there came to the camp in Maine a wild old squaw named Teppamoy who
raised the devil generally, but the constable had never caught her, and
that she "looked enough like that Mis' Browner to be her sister."
Another half-breed Indian, old Tuggie Bannocks, lived in old Narragansett.
She was as much negro as Indian and was reputed to be a witch; she
certainly had some unusual peculiarities, the most marked being a full set
of double teeth all the way round, and an absolute refusal ever to sit on
a chair, sofa, stool, or anything that was intended to be sat upon. She
would sit on a table, or a churn, or a cradle-head, or squat on the floor;
or she would pull a drawer out of a high chest and recline on the edge of
that. It was firmly believed that in her own home she hung by her heels on
the oaken chair rail which ran around the room. She lived in the only
roofed portion of an old tumble-down house that had been at one time a
tavern, and she bragged that she could "raise" every one who had ever
stopped at that house as a guest, and often did so for company. Oh! what a
throng of shadows, some fair of face, some dark of life, would have filled
the dingy tavern at her command! I have told some incidents of her life in
my _Old Narragansett_, so will no longer keep her dusky presence here.
Other Indian "walk-abouts," as tramps were called, lived in the vicinity
of Malden, Massachusetts; old "Moll Grush," who fiercely resented her
nickname; Deb Saco the fortune-teller, whose "counterfeit presentment" can
be seen in the East Indian Museum at Salem; Squaw Shiner, who died from
being blown off a bridge in a gale, and who was said to be "a faithful
friend, a sharp enemy, a judge of herbs, a weaver of baskets, and a lover
of rum."
Another familiar and marked character was Sarah Boston. I have taken the
incidents of her life from _The Hundredth Town_, where it is told so
graphically. She lived on Keith Hill in Grafton, Massachusetts, an early
"praying town" of the Indians. A worn hearthstone and doorstone,
surrounded now by green grass and shadowed by dying lilacs, still show the
exact spot where once stood her humble walls, where once "her garden
smiled."
[Illustration: Collin's Tavern.]
The last of the Hassanamiscoes (a noble tribe of the Nipmuck race, first
led to Christ in 1654 by that gentle man John Eliot, the Apostle to the
Indians), she showed in her giant stature, her powerful frame, her vast
muscular power, no evidence of a debilitated race or of enfeebled
vitality. It is said she weighed over three hundred pounds. Her father was
Boston Phillips, also told of in story and tradition for his curious ways
and doings. Sarah dressed in short skirts, a man's boots and hat, a heavy
spencer (which was a man's wear in those days); and, like a true Indian,
always wore a blanket over her shoulders in winter. She was mahogany-red
of color, with coarse black hair, high cheek-bones, and all the
characteristic features of her race. Her great strength and endurance made
her the most desired farm-hand in the township to be employed in haying
time, in wall-building, or in any heavy farm work. Her fill of cider was
often her only pay for some powerful feat of strength, such as
stone-lifting or stump-pulling. At her leisure times in winter she made
and peddled baskets in true Indian fashion, and told improbable and
baseless fortunes, and she begged cider at the tavern, and drank cider
everywhere. "The more I drink the drier I am," was a favorite expression
of hers. Her insolence and power of abuse made her dreaded for domestic
service, though she freely entered every home, and sat smoking and
glowering for hours in the chimney corner of the tavern; but in those days
of few house-servants and scant "help," she often had to be endured that
she might assist the tired farm wife or landlady.
A touch of grim humor is found in this tale of her--the more humorous
because, in spite of Apostle Eliot and her Christian forbears, she was
really a most godless old heathen. She tended with care her little garden,
whose chief ornament was a fine cherry tree bearing luscious blackhearts,
while her fellow-townsmen had only sour Morellos growing in their yards.
Each year the sons of her white neighbors, unrestrained by her threats and
entreaties, stripped her tree of its toothsome and beautiful crop before
Sarah Boston could gather it. One year the tree hung heavy with a
specially full crop; the boys watched eagerly and expectantly the glow
deepening on each branch, through tinted red to dark wine color, when one
morning the sound of a resounding axe was heard in Sarah's garden, and a
passer-by found her with powerful blows cutting down the heavily laden
tree. "Why, Sarah," he asked in surprise, "why are you cutting down your
splendid great cherry tree?"--"It shades the house," she growled; "I can't
see to read my Bible."
A party of rollicking Yankee blades, bold with tavern liquor, pounded one
night on the wooden gate of the old Grafton burying-ground, and called out
in profane and drunken jest, "Arise, ye dead, the judgment day is come."
Suddenly from one of the old graves loomed up in the dark the gigantic
form of Sarah Boston, answering in loud voice, "Yes, Lord, I am coming."
Nearly paralyzed with fright, the drunken fellows fled, stumbling with
dismay before this terrifying and unrecognized apparition.
Mrs. Forbes ends the story of Sarah Boston with a beautiful thought. The
old squaw now lies at rest in the same old shadowy burial place--no longer
the jest and gibe of jeering boys, the despised and drunken outcast.
Majestic with the calm dignity of death, she peacefully sleeps by the side
of her white neighbors. At the dawn of the last day may she once more
arise, and again answer with clear voice, "Yes, Lord, I am coming."