appears in its most beautiful light. There is no thought of almsgiving
on their part, nor a sense of accepting charity on the part of the
recipients. Benevolence and gratitude were not called upon to exchange
compliments. Farmer Bosworth is going our way and leaves a jug of milk;
he stops to chat a while and relight his pipe with a coal from the
hearth. Would you see him do it with a boy's eyes? The tongs are too
long and heavy to bring around to his pipe; but with them he pulls out a
coal of the right size, picks it up between thumb and finger and puts it
into his pipe bowl. I stand close beside him, and although he doesn't
cringe, I do, and almost feel my fingers burn. He winks out of the
corner of his eye at me and says, 'Your old daddy is tough isn't he?'
and shows me the end of his thumb calloused and hard as the knurl of
white oak; only fire could clean it to the original skin. He shakes out
his blue frock for fear of fire in it, and goes his way. There is always
something to spare by those who have more, to those who have less.
Whoever kills a fatted cow or a pig in early winter sends a portion to
the Red House; and a load of wood is left in the night by some farmer
who does not wish his right hand to know what his left doeth. Money is
scarce; but everything else is shared with those in distress or in
sickness. This is so much a matter of course that no one thinks of
credit or reward.
In such ways as I have described were the widow and her fatherless
children saved from destitution or loss of their respectable position in
the little community. I am sure my mother relied with complete trust on
the scriptural promises made to those in her difficult circumstances. If
they were fulfilled by human agencies, that, also, was the doing of the
Divine Director of the affairs of the poor. In those days men and women
were good and simple, obedient, not only unto the commands and examples
of their Bible, but also to the impulses of their own kind hearts.
Yet the household never again felt the highest happiness of domestic
life. A soft and tranquil resignation took its place. They moved about
with a gentler step, speaking in subdued tones, more often not at all.
They had to live out their lives, although it now seemed hardly worth
the struggle. Tears were in their eyes at the table, and one or another
would arise before the meal was half finished. I heard suppressed sobs
as I went to sleep on a truckle-bed beside my mother, who during the day
was more composed than her daughters. Neighbors soon began to call;
there was then a hearty cry in which everybody in the room joined.
Nothing so relieves the pent-up feeling as this, if only a little
sympathy is present, as it were, to receive and consecrate the precious
and sacred tribute of tears.
As for me when I returned from the grave of my father, unconscious of
what had happened, I resumed my interrupted play under the apple tree. I
had never as yet wept for anything except the crossing of my will--April
tears, soon dried.
MY MOTHER'S RED CLOAK
My mother was a silent woman, seldom speaking unless first addressed,
and she never asked questions of callers beyond what an extreme courtesy
required. I noticed the latter trait when a child, in contrast to the
custom of most people; for to ask questions seemed to be the usual and
almost only manner of carrying on conversation among the neighbors.
Moreover, I was myself pestered beyond endurance by a fire of questions
whenever I went anywhere, or anybody came to us. I inherit from my
mother a great reserve in speech and fondness for silence; and, as the
latter can only be purchased by retirement, I have added to silence a
love of solitude in which I have doubtless too much indulged myself. All
sorts of suppositions follow a man who retires and declines the
ambitions of his contemporaries. By some he is thought a coward or
eccentric; by others he is believed to be a philosopher. Those of a more
indulgent temper guess that delicate health or some disappointment in
love, in business or profession has driven him away from his kind. None
of these solutions hits the marks. And although I have no wish to
relieve myself of responsibility for my course of life, still less to
apologize for it, destiny, in form of a woman, my mother, has directed
my life in spite of reason, the persuasion of friends or the allurements
of the world--the world which inflicts its just penalties upon him who
refrains from becoming an actor, who persists in being a spectator. The
paradox of my nature is that I love my kind as much as I love solitude
and silence. My friendships are now sixty years old. My mother also
enjoyed society although she never sought it. She was easily amused, but
I never heard her laugh aloud; her whole face smiled and it was more
contagious than the outbursts of more demonstrative persons. She
listened apparently with all her senses and faculties. It was this
characteristic I imagine, that, when outward voices were withdrawn, made
possible the turning of an inward ear to the responses of her soul. In
no other way can I account for the fact that without education or
opportunities she became a refined gentle-woman, became intelligent
without books and had an insight and judgment in all matters within her
sphere, much depended upon by her family and acquaintances. She was
feminine to the tips of her fingers, and sympathetic with distress and
misfortune. From her scanty cupboard she fed all who asked for food. She
believed and often said that the loaf which is divided is never
consumed. Wandering beggars knew her door and were never turned away.
But, as her house was small, and without a man, if they asked for
shelter, she sent them to the next neighbor.
Bred in such a quiet atmosphere I was usually very silent in my mother's
presence. When alone on the road, or in the fields, or with my
playthings I talked to myself a great deal; or rather I addressed
inanimate objects as if they were living beings, a habit which still
clings to me, although the voice is no longer needed. My days were full;
I found everywhere enough to keep my feet moving and my hands busy. I
was completely filled and satisfied with the earth just as I found it in
the town of Bellingham. When, however, evening came on and I had to go
into the house, everything shrank to the size of the room. I became
restless and fretful. Having exhausted every amusement which the house
afforded and, however sleepy, unwilling to go to bed, I sat down upon a
cricket at my mother's knee and kept saying, "tell me one little story."
One such evening I recall when the days were growing short and shorter
and the candle was lighted at half past four o'clock. It was a privilege
always granted me to light the candle. If no one happened to be looking
I blew it out for the pleasure of relighting it; for, like other
children I loved to play with fire and the candles and the open hearth
gave me ample opportunities. The bellows and I were intimate and
constant playmates. We played many a trick together; sometimes stealing
up behind one of my sisters and blowing into her ear, or going some
distance away from the candle I made a current of air which would sway
the candle flame, when my mother would exclaim, "how the wind does blow;
some door must be open." Then my titter would reveal the rogue, who was
reminded that it was his bedtime.
But, on the evening to which I have referred, I was a good boy having
expended my naughtiness during the day. There was a still calm
throughout the house and the intense cold had hushed the air over field
and wood. The candle was alight on the three-footed stand and my mother
was counting the stitches in the setting of a new stocking. As usual I
was coaxing for a story. Perhaps it was the red yarn which reminded my
mother of her red cloak, or some sudden flash of tender memories. When
she had fairly started the stocking so that she could knit without
counting or looking at her work she said, "I had a red cloak once; would
you like to hear about it?"
"Oh yes, and tell it long, long, mother."
"I was a little girl then, so the cloak was short, and so the story. Red
was the color I most admired when I was ten years old. It became me, so
I thought, for I was almost as dark skinned as an Indian. Folks called
me Widow Thayer's red-winged blackbird when I wore my cloak, of which I
was very proud. It had no sleeves and came down to my feet and was
closed at the neck with a fastening of silk cord braided in a pretty
pattern.
"I went to meeting in it all one winter, proud and gay, but never wore it
on any other day except the Sabbath. At the end of winter it was packed
away in a great chest where our winter clothing was kept in summer with
tansy laid among the garments to prevent moths. My red cloak was placed
at the bottom of the chest and I myself spread an unnecessary number of
green tansy sprays over it. I never thought of the cloak again until the
next winter. When it was taken out for me to wear one cold November
Sabbath, what was my grief to see the cloak, as I thought, ruined. The
tansy leaves had printed their exact shapes in a dark brown color all
over the back, which had lain uppermost in the bottom of the chest. The
pressure and the heat had acted like a dye. I cried my eyes red and
would not go to meeting. Every one thought the cloak was spoilt. But one
day the minister's wife called at our house, and the sad tale of the
cloak was related to her, and asking to see it she said, "Why, if it
wasn't pretty before--and I never liked red for little girls--it
certainly is now. It is beautiful with those brown leaves; it looks
almost like a palm-leaf cashmere shawl." Now a palm-leaf cashmere shawl
was the finest and most costly outer garment a woman could possess in
those days. My mother and sisters agreed with the minister's wife, as
her opinion about all women's concerns was as much respected as was her
husband's on religious matters. So I began to wear the cloak again, and
people thought it was a new one, and wondered how my mother could be so
extravagant when she was so poor. But the cloak was much admired and
thought to become me more than the last year's red one. The secret was
not kept long for the minister's wife explained it to someone to free my
mother from the charge of extravagance. Soon everybody knew it and many
inquiries were made how it happened. Some of our neighbor's daughters
even tried to produce the same effects on their dresses and cloaks by
pressing green leaves on them with hot flatirons. But it did not
succeed. You cannot imitate accidents; they just happen once; the next
one is something different. So all the girls envied me my cloak. It
lasted me ten years, for I was not much taller at twenty than at ten."
My mother was silent again and I exclaimed "is that all, mother? Tell
some more, do."
"Stories, my son, must have an end or you would not like them--but there
would never be another. I have heard of a book that had a thousand, but
it took a thousand evenings to tell them. So one an evening ought to be
enough, and it is your bedtime."
Here my youngest sister, Harriet, who was fifteen years old, said,
"Mother, why don't you tell him the other part of the cloak story?"
"Yes, tell it," I entreated.
My mother appeared to be wholly absorbed in her stocking; she had
dropped a stitch and was working her needles painfully, trying to
recover it. A half sad smile, half pleased expression came into her face
and a faint blush upon her brown cheek.
"Well, I suppose the journey I took in the red cloak with the tansy
figures is what your sister wants me to tell you about. My mother, your
grandmother, was a widow. I never saw my own father, for I was born
while he was away fighting in the battles of the Revolution and he never
returned; he was killed at Yorktown. When I was about ten years old my
mother had an offer of marriage from a farmer in Medway who had lost his
wife; his children had grown up, married and settled excepting one son
twenty years old. It was a matter of convenience on both sides; my
mother needed a home and he needed a housekeeper. The marriage took
place in her own house. But she did not go immediately to her new home;
she had a little property to dispose of and other small affairs to
arrange. When she had sold everything but her old white mare she set out
for Medway upon the mare's back, taking me with her on a pillion behind.
It was a day in Spring, and although not cold, I wore my cloak as the
easiest way of carrying it. No doubt it was a queer spectacle we made;
yet, not as queer then as it would seem now--the old white mare ambling
along, head down, and feet hardly clearing the ground under the heavy
load, for your grandmother was a large, stout woman and we had a number
of bags and bundles fastened onto the saddle, and I almost hidden among
them, was quite covered by my cloak so that I might have been mistaken
for another parcel hanging behind my mother's broad back. She wore an
immense bonnet flaring wide in front and big bowed silver spectacles. I
had on a small tightly-fitting bright yellow cap tied under my chin with
blue ribbon. It was not a long journey from Bellingham to Medway, but it
was the first I had ever taken, and it seemed to me it would never end.
I was much subdued and even frightened on the way. It was all so strange
and perplexing to me this marriage of my mother to a strange man, giving
up my childhood home and going to another of which I knew nothing.
Little did I imagine the destiny that awaited me there.
"At last we turned into a long lane and came to a large rambling farm
house with barns all about it. A young man came to the doorstep to meet
us. I was not in the habit of taking much notice of boys and young men,
but I could not help seeing that he was a handsome youth, tall, fair
haired and blue eyed. He helped my mother to dismount, and then lifted
me in his arms from the pillion. That young man, my son, was your
father, and I have heard him say he that moment fell in love with the
little girl in the red cloak. He seemed never so much pleased as when
winter came round and I began to wear it again. He waited and served ten
years for me, and when I was twenty and he thirty we were married. We
went back to Bellingham to be married by my mother's minister, an old
friend. We went on horseback, I on a pillion behind your father just as
I had left the town and wearing still my red cloak, but almost for the
last time, for it was thought no longer suitable for a married woman. It
was hung away in a closet; your father would not have it made over into
any other kind of a garment, as was the thrifty custom of all
households, although I much wanted to make it into a petticoat. Your
father prized it more than any of my newer clothes, and it hung in the
closet for many a year. Sometimes in the long winter evenings when we
would be talking of old times and the ten tedious years of his waiting,
he would make me take out the cloak and parade around the room. It
seemed to make him happy and more affectionate."
MY UNCLE LYMAN
As I shall often allude to my Uncle Lyman in these pages, I will sketch
as much of his character and his ways as I can now recall, and that may
interest the reader. He was a farmer of the old style and I love to
remember him. To hear of great men and great events is stimulating, as
even the sound of fire is warming; yet the memory of those who have been
near and dear to us brings a deeper glow into the heart.
Uncle Lyman's farm supplied nearly every one of his needs except what
were called in his day West India goods. He believed with Cato that the
father of a family ought always to sell and never to buy. He strictly
followed his advice in selling his old cattle, his old carts and used up
tools and everything which he did not want. This was why his yards and
buildings were unincumbered with the trumpery which so often disfigures
New England farms. West India goods were the luxuries of his time. These
goods were chiefly rum, sugar and molasses. Tea and spices were even
greater luxuries. The strange marks on tea chests were a cipher no one
had unravelled. On his farm were raised corn, wheat and always rye, for
rye and not wheat was in Bellingham the staff of life. Eggs, cheese,
butter and pork were bartered at the country stores for West India
goods. Work, incessant work was the prime necessity on the farm and in
the house, and Uncle Lyman and his wife never knew an idle day. This
fixed upon him a serious and preoccupied air. He began the day early and
left off late. The sun was his fellow traveller and laborer to and fro
in the furrow, the corn rows and the swath. But it was hard for him to
leave his work at sundown; darkness alone sometimes compelled him to
quit the field. After supper, which was at five o'clock, the year round,
is half and the better half of the day in summer, he used to say. Our
Bellingham neighbors were humble, hard working people, but they taught
me "the great art of cheerful poverty." I was early cured of several
follies by standing under the shadow of rustic wise men. I drove their
oxen to the plow, and often fell behind alongside the ploughman and
picked up the scattered seeds of old, traditional wisdom in his furrows.
With these the sagacious urchin sometimes astonished his little mother.
Visitors, a cloudy day, a gentle rain did not prevent Uncle Lyman from
his labors. "Let us keep ahead of the weather," he would say, "and then
we can go a-fishing." No weeds grew in his corn or rye; and his made hay
seldom was wet. He scented a shower from as far away as the Mendon
hills. He first taught me to notice the sweet perfume which a summer
shower drives before it from afar, the combined perfume of wild flowers,
trees and new mown grass.
There was always the promise held out that, after haying or the first
hoeing, we should go a-fishing on Beaver Pond, and sometimes the promise
was kept. He was a masterful trailer for pickerel; he put into it the
same energy as into his axe and scythe. In the same way that I was
allowed to drive his mare Nancy by holding the slack of the reins, did I
have my part in the fishing excursions. I held a line over the edge of
the boat until the fish bit, then another hand took it and drew it in.
Perch or pout it was mine, and credit and praise were duly given. "What
a smart boy!" words that made me more proud than any commendations I
have heard since. When they were cooked I wanted my own catch to eat and
was humored. And in general that is the boy's disposition; whatever he
captures or finds on trees or on the earth he wishes to eat. No doubt a
green apple and the buds of trees, and all kinds of sweet or peppery
roots give him that wild and strenuous virtue which enables him to
resist pampering and effeminating influences.
Although Uncle Lyman seldom allowed himself a holiday, I believe he
enjoyed it as much as I did. He was simply an older boy; that was the
secret of our sympathy and my admiration for him. He knew so many more
things than I, could do so many more, yet when with me, all in a playful
way as if they were of no account, and only for fun. He was my model and
my ideal of a man in everything that made for me the world. I felt an
inward, irresistible impulsion to do all that he did, just as we are
inclined to beat time to the music that we love. Thus was I taught to
labor and enslaved to it before I knew it; for a boy wants to do what he
sees men do; he must handle the hoe, the rake, the axe and the scythe,
and these are often made to suit his size and strength in order to tempt
him still further on. Thus does he forge his own chains; he is caught in
his own net and his plaything tools become his masters. Now he must mow
and hoe in earnest, however hot the sun, however much he hates to work.
Yet I have never felt any distinction between work and play when the
former was to my liking.
Uncle Lyman's wisdom had been handed down to him by his fathers, and he
had improved it by observation. He added a new touch to the wrinkled
face of ancient use. He knew the properties of all trees, weeds and
herbs. Ash and hornbeam were his most precious woods. Ash served every
purpose this side of iron; it was as good as a rope, for was not the
Gordion knot tied with it? and could be whittled down as fine as a
knitting needle without breaking, and still keeping its strength; it
could be pounded into basket stuff, separating the layers to almost any
degree of thinness. It handled every tool, from a pitchfork to an awl,
and made the whole of a rake, the bows, teeth, head and staff. Besides,
it had medicinal virtues; it was good for nose-bleed ever since it
staunched the royal nose of King James, the Second. Although the most
elastic of wood it never grew crooked, but shot up a trunk as straight
as an arrow. It is a tree prophetic of archery. Uncle Lyman made me many
a bow from a selected piece of ash, each year of my age a little longer
and stouter. He measured the length the bow should be by my height. What
a joy it was at length to shoot an arrow almost out of sight! "Now",
said Uncle Lyman, "you are almost big enough for a gun". Alas, I might
as well have wished for a kingdom. A wooden gun for awhile satisfied my
ambition. With that, however, I shot many an Indian, and the little boys
and girls who teased and provoked me. But I soon tired of these
imaginary foes and marksmanship. With bow and arrow I could hit the
trunk of a tree, the house door, and by accident a pane of glass. Best
of all I liked to shoot over Uncle Lyman's dooryard elm, or try for the
clouds. Often I lost my arrow in them; so I bragged and believed.
The hornbeam was much less common than the ash and was saved with
particular care. It was mainly used for stanchions in the tie-ups of
cows and oxen, for stakes on sleds and carts, and for levers. It is not
easily bent and is almost impossible to break; it is the steel of the
forest. Its foliage resembles that of the elm, but is finer and denser.
It has no insect enemies and minds not the fiercest tempests. Uncle
Lyman said only lightning could rive it, that the hornbeam drew fire
from the clouds, and one should never go near it in a thunder storm.
This was only when it was alive.
His various speculations about natural objects and phenomena, were
always in the way of contraries and offsets. Good weather was enough to
ensure forthcoming bad; a full crop this year meant a poor one next
year. If every kernel of corn sprouted, look out for plenty of crows and
a poor yield. Thus he comforted himself in every reverse and humbled
himself in good fortune. In good years he was more saving, and in bad,
less so than most of his neighbors. Now he had a fear ahead and now a
hope. Thus he balanced both; yet the balance so inclined that the years
increased his store, and thrift, industry and honesty brought him honor
among his neighbors. He helped the widow and the orphan and loaned money
without a mortgage. His debts and credits were obligations of honor; as
he paid, so he was paid.
Uncle Lyman admired trees as the most wonderful things that God had made
grow out of the earth. He could hardly bring himself to chop them down.
The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, made
him sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an old
friend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from a
sapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the old man of Verona,
"A neighboring wood, born with himself, he sees,
And loves his old contemporary trees".
The trees I loved and played with most in my boyhood, the white birches,
for which I still have more fondness than any other in our northern
forests, Uncle Lyman cared for not at all. Although he had a sense of
beauty, and long association with an object affected him with a tinge of
romance and secret sentiment, yet utility was the chief criterion in his
estimate of trees and men. Could you do a good day's work, it was
enough; it filled the measure of a man and the promise of a boy. A
useful tree was therefore the best tree. He had no use for white or gray
birches, for they were neither timber nor vendible firewood. He often
ridiculed them, and if there was a worthless fellow in town, he was, in
his comparison, a gray birch, good for nothing but to hoop the cider
barrels, of which the fellow was too fond; if a too gay girl, she was a
white birch, dressed in satin, frizzled and beribboned, dress over dress
of the same stuff to her innermost petticoat. He saw no good in the
birch except for the backs of naughty boys. I now know a hundred uses
for the birch, unsuspected by him. He had never heard of peg and spool
and bobbin mills, nor of the mountain poet who makes his own birch bark
books, on whose leaves he inscribes his simple songs--and, envied man,
is able to sell them.
But all these useful, playful and poetic uses are nothing to me in
comparison to the birchen bower wherein I spent entrancing summer days
with Launa Probana.