The cross-road under the great leafy ridge of Eastman Hill has pretty
farms along it, and half-way across there is a country burying ground,
where wild plums blossom, and the grave-stones are half hidden all
summer in a green thicket.
One name in the graveyard we all hold in special honor, that of Serena
Eastman. I never knew her myself, and it is only from her granddaughter
and from the neighbors that I learned of her beautiful life.
She was a mother in Israel; one of
"All-Saints--the unknown good that rest
In God's still memory folded deep."
She brought up eleven children to upright manhood and womanhood, and
beside this a whole neighborhood was nourished from the wells of her
deep nature. She lived and died before the days of trained nurses, and
in addition to her own cares she was the principal nurse of her
countryside. Those were the days when nursing was not and could not be
paid for, but was a priceless gift from neighbor to neighbor. She stood
ready to be up all night, and night after night, to ease pain by her
ministering, or to help to bring a new life into the world; her faith
lifted the spirits of the dying, and of those about to be bereaved, as
if on strong pinions.
Small-pox was still a terrible scourge in those times, and she was the
only woman in the district who would nurse it. Her granddaughter has
told me how she kept a change of clothes in an out-house, and how she
bathed and dressed there (the only precautions against infection known
to the times), whether in winter or summer, before rejoining her family.
She always drove to and from such cases at night, to run as little
danger as possible of coming in contact with people. Her husband took
the same risks that she did. He drove back and forth, and lent his
strength in lifting and carrying patients.
They had a large farm, which meant cooking for hired men in the busy
seasons, and beside Serena's eleven children there were older relations
to do for, her husband's father and mother, and one or two unmarried
sisters. She was active in Dorcas society and in meeting. Her
granddaughter feels that only the completeness of her religious life
could have carried her through the fatigues which she underwent. She
lived in that conscious obedience to duty which eliminates friction, and
her view of duty was one taken through wide-opened windows. She walked
with God daily.
The house of this dear woman burned, not long after she and her husband
died, and only the blossoming lilacs mark its empty cellar-hole, but the
next farm, which belonged to Mr. Eastman's brother, and is now his
nephew's, is a fine one. You drive on to a wide green, as smoothly kept
as a lawn, where three huge trees, a willow and two elms, overhang the
house. There are big comfortable barns and outhouses, a corn-crib and
well-sweep, and the house is square and ample, with two big chimneys.
Next to the Eastmans', beyond their orchard, comes a neat small farm,
with a long wide stone wall, where grapes are trained, owned once by two
queer old sisters, the Misses Pushard, or as we have it, the Miss
Pushhards. (A Huguenot name, pronounced _Pushaw_ by the older
generation.) They went to Lyceum in their young days, and, a rare thing
then so far in the country, they had a piano. This gave them "a great
shape." Poor ladies, with their piano! Years later they were in
straitened circumstances, and anxious to sell it, but to their
indignation nobody wanted it, or not at the price they thought fitting;
so, one night, they _chopped it up_, and hid the pieces. Thus they were
not left with the instrument on their hands; and they had not accepted
an unworthy price for their treasure. All this was learned years
afterwards from some old papers. The fragments of the piano were found
in the cistern.
The last farm on the road is owned by Sam Marston and his dear wife,
Susan; who, though you never would think it (except for a little
remaining crispness of speech), was born in England, in Essex, and came
as a young English housemaid--dear me, how long ago now!--to the
Homestead, eight miles away, by the River. Sam Marston worked there in
the stables, and lost his heart promptly, and after four or five years
of characteristic Yankee courting, leisurely, but humorously determined,
Susan made up her mind, and said "yes," and came out to the farm, with
her fresh print gowns, her trimness and stanchness, and her abiding
religion.
Susan keeps also her fixed ideas of the "quality." She is now a power in
her whole neighborhood. She and Sam, alas, have no children, a great
sorrow, but the young people growing up near her show the reflection of
her uprightness and that of her Sam. But after all these years she is
still an exotic. The Sunday-school which she has gathered about her is
strictly Church of England. The children learn their catechism, and "to
do their duty in life in that station into which it shall please God to
call them"; and they are instructed perfectly clearly as to their
betters!
The other day we drove out to her farm. We were going to climb Eastman
Hill, after Lady's Slippers, and then were to have supper with Susan.
The sky was very deep blue, with flocks of little white clouds sailing.
The woods were still all different shades of light and bright green, and
the apple trees were in full blossom. The barn swallows were skimming
and pouring low about the green fields in their effortless flight. I
think I never drove through so smiling a country.
The house is a long low brick one, with dormer windows, in the midst of
an old orchard. There is a fence and a hedge, and a brick path leads to
the door. There are lilac bushes at the corner of the house, and
cinnamon roses and yellow lilies on each side of the doorway.
Susan came out, laughing, and nearly crying, with pleasure, to welcome
us. She "jumped" us down with her kind hands, and took all our wraps. We
went as far as the house, asking questions and chattering, and then
Susan showed us our way, an opening in the screen of the woods reached
by a path through the orchard, and stood shading her eyes with her hand
to look after us.
We followed a bit of mossy old corduroy road, through moist rich woods,
and then began to climb among a wood of beeches. Soon the rock began to
crop out in small cliffs, and we found different treasures, the little
pale pink _corydalis_, a black-and-white creeper's nest in a ferny cleft
between two rocks, quantities of twin-flower, and then, rising a
beech-covered knoll, we came on our first Lady's Slippers. The glade
ahead was thronged with them. They spread their broad light-green leaves
like wings, and their beautiful heads bent proudly. They grew sometimes
singly, sometimes in clumps of fifteen or twenty blossoms, and were
scattered over the whole glade as if a flight of rose-colored
butterflies had just alighted.
We came on this same sight seven different times; this lovely company
scattered over the slope among the rocks, where the ridge broke out into
low gray pinnacles among the beeches.
When at last we could make up our minds to climb down, following the
white thread of a waterfall, into the deeper woods, we found Painted
Trilliums, bright white and painted with crimson, with
Jack-in-the-pulpits, both grown to a great size in the rich mould,
amongst a green mist of uncurling ferns.
The brook which we followed came out at last in an open pasture above
the farm. It was as refreshing as a bath in running water to come out
into the cool, sweet evening air, for the heavy woods were warm, and
there had been quantities of black flies and mosquitoes, which our hands
were too full to fight. Beside all our baskets, our handkerchiefs and
hats were full of flowers. One of our number carried a young cherry
tree, with roots and sod, over his shoulder, and mosses in his pockets,
and the girls had Lady's Slippers and fern roots in their caught-up
skirts.
The turf was powdered white as snow with Innocents, and there were
violets. The pasture slopes down through dark needle-pointed clumps of
balsam fir, and scattered hawthorn and cherry trees, which were in
flower. A hermit thrush sang from one of the firs as we came down. The
heavenly, pure carillon rang out again and again, as dusk fell deeper,
the singer altering the pitch with each repetition of the song, ringing
one lovely change after another.
Such a supper was set out on the porch! Fresh rolls and butter, cream
cheese and chicken, jugs of milk and cream, fresh hot gingerbread, and
bowls of wild strawberries. The porch runs out into the orchard, and the
white petals of the apple-blossoms drifted down as we sat laughing and
talking. Susan placed her chair near us, but nothing would induce her to
eat with us, and she jumped up every minute and fluttered into the
house, to press more good things on us. Presently, Sam came in from
milking, and was a fellow-Yankee and a brother at once.
We could hardly bear to go home, and almost took Sam's offer (which so
scandalized Susan) of a night in the hay in the new barn. It would be so
pretty to lie watching the swallows darting in and out after sunrise.
We went all through Susan's trim farmhouse, and saw her dairy, with its
airy and spotless arrangements. The milk, thick and yellow with cream,
was in curious blue glass pans, which Susan said came long ago from the
Homestead. We saw all the chickens, the calves, and the black pigs. The
Jerseys blew long breaths at us from their mangers, and the horses put
out their soft noses for sugar. The ducks were quacking and waddling all
over the yard, and the pigeons fluttered about.
The late veeries and robins were singing, and the warm fragrance of the
apple-blossoms was all about us, as we gathered our treasures together
and drove home in the dusk.