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Title: In old Narragansett; romances and realities
Author: Alice Morse Earle
Release date: October 13, 2023 [eBook #71873]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Son, 1898
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN OLD NARRAGANSETT; ROMANCES AND REALITIES ***
THE IVORY SERIES
_Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents_
AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell, Editor of “Life”
IA. A Love Story. By Q. [Arthur T. Quiller-Couch]
THE SUICIDE CLUB. By Robert Louis Stevenson
IRRALIE’S BUSHRANGER. By E. W. Hornung
A MASTER SPIRIT. By Harriet Prescott Spofford
MADAME DELPHINE. By George W. Cable
ONE OF THE VISCONTI. By Eva Wilder Brodhead
A BOOK OF MARTYRS. By Cornelia Atwood Pratt
A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH. By E. W. Hornung
THE MAN WHO WINS. By Robert Herrick
AN INHERITANCE. By Harriet Prescott Spofford
THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF THE BLACK STOCK. By Thomas Nelson Page
LITERARY LOVE LETTERS AND OTHER STORIES. By Robert Herrick
A ROMANCE IN TRANSIT. By Francis Lynde
IN OLD NARRAGANSETT. By Alice Morse Earle.
SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER. By J. V. Hadley.
_Other Volumes to be announced_
IN OLD NARRAGANSETT
_ROMANCES AND REALITIES_
BY
ALICE MORSE EARLE
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK, 1898
Copyright, 1898, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
FOREWORD
_Some of these stories of old Narragansett are familiar fireside tales
to those who have lived in that picturesque land; some are but vague
traditions, others summer dreams; a few are family chronicles; still
others are outlined in that interesting memoir, Thomas R. Hazard’s
“Recollections of the Olden Times,” or in Updike’s “Narragansett
Church.” Old Narragansett was, properly, all the lands occupied by the
Narragansett Indians at the coming of the English. Narragansett is
now, popularly, the coast sweep of the western shore of Narragansett
Bay from Wickford to Point Judith. In 1685 Narragansett was made a
separate government apart from Rhode Island, and was called the Kings
Province. When reunited with Rhode Island this was changed to King’s
County. For many years, and by some old people to-day, it is called
the South County, but its legal name is Washington County, which was
given it in 1781; Washington being a more agreeable and tolerable name
at that date to loyal Americans than King’s. Narragansett was owned by
a comparatively small number of persons, and estates were large, one
family owned a tract nine miles long and three wide. Thomas Stanton had
a “lordship” four and a half miles long and two wide. Colonel Champlin
owned two thousand acres, Thomas Hazard twelve thousand acres. Farms of
five, six, even ten miles square existed._
_Thus the conditions of life in colonial Narragansett were widely
different from those of other New England colonies. The establishment
of and adherence to the Church of England, and the universal
prevalence of African slavery, evolved a social life resembling
that of the Virginian plantation rather than of the Puritan farm.
It was a community of many superstitions, to which the folk-customs
of the feast-days of the English Church, the evil communications of
witch-seeking Puritan neighbors, the voodooism of the negro slaves,
the pow wows of the native red men, all added a share and infinite
variety. It was a plantation of wealth, of vast flocks and herds, of
productive soil, of great crops, of generous living; all these are
vanished from the life there to-day, but still the fields are smiling
and the lakes and the bay are blue and beautiful as of yore; and a
second prosperity is dawning in the old Kings Province in the universal
establishment therein of happy summer-homes._
_In memory of many perfect days spent on Narragansett roads and lanes,
of days in Narragansett woods or on the shore, these pages have been
written._
_ALICE MORSE EARLE._
_WICKFORD, RHODE ISLAND,
Midsummer Eve, 1897._
CONTENTS
PAGE
_A Narragansett Elopement_ _1_
_Narragansett Weavers_ _23_
_Where Three Towns Meet_ _51_
_Tuggie Bannocks’s Moonack_ _63_
_A Black Politician_ _77_
_The Witch Sheep_ _103_
_The Crusoes of the Noon-House_ _121_
_The Doctor’s Pie-Plates_ _139_
_My Delft Apothecary Jars_ _151_
_The Dancing Turkey_ _169_
_Cuddymonk’s Ghost_ _181_
A NARRAGANSETT ELOPEMENT
Four miles north of Narragansett Pier lies the old South Ferry, from
whence for over a century ran ferry-boats to a landing on Conanicut
Island. About a mile farther north there stands on Boston Neck an
ancient willow-shaded, gambrel-roofed, weather-beaten house which in
the latter part of the eighteenth century was the scene of a sadly
romantic event. It was built by Rowland Robinson in the first half of
the century--in 1746--and was originally one hundred and ten feet long,
as the stone foundations still show. The kitchen and negro quarters
have been demolished, and the present structure has a front of sixty
feet. The rooms within are models of the simple style of architecture
of that day. The staircase is specially beautiful with its gracefully
turned balusters and curious drop ornaments, and its deep-worn steps of
bass-wood. The walls of all the rooms are wainscoted in a substantial
manner, and the fireplaces are ornamented with blue and white Dutch
tiles. The heavy timbers and rafters--all cut on the place--have
not sagged an inch with the weight of years. Over the fireplace in
the dining-room is a panel bearing a smoke-darkened painting which
represents a deer-hunt that occurred on the Robinson place while the
house was being built. The riders in this picture appear to be standing
in their stirrups instead of sitting on their saddles. The great attic
in which the slaves are said to have slept contains now a picturesque
litter of old sea-chests, spinning-wheels, clock-reels, wool-cards,
flax-brakes, yarn-winders, saddles, and pillions; and in the beams of
the roof are great iron hooks to which--it is whispered--the slaves
of olden times were tied when they received their floggings. They are
with much more probability the loom-hooks which were used by weavers
when weaving cloth on an old hand-loom. The handsome great west room is
known as the Lafayette Chamber, it having been occupied for some weeks
by the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolutionary War; and on panes
of glass, still whole after a century’s use, are the names of French
officers, scratched on with the writers’ diamond rings.
The house abounds in cupboards--tall, narrow cupboards high up over
the chimney, low, broad cupboards under the window-seats, medicine
cupboards and pot cupboards, triangular corner cupboards, and, in
the parlor, one beautifully proportioned apse-shaped china-cupboard
which is ornamented with carved “sunbursts” and scalloped and serrated
shelves, and is closed with glass doors to show the treasures and
beauties within. But in “Unfortunate Hannah’s” chamber is the most
famous cupboard of all, for in that narrow and shallow retreat a
beautiful daughter of Rowland Robinson hid her lover when she heard the
approaching footsteps of her irascible father on the staircase leading
to her room.
Rowland Robinson was a typical Narragansett planter--wealthy, proud,
and imperious. Tall and portly, ruddy of face, he showed in his
dress and carriage his great wealth and high position. A coat of
fine dark cloth or velvet with silver buttons was worn over a long
yellow waistcoat with great pockets and flaps; violet or brown velvet
knee-breeches with handsome top-boots, or silk stockings with buckled
shoes; lace-frilled shirts; a great beaver cocked hat looped up with
cords over his powdered hair--this attire gave him a comely and elegant
presence. His character may be given in a few words by quoting the
wife of Hon. William Hunter, minister to Brazil. She wrote in her
diary sixty years ago her personal recollection of him. “He was of
violent passions, which was characteristic of the Robinsons, but of
benevolent, noble nature.” Many stories are told of his impetuous
generosity and kindly impulsiveness, none being more characteristic
than his action when his first cargo of slaves came from the Guinea
coast. Slave-dealing was such a universal practice at that date among
wealthy residents of Narragansett and Newport that it was a commonplace
business enterprise for Rowland Robinson, when he was building his new
house, to send a ship to Africa for a cargo of negroes, intending to
keep the most promising ones for his own household and farm servants,
and to sell the remainder. But when the ship landed at South Ferry, and
the forlorn, wretched, feeble men and women disembarked, he burst into
tears and vowed that not one should be sold. He kept them all in his
own household, where they were always kindly treated. He never again
sent a vessel to Africa to engage in the slave-trade, though one negro
of royal birth--Queen Abigail--was so happy in her Narragansett home,
that with Rowland Robinson’s consent and his liberal assistance she
returned to her home in Africa, found her son--the negro prince--and
brought him to America, where he became Mr. Robinson’s faithful
body-servant.
The wealthy planter had other sources of income than slave-trading. He
owned great ships that engaged in general commerce. He had an immense
dairy and made fine Rhode Island cheese from the milk of his beautiful
“blanket-cows.” It was his ambition to have one hundred of these lovely
black-and-white animals, but it is a matter of tradition that, while
he could keep ninety-nine readily enough, when he bought or raised
the hundredth cow, one of the ninety-nine sickened and died, or was
lost through accident, and thus the number still fell short. Great
quantities of grain and hay did he also raise on his fertile farm;
and besides the grain and cheese that he shipped to the West Indies
he also sold to the wealthy colonists many Narragansett pacers--swift
horses of the first distinctively American breed. These pacers all came
from one sire, “Old Snip,” who it is said was of Andalusian birth and
was found swimming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, was hauled
on board a trading-ship and was carried to Narragansett, where he was
allowed to run wild on the Point Judith tract. These sure-footed pacers
had a peculiar gait; they did not sway their rider from side to side,
nor jolt him up and down, but permitted him to sit quietly, and thus
endure without fatigue a long journey. In those carriageless days,
when nearly all travel was by saddle and pillion, the broad-backed,
easy-going Narragansett pacers were in such demand that they brought
high prices and proved a good source of income.
Three children were born to the builder of this beautiful colonial
home: William Robinson, who died in Newport in 1804, in a house on the
corner of Broadway and Mann Avenue, and two daughters, Mary and Hannah.
Gay festivities had these young people in the hospitable great house,
especially when a demure young Quaker cousin was sent to them to live
for awhile in order to break up a romantic love-affair of hers with
a young French officer. Count Rochambeau was a guest at her father’s
house, and too many opportunities for love-making were found when the
young Frenchman came to report to his commanding officer.
Gayest and loveliest of all the beauties throughout Narragansett
was fair Hannah Robinson--Unfortunate Hannah. Much testimony of her
extraordinary beauty has descended to us, one story being of her
meeting with Crazy Harry Babcock, that reckless dare-devil of a soldier
whose feats of valor by land and sea were known all over Europe as
well as in America. This extraordinary man, during a visit to England,
was invited to the palace and introduced to the royal family. When the
queen extended her hand to him to be kissed, he sprang briskly from his
knees, exclaiming: “May it please your majesty, in my country, when we
salute a beautiful woman we kiss her lips, not her hand,” and with the
words he seized the astonished queen by the shoulders and impressed
on her lips a rousing smack. Upon his return to America he went to
Narragansett for the avowed purpose of “seeing the prettiest woman in
Rhode Island.” As he entered the parlor of Rowland Robinson’s house
fair Hannah rose to meet him, and the crazy colonel, as she extended
her hand to greet him, dropped on his knee with a look of intense
admiration, saying, in the stilted words of the times: “Pray permit one
who has kissed unrebuked the lips of the proudest queen on earth to
press for a moment the hand of an angel from heaven!”
The great wealth and luxurious manner of living of the opulent
Narragansett planters was shown in no way more plainly than in the
manner in which they educated their children. They spared no pains nor
expense to obtain the best masters and teachers. Rowland Robinson sent
his daughter to Newport to receive instruction from Madame Osborne,
whose fame as a teacher was known throughout America, and whose
“Memoirs” form the dullest book in the English language. At this school
Hannah met the handsome lover who was to have such an influence over
her life. Pierre Simond, or Peter Simons as was most unromantically
Anglicized his name, was a scion of a French Huguenot family, who
taught music and French in Madame Osborne’s school. From the moment the
young couple met they were lovers. Both knew, however, how hopeless it
was to think of obtaining Mr. Robinson’s consent to a marriage which
would appear to him so unequal; they therefore kept their love a secret.
As the time approached for Hannah’s return to her home in Narragansett,
the lovers were in despair at the thought of separation, for they
knew their unhappiness could not be mitigated even by the exchange
of love-letters. At this juncture the young music-teacher managed to
obtain a position as private tutor in the family of Colonel Gardiner,
who lived only two miles from Hannah’s home and who was her uncle.
It can easily be divined that when once in Narragansett the happy
lovers found many opportunities of meeting, which were frequently
brought about by the romantic and easy-going colonel, and were not
hindered by Hannah’s mother when she discovered her daughter’s
love-affair. Though Mrs. Robinson would not give her approval she
tacitly gave her aid by helping to conceal the lovers’ meetings from
Rowland Robinson; and it was with her knowledge that the lover came to
Hannah’s chamber, where he often had to be concealed in the friendly
cupboard.
When Peter Simons could not enter the Robinson house he stood by his
true-love’s window under a great lilac-bush, which is still growing,
sturdy and unbroken under the weight of a century of years. In the
concealing shadow of the lilac-bush words of love might be whispered to
the fair girl who leaned from the window, or letters might be exchanged
with comparative safety.
But true love ran no smoother in the eighteenth century than in the
nineteenth, and when one night a fair hand dropped a tender billet into
the gloom of the lilac-bush, old Rowland Robinson chanced to open the
door of his house and he saw the white messenger descend. Speechless
with suspicion and rage he rushed to the lilac-bush and thrust his
buckthorn stick into it with vigorous blows until a man ran out into
the darkness, whom the irate father in the second’s glimpse recognized
as the “wretched French dancing-master” who taught his nephews.
The horrified and disgusted anger of Rowland Robinson and the scene
that ensued within doors can well be imagined; little peace or
happiness was there for Hannah after her father’s discovery. Updike,
in his “History of the Narragansett Church,” says of her life at
this time: “If she walked, her movements were watched; if she rode,
a servant was ordered to be in constant attendance; if a visit was
contemplated, her father immediately suspected it was only a pretext
for an arranged interview; and even after departure, if the most
trifling circumstance gave color to suspicion, he would immediately
pursue and compel her to return. In one instance she left home to visit
her aunt in New London; her father soon afterward discovered from his
windows a vessel leaving Newport and taking a course toward the same
place. Although the vessel and the persons on board were wholly unknown
to him, his jealousies were immediately aroused. Conjecturing it was
Mr. Simons intending to fulfil an arrangement previously made, he
hastened to New London, arrived a few hours only after his daughter,
and insisted on her instant return. No persuasions or argument could
induce him to change his determination, and she was compelled to return
with him.”
Though Rowland Robinson was firm in his determination and constant
in his action to prevent the lovers from meeting, Hannah--the true
daughter of her father--was equally determined not to give up her
sweetheart; and as the Narragansett neighbors, like the rest of the
world, “dearly loved a lover,” they gladly assisted the romance by
exchanging letters and arranging meetings for the lovers. Months of
harassing suspicions and angry words at home, and frightened meetings
with her lover away from home, told so upon Hannah’s health that her
mother finally permitted to be carried into execution a long-planned
scheme of elopement. It was finally arranged through the agency and
assistance of a young friend of Hannah’s--Miss Belden--and the ever
sentimental colonel-uncle.
Invitations for a great ball had been sent out all over Narragansett,
and to many in Boston, Providence, and Newport. It was to be given by
Mrs. Updike, Hannah’s aunt. She lived eight miles north of Rowland
Robinson’s home, in the old historic house which is still standing and
is now known as Cocumcussuc. A portion of it was the first house or
fort built by the English in Narragansett in the year 1636. Though
Hannah’s father was unwilling to allow his daughter out of his sight,
he at last consented that both Hannah and Mary should go to their
aunt’s ball. They set out on horseback, accompanied by faithful Prince,
the son of Queen Abigail, and were met, as had been arranged, in the
thick woods on the top of Ridge Hill, by Mr. Simons with a closed
carriage. Into this conveyance Hannah entered with her lover, in spite
of her sister’s tears and Prince’s frantic appeals, and rode off to
Providence, where the eloping couple were married.
When the news of Hannah’s disobedience came to the knowledge of Rowland
Robinson, his rage and disgust knew no bounds. He forbade his family
ever to communicate with Hannah again; and knowing well that she must
have been assisted in carrying out her plans to elope, he offered a
large reward to anyone who would make known to him the names of the
persons who had aided her escape.
It would seem that the fair bride should be called Fortunate Hannah,
since she managed to evade her father’s vigilance and wed her
ardent French lover, but alas! Peter Simons, like many another
hero of an elopement, did not prove worthy of the great sacrifice.
Disappointed through the implacable anger of Rowland Robinson in the
hope of obtaining any of his wealth, the unprincipled husband soon
neglected his lovely wife and at last deserted her for days and weeks.
Broken-hearted, alone, and poor, the unfortunate girl began to fail
rapidly in health, and spent many weary, lonely days in her wretched
home in Providence, having for her only companion her dog Marcus, that
had been secretly sent to her by her mother from her Narragansett home.
In the meantime her sister, Mary Robinson, had died of consumption;
and her mother, worn out by grief, had completely failed in health.
Her father, though outwardly stern and unforgiving, was evidently
exceedingly unhappy at the alarming news of his daughter’s state of
health; and at last, of his own accord, sent to live with her and care
for her the negro maid who had attended her in her happy girlhood. He
also conveyed to her the message that she might come home and would be
warmly welcomed, provided she would reveal to him the names of those
who assisted in her elopement. Her compliance with this condition was,
he said, absolutely imperative.
On receiving this message Hannah wrote in answer, with trembling hand,
a most affectionate letter, stating firmly that the sentiments of
honor which he himself had both taught and transmitted to her forbade
her betraying the confidence of those who had aided her and offended
him. Mr. Robinson eagerly opened the letter, but his face changed when
he read her decision, and he tossed the sheet to her mother with the
contemptuous remark, “Then let the foolish thing die where she is!”
As weeks passed the accounts of Hannah’s health grew more alarming
still, and it was evident that a fierce struggle between love and
pride was taking place in the unhappy father’s breast; one day he rose
suddenly from the dinner-table, jumped upon his horse, and saying to
his wife that he should be away from home for a day or two, started on
the thirty-five-mile ride to Providence. He remained overnight at the
Updike farm and reached his daughter’s house in Providence at noon.
Without dismounting he rapped on the door with his riding-whip. Full
of joy at the sight of her old master and at the thought of the happy
reconciliation, the negro maid hastened to the door with the entreaty
that the welcome visitor would come at once to the poor invalid’s
chamber. “Ask your mistress,” said Rowland Robinson, “whether she is
now ready to comply with her father’s request to know the names of
her fellow-conspirators, and say that if she is, he will come in, but
on no other conditions.” Poor Hannah, torn with a thousand emotions,
still clung to her decision not to betray her friends, and her father,
without another word, rode away to the Updike farm. For several weeks
the stubborn and unhappy father, unable to live without news of his
sick daughter, rode at intervals of two or three days from Narragansett
to Providence, knocked at Hannah’s door, asked for her health, and left
without another word.
At last, her friends who had helped in her elopement, hearing of her
father’s firm decision, which barred all reconciliation, insisted upon
her revealing to him their names and the true story; and when Rowland
Robinson next rode up to his daughter’s door he received the welcome
message that she would see him and tell him all. When he entered that
barren chamber all thought of discovering her closely guarded secret
fled at once from his thoughts as he gazed at the wasted form of the
once beautiful girl. He knelt by her bedside and wept aloud in anguish
and remorse. As soon as he recovered his composure he at once rode to
his home, from whence he despatched to Providence in a fast-sailing
sloop four of his strongest and trustiest negro men, and a hand-litter
for the sick, which was, at that time of rough roads and few carriages,
an indispensable article in every well-appointed Narragansett
household. Dusty, travel-stained, and tired, without waiting for a
night’s rest he at once jumped upon a fresh horse and, attended by
Prince, who was mounted and led a horse for Hannah’s maid, poor Rowland
Robinson started for the last time to ride to his sick daughter’s door.
Upon a lovely morning in June, the four strong negroes, bearing the
litter upon which lay the sick girl, with her father and faithful
Prince riding on either side, slowly wended their way to poor Hannah’s
early home. Those who know the beauty of sunny Narragansett in early
June, when the roads are everywhere overhung with the graceful,
sweet-scented blossoms of slender locust-trees, when the roadsides are
one luxuriant, blooming garden of lovely wild flowers, and the fields
are sweet with rich clover, can feel the strong and painful contrast
which the sad figure of the dying girl must have formed to the glowing
life around.
When the spot was reached on Ridge Hill where Hannah had seen for the
last time her sister Mary, Prince saw that she covered her face with
her hands and cried. One other pathetic incident is told by “Shepherd
Tom” of the homeward journey. Though on every side lay a glory of
spring flowers, poor Hannah, with thoughts that no one can fathom,
asked her father to pick for her and lay on her breast a withered sprig
of the pale blossom called life-everlasting, which had bloomed and died
the year before.
At last the painful journey was ended; of the sad meeting between
mother and daughter, and of the sorrowful faces of the faithful
servants, it is needless to write in detail.
That night a whip-poor-will--the bird believed throughout Narragansett
to be the harbinger of death--perched on the lilac-bush under the
window of the chamber where once again slept Unfortunate Hannah; and
throughout the long dark hours sounded gloomily in the father’s ears
the sad, ominous cry of “Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!” The following
day poor Hannah died.
Again did four strong men bear on their shoulders the form of the once
beautiful girl, as they passed under the branches of the sweet-scented
lilac to the grave near the old house where still is shown the
headstone that marks the last resting-place of Unfortunate Hannah
Robinson.
NARRAGANSETT WEAVERS
During the first years of this century there could be found in every
English town, village, and hamlet many hand-looms and many weavers who
on these looms wove for their neighbors and for small cloth-jobbers
strong homespun woollen stuffs, rag-carpets, woollen sheets, cotton
and wool bed-spreads, flannels, coarse linen and tow, heavy cotton
cloth and fine table and bed linen. These hand-looms lingered in use
till about 1840. So universal was then the extinction of hand-weaving
through the vast growth of power-loom manufacture and of spinning by
steam-spindle, and so sudden and complete the destruction and vanishing
of all the old-time implements and machines, that when, ten years ago,
under the stimulus of Ruskin’s fiery appeal for the revivifying of
hand-spinning and hand-weaving, these household arts were again started
in Westmoreland, but a single linen-loom could be found for the work.
In the American colonies hand-weaving was also a universal industrial
art. In no part of the country has the industry lingered longer than
in old Narragansett. In many old New England towns single hand-looms
can be found, some in running order, and with owners capable of running
them to make rag-carpets. Others are still standing, cobwebbed and
dusty, in attic lofts, lean-to chambers, woodsheds, or barns, with no
one to set the piece or fill the shuttles. In Narragansett I know a
score of old looms in good running order, though, save in one instance,
set only for weaving rag-carpets; in many cases the owners, who do
not make weaving a trade, will not “start them up” for weaving less
than a hundred yards of carpeting. This is a long strip for a room
in a cottage or farm-house, so neighbors frequently join together in
ordering these carpets, and in company send vast rolls of the filling,
which is made of inch-wide strips of cloth of all colors and materials
sewed in long strips. Within a few years these old hand-looms have been
used for weaving rag-portières made of silk strips.
Weaving was a very respectable occupation. It is told that the regicide
Judge Whalley lived to great old age in Narragansett--one hundred
and three years--and earned his living by weaving. The son of the
Congregational minister at Narragansett, Dr. Torrey, was a weaver. The
province was full of weavers. Miss Hazard gives the names of many in
her “College Tom.” With all the spinning-jennies for spinning a vast
supply of thread and yarn, there were no power-looms in Narragansett
till 1812. Hand-looms made up all the yarn and thread that were
produced. The prince of Narragansett weavers was Martin Read. In 1761
he was baptized in St. Paul’s Church as “Martin Read, an adult, the
Parish Clerk.” He was a devoted lover of the church and was sexton
for many years. He led the singing, and it is said that under his
leadership the _Venite_ was first chanted in America. During the
troubled and rector-less days of the Revolution, he helped the parish
work along by reading morning-prayers and the funeral-service for the
dead.
He was apprenticed, an orphan, at seven years of age to a
diaper-weaver, and served till he was of age, with one term only of
schooling; but he was ambitious and read eagerly instructive books,
especially on weaving and kindred arts. He married the daughter of an
Irish weaver, and soon had journeymen and apprentices, whom he taught
to sing as they wove; and when they did not sing the men whistled the
airs, and with singing and whistling the work speeded.
This singing at the loom was not a peculiarity of Martin Read’s. We
know the exclamation of Falstaff: “I would I were a weaver, I could
sing Psalms and all manner of songs.” Nares says weavers were generally
good singers, and that as they sat at their work they practised
part-singing. Many of the weavers in Queen Elizabeth’s day were Flemish
Calvinists and therefore given to psalm-singing, hence Falstaff’s
reference.
One weaver, named James Maxwell, wrote some “Weaver’s Meditations”
in rhyme in 1756. The frontispiece of his book--his portrait at his
loom--is thus inscribed:
“Lo, how ’twixt heaven and earth I swing,
And whilst the shuttle swiftly flies,
With cheerful heart I work and sing,
And envy none beneath the skies.”
Martin Read reared his family well, and in the Episcopal Church.
His son, Rev. Dr. Read, preached for many years at Christ’s Church
in Poughkeepsie. He wove coverlets, blankets, broadcloth, flannel,
worsted, linen, tow-cloth, and calamanco. This last was a glossy
woollen twilled fabric, sometimes woven in a pattern in the warp. James
Fontaine, a Huguenot weaver, says it was made of a fine double-twisted
worsted. It was much used for the nightgowns and banians worn by
substantial citizens of the day, and for women’s winter-gowns.
Other goods made by Weaver Read were duroy, durant, and crocus, a
coarse tow-stuff for servants’ wear. This word, crocus, still may be
heard in Virginia, and perhaps elsewhere in the South, where it was
more and longer used than in Narragansett.
Martin Read lived near the old church he so dearly loved, and a sightly
spot it was for a home. Still standing beside the church foundation,
the site where the church first stood, is the deserted house in which
Martin Read lived and wove and whistled and sung. On the road near his
home lives to-day the last of the old-time weavers, one who can weave
woollen and linen stuffs. Hand-weaving is not with him an accidental
industrial makeshift, but his every-day occupation and means of
livelihood. He learned to weave from one of Martin Read’s apprentices.
His low, weather-beaten house, set in a close-walled garden, is one
of the most picturesque in old Narragansett. We entered from a glory
of midsummer sunlight into a cool, pale-green light which penetrated
the rooms through the heavy shadows of the rugged old cedar-trees that
overhung the roof and the ancient lilacs that pressed close to the
windows.
There has ever been associated in my mind with the trade of weaving the
pale and sickly appearance and bearing of many English mill weavers;
and, though ever of country life, this Yankee weaver was no exception
to the rule. His skin, of extreme delicacy, was pale, yet suffused at
times with that semi-transparent flush which is seldom seen save on
those whose life is wholly indoors. His hair and beard were long and
white, and had evidently been light-brown before they were white; his
bright blue eyes looked pleasantly and intelligently out from the wisps
of white hair. His visible attire was a clean, but collarless, white
shirt and a pair of blue overalls; his feet were bare. We mounted with
him the narrow enclosed staircase to the loom-loft.
There was such a flood of color out of doors, the fields and trees
were so green, the tangle of larkspurs in the garden was so blue, the
sunbeams so radiant, that the attic seemed but a dull abiding-place
for a summer’s day; but as the eye grew accustomed to the dimmer light
and learned to avoid the piercing arrows of sunshine that burned in
through the heart-shaped holes in the shutters and made every mote of
wavering dust in their path a point of unbearable glitter, then the
attic seemed quiet and peaceful, and its shadows were grateful; and
even the bang, bang of the loom when it was started up was not a garish
rattle. Heaps of gay woollen yarns lay under the eaves, and a roll or
two of rag-carpeting and strips of worn-out bed-coverlets of various
patterns were hung on the beams or piled in heaps. There were vast
boxes of cotton twine; and many yarn-beams ready wound, and swifts and
quilling-wheels and “scarnes,” many in number, thrust under the garret
eaves. Among the discarded wool-wheels and flax-wheels heaped high in
the corner--obsolete before their fellow, the hand-loom--I did not peer
deep. Though neglected, they are jealously treasured, for “that was
grandma’s foot-wheel,” and “Aunt Eunice used that wool-wheel sixty-two
year,” showed that what seemed to me useless lumber was haloed with
association and tradition. I have never seen or felt elsewhere any such
picture, any such atmosphere of an industrial life that is forever
past, as that old-time weaving. The dim half-light of the loom-room and
the darker garret beyond; the ancient chairs that thrust out a broken
arm, and tables that put forth a claw-foot from the shadows; the low
buzzing of hornets that fluttered against the upper skylight or hung
in dull clusters on the window-frame--hornets so dull, so feeble,
so innocuous in their helplessness that they seemed the ancients of
their day; the eerie clamor of swallows in the chimney; the pungent
aroma of “dry, forgotten herbs,” that swayed in the summer wind from
every rafter; and the weaver, pale and silent, laboriously weaving his
slow-growing web with a patience of past ages of workers, a patience
so foreign to our present high-pressure and double-speed rates that he
seemed a century old, the very spirit of colonial, nay, of mediæval
days.
There was a monotonous yet well-controlled precision in this weaver’s
work that was most soothing, and that seems to be a characteristic
influence of the homespun industries. It was felt by Wordsworth and
voiced in his sonnet:
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute.”
This precision in work is that of the skilled hand and thinking brain
controlling the machine, not the vast power of steam relentlessly
crowding the overworked body and dulled brain.
By this hand-weaving, as if to prove Ruskin’s glowing and inspiring
assertions, this weaver earns an independent living in intelligent
work, of reasonable hours, in a comfortable house, and in conditions
favorable to health--a vast contrast to the overworked, unhealthy,
poorly fed, stultified factory-worker. His business has so prospered
of late that he has had a trade-card printed at the village printer’s
like any other independent manufacturer. From it I learn that he
weaves rag-carpets, bed-coverlets, and hap-harlots. Hap-harlots,
forsooth! could anyone believe that obsolete word had been used since
Holinshed’s day? He wrote in 1570, in his “Chronicles of England,” etc.:
“Our fathers have lien full oft upon straw pallets or rough mats,
covered onlie with a sheet under coverlets made of dagswain or
hap-harlots, and a good round log under their heads instead of a
bolster.”
Yet here have been Narragansett weavers weaving hap-harlots, and
sleeping under hap-harlots, and speaking of hap-harlots as though three
centuries ago were as yesterday. I presume they have made dagswains
also, since there still exists bills of Narragansett shepherds for
dagging sheep.
The old-time cotton and wool bed-spreads or coverlets, seen of old
on every four-post bedstead, he now sells for portières and bathroom
rugs, as well as for bed and couch spreads. They are woven in simple
geometric patterns, just as in the times of the ancient Britons, when
the wools of the weft were dyed with woad and broom. The patterns
are nearly all over a century old. He has a worn pattern-book with
bewildering rules for setting the heddles for over fifty designs.
Quaint of name are the patterns: “chariot-wheels and church-windows,”
is a bold, large design; “church-steps,” a simpler one; “bachelors’
fancy,” “devil’s fancy,” “five doves in a row,” “shooting-star,”
“rising sun,” “rail fence,” “green veils,” offer little in their
designs to give reason for their names. “Whig rose,” “Perry’s Victory,”
and “Lady Washington’s fancy,” show an historical influence in naming.
“Orange-peel” is simply a series of oblong hexagons honeycombed
together. “All summer and all winter” was similar. “Bricks and blocks”
is evenly checkered. “Capus diaper” is more a complicated design for
weaving damask linen, taking five harnesses. Floral names are common,
such as “Dutch tulip,” “rose in bloom,” “pansies in the wilderness,”
“five snow-balls,” etc.
The loom on which this Narragansett weaver works might be six centuries
old. You may see precisely similar ones pictured by Hogarth in the
middle of the eighteenth century; and an older one still in the
Campanile at Florence, by Giotto, in 1334.
These excerpts from a letter of Weaver Rose’s give some pleasant
weaver’s lore, and are in the lucid, simple, and quaint English to be
expected of a man who still weaves and talks of hap-harlots:
“My grandfather and grandmother Robert and Mary Northrup lived at
what is now called Stuart Vale but then known as the Fish Pond, in a
little hamlet of four houses, only one of which, my grandfather’s, is
now standing. He owned a shore and fished in the spring and wove some
at home and went out amongst the larger farmers working at his trade
of weaving, whilst his wife carried on the weaving at home and had
a number of apprentices. He learned his trade of weaving of Martin
Read, the deacon of St. Paul’s Church, who lived a few rods from the
church. He died in 1822, his wife lived till 1848. The spool I gave
you was made by Langworthy Pierce, a veteran of the Revolution. It
has the initials of his name. I send you now one of his shuttles
used for weaving broadcloth, and a square of linen I have woven for
you of a pattern of five harnesses called Browbey. The looms here in
Narragansett were all made by local carpenters. Stephen Northrup made
looms, and Freeborn Church made looms and spinning wheels. I have 2
of his make. Friend Earle! more money can be made by weaving than
farming. I have wove 30 yards of rag carpet in one day at 10 cents a
yard; or 23 cents a yard when I found the warp. There was a man here
by the name of Eber Sherman, he called himself Slippery Eber. He died
in the war of 1812; his widow worked at spinning for 25 cents per
day and supported herself and one son well on that wage. One dollar
and a half per week was regular wage for a woman’s work. It took a
woman one week to weave a coverlet of 3 yards long and 2-1/2 yards
wide. Mahala Douglas went out to work at one dollar and a half per
week making butter and cheese, milking seven cows every week day and
nine on Sunday. She died leaving a large Estate, several thousand
dollars, which her Legatees had no trouble in spending in six weeks.
My grandfather was one of eight children. One brother was Rev. William
Northrup; Thurston Northrup, another brother, was a school-teacher
and a weaver of coverlets and cloth. John Northrup was called Weaver
John. He was a coverlet weaver. John Congdon was a maker of Weavers’
reeds or slays. I have 70 or 80 of his make in my house. I have a reed
that my grandfather Northrup had made when he went to the Island of
Rhode Island weaving Broadcloth. He received 50 cents per day pay.
Good Cream Cheese was 3 cents a pound at the same time of the Embargo
in the war of 1812. I have an Eight and Twenty slay with 29 Beer that
cost one dollar, made by John Congdon 70 years ago, as good as when
made. He lived in North Kingston.”
The word slay or sley, meaning a weavers’ reed, has not been used
commonly in England for many years, and is contemporary with
hap-harlot. A beer was a counting-off of forty warp-threads.
It may be seen by this letter how many classes of workmen were kept
busily employed by these homespun industries; makers of looms, wheels,
reeds, scarnes, raddles, temples, swifts, niddy-noddys, spools, and
shuttles; and turners of warp-beams and cloth-beams. The proper shaping
of a shuttle was as important as the shaping of a boat’s hull. When the
shuttle was carefully whittled out, smoothed off with glass, lightly
shod with steel, and marked by burnt-in letters with the maker’s
initials, it was a proper piece of work, one for a craftsman to be
distinctly proud of. Spools could be turned on a lathe but were marked
by hand. No wonder our weaver loved his old worn-out rubbish; every
piece had been made and used by his kinsfolk and neighbors, who had put
into every spool, shuttle, and loom good, faithful hand-work; and, like
the cloths he wove, they wore well.
Weaver Rose would be an unimpeachable candidate for many of our
modern patriotic-hereditary societies. One great-great-grandfather
held a commission under King George III., which the weaver still has.
Others were members of the provincial assemblies. Two great-uncles
were taken on board a Yankee privateer in the Revolution, carried to
England to Dartmoor Prison, and never heard of afterward. The son
of one of those patriots was captured in the War of 1812, and kept
eight years at Dartmoor, while he was mourned in Narragansett as
dead. He was then released, returned home, and held to his death an
office under the government at Wickford, a Narragansett seaport. One
great-uncle was starved to death in the prison-ship _Jersey_ in the
Revolution, and another lost his life in Newport during imprisonment
by the British. Grandfather James Rose was with the famous Kingston
Reds in the Battle of Rhode Island and other Revolutionary encounters;
and the weaver’s father, William Rose, fought in the War of 1812.
His great-great-grandfather Eldred killed the famous Indian warrior
Hunewell, after that cruel Narragansett tragedy, the Swamp Fight.
Hunewell was naked and covered with grease, but he was not slippery
enough to escape the bitter Englishman, who had been fighting for days.
This tragedy was at Silver Spring, about two miles from the weaver’s
home. Another Indian chased Eldred, but without capturing him. The
chase was long, and Eldred did not spend much time in looking backward,
but he never forgot the Indian’s face; and some years later he met
in Newport an Indian who was very smooth and friendly, but whom he
at once recognized as his old-time enemy. The weaver thus grimly and
laconically tells the sequel: “Grandfather got an awl and settled it
in his forehead and finished him.” Great-grandmother Austin was one of
sixteen children. Their names were Parvis, Picus, Piersus, Prisemus,
Polybius, Lois, Lettice, Avis, Anstice, Eunice, Mary, John, Elizabeth,
Ruth, Freelove. All lived to be three-score and ten, and one to be
five-score and two years old.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the sturdy fighting ancestry of
this weaver, with a distinct sense of pleasure at the quality of
his forebears. He is, in the best sense, a pure American, with not
a drop of admixture of the blood from recent immigrations. Some of
his ancestors were those who made the original Petaquamscut purchase
from the Indians, and here he lives on the very land they purchased.
It is such examples as this that give dignity to New England rural
life, give us a sense of not being offensively new. In my genealogical
researches in England I have not found such cases nearly as common as
in New England. Surprise and even annoyance is shown in England at
your expectation and hope to find descendants of the original owners
occupying farm-houses and manors two hundred years old.
Had the weaving been the only portion of the work done in the
farm-house it would seem an important addition to the round of domestic
duties, but every step in the production of clothing was done at home,
as expressed by Miss Hazard of her great-grandfather’s household in
Narragansett: “From the shepherd who dagged the sheep, the wool-comber
who combed the wool, the spinners who spun, the weavers who wove, all
in regular order till the travelling tailor made the clothes up, and
Thomas Hazard went to meeting in a suit made from wool of his own
growing.” The “all-wool goods, yard wide,” which we so glibly purchase
to-day meant to the Narragansett dame the work of months from the time
the fleeces were given to her deft fingers. After dag-locks, bands,
feltings, tarred locks, were skilfully cut out, the white locks were
carefully tossed and separated, and tied in net bags with tallies, to
be dyed. The homely saying, “dyed in the wool,” indicated a process
of much skill. Indigo furnished the blue shades, madder and logwood
the red. Sassafras, fustic, hickory, and oak bark furnished yellow
and brown. It will be noted that the old-time dyes were all vegetable.
After the dyeing mixed colors could be made by spreading in layers and
carding them over and over again. In carding wool, the cards should
be kept warm and the wool very slightly greased with rape-oil or
“swines’-grease.” At last the wool was carded into light rolls and was
ready for the wheel.
An old writer says, “The action of spinning must be learned by
practice, not by relation.” The grace and beauty of wool-spinning, ever
sung by the poets, need not be described. Stepping lightly backward and
forward, with arms at times high in the air, now low at the side, often
by the light only of the fire, the worker, no matter what her age,
seemed the perfection of the grace of motion; and the beauty of the
occupation makes the name of spinster (the only title by law of every
single woman) a title of honor and dignity.
The preparation of flax was infinitely more tedious and more
complicated. From the time the tender plant springs up, through
pulling, spreading, drying, rippling, stacking, rotting, cleaning,
braking, swingling, beetling, ruffling, hetchelling, spreading, and
drawing, there are in all over twenty dexterous manipulations till the
flax is ready for the wheel, the most skilful manipulation of all,
and is wrapped round the spindle. Flax thread was spun on the small
flax-wheel. “Lint on the wee wheel, woo’ on the muckle.” It was reeled
into skeins on a clock-reel, which ticked when the requisite number had
been wound, when the spinner stopped and tied the skein. A quaint old
ballad has the refrain:
“And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked.”
These knots of linen thread had to be bleached before they were woven.
They were soaked in water for days, and constantly wrung out; they were
washed again and again in the brook; they were “bucked” with ashes
and hot water in a bucking-tub; they were seethed, soaked, rinsed,
dried, and wound on bobbins and quills for the loom. In spite of all
this bleaching, the linen web, when woven, would not be white, and it
afterward went through twoscore more processes of bucking, possing,
rinsing, drying, and grassing. In all, forty bleaching manipulations
were necessary for “light linens.” Thus, at least, sixteen months had
passed since the flax-seed had been sown, during which the good-wife
had not “eaten the bread of idleness.”
With the passing of these old-time household arts of spinning and
weaving, went also the household independence. Well timed was our
struggle for freedom from British rule, when every man and wife on
their own farm held everything necessary for life and comfort--food,
shelter, fuel, illumination, clothing. What need had he or she to fear
any king? It could not be such an independent revolt to-day; in the
matter of clothing alone, no family could be independent of outside
assistance.
The old-time preparatory work of the weaver is much simplified for
this Narragansett weaver in modern times, by the use of machine-spun
threads and yarns. The warp of these bed coverlets is of strong twine
or thread, while the weft is of various woollen yarns or zephyrs or
crewels, bought at mills. These latter are aniline-dyed, and in no
artistic sense equal the old indigo, hickory, sassafras, or madder
home-dyed wools of yore. These skeins of yarn are prepared for use by
spreading them on a reel or swifts, and winding the yarn off on quills
in a quilling-wheel, which is somewhat like a simplified spinning-wheel.
Besides these weavers who worked in their own homes, making their own
wool into cloth to sell, or weaving the thread and yarn brought to them
by their neighbors, there was a distinct class of travelling weavers,
who went from house to house working for a few shillings a day and
their “keep.” They often were quaint and curious characters; frequently
what were known as “natural preachers;” that is, either mystic or
fanatic souls who tried to supplement or supersede the religious
teaching of the community by itinerant preaching. Such teachers and
preachers have ever flourished in Narragansett since the day of Samuel
Gorton and his associates.
One of these weaver-preachers, undismayed by the indifference and even
the disapproval of his neighbors, built a rude log pulpit in the woods
near his home and there communed aloud with God if not with man. The
sound of his fervid prayers and invocations could be heard afar off
by passers-by in the wood-lanes and roads, even in mid-winter; while
the emphasizing thumps of his sturdy fist kept his blood as warm as
his religion and startled the Narragansett squirrels and chipmunks who
thriftily used the recesses of the weaver’s pulpit as a storage-place
for nuts and acorns. There were few women weavers among them,
especially for linen-weaving, which was hard work. Occasionally some
sturdy woman, of masculine muscle and endurance, was a weaver.
One of these Narragansett women-weavers was a witch. She would sit for
hours bending over her loom, silent, peering into it and not doing a
single row. This angered the dames for whom she worked, but they said
nothing, lest they get her ill-will. Suddenly she would sit up and
start her treadle; bang! bang! would go her batten as fast as corn in a
corn-popper; and at night, after she had gone home, when her piece was
still set in the loom, the family would waken and hear the half-toned
clapping of the loom, which someone was running softly to help the
witch out in her stint, probably the old black man. So, behold! at the
end of the week more cloth appeared on the cloth-beam, more linen was
ready for bleaching, and more rolls of carpet were woven than could
be turned out by any man-weaver in the province. So whether it was
hitching up with the devil or not, she always had employment in plenty;
and her fine linen table-cloths were in every bridal outfit, and her
linen web used in many a shroud throughout Narragansett.
She never ate with the family of her employer as did every other worker
in house or on farm, nor was it evident that she brought food with her.
The minister suspected she ate nocake, which she could easily hide
in her pockets. She never asked for water, nor cider, nor switchel,
nor kill-devil, nor had anyone ever seen her drink. Debby Nichols
once saw a bumble-bee fly buzz-buzz out of her mouth as she wove in
the minister’s loom-loft. But the minister said it was only a hornet
flying past her--the garret was full of them. But, sure enough, at
that very hour Joe Spink fell from his horse on the old Pequot trail
from Wickford and broke his leg. Joe said a big bumble-bee stung the
horse on the nose and made him rear and plunge. Joe had had high words
with the witch over some metheglin he had tried to buy from her the
previous week, for she brewed as well as she wove. The minister said
that if metheglin had been the only drink Joe ever bought he wouldn’t
have fallen from his horse, and that it wasn’t the first bee Joe had
had in his bonnet.
One day some careless darkies in a kitchen set on fire a hank of
tow that was being hetchelled by the chimney-side. The sudden blaze
extended to a row of freshly ironed sheets, then to a wool-wheel, and
soon a dense smoke and darting flames filled the room. All ran out of
the house, some for water, some for buckets, some for help, and no one
thought of the witch in the loom-loft. The bang and rattle of her work
made her ignorant of the noise and commotion below, and as the smoke
entered the loft she thought, “But that chimney do smoke!” Finally
a conviction of danger came to her and she made her way down the
loft-ladder and through the entry with difficulty to the open air.
“Where’s the cat?” was her abrupt greeting to the shamefaced folk who
began to apologize spasmodically for their neglect to alarm her. “I
saw her an hour ago on the spare bed in the fore room”--and back into
the house rushed the witch, to return in a few moments with Tabby
safely in her arms. This act of course deserved scant praise. Everyone
murmured that there was probably some good reason for doing it, that
everyone knew witches and cats had close relations, that the house
didn’t burn down anyway, and probably she knew it wasn’t going to.
One night a neighbor met her, breathing heavily, her hand at her side,
hobbling haltingly homeward. He told his wife he guessed the witch
was pretty sick. She told the minister’s wife that the witch was
getting her deserts. The latter in turn told her husband, and during a
ministerial visit the next day he discoursed profitably on the probable
illness and the unsanctified life of that misguided woman. The minister
sat long in the front room sipping sangaree, but the hard-working
little tailoress in the kitchen overheard his moralizing and his story.
And when goose and shears were laid aside, and her day’s work was
over, she hurried through the winter gloaming, across the ice-crusts
of three fields, to the witch’s door. No light shone from the window,
either of evil or domestic significance; but the tailoress pulled
the latch-string and pushed open the door, and by the light of her
hand-lantern found the witch in the chilled house cold and dead.
The following August a band of wondering, marauding boys, with
alternate hesitation and bravado, entered the tenantless house.
The windows had all been broken by missiles thrown by witch-hating
passers-by, and the spring rains and summer suns had freely entered the
room. And lo! the witches bed, on which she died--a sack full of straw
of mouse-barley, with occasional spikes of grain attached--had sprouted
and grown through the coarse hempen bed-tick, and was as green and
flourishing as the grass over her unmarked grave.
WHERE THREE TOWNS MEET
In the heart of Narragansett three towns meet at a cross-roads;
they are North Kingston, South Kingston, and Exeter. It is a lonely
cross-roads, even in days of summer, though Weaver Rose’s cheerful
home is near it; but it is picturesque and beautiful in its extended
view, its overreach of splendid locust-trees, and the tangle of wild
flowers fringing the roadside and rioting along the stone walls. There
is no monument or stone, nothing to mark the special tradition of this
corner, as Squaw Rock at Indian Corner, half a mile farther on the
road, a sinister rock with dark, blood-red veins and splashes, a rock
whereon were dashed the brains of a Narragansett squaw by her drunken
brave of a husband.
This cross-roads, or “corner,” has been the scene many times of
episodes as uncivilized, if not as cruel, as the one that immortalized
Squaw Rock. Here--a spot chosen either through fancy, tradition, or
even rustic fashion, or because here three townships meet--have taken
place several of those absurd bequests of barbaric peoples known as
shift-marriages.
These ungallant and extremely inconvenient ceremonies are not American
inventions or Yankee notions, but an old English custom, being in brief
the marriage of a woman, usually a widow, clad only in her shift, to
avoid hampering her newly made husband with her old debts. All through
New England, in New York and Pennsylvania, this custom was known until
this century. In Narragansett it was comparatively common. The exact
form of the _sacrifice_ (for sacrifice it was of modesty to the new
husband’s cupidity) and notions about it varied in localities. Let me
give a marriage-certificate of a shift-marriage which took place on
this very cross-roads where the three towns meet:
“On March 11th, 1717, did Philip Shearman Take the Widow Hannah
Clarke in her Shift, without any other Apparel, and led her across
the Highway, as the Law directs in such Cases and was then married
according to law by me. WILLIAM HALL, _Justice_.”
It is not specified in this certificate that this grotesque proceeding
took place at night, but, out of some regard for decency, and to avoid
notoriety, such was usually the case.
There is an ancient registration book of births, deaths, and marriages
at the handsome new Town Hall at South Kingston, R. I. There is an
entry within it of a shift-marriage:
“Thomas Calverwell was joyned in marriage to Abigail Calverwell his
wife the 22. February, 1719-20. He took her in marriage after she had
gone four times across the highway in only her shift and hair-lace and
no other clothing. Joyned together in marriage by me.
“GEORGE HAZARD, _Justice_.”
This was but two years after the marriage of Widow Clarke, and the
public parade may have taken place on the same spot, but there is a
slight variation, in that the fair Abigail’s ordeal was prolonged to
four times crossing the road. The naming of the hair-lace seems trivial
and superfluous with such other complete disrobing, but it was more
significant than may appear to a careless reader. At that date women
wore caps even in early girlhood, and were never seen in public without
them. To be capless indicated complete dishabille. A court record still
exists wherein is an entry of a great insult offered to the town
constables by an angry and contemptuous woman. She threatened to pull
off her head-gear and go before them, “only in her hair-lace and hair,
like a parcel of pitiful, beggarly curs that they were.” So the abandon
of only a hair-lace comported well with Abigail Calverwell’s only a
shift.
Hopkinton is another Narragansett town, in the same county. In 1780
David Lewis married at Hopkinton, Widow Jemima Hill, “where four
roads meet,” at midnight, she being dressed only in her shift. This
was to avoid payment of Husband Hill’s debts. Ten years later, in
a neighboring town, Richmond, still in the South County, Widow
Sarah Collins appeared in the twilight in a long shift, a special
wedding-shift covering her to her feet, and was then and thus married
to Thomas Kenyon.
Westerly, still in the same Narragansett county, had the same custom
and the same belief.
“To all People whom It May Concern. This Certifies that Nathanell
Bundy of Westerly took ye Widdow Mary Parmenter of sd town on ye
highway with no other clothing but shifting or smock on ye Evening of
ye 20 day of Aprill, 1724, and was joined together in that honorable
Estate of matrimony in ye presence of
JOHN SANDERS, _Justice_.
“JOHN COREY.
“GEORGE COREY.
“MARY HILL.
“PETER CRANDALL.
“MARY CRANDALL.”
The use of the word smock here recalls the fact that in England these
marriages were always called smock-marriages.
The Swedish traveller, Kalm, writing in 1748, tells of one Pennsylvania
bridegroom who saved appearances by meeting the scantily clad widow
half-way from her house to his own, and announcing formally that the
wedding-garments which he thereupon presented to her were not given to
her but were only lent to her for this occasion. This is much like the
ancient custom of marriage investiture, still in existence in Eastern
Hindostan.
Another husband who thus formally lent wedding-garments to a
widow-bride was Major Moses Joy, who married Widow Hannah Ward in
Newfane, Vt., in 1789. The widow stood in her shift, within a closet,
and held out her hand through a diamond-shaped hole in the door to
the Major, who had gallantly deposited the garments for Madam to
don before appearing as a bride. In Vermont many similar marriages
are recorded, the bride not being required to cross the highway. One
of these unclad brides left the room by a window, and dressed on
the upper rounds of a ladder, a somewhat difficult feat even for a
“lightning-change artist.” In Maine the custom also prevailed. One
half-frozen bride, on a winter’s night in February, was saved for a
long and happy life by having the pitying minister, who was about to
marry her, throw a coat over her as she stood in her shift on the
king’s highway. In early New York, in Holland, in ancient Rhynland,
this avoidance of debt-paying was accomplished in less annoying fashion
by a widow’s appearing in borrowed clothing at her husband’s funeral,
or laying a straw or key on the coffin and kicking it off.
The traveller, Gustavus Vasa, records a shift marriage which he saw
in New York in 1784. A woman, clad only in her shift, appeared at the
gallows just as an execution was about to take place, demanded the
life of the criminal, and was then and there married to him. It is
well known that in England criminals sentenced to death (usually for
political offences) were rescued from the gallows by the appearance
at the time and place of execution of women who claimed the right of
marrying them, and thus saving their lives.
It has been asserted that these shift-marriages were but an ignorant
folk-custom, and that there never was any law or reason for the belief
that the observance procured immunity from payment of past debts. But
it is plainly stated in many of these Narragansett certificates that it
was “according to the law in such cases.” The marriages were certainly
degrading in character, and were gone through with only for the express
purpose of debt evasion, and they must have been successful. The
chief actors in these Narragansett comedies were, from scant negative
testimony of their life and the social position of their families, not
necessarily of limited means. Any man of wealth might not, however,
wish to pay the debts of his matrimonial “predecessor,” as the first
husband is termed in one case.
And it should be remembered also that at the time these weddings took
place there was nothing boorish in the community. Considering the
necessary differences in the centuries, the “South County” was not
nearly as “countrified,” to use a conventional term, then as now.
Exeter has ever been sparsely settled, with many woodlands, meagre
farms, and little wealth, though it had one church with a thousand
members; but North Kingston had a thrifty and enterprising general
population, with many men of wealth, and handsome houses. South
Kingston, the nearest town-centre to the cross-roads, was settled
by men of opulence and of polite culture. It was the richest town
in the State of Rhode Island, paying, as late as 1780, double the
taxes assigned to Newport and one-third more than Providence. The
cross-roads, where the three towns meet, was not far from St. Paul’s
Church, where the planters and their families gathered each Sunday,
riding to it over the very highway where the shift-marriages took place.
As I sat on a fallen tree last summer at the lonely cross-roads, the
scene of so many of these shift-marriages, the place, with its fairly
tropical bloom, seemed a romantic spot for such a grotesquery; but
the picture of the last of these benumbed brides, who, early in this
century, clad only in a linen shift, on a February night--a _New
England February night_--shivered across the frozen road to avoid
the payment of some paltry debt, and the thought of the unspeakable
husband who would let her go through such a mortifying and distressing
ordeal, there seemed scant romance, and nothing but ignorant and sordid
superstition.
TUGGIE BANNOCKS’S MOONACK
Tuggie Bannocks, the Narragansett negress, decided to work a charm
on old Bosum Sidet, the negro tinker. She was not going to charm him
in the ordinary commonplace way, albeit pleasing, that most dames
follow--be they old or young, black or white--to allure human beings of
the opposite sex. Her charm was, alas, a malignant one, a “conjure,”
that she angrily decided to work upon him as a revenge for his clumsy
and needless destruction of her best copper tea-kettle while he was
attempting, or I suspect pretending, to repair it. This charm was not
a matter of a moment’s hasty decision and careless action; it required
some minute and varied preparation and considerable skill to carry it
out successfully, and work due and desired evil.
Tuggie’s first step, literally, was to walk over the snowy fields,
the frozen roads, to Bosum’s house to obtain some twigs or sprigs of
withered grass that had grown and still lingered in his dooryard.
Lest Bosum’s wife should suspect any uncanny motive for her visit, she
carefully elaborated a plan, and carried on, in its furtherance, a long
conversation with regard to a certain coveted dye-stuff which Mother
Sidet manufactured; it turned all woollen stuffs a vivid green, and
was in much demand throughout Narragansett to dye old woollen rags and
worn-out flannel sheets and shirts this brilliant, verdant hue, when
they could thereafter be used to most astonishing and satisfactory
advantage in conferring variety in the manufacture of those triumphs
of decorative art, those outlets of rural color-sense, home-made woven
rag-carpets, and hooked and braided rugs. Tuggie argued with much
dignity and volubility that she should be told the secret of this
dye-stuff as some slight compensation for her ruined tea-kettle. It is
needless to state that she was unsuccessful, nor had she expected to be
otherwise. The secret of the dye was Molly Sidet’s stock-in-trade, just
as the soldering-iron and solder were her husband’s.
At Molly’s refusal Tuggie waxed wroth, and a most unpleasant exchange
of personalities took place, which culminated in Tuggie’s exasperating
reference to an event which had occurred in Bosum’s youth, and about
which he and his wife were exceedingly and naturally sensitive. He
had once gone proudly to Boston for a three months’ visit to ply his
trade and see the town. At the end of two weeks he had reappeared
in Narragansett, kit in hand and depressed in appearance. When
interrogated as to the reason of his sudden and speedy return, he had
answered, acrimoniously, that “Boston folks is too full of notions.”
In the course of a few weeks, however, news came to Narragansett that
Bosum had been arrested in Boston for his well-known trick of stealing,
and had been whipped through the town at the cart-tail. Nothing could
anger Molly Sidet more than a reference to “Boston notions.” Tuggie
used this thorn in the side with well-planned judiciousness and with
the pleasing and wholly satisfactory result that Molly ordered her
fiercely out of the house. This was precisely what she desired, for a
witch cannot work a full, a thoroughly successful conjure on one who
has always treated her well and kindly, and shown her due hospitality;
hence old Tuggie, by Molly’s abrupt expulsion of her from her house,
was left free to work her wicked will.
Though Tuggie did not get the coveted dye-stuff, nor the recipe
therefor, she did not return home empty-handed; she managed to
pick without discovery a few leafless twigs from the great bush of
southernwood that grew by the stone doorstep of Bosum Sidet’s house,
and she felt that her visit had not been in vain. Fortune favored her.
As she passed the door of the tinker’s barn she slipped in unobserved
and clipped a few hairs from the tail of his cow. It would have been
much better, much surer, to have had these hairs from Bosum’s own head,
but to aspire to a fibre of his close-cropped wool was useless.
As Tuggie Bannocks walked home over the crisp snow she muttered to
herself with delight, and she glowered and scowled at the children as
she passed the school-house at the corner, and they hooted and jeered
at her in return, and called out, “Te-Rap, Te-Rap,” which everyone
knows is the greeting that witches cry out to each other.
She certainly was deemed a witch by her neighbors as well as the
children. And this reputation was not accidental, it was jealously
cultivated. She conformed her mien and behavior to all that was
expected of a witch; and she had been gifted by nature with one
feature which, much to her satisfaction, enabled her to exhibit
convincing proofs of her pretensions. She had two full rows of double
teeth (front teeth and all were double), which could be displayed to
telling and bewildering advantage to those who thought her “just like
other folks.”
She did have some uncanny habits; some that, a century previous, in a
Puritan community, would have set her afloat to sink or swim.
She never sat upon stool or chair or settle in anyone’s house; no one
had ever seen her seated save on a table or dresser or bed, or even on
a cradle-head--this to the painful apprehension of the mother who owned
the cradle. When spinning flax in one house she sat on a saw-horse. She
had not a chair in her house, but there was an oaken chair-moulding
at the top of the wainscoting in her spacious old kitchen; and it was
currently reported and believed that when she was alone she perched
or clung with her heels on this moulding. The Newport chap-man, Chepa
Rose, told at the Ferry that he saw her one night running round the
room on the moulding. But Chepa was not truthful, so I do not believe
it.
Tuggie dwelt alone in the ell part of an old gambrel-roofed house,
which had seen better days, but was now deserted and sadly dilapidated,
and was indeed in its main portion almost roofless. The ell, which
contained the great raftered kitchen and two other rooms, was, however,
tight and comfortable, and made a cheerful, picturesque home. Tuggie,
who was strong and capable, worked for the farmers’ wives around;
dipped candles, made soap, spun yarn and wove carpets, brewed and
salted; she also cultivated a little patch of land of her own, and
knit stockings to sell, and was altogether a very thrifty, industrious
person. She was in reality far more afraid of being bewitched than she
was confident of bewitching, and that evening, as she prepared to “burn
a project” to conjure old Bosum Sidet, she started at every sound, and
turned her petticoats inside out, to keep off evil spirits, and at last
hung a bag of egg-shells around her neck as a potent saving-charm.
She first mixed a little flour and water into dough and stirred in the
hairs from the cow’s tail--these were the straw for her brick; then
she moulded the dough into the shape of a heart and stuck two pins in
for legs and two for arms; this would surely give Bosum “misery in de
legs and arms”--in short, rheumatism. This dough-heart she set aside,
for it was not properly part of the project, and would only fulfil its
diabolical mission when it was carried to Bosum’s door and set upon his
fence or doorstep, when the “misery” would begin.
She then, with rather a quaking heart, prepared to burn the project.
The sprigs of southernwood from Bosum’s door-yard, a few rusty nails,
the tail of a smoked herring, a scrap of red flannel, a little mass
of “grave-dirt” that she had taken from one of the many graveyards
that are dotted all over Narragansett, and, last of all, that chief
ingredient, the prime factor in all negro charms--a rabbit’s foot--were
thrown into a pot of water that was hung upon the crane over a roaring
fire. Of course everyone in Narragansett knew that when a project began
to boil the conjured one would begin to suffer some mental or bodily
ill; hence Tuggie listened with much satisfaction to the premonitory
bubbling within the pot.
She stepped into the centre of the room on account of the heat
of the fire, and because it is not good luck to watch a boiling
project; and as she stood in the red glow of the firelight she was
the personification of negro superstition. Tall and gaunt, with long
bony arms, and skinny claws of hands, with a wrinkled, malicious,
yet half-frightened countenance, surrounded by little pig-tails of
gray wool that stuck out from under her scarlet turban, with her old
petticoat turned inside out, and a gay little shawl pinned on her
shoulders, she stood like a Voodoo priestess eagerly watching and
listening. When the boiling fairly began, she commenced swaying,
rocking herself backward and forward, patting the floor with heavy
foot, almost dancing while she muttered and sung, in a low voice, a few
gibberish charms that had been taught by her mother, Queen Abigail.
She rolled her eyes up in a superstitious ecstasy, and swung her long
arms to the rhythm of her heathenish song, when suddenly a shock like
an earth-quake struck her door; it flew violently open, and some long,
heavy object rushed in, struck Tuggie violently on her tender shins,
and threw her, face downward, on the floor. She was for a moment
stunned with the fall and with the suddenness of the assault, but when
she regained her senses she still lay on the floor with eyes tightly
closed and her face covered with her hands, for this violent assailant
was surely that terrifying creature, a “moonack,” that she had raised
and brought by her wicked conjuring, and if she glanced at it, it would
cause her instant death.
Perfect stillness had succeeded the assault. The old negress groaned
and tried to pray. She repeated some old Voodoo charms, the Creed, all
kinds of words to ward off evil spirits, and at last pleaded aloud,
“Oh, Mass’ Debbil, you only lets me go dis time, I won’t nebber burn no
projects no more; I warn’t a-goin’ to hurt Bosum anyway, I only wants
to git a new tea-kettle outen him. I’ll frow de project out, and burn
up de dough-baby, an’ lug back dat wool I stole from Debby Nickkels,
an’ I won’t nebber purtend I’se a witch agin. Oh! Mass’ Moonack! Don’t
take me dis time.” At this juncture she again became speechless with
terror, for she heard soft, irregular footsteps entering the door. She
groaned and moaned, but did not open her eyes.
Four pale and staring boys, Tom and Jeffrey Hazard, Zeke Gardiner,
and Pel Noyes, stole softly in on tiptoe, caught hold of the clumsy
caricature of a bob-sled that had so fiercely assaulted Tuggie’s shins
and knocked her down, dragged it out of the house and disappeared
with it down the road. Jeffrey Hazard, who had in him throughout his
entire life a far more active and real devil than any evil spirit that
Tuggie conjured or dreamed of, could not resist, ere he left the house,
catching the old woman by the foot as he passed her and pulling her as
if to take her off with him, until her groans of fright made him desist.
Old Tuggie listened to the light footsteps and the dragging noise in
agony. With close-shut eyes she listened to the steps of the devils
and moonacks as they gradually went away from the house. The cold, icy
night-air blew in upon her as she lay on the floor, the water burned
down in the pot, and a nauseous odor of burning fish and flesh filled
the house. At last she tremblingly arose, closed the door, swung the
pot off the fire, seized a horseshoe and prayer-book, and went to bed.
The week previous Pel Noyes had been to Boston, and had returned with
his brain and tongue full of a fine sled for coasting that he had seen
in that great metropolis. With four old sleigh-runners and a few
boards he had rigged an imitation of the beautiful “double-runner,”
and the four boys sallied out that winter night to use and enjoy it.
They intended to skim past Witch Tuggie’s door with a shrill and
annoying shriek of defiance, but alas! their clumsy steering-apparatus
broke when they were half-way down the hill, and the contrary sled,
rudderless and uncontrolled, instead of gliding past the witch’s door
banged into it, with the full success that we know. The boys were
thrown into the snow outside the door, and their first impulse was to
abandon their newly manufactured sled and run for their lives; but they
were quick to discover, from manner and word, that Tuggie was more
frightened than they were, and they stole in softly and rescued the
sled out of the very witch’s den.
A BLACK POLITICIAN
On a bright June morning in the year 1811, old Cuddymonk sat in
the cheerful sunlight at the open door of his house, on the banks
of Lake Petaquamscut, in old Narragansett. Cuddymonk was a negro;
but a Narragansett negro was, at that date, of almost another race
than a Southern negro. He was free; he was usually respected and
self-respecting; he might, and often did, own a house and farm of
his own; and he had a certain independent social position which was
far from being a despised one, for he enjoyed, with his rich white
neighbors, who had been slave-owners, a friendly intimacy that
was denied to a poor white man. He was, however, somewhat lazy,
occasionally untruthful, and even dishonest--like his Southern colored
brother. Cuddymonk was a typical Narragansett negro--sharp, shrewd, and
in the main thrifty. He was deeply and consistently superstitious, and
knew a thousand tales of ghosts and spirits and witches and Manitous,
old traditions of African Voodooism and Indian pow-wows. He was
profoundly learned in the meaning of dreams and omens and predictions,
and he did not hesitate to practise--or attempt to practise--all kinds
of witch-charms and “conjures” and “projects,” though he was a member
in good standing, as he proudly stated, of “de Pistikle Church.”
He was a good cobbler, a fair tinker, a poor mason, a worse carpenter,
a first-class fisherman. He worked at any and all of these trades with
cheerful and indolent impartiality, just as he fiddled, and sheared
sheep, and ploughed, and sowed, and raked, and harvested for his rich
white neighbors; but when anyone asked him his real trade, he proudly
answered, “I’s er pollertishun.”
He was indeed a politician, for he had held the highest political
position that his State and race afforded: he had thrice been elected
“Black Gov’nor” of Narragansett on “Nigger ’Lection Day”--not on
account of his master’s great wealth and high position, as was in
slavery times “Gov’nor” Aaron Potter; not for his military prowess,
as was “Gov’nor” Guy Watson, who had served bravely at Ticonderoga
and at the absurd capture of General Prescott; not, as was “Gov’nor”
Prince Robinson, for his handsome person and stately appearance,
for poor Cuddy possessed neither. He had been elected just as white
governors frequently are elected nowadays--because he was a politician.
His office, however, bore no salary and but few emoluments; but it
conferred great honor and dignity, and through it he received many
small favors. He was consulted as to the settlement of many petty
disputes among his black brothers, and his decision was law. His office
thus had a certain power, and commanded some respect among the white
people, who through him could obtain small settlements and adjustments,
and arrange many matters in their relations with the negroes, without
the trouble of personal effort. Cuddy had the honor of having many
of his legal decisions and political aphorisms and his abstruse
financial opinions quoted at the white Governor’s table, where they
had been received with much laughter, and some praise, also, for their
shrewdness.
His election had been a scene of great festivity. On the third
Saturday in June (on which Nigger ’Lection was always held) there
gathered in the great oak grove on Rose Hill the black inhabitants,
riding on saddles and pillions, in chaises and farm-wagons, in ox-carts
even--men, women, and children--all in their gayest and finest attire,
from all the towns around. At ten o’clock the canvass commenced. Weeks
of “’lectureneerin’ and parmenteerin’” had roused great interest in the
event, and at last the two rows of the male friends of the respective
candidates were arranged in lines under the trees in the charge of two
pompous marshals, while the women stood admiringly around. Cuddymonk,
mounted on Colonel Gardiner’s gray horse, and wearing a fine coat and
knee-breeches that had been given him by the colonel, with a great
borrowed gold-laced cocked hat balanced on the back of his head, rode
up and down the line flourishing a long sword that had been lent him
for the occasion. And he kept quiet and order, that no one might change
ranks after the counting began, or step from one end of the line to the
other, and thus fraudulently increase the number of votes. When the
counting was done the number of votes and successful candidate was
announced. Cuddymonk’s election was received with tumultuous cheers and
congratulations.
Only one event occurred to mar the dignity of this first election. As
he was about to end his inauguration address with a glorious flourish
and climax of ornate rhetoric, his defeated opponent called out, in a
high, malicious voice, “Cuddy, yer calfs has got round in front!” Cuddy
glanced down at his legs with apprehensive mortification. Alas! it was
too true. Colonel Gardiner had given with the knee-breeches a pair of
his fine long stockings: but as he was as sturdy and muscular as Cuddy
was thin, and as the politician had even more “negative calf and convex
shin” (as said Randolph of Virginia) than have most of his race, the
colonel’s stockings hung in unsightly folds; that Cuddy’s wife, Rosann,
remedied by thrusting into each stocking-leg a great roll of sheep’s
wool. In the heat of “parmenteerin’,” and through constant friction
against his horse’s sides, Cuddy’s woollen calves had indeed “got round
in front.” In vain did he try, amid the jeers of his opponents, to
replace the unsightly wads in a dignified and proper position; they
refused to stay placed, and for the rest of the day, at the dinner and
at the dance, the false calves hung in front of and under his sharp old
knees, looking for all the world, in the gray, wrinkled stockings, like
a pair of hornets’ nests under the eaves of a house.
It may plainly be seen that by virtue of his position old Cuddymonk was
of the high aristocracy of Narragansett black society. He was also an
aristocrat by birth. The blood of African kings ran in his veins, and
a strong cross of Indian blood, that of old King Ninigret, showed in
his high cheek-bones and coarse black hair. His skin, too, was far from
black. As he sat in the clear sunlight on this May morning, his bare
feet and hands and face were of a uniform glowing golden-brown color,
as rich and cheerful, though not as orange-tinted, as a ripe pumpkin.
The appearance of his head was, also, most unlike the wool-covered,
low-browed, heavy-jawed cranium of a negro; for his half-curly, coarse
hair grew on the back part of his head only, and stuck out in a great
stiff, surrounding halo. The top and sides of his head being thus left
bare gave to him the appearance of having an extraordinarily high and
brain-developed forehead; and altogether these peculiarities caused
him to bear a comical cranial resemblance both to the noble Shakespeare
and a blue-haired, ring-crowned baboon. His teeth and eyeballs showed
the brilliant, glittering white of the negro, not at all like the dingy
black snags and reddish, inflamed eyeballs seen in the Indian. He wore
a collarless and rather ragged white shirt, an ancient and much-worn
long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, the very coat which had been
given to him by Colonel Gardiner to attire him fitly and gloriously
upon his election as “Gov’nor.” But the garment having served through
three terms of office (to say nothing of the many years it had
faithfully covered the colonel’s back), was now degraded to every-day
wear. Cuddy was also clad in a shapeless pair of loose yellowish tow
trousers called “tongs,” that bore strong evidence not only of home
spinning and weaving, but of home tailoring as well, if such unsightly
great linen bags could be said to be tailored.
Cuddy regarded with much satisfaction a row of dilapidated beehives
that stood by his door, whose busy inhabitants furnished to him the
toothsome honey he so dearly loved, and which he could so readily and
profitably sell when he could “spare” it. He looked with equal pride on
a row of thriving okra-plants, whose long green pods would in midsummer
make for him such succulent and nourishing soups, and would also be
sliced into delicate pale green, six-rayed stars, and displayed for
weeks on window-sills and door-stones and shed-tops and stone walls in
his small domain, through sunny, windless days when the starry wafers
would not be blown away, drying for his own winter use and to carry
to Newport to sell. His only other crop was represented by a freshly
turned plot of earth--a potato-field--which he had planted the previous
day.
Cuddymonk stretched himself with delight in the sunshine, and thus
spoke to his wife, Rosann, a gay-turbaned old woman, who was twice as
fat and twice as black as he was:
“I tell ye, Rosann, ’tatoes an’ honey an’ okra is a tousan’ times
better’n pigs; ye don’ have ter feed ’em, an’ tend ’em, and watch ’em
eaten theirselves up. Dey jess grows an’ grows for nothin’. Ef more
folks growed ’tatoes an’ okra in dis country, times’d be better’n dey
is.”
Rosann did not answer him, she seldom did; and now her attention
was called to a horse and rider that had turned from the main road
and were advancing up the narrow lane that led to Cuddy’s house.
Mounted visitors were not frequent at Cuddy’s humble home, even on
gubernatorial business; and when he and Rosann saw that the horseman
was no less a person than Constable Cranston, of North Kingston, they
stared in open-mouthed amazement. No less astonished were they when the
sheriff announced his errand--that he had come to arrest the “Gov’nor”
for debt. Suit had been brought against him and judgment rendered, and
his arrest was the next step.
For Cuddymonk, like many another philosopher and many another
politician, was careless and even tricky in business matters, and had
been accused by both black and white neighbors of “never paying fer
nothing if he could help it.” That he should have been arrested for
this special debt was to him most astonishing, and he denounced it as
keen injustice. He thus protested to the sheriff:
“Mass’ Cranston, yer don’t know what yer a-doin’. I don’t owe ole man
Hazard nothin’! Yer see, it was jess like dis. I say ter him, I mus’
hab er pig ter raise. He say ter me, ‘Take one ob mine;’ an’ he press
me ter take it, kase it’s a runtlin’, an’ he’s afear’d it’ll die. An’
Rosann, she knows how ter mother runtlin’s, so I takes der pig. An’ I
say, ‘Ole man Hazard, I pay you free dollar ob de money I git for der
pig.’ He say, ‘All right, Cuddy.’ Now I don’t nebber git no money fer
dat pig. I buy de corn ter feed der pig of Peleg Brown; an’ when I kill
de pig an’ take him ter Peleg ter sell, he don’ come ter ser much as de
corn he eat. I t’ink he shrink kase I kill him in de discrease ob de
moon. So I nebber got nothin’ fer de pig, so in course I don’ owe ole
man Hazard nothin’. I ain’t got no money ter pay wid, anyway. I tell
ye, Mass’ Cranston, times nebber’ll be good in dis country till corn’s
a pistareen a bushel an’ pork a pistareen a pound. Den de pore man’ll
hab some chance.”
Mr. Cranston knew old Cuddy too well to allow him to proceed into the
discussion of political economy; and he interrupted the “Gov’nor,”
saying, with much gravity, that the law must take its course, nor
could the execution of justice be delayed; that since Cuddy could not
pay, he must come at once with him to jail. The negro rose cheerfully,
saying, as he hobbled into the house:
“Wal, ef I mus’ go I mus’; but de exertootion ob justice’ll hab to move
mighty slow a-takin’ ole Cuddy ter jail. I’se got der rheumatiz, so I
can’t hardly walk. I’se dat bad I t’inks I mus’ be witch-rid by ole
Tuggie Bannocks. Dat’s why dat pig eat ser much corn kase she conjured
him. Times nebber’ll be good in dis country whiles dey don’ hang ole
witches like Tuggie Bannocks. Hitch yer hoss ter de button-wood tree
an’ come in an’ set down while I’se packin’ up, an’ Rosann’ll cook ye
some early ’tatoes. Run out an’ git some of our first crap, Sanna.”
“Early potatoes!” exclaimed Mr. Cranston, “at this time of the year!”
“Yis, I’se a fust-rate farmer, ef I ain’t much on pig-raisin’. I allays
has fine early ’tatoes, de fust yer see anywheres. Jes’ look at dem!”
Rosann appeared with her apron full of the freshly planted potatoes,
that, negro-fashion, he had planted whole, and that had spent a few
hours only on Cuddy’s farm; and as the sheriff refused to allow her
to cook them for him, she placed them upon a blanket in the centre of
the floor, upon which she and Cuddy were accumulating the articles that
the negro wished to take to jail with him. The pile rapidly increased.
Old coats and shirts, a feather pillow, a fiddle, a prayer-book, a pair
of long boots filled with flax-seed, were added to the contents of the
blanket.
“Come, come,” said the sheriff; “you can’t take all that along with
you. How are you going to carry it?”
“I guess you’ll hab ter tote it for me, Mass’ Cranston, I’se dat bad
wid the rheumatiz.”
This was more than the constable had bargained for. This arrest of
old Cuddy was more than half a joke, and was done at the instigation
of several farmers who hoped thus to obtain some satisfaction for the
many debts Cuddy had argued and twisted himself out of paying. They
had all fancied that the terrified politician would gladly pay over
the three dollars at once, as it was well known that Rosann had a good
stockingful of silver dollars hidden under the hearth-stone--and one
of her stockings full of silver was well worth having. The constable
was on his way to attend to other and more pressing duties, and had
but little time to spend over this arrest; much less did he wish to
ride to Kingston jail carrying a great pack of Cuddymonk’s clothing and
possessions behind him. He told Rosann to remove half of the articles
from the blanket, and a long and wordy argument with the “Gov’nor”
arose over every relinquished treasure, ending in the constable’s
complete rout when he attempted to leave the foot-stove behind and to
pour the flax-seed out of his boots. “I can’t do dat, noway,” said
Cuddy; “it’ll spoil deir shape ef I don’ keep flax-seed in ’em, an
I’se afeard I can’t get none in jail.” At the end of half an hour the
blanket with its contents was rolled into a great, irregular, unwieldy
bundle and strapped on the horse’s back.
The man of law mounted his horse, and with his prisoner passed slowly
down the narrow lane and through the rocky cross-road under the
feathery pale-green foliage and sweet-scented pink-and-white blossoms
of the graceful locust-trees that form such a glory in early summer by
all the roadsides throughout sunny Narragansett. Flickering patches of
glowing sunlight fell through the clusters of peachy locust-blossoms
on the stone walls and hedgerows, that were a great, luxuriant, tangled
garden of faintly perfumed wild flowers. The leaves of sweetbrier and
bayberry sent out a pungent, spicy odor that mingled with the vapid
and cloying sweetness of the locust-blossoms. Great fields of clover
wafted their fresh balm in little puffs of pure sweetness that routed
the combined fragrance of locust, bayberry, and brier. Thousands of
bees hummed over the sweet, sunny fields and in the fragrant, flowering
branches--Cuddy’s own bees gathering for him the luscious honey he
loved. Singing-birds flew lightly and warbled softly around. The
tropical blood of the old negro fairly glowed with the sense of light
and perfume and melody and warmth, and he laughed aloud with sensuous
delight as if the road to jail lay through Paradise.
He hobbled painfully, however, even in the warm sunlight, and he
frequently sat down on a sunny stone to rest his rheumatic old bones;
but his tongue never ceased wagging, and he poured forth to the
constable a flood of political, ethical, physical, legal, spiritual,
meteorological, thaumaturgical, and medical advice, and also a complete
local history of past events in Narragansett. A flame of youth and
memory and happiness seemed kindled by the glorious summer day in his
heart and brain, though his poor body was too stiff and worn to renew
also its activity and youth.
At last he said, smilingly, to the constable: “Mass’ Cranston,
ef you’ll go de ribber road an’ wants ter let me stop ter Kernel
Gardiner’s I kin get some money; he owes me five dollar for honeycomb.”
Gladly did Sheriff Cranston consent, though Colonel Gardiner’s house
was two miles out of the way, for he saw now a prospect of release
from his cumbersome charge. “Here, Cuddy,” he said, “we sha’n’t get to
the Colonel’s for two hours at this rate--you talk so much and walk so
little. You get up and ride and I’ll walk for awhile, then we shall get
along faster.”
The old negro, with the constable’s assistance, mounted and smiled with
delight; for he loved a horse, as do all of his race. A gleam of humor
twinkled in his eye as he urged on the sturdy sorrel, a half-blooded
Narragansett pacer, until she ambled along at a rate that forced the
constable to walk at an uncomfortably rapid and perspiring pace. Nor
was Mr. Cranston altogether comfortable mentally. He winced several
times in his progress at the laughing inquiries and jeers of the
farmers that he saw in the field or passed in the road; and the shouts
of the district-school children at the “Corner,” who chanced to be “out
at recess” as the “Black Gov’nor” and his white foot-runner coursed
along, made him keenly conscious that the dignity of the law was not
fully preserved, either in his hurrying, panting figure or in the
grotesque appearance of short-legged Cuddy. For the Narragansett pacer,
like others of her race, was phenomenally broad-backed; and Cuddy’s
short, stiff legs, clad in their unsightly, flapping tow tongs, stuck
out at an absurd angle, showing a long expanse of skinny, bare ankles
that looked like yellow turkey-legs; and the enormous uncurried leather
shoes that he had donned, in which to walk in comfort to jail, looked
twice as large as ever in that prominent position. The constable had an
uneasy suspicion that Cuddy had retained his tow tongs and long-tailed
coat, and had put on his old black satin brass-buckled stock and red
woollen comforter and great moth-eaten fur cap--the worst clothes he
had in the world--in order to look as ridiculous as possible, and thus
guy his captor. But the cheerful yellow countenance of the prisoner
bore not a trace of any possibility of ever cherishing a sinister
design.
When they reached the great gambrel-roofed house of Colonel Gardiner
the negro dismounted and entered. He soon reappeared, saying,
cheerfully, “I’se got de money, Mass’ Cranston.”
“Hurry up, then, and give me the three dollars,” said the constable,
impatiently. “I want to get off.”
The negro stared in astonishment: “I ain’t agoin’ ter spen’ dat
honey-money dat way--payin’ fer an ole dead pig I don’ owe nothin’ fer.
I’se goin’ to keep it ter be comferable in jail wid. Didn’ yer hear
Rosann say, ‘Keep comferable, Cuddy?’ Dat’s why I brung de foot-stove
fer!”
The constable was wild with indignation and disgust. He had gone two
miles out of his way--painfully running and perspiring while his
prisoner rode at ease--and now he was farther from the end of his
vexatious business than ever. He impatiently explained and argued
to the stubborn negro that if he would only pay over part of the
five dollars he would need no jail comforts. Still the old man was
persistent in his determination; he had started to go to jail, and to
jail he would go.
“I ain’t agoin’ ag’inst de course ob de law. It ’ud be a pretty scandal
fer de Gub’nor not ter go ter jail when he ’rested. Set ebberybody a
bad edsample. I’se er law-erbidin’ citterzman, an’ I’se goin’ ter ’bey
de law ob de lan’. B’sides, Rosann she say she t’inks I get red ob my
rheumatiz’ in jail. Ole Tuggie Bannocks can’t get me out nights ter
witch-ride me.”
The discomfited sheriff at last rode slowly on, while Cuddy again
hobbled alongside, still cheerful, still philosophizing, still
advising. Mr. Cranston was puzzled. He could not abandon his prisoner,
nor could he persuade or force him to pay the debt; still less could he
hurry him, and the time to perform other and more important duties was
close at hand. At last, completely baffled and conquered, he suddenly
exclaimed: “Here, Cuddymonk, I’ve had enough of this; take your bundle,
I’ll pay your debt to old Hazard and the costs, too.”
“Mass’ Cranston, is dat de way yer does yer duty? I’se agoin’ ter jail
ef I hab ter walk dere alone, an’ tell de jedge dat de constable run
off an’ leff me. I ain’t no runnagadore. I’se goin’ in de cause ob de
right. You’se ’rested me, an’ I’se agoin’ ter stay ’rested. I nebber
see a jail, anyway, an’ I wants ter see one. Times neber’ll be good in
dis country till bof people an’ rulers knows erbout de instertootions
ob de lan’!”
Again did the baffled sheriff explain and expostulate and seek to rouse
in Cuddy a sense of pride and dread of shame. “It’s most time for
’Lection Day, Cuddy. You’ll never be elected again if you go to jail.
They’ll never want a rogue for Gov’nor.”
“’Cause de Gov’nor am a rogue this year ain’t no sign de next one won’t
be,” answered wise Cuddy. And when the constable had straightened out
Cuddy’s ambiguous thought, he said to himself that black politics were
much like white.
“I can’t see why all you blacks are so dishonest and tricky!”
“Why, Mass’ Cranston” (with an injured but unresentful air), “dey has
ter be--dey so kep’ down. It all de fault ob dat unrageous ole George
Washin’ton. When he a-dyin he rolls his eyes an’ say: ‘Forebber keep de
nigger down’--an’ it take a hundred year to work out a dyin’ spell.”
This astounding piece of post-mortem news about the Father of his
Country was new to the constable, though it was commonly believed by
negroes then as now. He answered Cuddy severely and sharply:
“Who told you that nonsense? It’s no reason, anyway. There is no need
for any nigger to be dishonest unless he wants to.”
“Now, Mass’ Cranston, dis’ jess de way I looks at it. Times nebber’ll
be good in dis country till things is fixed an’ proputty’s divided so
no one can’t be poor; den no one can’t be dishonest, cause ef dey has
plenty dey won’t want ter be.”
The constable felt that it was useless to argue further with such a
philosopher, and rode on for some time in silence; then he desperately
exclaimed: “Cuddy, what’ll you take to go home again? I can’t bother
any longer with you. I’ve got to go to Wickford to-night, and you can’t
walk there.”
The old negro shook his head profoundly and thoughtfully, and sighed
deeply, as though abandoning with keen regret a dearly loved and
cherished plan; then he said, solemnly:
“No bribe’ll ebber soil dis hand while it fills de office ob de
Gub’nor’s seat! But dey do say de best charm eber seed ter bring good
luck forebber is ter look at a constable a-dancin’ ober runnin’ water.
Now here’s de bridge an’ a good dancin’-floor. I’ll hole der hoss an’
sing ‘Old Charmany Fair,’ an’ you dance, ter bring good luck ter me in
de ’lection next week. Den I s’pose I’ll hab ter gib up going ter jail
dis time just ter please yer.”
The constable was stunned by this audacious and fairly insulting
proposition; but being thoroughly convinced that Cuddy was half
demented, he thought it better to yield at once to the stubborn negro’s
condition, and thus save his precious and much-wasted time. He jumped
from his horse and angrily yanked off Cuddy’s blanketful of jail
equipage, and threw it on the ground. He glanced apprehensively up and
down the road to see that there was no approaching traveller to spread
the tale of his ridiculous discomfiture and abject submission, and
then walked to the middle of the bridge and began to sullenly dance to
Cuddy’s lively and rollicking dance-tune. The jolly song and dismal jig
were nearly ended, when a most surprising and inexplicable event took
place. The constable’s sedate and quiet horse gave a sudden snort,
reared, broke away from Cuddy’s restraining hand, and plunged violently
down the hill.
“Stop her! Stop her, Cuddy!” roared Mr. Cranston, as he suddenly ceased
his forced dance and began to run.
“I ain’t agoin’ ter run none after dat ole hoss,” said Cuddy; “I’se
got de rheumatiz’ too bad. You jess see ef you can’t run faster as you
can dance. You can’t catch her, dough,” he called after the retreating
sheriff. “I know she’s conjured by de way she run. It always do conjure
a hoss to see a constable a-dancin’ ober runnin’ water.”
As the constable shouted “Whoa!” at the top of his lungs and chased
wildly down the hill out of sight, Cuddy walked to the side of the
bridge and threw into the water the long, sharp locust-thorn that had
done such sly and good execution as a spur, as a “conjure” to the
sheriff’s steed. Then he sat down by the side of his blanket bundle in
the hot noonday sunlight, and he took out his fiddle and scraped and
sawed to the bees and birds and butterflies like a jolly yellow Pan.
And he chuckled and laughed and whistled and sang, and once he jumped
up and danced through “Old Chalmouni Fair” with a brisk vigor that
put to shame the unwilling and clumsy efforts of the constable, and
made the tow tongs and the blue coat-tails snap and flap around his
shrivelled old yellow legs. It was certainly most astonishing to see
such agility and activity in a man so aged, and in one so rheumatic and
so witch-ridden an hour previously. At last a passing farm-wagon picked
him up and carried him and his great bundle to his own door.
As Cuddymonk replanted his early potatoes the following morning, he
once more soliloquized to his wife:
“I tell you, Rosann, dat ole fool ob a Cranston won’t nebber ’rest me
fer debt no more. I ain’t goin’ to raise no more pigs anyway, even ef I
does get ’em somewhat cheap. ’Tatoes is better’n pigs. Times nebber’ll
be good in dis country till ebberybody stops raisin’ pigs an’ plant
’tatoes; dat’s de true secret ob de pollitercul crisis ob dis land.”
THE WITCH SHEEP
In the darkness of Christmas morning, in the year 1811, old Benny
Nichols could not sleep. He was not thinking of Santa Claus nor of
Christmas gifts; he was watching for the first gray dawn which marked
his regular rising hour, and he tossed and turned, wondering why he
was so wakeful, until at last he rose in despair and lighted a candle
to discover how long he had to wait ere daybreak. To his amazement
he found the hands of the old clock pointing to the hour of nine,
and as he stood shivering, candle in hand, staring at the apparently
deceitful, bland face the clock raised its voice and struck nine,
loudly and brassily, as if to prove that its hands and face told the
truth. Benny then walked quickly to the window, and saw that the
apparent darkness and length of the night came from a great wall of
snow which covered the entire window and which had nearly all fallen
since the previous sunset.
Keenly awake at once when he recognized the lateness of the hour,
the old man wakened his wife Debby, and bade her “hurry up and git
somethin’ to eat. It’s nine o’clock, and we’ve had the wust snowstorm
ye ever see, and me a-laying’ here in bed, and them new sheep a-walkin’
into the sea and gittin’ drownded!”
Benny was a weazened-faced, dried-up old man, who was the shepherd of a
large Narragansett farm which lay between Pender Zeke’s Corner and the
bay. He knew well the danger that came to sheep in a heavy snowstorm.
He had seen a great flock of a hundred timid, shrinking creatures
retreat and cower one behind the other to shelter themselves from the
fierce beating of the wind and sleet, until, in spite of his efforts,
all were edged into the sea and lost, save a half-dozen whose throats
were cut by him with a jack-knife to save the mutton. Without waiting
for any warm food, he cautiously opened the door to dig himself out.
“Ye can’t go out, Benny Nichols, in them shoes,” said Debby, firmly.
“I told ye long ago they was half wore out--here, put on yer Sunday
long-boots.”
This suggestion was a bitter one to prudent Benny, who expected to
have those boots for Sunday wear for the next ten years, just as he
had for the past ten; and he knew well what a hard day’s work he had
before him, and how destructive it would prove to shoe-leather. But
Debby was firm, and, seizing the great boots from the nail on which
they hung, she poured out the flax-seed with which they were always
kept filled when they were not on Benny’s feet. The old man pulled them
on his shrivelled legs with a groan at Debby’s extravagance, and then
proceeded to dig out a path in the snow. Benny had not seen such a
snow-storm since the great “Hessian snow-storm” in the winter of 1778,
when so many Hessian soldiers perished of cold and exposure. When he
reached the surface and could look around him, he saw with satisfaction
that the snow and wind had blown during the previous night _away_
from the water, hence his sheep would hardly be drowned. He quickly
discovered a strange-shaped bank of snow by the side of one of the
great hay-ricks, so common throughout Narragansett, and he shrewdly
suspected that some of his sheep were underneath the great drift. When
carefully searched with a rake-stale this proved to be the case, and
when he shovelled them out all in the mound were alive and well. In a
snow-drift, by the side of a high stone wall, he found the remainder of
his flock, save one, a fine little ewe of the creeper breed, the rarest
and most valued of all his stock. As sheep-sheds at that time were
unknown in Narragansett, the loss of sheep was great in the Christmas
storm, and many cattle were frozen in the drifts; and one shepherd
noted two weeks later that the hungry cattle he foddered never touched
a full lock of hay that he had thrown on the top of a little hillock
of snow near his rick. So he thrust at it with his hay-tines, and in
so doing he lifted off a great shell of snow-crust, and there peered
out of the whiteness the bronze, wrinkled face of the old squaw Betty
Aaron, who was sitting bolt upright, frozen stiff and dead, her chin
resting on both hands, her elbows on her knees. Hence Benny was justly
proud of his rescued flock, though he mourned the one sheep that was
lost, and blamed himself for sleeping so late, saying, he “wouldn’t
have minded spilin’ his roast-meat boots if he could have found the
creeper.”
On the fourteenth day of January Benny Nichols chanced to see in the
snow, by the side of a hay-rick which stood a mile away from his home,
a small hole about half an inch in diameter, which his practised eye
recognized at once as a “breathing-hole,” and which indicated that some
living thing had been snowed in and was lying underneath. He broke away
the covering of icy crust, and to his amazement saw a poor creature of
extraordinary appearance, which he at first hardly could believe was
his own lost creeper sheep. She was alive, but alas! in such a sorry
plight.
The hungry sheep, in her three weeks’ struggle against starvation,
had eaten off every fibre of her own long wool that she could reach,
and she lay bare and trembling in the cold air, too weak to move, too
feeble to bleat either in distress or welcome. Old Benny wrapped the
half-dead creature in the corner of his cloak and carried her home to
Debby, who fairly shed tears at the sight of the poor naked skeleton
of a sheep. Tenderly did the kind woman wrap the frozen ewe in an old
flannel petticoat and feed her with warm milk, a few drops only at
first, and then with much caution until the sheep was able to digest
her ordinary food. In a week the creeper seemed as strong as ever,
quickly gained the lost flesh, and could bleat both loud and long.
And with returning health she grew active and mischievous, and was
constantly thrusting her long black nose into the most unexpected and
most unsuitable places, to the great distress of careful Debby, who
longed to put her out of doors.
But the sheep’s lost wool could not grow as quickly as did the fat
on her ribs, and she could not be thrust out thus, naked and bare,
in the winter air, so Debby decided to make for the little creature
a false fleece. For this purpose she took an old blue coat which had
once been worn by her son, and cut off the sleeves until they were
the right length to cover the ewe’s forelegs. She then sewed at the
waist of the coat two sleeves from an old red flannel shirt; these
were to cover Nanny’s hind legs. And when Debby drew on the gay jacket
and buttoned it up over the sheep’s long backbone with the large
brass coat-buttons, there never was seen such a comical, stunted,
hind-side-foremost caricature of what is itself a caricature--an
organ-grinder’s monkey.
When Benny carried the gayly dressed Nanny out to the enclosed yard,
it was hard to tell which exhibition of feeling was the keenest--poor,
unconscious, and absurd Nanny’s delight in her freedom and her eager
desire to take her place with her old companions, or the consternation
and terror of the entire flock at the strange wild beast which was thus
turned loose among them.
They ran from side to side, and crowded each other against the paling
so unceasingly and so wildly, that Benny carried the unwilling ewe back
to the kitchen.
At nightfall, however, Benny again placed Nanny in the open field with
the sheep, thinking that they would gradually, throughout the darkness,
become used to the presence of her little harlequin jacket, and allow
her to graze by their side in peace.
That night two cronies of Benny’s came from a neighboring farm to talk
over that ever-interesting topic, the great snowstorm, and to buy some
of his lambs. The three old men sat by the great fireplace in the
old raftered kitchen in the pleasant glow from the blazing logs, each
sipping with unction a mug of Benny’s famous flip, while Debby rubbed
with tallow the sadly stiffened long-boots that had been worn in the
Christmas snow. Suddenly a loud wail of distress rang in their ears,
the door was thrust violently open, and in stumbled the breathless
form of the tall, gaunt old negress Tuggie Bannocks. She was a relic
of old slavery times, who lived on a small farm near the old Gilbert
Stuart Mill, on Petaquamscut River. They all knew her well. She had
bought many a pound of wool from Benny to wash and card and spin into
yarn, and she always helped Debby in that yearly trial of patience and
skill--her soap-making. The old negro woman had double qualifications
to make her of use in this latter work: her long, strong arms could
stir the soap untiringly for hours, and then she knew also how to work
powerful charms--traditional relics of Voodooism--to make the soap
always turn out a success.
Tuggie Bannocks sank upon the table by the fire, murmuring: “Tanks be
to Praise! Tanks be to Praise!” and closed her eyes in speechless
exhaustion. Debby took a half-crushed basket of eggs from the old
woman’s arm, drew off her red woollen mittens, and rubbed briskly her
long cold claws of hands. Benny had a vague remembrance of the old-time
“emergency” saying, “feathers for fainters,” and seized a turkey’s wing
that was in daily use as a hearth-brush, thrust it into the flames, and
then held the scorching feathers under the old negress’s nose until all
in the room were coughing and choking with the stifling smoke.
Spluttering and choking at the dense feather-smoke, Tuggie gasped
out: “I ain’t dead yit--I specks I shall be soon, dough--kase I seen
de ole witch a-ridin’--I’se most skeered to death” (then in a fainter
voice)--“gib me a mug of dat flip.” Startled, Benny quickly drew a
great mug of home-brewed beer and gave it a liberal dash of Jamaica
rum and sugar, then seized from the fire the red-hot “loggerhead” and
thrust it seething into the liquid until the flip boiled and bubbled
and acquired that burnt, bitter flavor that he knew Tuggie dearly
loved. The old woman moaned and groaned as she lay on the table-top,
but watched the brewing of the flip with eager eye, and sat up with
alacrity to drink it.
With many a shuddering sigh and many a glance behind her at the kitchen
door, and crossing her fingers to ward off evil spirits she began: “Ye
know, Miss Nickkels, I telled ye I was witch-rid by ole Mum Amey, an’
dis how I know I was. Ye see I was a-goin’ to wuk a charm on her first
off--not to hurt her none, jess to bodder her a leetle--an’ I jess put
my project on de fire one night, an’ it jess a-goin’ to boil, an’ in
come her ugly, ole grinnin’ black face at de door, an’ say she a-goin’
to set wid me a spell.” Mum Amey was a wrinkled half-breed Indian of
fabulous age and crabbed temper, a “squaw-nurse,” who was, of course,
not half as black as negro Tuggie. “She walk ober to de chimbly to
light her pipe an’ ask me what I a-cookin’, an’ I say Ise a-makin’
glue, cause Ise afeard she see de rabbit’s foot in de pot, an’ I say
it all done, an’ yank de pot offen de crane so she can’t see into it.
An’ ob course when I take de project offen de fire afore it’s wukked,
it break de charm; an’ wuss still, I can’t nebber try no project on
her no more. Ole Mum Amey larf, an’ say, a-leerin’ at me, dat pot ob
glue won’t nebber stick nothin’ no more. An’ ebber sence dat night I
ben witch-rid. Mornin’s when I wakes up I sees marks ob de bit in de
corners ob my mouf, where Mum Amey ben a-ridin’ me all ober Boston Neck
an’ up de Ridge Hill till I so tired and stiff I can’t hardly move. Ise
ben pinched in de night an’ hab my ha’r pulled. An’ my butter won’t
come till I drops a red-hot horseshoe in de cream to dribe her out. One
day I jess try her to see ef she a witch (dough I know she one, ’cause
I see her talkin’ to a black cat); I drop a silber sixpence in her
path, an’ jess afore she get to it she turn an’ go back, jess I know
she would. No witch can’t step ober silber. An’ now, Benny Nickkels,
I know for shore she’s a witch, I see her jess now in de moonlight
a-chasin’ an’ ridin’ your sheep; an’, shore’s yer bawn, yer’ll find
some on ’em stone dead in de mornin’--all on ’em, mebbe!”
Benny looked wretched enough at this statement. Dearly as he loved his
sheep and ready as he was to face physical discomfort and danger in
their behalf, he was too superstitious to dare to go out in the night
to rescue them and brave the witch.
“How did she look, Tuggie? And what did she do?” whispered awe-struck
Debby.
“Oh, she was mons’ous fearsome to see! Witches don’t nebber go in deir
own form when dey goes to deir Sabbaths. She was long an’ low like a
snake. She run along de groun’ jess like a derminted yeller painter,
a-boundin’, an’ leapin’, an’ springin’, a-chasin’ dem pore sheeps--oh,
how dey run! Wid her old red an’ blue blanket tied tight aroun’
her--dat’s how I knowed her. An’ she had big sparklin’ gold dollars on
her back--wages ob de debbil, I ’specks. Sometimes she jump in de air
an’ spread her wings an’ fly awhile. Smoke an’ sparks come outen her
mouf an’ nostrums! Big black horns stick outen her head! Lash her long
black tail jess like de debbil hisself!”
At this dramatic and breathless point in Tuggie’s flip-nourished and
quickly growing tale, credulous Debby, whose slow-working brain had
failed to grasp all the vivid details in the black woman’s fervid and
imaginative description, interjected this gasping comment: “It must ha’
been the devil or the creeper.”
Benny jumped from his chair and stamped his foot, and at once burst
into a loud laugh of intense relief, and with cheerful bravado began
to explain animatedly to his open-mouthed cronies that of course anyone
could see that Tuggie’s sheep-chasing witch was only the creeper sheep
in her new fleece, and he offered swaggeringly to go out alone to the
field to bring the ewe in to prove it.
The old negress sprang to her feet, insulted and enraged at the jeering
laughter and rallying jokes, and advanced threateningly toward him.
Then, as if with a second thought, she stopped with a most malicious
look, and in spite of Debby’s conciliatory explanations and her
soothing expressions “that it might have been Mum Amey after all,”
she thrust aside Benny’s proffered mollification of a fresh mug of
flip, seized her crushed basket, stalked to the door, and left the
house muttering, vindictively: “High time to stop such unrageous
goin’s-on--dressin’ up sheeps like debbils--scarin’ an ole woman to
death an’ breakin’ all her aigs! Ole Tuggie Bannocks ain’t forgot how
to burn a project! Guess dey won’t larf at witches den!”
And surely enough--as days passed it could plainly be seen that
the old negress had carried out her threat--for the chimney was
“conjured”--was “salted.” On windy nights the shepherd and his wife
were sure they could hear Tuggie dancing and stamping on the roof,
and she blew down smoke and threw down soot, and she called down the
chimney in a fine, high, shrieking voice: “I’ll project ye, Benny; I’ll
project ye.” And she burnt the cakes before the fire, and the roast
upon the spit, and thrice she snapped out a blazing coal and singed a
hole in Debby’s best petticoat, though it was worn wrong side out as a
saving-charm. And Benny could see, too, that the old ram was bewitched.
The remainder of the flock soon became accustomed to the sight of
Nanny’s funny false fleece, but he always fled in terror at her
approach. He grew thin and pale (or at any rate faded), and he would
scarcely eat when Nanny was near. Debby despairingly tried a few feeble
counter-charms, or “warders,” but without avail. When sheep-shearing
time came, however, and Nanny, shorn of her uncanny fleece and clothed
in her own half-inch snowy wool, took her place with the other
short-clipped members of the flock, he ceased to be “witch-rid”--the
“project,” the “conjure” was worked out. He grew fat and fiercely
brave, and became once more the knight of the field, the lord of the
domain, the patriarch, the potestate of his flock.
The story of Tuggie Bannocks’s fright and her revengeful “project”
spread far and wide on every farm from Point Judith to Pottawomat, and
was told in later years by one generation of farmers to another. And as
time rolled on and Nanny reared her lambs and they her grand-lambs, the
creeper sheep were known and sold throughout Narragansett by the name
of witch-sheep.
THE CRUSOES OF THE NOON-HOUSE
In a grass-grown graveyard by the side of an old Presbyterian church
in Narragansett, the warm, midday sun shone brightly down one spring
Sabbath in the year 1760 upon two boys twelve years of age, two
cousins, named Elam Noyes and Cotton Fayerweather. They stood by
the side of their grandfather’s grave, which bore a new blue slate
headstone, inscribed with his name and age, and the verses:
“You children of ye name of Noyes
Make Jesus Christ yo’r oleny choyse.”
The boys had gone into the church-yard with the apparent design of
examining this fine, though misspelled, token of the stone-cutter’s
art, but were really speaking and thinking of a very different subject.
They would never have been allowed to wander in the church-yard to
indulge in idle talk, and even now could spend but a few minutes in
conversation together. It was their only meeting-time during the
week, for they lived at extreme ends of the town, and Elam recited
his lessons to the Baptist minister, who lived near him, while Cotton
attended the village school. They were two well-built, healthy
boys, both dressed in clumsy, homespun suits of clothes, with full
knee-breeches, long-flapped coats and waistcoats, coarse yarn stockings
and buckled shoes, and great gray beaver hats several sizes too large
for them. Elam was as solemn and serious in his appearance as was his
father, but in his brain was a current of keen romance rarely found in
the head of any elderly colonist. As he left the church-yard with his
cousin he said, with much impressiveness, “Remember, Cotton, if you are
not here by candle-light I shall tarry no longer, but shall go home.”
For several Sundays, as the boys had walked among the graves, and while
they had been busy with the care of their fathers’ horses, Elam had
occupied every moment in telling to Cotton all that he could remember
of a wonderful story he had read in New Haven. Two months previously
he had ridden with his father to that town, and in the tap-room of
the “ordinary” at which they had “put up” during their stay there had
lain a pile of about forty books, which a sea-captain had left to be
sold to any chance traveller, or to townspeople who might be inclined
to purchase them. There were several copies of Tate and Brady’s new
Psalms, which some of the New England Puritans wished to use instead
of the loved old Bay Psalm-book, two or three Bibles, half a dozen
volumes of sermons, a Dutch Psalm-book, which was not Dutch at all, but
a collection of English songs and ballads, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” a
few prayer-books, and then there was a wonderful book which Elam did
not have time to finish, though he had not wasted a moment. It thrilled
and filled him with adventurous longings, and was called “Robinson
Crusoe.” This was the first and only story-book he had ever seen, and
as he retold the wonderful tale to Cotton, the desire to run away out
into the great world, to cross the ocean and see some strange sights
and lead a different life from that on a Narragansett farm, grew strong
in both boys’ breasts.
At last Elam, having a fertile though unexercised imagination,
developed a plan of action. They would leave home and meet at the
old meeting-house, where they would spend several weeks of idleness,
roaming the woods by day and sleeping in the noon-house by night, and
when everyone in town was tired of searching for them, then they would
make their way to the sea-shore without fear of capture, and get on
board a ship and sail off somewhere. They could hide in the wood on
the Sabbath days, and as the meeting-house stood on a lonely road in a
great wood on the top of a high hill, there would be but few passers-by
on week-days, and hence few chances of discovery. And now I must
explain about the noon-house, which was to be their sleeping-place, for
none of those queer old buildings now exist in New England.
By the side of the barn-like church were three long, low, mean,
stable-like log buildings, which could hardly be stables, since at one
end of each hut was a rough stone chimney. These were noon-houses,
or “Sabba-day houses.” One had been built by Elam and Cotton’s
grandfather, and was used by the families of his children. Until
the early years of this century, only two or three meeting-houses
throughout New England contained stoves. All through the long, bleak,
winter weeks, through fierce “nor’-westers” and piercing frosts, the
lonely churches stood, growing colder and colder, until when they were
opened upon the Sabbath the chill and damp seemed almost unbearable.
The women brought to church little iron foot-stoves filled with hot
coals. Upon these stoves they placed their feet, and around them the
shivering children sat at their mothers’ feet and warmed their chilled
hands. But by the time the long service was over--for often the
minister preached two hours and prayed an hour, and some of the Psalms
took half an hour to sing--you can easily see that the warmth would all
have died out of the little foot-stove, and the mothers and children
would be as cold as the fathers, which is saying a great deal.
Now these half-frozen Baptists and Puritans and Episcopalians could
hardly have remained to attend an afternoon service and lived through
it, so they built houses with chimneys and fireplaces near the church
where they could go and make a fire and get warm and eat their lunch,
and when they asked permission to put up such a building they said it
was to “keep their duds and horses in.”
And, surely enough, at one end of the noon-house were usually several
stalls for the horses, who doubtless also enjoyed the warmth that came
from the fireplace at the end of the room. The “duds” were the saddles
and pillions on which the church attendants had been seated on their
ride to church, and the saddle-bags which were full of good things to
eat. Sometimes a few cooking-utensils to warm the noonday food were
kept in the noon-house, and often hay for the horses and a great load
of logs to burn in the fireplace, and sometimes a barrel of “cyder,” to
drink at the nooning.
Frequently a large noon-house was built by several farmers in company,
and I am afraid the children did not then enjoy their Sunday noontimes,
for some old deacon or elder usually read a sermon to them between the
morning and afternoon services, and they had to sit still and listen.
So you see that Elam and Cotton had very comfortable quarters to sleep
in when they ran away to the noon-house on the Monday following the
opening of my story. Each arrived about an hour before sunset, laden
with all the food that he had been able to capture before leaving home.
Cotton had a great piece of salt-pork and a dozen eggs, some of which
had had a rather disastrous journey in his coat-pockets. Elam had a
great crushed mass of dough-nuts and brown bread. This was not all of
their provisions for their sojourn, for on each successive Sunday for
five weeks previously both boys had crowded their great pockets with
russet apples and their saddle-bags with cold corn-bread and brown
bread, and they had starved themselves at each nooning in order to save
their food and thus provide for the coming day of need; and they had
concealed their treasures in an empty corn-bin at the horses’ end of
the house. Cotton felt sure that they had food enough to last them for
three weeks--rather dry and conglomerated, to be sure, but still good
enough for boys of healthy appetites and simple Puritan tastes. Elam
also had brought a flint and tinder-box with him, and with their aid
and that of some light “candle-wood” he soon had a blazing fire upon
the hearth, the coals of which he carefully covered up to save till
morning, and then the two Robinson Crusoes climbed upon the hay and
fell asleep.
The story of the first day spent by the runaways in their retreat would
be the story of all the days, which were not as pleasure-filled as
they had hoped. They had no hut to build, no goats to tame, no savages
to fight and dread. They rose early in the morning, for the habits of
their daily life were strong, and they did not dare have a fire much
after daybreak, lest the smoke from the chimney should be discovered by
some rare passer-by. They ate their breakfast of brown bread and cheese
and apples and drank a little of the hard cider. As the weather was
fortunately warm, they lolled on the stones behind the noon-house while
Elam told over and over again the story of Robinson Crusoe and tales
of the Indians that he had heard from his grandfather. They fished,
with some success, in a little brook which ran through the woods, and
one day they caught a rabbit in a trap which Cotton had set, and which
he had learned how to make from old Showacum, a “praying Indian” who
lived in the village. These trophies of their skill they of course
skinned and cleaned and cooked, and though they were hungry--for they
were hungry all the time--the unsalted fish and game did not seem very
appetizing to them. They found a treasure one day in the woods--a store
of nuts which had been forgotten or neglected or reserved until spring
by some kindly squirrels--and with a few cakes of toothsome maple-sugar
they had some variety of diet.
But alas, they also had healthy young appetites, and on Saturday night
Cotton awakened to a fact whose approach had been plainly looming up
before Elam for some time--that their three weeks’ supply of food was
all gone. A half-decayed apple was their sole supper. A drink of the
sour cider seemed only to make their hunger harder to bear, but at last
they fell asleep. Perhaps the pangs of his gnawing stomach made Elam
sleep more lightly than on previous nights, perhaps the equally keen
pangs of his awakened conscience may have made him restless, but at
midnight he suddenly sprang to his feet with an exclamation of horror
at a sound which he recognized at once as the howl of a wolf. He jumped
to the fire, wakening Cotton, who tumbled out of his nest of hay with
a bewildered and wretched expression and an impatient cry of, “Oh, why
did you wake me up when I am so hungry; pray let me sleep if you do
or not,” when nearer and louder still rose the mournful howl of the
wolf. With trembling hand Cotton heaped the light wood on the blaze
which Elam had started with the old leather bellows, and then threw
log after log on the hearth until the blaze roared up the chimney. Of
course, the wolves--for they could hear more than one--could not get
into the noon-house, as window and shutter were fast, but the boys
were so wretched with hunger, so homesick, so lonesome, that they
hardly stopped to reason, and, trembling with fear, Cotton seized an
iron “loggerhead” which his father kept in the noon-house, and thrust
it into the coals to heat to a red-hot pitch, when it could be used
as a weapon. A “loggerhead” was a bar of iron which was used as a
stirring-stick in making “flip.” Deacon Fayerweather always brought to
church each winter Sunday in his saddle-bags three or four bottles of
home-brewed beer and a bottle of Jamaica rum, from which, with the aid
of the loggerhead, he made a famous jug of flip for the minister and
deacons at the nooning.
And now the peaceful loggerhead was the only weapon the two wretched
boys possessed, and, indeed, all they needed, for in a short time
the howls of the wolves grew fainter and fainter and at last were no
longer heard. All thought or power of sleep had, however, vanished
from the brains of the terrified young Crusoes at this experience of
the pleasures of adventure. All wish for final escape to the sea-shore
had also disappeared, and now their only longing was to return home.
All the remaining hours of the night they sat by the fire, while Elam,
romantic in spite of hunger, fright, and disappointment, made known his
plans for the following day. Toward morning they let the fire die down
and expire, and when the sun was fully risen they left their sheltering
noon-house and hid in the woods not far from the meeting-house,
trembling, however, at every sound as they thought of their dread
night-visitors.
As nine o’clock drew near there approached the church on every side, on
foot and on horseback, the members of the congregation. All knew of the
mysterious disappearance of Cotton and Elam, for the country had been
widely and quickly scoured for them. Among the worshippers came Deacon
and Mistress Fayerweather and Goodman Noyes and his wife, for all felt
it a godly duty, even in time of deep affliction, not to neglect the
public worship of God on the Sabbath. Despairingly did the sad parents
hope to hear some news of their lost boys, who had apparently vanished
from the face of the earth, for neither in farm-house nor in field,
neither on the road nor at the toll-gate, neither by traveller nor by
hunter, had they been seen. The very simplicity of their plan had been
its safety. Forty years previously the whisper of kidnapping by the
Indians would have added terror to the parents’ grief, but those days
were happily over.
After sad greetings had been exchanged and the minister had entered the
pulpit, the congregation seated itself for its usual Sunday-morning
service. The opening half-hour prayer was ended, the church attendants
had let down their slamming pew-seats (for the seats in those old
New England meeting-houses always turned up on hinges to allow the
pew occupants to lean against the walls of the pew during the long
prayer), the minister had read with trembling voice a note which had
been sent to him, “desiring the prayers of the congregation for two
families in great inconveniency and distress,” when a door on the
leeward side of the church slowly opened and two pale, dishevelled, and
most wretched-looking youngsters crept slowly and shamefacedly in. The
habit of constant self-repression and self-control, characteristic of
the times, was all-powerful, even in this intense moment of crisis for
the families of Fayerweather and Noyes. The deacon flushed scarlet,
but did not move from his raised seat in front of the congregation.
A faint murmur swept over the entire assembly at the appearance of
Cotton and Elam, but was at once repressed. The boys walked calmly on
to their accustomed seats on the gallery stairs, under the supervision
of the tithingman. That zealous officer rapped sharply on the head
with his long staff two or three of the occupants of one of the “boys’
pews,” who had turned around and stared, and whispered noisily at the
appearance of the runaways. The old minister, being slightly deaf,
had heard no ripple of commotion, and, not having glanced at the late
comers, proceeded to offer a pathetic prayer for the lost ones, “whom
God held in the hollow of his hand,” a prayer that brought to Elam and
Cotton a realizing sense of their selfishness and wickedness, and which
worked a lesson that influenced them through life. The parson then
gave out his text: “He will have charge over thee concerning thee,” and
worked his way on in his accustomed and somewhat monotonous fashion,
though with many allusions to the two wanderers, until at fourteenthly
came the long-deferred end. Nor was there any murmur of feeling
heard (though the mothers’ eyes were filled with tears), when Deacon
Fayerweather, in a slightly trembling voice, lined out the Psalm:
O give yee thanks unto the Lord
because that good is hee,
Because his loving-kindness lasts
in perpetuitee.
I’th’ desart in a desart way
they wandered: no towne finde
to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty
their Soul within them pinde.
Then did they to Jehovah cry
when they were in distresse
Who did them set at liberty
out of their anguishes.
In such a way as was most right
he led them forth also
That to a citty which they might
inhabit they might go.
I wish I could say that the boys’ parents, being so glad to get the
wanderers home, permitted them to go unpunished, but alas! early New
Englanders believed firmly that “foolishness is bound up in the heart
of a child,” and never spared the rod; and, as “sloathefulnes” and
disobedience to parents were specially abominated, such high-handed
rebellion as this of Elam and Cotton could hardly be allowed to pass by
without being made a public example. Then, too, unfortunately for the
boys, the warmth of joy at recovering the lost ones had time through
the two hours of sermon to cool down and change into indignation. So
at the close of the service Deacon Fayerweather, after rather coldly
greeting his son and nephew, asked the advice of the minister upon
so important a subject, who gave as his opinion that the gravity
of the offence, the necessity of the lesson to other youths in the
congregation, and the conveniency of circumstances seemed to point
out plainly, and was furthermore upheld by Scripture, that public
chastisement should be given upon the spot, and that Elder Rogers
was best fitted, both by age, dignity, and strength, to administer
both rebuke and punishment. And with promptness and despatch and
thoroughness the decree was carried out; both boys were “whipped with
birchen rods” while standing upon the horse-block before the church.
But though the colonial fathers were stern and righteously
disciplinarian, the colonial mothers were loving and tender, as are
mothers everywhere and in all times, and Mistress Fayerweather and
Mistress Noyes each bore off her weeping boy to the noon-house and
filled his empty stomach well with dough-nuts and pork and peas and
pumpkin-bread, until, with comfort and plenty within, external woes and
past terrors were forgotten.
THE DOCTOR’S PIE-PLATES
Many of my cherished china treasures, having no historical association
and being of comparatively coarse ware, would be of little value on
the shelves of a collector, and also of little interest to the general
observer; but they are endeared to me by the remembrance of the
circumstances under which they were found, or by some story connected
with their past owner or their past history.
I have a set of dark-blue Staffordshire plates, known as the “Doctor’s
Pie-plates,” which are resplendent with an interest that does not
come from their glorious color, rich as it is, nor from the wit of
the humorous scenes they represent. The plates, named, respectively,
“Dr. Syntax’s Noble Hunting-party,” “Dr. Syntax Upsets the Beehives,”
“Dr. Syntax Painting the Portrait of His Landlady,” “Dr. Syntax
Taking Possession of His Rectory,” and “Dr. Syntax Star-gazing,” are
printed from a set of pictures drawn by Thomas Rowlandson, one of
the most celebrated designers of humorous and amusing subjects of his
day. They were drawn and engraved to illustrate a book published by
William Combe, in 1812, called “Dr. Syntax’s Tour in Search of the
Picturesque.” A second tour, “In Search of Consolation,” appeared in
1820. This was also illustrated by Rowlandson. A third tour, “In Search
of a Wife,” was printed the following year. These books had an immense
and deserving popularity. Not only did these blue Staffordshire plates
appear, copying the amusing designs from the Dr. Syntax illustrations,
but a whole set of Derby figures were modelled--Dr. Syntax Walking, In
a Green-room, At York, At the Bookseller’s, Going to Bed, Tied to a
Tree, Scolding the Landlady, Playing the Violin, Attacked by a Bull,
Mounted on Horseback, Crossing the Lake, Landing at Calais, etc., and
also were sold in large numbers.
The “Doctor’s Pie-plates” did not, however, receive their name on
account of the presence of the laughable figure of Dr. Syntax in
their design, but from a far different and more serious and deeply
felt reason. They were once used as pie-plates; or, rather, I should
say more exactly and truthfully, were used _once_ as pie-plates, and
the story of that solitary pie-episode in their history, with the
succeeding results of their one period of use in that capacity, will
explain their fresh, unused condition, and show why I prize them so
highly, and reveal also the reason why I call them the “Doctor’s
Pie-plates.” The name has a deep significance; the pie-plates are
captured trophies of past war, sad emblems of hopeless rebellion,
never-fading ceramic proofs and emblems of the selfishness, the tyranny
of man.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, an American gentleman
married in England an English lady of some wealth. They brought
to America with them in a sailing-vessel, as part of the bride’s
wedding-outfit, a gayly painted, richly mounted travelling-coach. In
this great coach they rode in grand style with four post-horses from
Boston to Albany, New York, and Philadelphia, and back to the little
town in Narragansett, which was ever after their home. In due time
they died, and left to their only son, a physician, all their worldly
goods, including the old coach, and the far less desirable inheritance
of a high and stubborn temper, and a firm and deep-seated veneration
for English customs, manners, traditions, and productions, which would
be worthy an Anglomaniac of the present day. He, however, made one
unfortunate and incomprehensible deviation from his Anglo-worship when
he married an American wife. As years went on, the Doctor grew more and
more overbearing and dictatorial, especially in his household (as some
English husbands are also said to be), and in the matter of food and
of cooking--those unfortunate hobbies of an ill-tempered man--he took,
perhaps, the most violent stand. Never did any other wife have to hear
so often the words, “as my mother used to cook it,” and “they don’t
do it so in England,” or have to listen so frequently to acrimonious
expressions of dislike of American cooks and cooking. Pork and beans,
“cracker johnny-cake,” Indian-pudding, even the purely Dutch dough-nuts
were banished from his board; for not only did he refuse to eat these
New England dishes himself, but would not let his wife and daughters,
either. He also became unjust enough bumptiously to denounce as
“American” and “taboo” any food (no matter of what nationality) which
did not suit his fancy or which chanced to disagree with him.
On an unlucky day, having eaten too greedily of mince-pie (for he had
a fine English appetite), he passed his universal banishing dictum
on that darling of New England hearts and stomachs--_the pie_. From
thenceforth on feast-days only English plum-pudding was served for
dessert. To the New England wife, accustomed to see at least _four_
kinds of pie offered to “company,” if one made pretence even of being
truly hospitable and housewifely, the lonely pudding was a great
and almost unbearable source of grief and mortification, and many
a struggle did she make (trying to imitate her forefathers of old)
against the English yoke, but in vain; pieless and barren for years was
her table. But reinforcing troops at last came to her rescue; for three
daughters were grown, and, brave and strong with youth, they dared to
rebel more openly and recklessly than their browbeaten mother.
In 1830 all the Doctor’s relatives, far and near, were invited to eat
“Thanksgiving dinner” with him and his family; for he was hospitable
enough, in his own fashion; in all, thirty were to sit down at his
board. On the day before Thanksgiving, mother, daughters, and “help”
were all busy at work from early morning in the great pantry and
kitchen, making careful preparation for the coming dinner, and brisk
sounds of chopping and pounding and mixing were heard, and savory
smells and spicy vapors filled the house. Toward the close of the
day, when their work was nearly done, they suddenly heard, to their
terror, the sound of the Doctor’s cane (for he was badly crippled with
that typical English disease, the gout) thump, thumping through the
halls and rooms to the kitchen, an apartment he seldom visited. With
palpitating hearts but firm countenances they stood in a hollow square
for strength, as does any determined band, while he walked past them to
the “buttery,” where were placed in military rows twenty-six of those
hated abominations, pies--mince-pies, pumpkin and apple and cranberry,
and, the crowning dainty of all, “Marlboro’” pies. Their only hope of
salvation was that in the dull, fading November light the tyrant might
not discover the forbidden pastry; and, indeed, he did not appear to
do so, for he merely glanced scowlingly around, and, without speaking,
hobbled back to his office. Once more they breathed freely, and the
eldest daughter said, cheerfully: “Now, girls, nothing can happen; if
he had seen them we should have had to give them away; but he won’t
know anything about it now until they are brought on the table with the
pudding, and he will be most through his bottle of port then--but oh,
what shall we do when the company goes?”
Poor souls! they slept for one night the happy, unconscious sleep of
the victorious, the hospitable, and awoke on Thanksgiving morn to
find every pie vanished from the pantry-shelf. Every pie? Yes, and
every pie-plate, too!--twenty-six of the new English blue-and-white
stone-ware plates. At first they really believed, in their simplicity,
that a thief must have entered from outside and stolen them; but why
should the marauder take pies, and no other food? Then, too, there
was not a foot-print on the light snow which had fallen early in the
evening. No; the Doctor must have stolen his wife’s pies! But where
could he have hidden the pie-plates? For weeks, yes, for years, they
searched in every nook and corner; through the hay in the barns, behind
the logs of wood in the sheds, in old barrels and boxes in the cellar,
in closets, in trunks, under the eaves in the attic; and they even
peered out on the roof behind the peaks of the gable-windows, but no
pie-plates could they find. The grim old Doctor kept his silence, until
his daughters grew at last to think that some thief must have entered
in spite of apparent impossibility.
Thirty-six years later, in 1866, the aged Doctor died, and went,
doubtless, to an English paradise. His browbeaten wife had given up
the struggle many years before. The daughters, now elderly women, with
a long-concealed but unsubdued hatred born of years of tyrannical
browbeating and oppression, at once made a triumphal holocaust of many
of the cherished treasures of the British tyrant; and the first victim
doomed to destruction was the old English coach in which their English
grandmother had ridden in state through the country. This broken-down,
moth-eaten, rat-nibbled, cobweb and dirt-filled relic had stood unused
for fifty years--an abominable nuisance, an inconvenient obstruction,
a hated eyesore, in the carriage-house connected with their dwelling.
The Doctor had cherished it on account of its English birthplace; but
now its fate was sealed. As the first heavy blow of the destroying
iconoclastic axe struck the hated coach, a loud rattle as of falling
crockery was heard, and the executioner paused. A careful investigation
discovered an unknown compartment under the driver’s seat which had
been constructed for the purpose of hiding despatch-boxes and, perhaps,
the bride’s jewel-cases--and in this hiding-place were twenty-six
dirt-covered, dark-blue Staffordshire plates. A sudden light of
comprehension and recognition came into the faces of the sisters--here
were the long-lost pie-plates! The cantankerous old Doctor had craftily
arisen in the night, hobbled out silently, in spite of his gout,
thrown the carefully and daintily made Thanksgiving pies to the pigs,
stealthily packed the plates in the old coach, watched maliciously
the unsuccessful plate-search, kept silence throughout the despoiled
Thanksgiving dinner and through nearly forty pieless years, and died
triumphant.
Half of this treasure-trove, which the Doctor could hide, but, happily,
could not take with him, were the Dr. Syntax plates; and from that
half came my share. The other plates were of well-known English
views--Payn’s Hill, the City of Liverpool, Blenheim Castle, Fulham
Church-yard, Windsor Castle--no American views were on any of his
crockery; no landing of Lafayette, no State plates, were ever allowed
to grace that rank old Tory’s pantry.
Thus, one good, one noble result came from this “ugly trick”--the
hidden pie-plates were all saved unscratched, unbroken, for the
Doctor’s kinsfolk to-day, who, in gratitude for his unintentional
posthumous favor, suitably reward him by telling the story of his
spiteful midnight theft whenever we show the plates. And, moreover,
we wantonly and openly insulted and jeered at his memory and his
gastronomic laws by formally and derisively naming the dark-blue
salvage from the coach the Doctor’s Pie-plates.
MY DELFT APOTHECARY JARS
The circumstances under which I first saw my old Delft apothecary jars
were so painful, so mortifying, that for a long time I could not bear
even to think of them; but now, as years have passed and softened the
sharp lines, I will write account of that unique adventure.
We were one day, as was our wont, hunting in old Narragansett for
ancient china and colonial furniture, but even on that historic and
early-settled ground had met with scant success. At last, on an
out-of-the-way road, was found a clew.
We were driving slowly along, when the door of a long, low wood-shed
opened, and an elderly man walked out on the single broad stone step
and stood, in the lazy country fashion, staring openly and sociably at
us as we passed by. He had in one hand a piece of dark wood which he
was slowly rubbing with sand-paper. We had driven past his door when
my companion suddenly exclaimed: “That man had a claw-foot.”
“A claw-foot!” I answered in astonishment; “what do you mean?--a cloven
foot or a club-foot, perhaps?”
“No, you goose; that man had in his hand a claw-foot--the leg of a
chair, I am sure, and I am going back to see to what it belongs.”
So we whisked the pony around and drove to the door where the
claw-footed man still stood, and we then saw in the one dingy window a
small sign bearing the words
+------------------+
| ELAM CHADSEY |
| GENERAL REPAIRER |
+------------------+
“Are you Mr. Chadsey?” my fellow china-hunter asked. “We saw you with
something that looked old-fashioned in your hand, and we thought you
might have or know of some antique furniture or old crockery that the
owners would be willing to sell.”
“Wal, I ain’t got any to sell; I only mend furnitoor. I’ve got a couple
of tall clocks in here repairin’, but they ain’t mine, so I can’t sell
’em. N-o--I don’t know of none--except--What furnitoor do you want?”
“Oh, anything, almost, that is old, and china especially; any old blue
pie-plates or such things.”
Elam stood slowly rubbing his claw-foot and at last answered: “I
know some old blue-and-white crockery preserve-jars, or jell-pots,
ye might call ’em, which I ruther think ye could get ef ye want ’em.
Ye see, Abiel Hartshorn, he’s a widower an’ he’s a-goin’ ter marry a
school-marm up ter Collation Corners, an’ she’s got awful highty-tighty
notions, an’ he’s a-goin’ ter sell the farm, an’ she come down ter see
what things she wanted saved out of the house fur her. An’ Abiel’s
fust wife she had all these old blue-an’-white pots with letters on
’em, an’ some had long spouts, an’ she always kep’ her preserves an’
jelly an’ sweet pickles in ’em, an’ mighty handy they was too. An’
when this woman see ’em she was real pleased with ’em, but her brother
was along with her, and he’s a clerk in a drug-store, an’ he bust out
a-larfin’, an’ says he: ‘Them letters on them jell-pots means senna,
an’ jalap, an’ calomel, an’ sweet syrup of buckthorn, an’ lixypro, an’
lixylutis, an’ all sorts of bad-tastin’ medicines.’ An’ then she fired
right up, an’ says she: ‘I won’t have any of my preserves kep’ in them
horrid-tastin’ old medicine-bottles;’ so I guess Abiel would be glad
enough ter sell ’em fur most anything.”
We suspected at once that these “jell-pots” with blue lettering of the
names of drugs were Delft apothecary jars, and that the “ones with
spouts” were the old jars, so rarely seen, that are identical in shape
with the “siroop-pots” of Dutch museums. When the Dutch used these jars
a century or more ago, they covered the open top with tightly tied
oilskin and poured the contents from the spout, which at other times
was kept carefully corked. By what strange, roundabout journey had
these Delft jars strayed to that New England farm? We asked eagerly
where we could see the despised “jell-pots.”
“Abiel’s house is about two mile from here by the road. I tell ye what
ye can do. Ye may as well see ’em now’s ever. I’ll walk cross-lots an’
you drive there. Go on down the road a piece an’ turn the fust road ter
the right. ’Tain’t much of a road--it’s kind of a lane. Go on to the
fust house ye come to. I’d better come, ’cause mebbe Abiel wouldn’t
let ye see ’em ef ye went alone.”
We left him and drove on and down through the narrow, grass-grown lane.
When we reached the old gray farm-house we found it deserted and still,
so we sat down on the stone doorstep and waited for Elam Chadsey, and
soon he climbed over the stone wall before us.
“Ain’t Abiel at hum? All the better! We’ll go in ’n’ see the
preserve-jars, an’ then he won’t know any city folks want ’em an’ won’t
put the price up on ye.”
He prowled around the house, trying in vain to open first the doors and
then the windows, but to his amazement he found all carefully locked.
“The ninny!” he said, indignantly, “he ain’t got nothin’ to steal! What
did he lock up fur? I never heard of such a thing--lockin’ up in the
daytime; it makes me mad. The dresser stan’s right in that room and
them jars is on top of it; ef ye could only see in that window ye could
look right at it, then ye’d know whether ye wanted ’em or not.”
“Isn’t there anything I could climb up on?” doubtfully I asked.
He searched in the wood-shed for a ladder, but with no success. At last
he called out: “I guess ef you two’ll help me a little we can pull this
around fur ye to stand on.”
“This” was a hen-coop or hen-house, evidently in present use as a
hen-habitation. Its sides were about four feet high, and from them ran
up a pointed roof, the highest peak of which was about five feet and a
half from the ground.
“There,” he exclaimed, triumphantly, as he pushed it under the
window, “ef ye can git up an’ stan’ on that ye can see in.
Then”--vindictively--“we’ll leave it here fur Abiel to drag back
himself, to pay him fur bein’ such a gump as to lock his doors. I guess
it’ll hold ye, ef ye are pretty hefty.”
I may as well state the annoying fact that to be “pretty hefty” is
a great drawback in searches after “antiques.” You cannot climb up
narrow, steep ladders and through square holes into treasure-holding
attic-lofts, as may a slender antique-hunter. You must remain patiently
below and let her shout down, telling and describing what is above. It
is such a trial to an explorer to have to explore by proxy, especially
when you know you could discover more than anyone else could. I
determined that “heft” should be no obstacle to me in this case, though
the hen-house did look rather steep and high; and I bravely started to
climb. I placed one knee, then the other, and then my feet upon the
ledge at the edge of the roof, while Elam Chadsey pushed. He weighed
about one hundred pounds, and was thin, wizened, and wrinkled to the
last New England degree. He braced his feet firmly in the ground, set
his teeth, and pushed with might and main. Alone I scaled the second
height. I had barely set my feet firmly on the peak of the roof, had
shaded my eyes from the sunlight with one hand, while I clung to
the window-frame with the other, had caught one glimpse of a row of
blue-and-white apothecary jars, when--crack!--smash! went the frail
roof under my feet, and down I went--down into the hen-house!
In spite of my distress of mind and my discomfort of body, one
impression overwhelmed all others--the anguish and consternation of
Elam Chadsey. He darted from side to side, exactly like a distracted
hen; he literally groaned aloud.
“Darn that gump of an Abiel Hartshorn! He’s the biggest fool in Rhode
Island--lockin’ up his house jest ’cause he’s goin’ away, an’ gettin’
us in this fix. Wait, miss, keep still, an’ I’ll see if I can find an
axe to chop ye out.”
Wait! keep still!--indeed I would--I couldn’t do otherwise. Off he
ran to the wood-shed, and soon came back madder than ever; he fairly
sizzled.
“Oh, the ninny! the big donkey! his axe is in the house. What do you
s’pose he locked it up fur? He’s a reg’lar wood-chuck! I’ll tell him
what I think on him. Ye ain’t hurted much, be ye, miss?”
“Oh, no,” I answered, calmly, “I’m all right as long as I keep still.
But if I try to move there are several big and very sharp splinters
that stick into me, and nails, too, I think--rusty nails, without
doubt, which will probably give me the lock-jaw. Oh, Mr. Chadsey, do
you suppose there are many eggs in this house?”
“Not many hull ones, I’ll bet. Oh, no”--very scornfully--“I s’pose
Abiel took ’em into the house to lock ’em up--the ninny. He’s the
biggest ninny I ever see. Do ye think, miss, if we could manage to tip
the hen-house over, that we could drag you out?”
“No,” I answered, vehemently, “the splinters are all pointing downward,
and if you try to pull me out they will all stick into me worse than
they do now. I have got to be chopped out of this trap, and you must
go home, or somewhere, or anywhere, and get an axe to do it. Take
our horse, and drive there, and do be careful when you go around the
corners, or the cart will upset--and do, oh, do hurry. You must both
go, our pony is so queer and tricky, and Mr. Chadsey might have trouble
with him. Now, don’t object, nothing can happen to me in my fortress.”
So, rather unwillingly, they drove off, Elam Chadsey muttering to
himself, “that Abiel Hartshorn’s the biggest ninny in Rhode Island.”
I was alone in my hen-house. I was not at all uncomfortable--while
I kept still--though I was “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d.” The true
china-hunting madness filled my brain as I thought of the row of fine
blue-and-white apothecary jars which would soon be mine, and other
thoughts were crowded out. The calm and quiet of the beautiful day also
soothed and cheered me in spite of myself. The wind sighed musically
through the great ancient pine-tree that stood near the house.
Flickering rays of glowing sunlight shone down on my head through the
feathery foliage of the locust-trees that filled the door-yard. A great
field of blossoming buckwheat wafted fresh balm in little puffs of
pure perfume. Bees hummed and buzzed around me, and a meadow-lark sung
somewhere near, sung and sung as if summer were eternal. A flood of
light and perfume and melody and warmth filled me with sensuous delight
in spite of my awkward imprisonment, and I fairly laughed aloud, and
frightened the hens and chickens that had come clucking round me in
inquisitive wonder at the removal and invasion of their home.
But my ill-timed and absurd sense of being in a summer paradise did
not last long, for I heard in a few minutes the loud clatter of wheels
coming down the lane from the opposite direction to that which had
been taken by the hurrying pair. Of course, I could not see, for I had
fallen with my face toward the house, and I did not like to try to turn
around--it inconvenienced the splinters so. The sound came nearer and
nearer, and at last I managed to move my head enough to see a country
horse and wagon with two men. Then I leaned my face on my folded arms,
and I hoped and prayed that they might drive past. But, to my horror,
to my intense mortification, they turned and came up the driveway and
underneath the shed of the Hartshorn house.
A great dog bounded around and stared at me. I heard around the corner
the murmuring sounds of suppressed laughter and eager questioning, of
which one sentence only came distinctly to my ears: “Queer sort of hens
you keep, Hartshorn;” and then the two men came round the house.
I hardly know what I said; I think it was this: “If you are Mr.
Hartshorn, I must beg your pardon for my sudden, impertinent, and most
unexpected intrusion on the privacy of your--hen-house” (here we all
three burst out laughing), “and I must ask if you will please get your
axe and chop up your own hen-house in order to get me out.”
Never speak to me again of Yankee inquisitiveness! Without asking one
question, Hartshorn ran into the house, brought out his hidden axe,
and while the boards were firmly held by the other man (who, alas! was
young and well-dressed, and who proved to be the city purchaser of
the farm), Abiel carefully chopped and split. I heroically bore this
undignified ordeal in silence, until at last I was released.
“Come into the house,” said Abiel, with wonderful hospitality to so
impertinent an intruder; “ye must be a leetle tired of standin’; come
in and sit down. Ye ain’t hurt much, air ye?”
“Oh, no,” I answered, “only some deep scratches; but let me explain to
you”--and I did explain with much self-abasement how I came to be fixed
in my absurd position.
In the meantime the distracted pair had obtained the axe and were on
their way back to the scene of disaster. As soon as they were within
a full view of the house my companion china-hunter burst forth: “Why,
she is gone! Where can she be? Do you suppose she has fainted and
sunk into the hen-house? No, I can see, it is empty; she has got out
of it somehow.” Then she jumped out of the cart, ran up the path and
through the open door, and found me sitting calmly talking with the
well-dressed young man.
From the kitchen we soon heard sounds of violent and vituperative
altercation.
“Abiel Hartshorn, yer the biggest fool I ever see. What did ye lock
yer house up in the daytime fur?”
“To keep out jest such pryin’ haddocks as you and them be.”
“Ye ain’t got nothin’ in it, anyway.”
“Then what did you and her want to peek in fur?”
“Such a rotten old hen-house I never see.”
“’Tain’t made as a platform fur to hold a woman of her size.”
“She don’t weigh much.”
“She do, too. Ye ain’t no judge of heft, Elam; ye don’t weigh enough
yerself.”
“What did yer lock up yer axe fur?”
“Ef I’d a-knowed yer’d a-wanted it so bad, I’d a-perlitely left it out
fur ye.”
“Wal, I never heard of sech a thing as lockin’ up a house in the
daytime, and yer axe, too--how could ye be such a fool? Say, Abiel, she
looked funny though, didn’t she?”
All’s well that ends well. Abiel, having sold the farm, was glad to
sell the roofless hen-house for two dollars, and he eagerly gave me the
drug-pots. The former antique was never claimed, and the blue-and-white
jars proved for many months too painful and too hateful a reminder to
have in sight. Now they stand on table and shelf--pretty posy-holders,
but severe and unceasing monitors. Their clear blue letters--“Succ: E,
Spin: C,” and “U: Althæ,” and “C: Rosar: R,” etc.--speak not to me of
drugs and syrups, of lohocks and electuaries; they are abbreviations
of various Biblical proverbs such as “Every fool will be meddling,”
“He taketh the wise in their own craftiness,” “Boast not thyself of
to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth,” “Let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” etc. And the little
ill-drawn blue cherubs that further decorate the drug-pots seem always
to wink and to smirk maliciously at me, and to hold their fat sides
as though they were thinking of the first time they peeped at me and
jeered at me out of the window of the gray old farm-house as I stood
entrapped in my meddlesome folly in the sunlight under the beautiful
locust-trees in old Narragansett.
I cannot tell a romantic story of a further acquaintance with the
good-looking young man; I never saw him again, and I am sure I never
want to. Still, I know, ah, too well I know, that he often thinks of
me. On that susceptible masculine heart I made an impression at first
sight. When he welcomes visitors to his country-home I know he often
speaks of his first glimpse of the house--and of me. ’Tis pleasant
to feel my memory will ever bring to one face a cheerful smile, and
furnish a never-failing “good story”--nay, to three, for I know that
Elam Chadsey and Abiel Hartshorn both keep my memory green; that to
them my mishap was “argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a
good jest forever.”
THE DANCING TURKEY
In the States Papers office in London is a “propper ballad” entitled a
“Sommons to New England,” which was written about 1680. It alluringly
recites natural conditions in the colonies. One verse runs thus:
“There flights of foules doe cloud the light,
Of turkies three score pound in weight
As bigg as ostridges.”
All the early travellers in America confirm the vast weight of
these wild turkeys--Josselyn said sixty pounds. The turkey has not
grown larger by domestication, the wild birds are still finer and
more beautiful than the tame ones. All foreign epicures agree that
American turkeys are the best in the world. In America we make
fine distinctions, even in American turkeys; tastes differ with
localities. In some northern States no turkey is perfect unless
stuffed with chestnuts--that is, as food. In Louisiana he is gorged
with pecan-nuts. In South Carolina raw rice is your only prime
turkey-food. In Virginia wild persimmons give the turkey a tang that
gilds refined gold. The President of the United States, whoever he may
be, feasts every Thanksgiving Day on a Narragansett turkey fattened on
Narragansett grasshoppers--and I approve the President’s taste.
These Presidential turkeys, though great and fat, are not “as bigg as
ostridges;” but a Narragansett turkey with whom I was acquainted--as
Rosa Bonheur would say--fairly rivalled his ancestors of colonial days.
His name was Launcelot Gobbo; he was born, or rather hatched, on a
Narragansett farm. He was the joint property of Bill and Ralph Prime,
two farmer’s sons, fourteen and fifteen years of age, who, according
to the good old fashion in the Prime family, were given each year some
portion of the farm stock--a cosset lamb, a brood of chickens, a pig,
a cote of pigeons--to rear and sell, or keep as their very own. This
year their share of the farm-products was Launcelot Gobbo and his mate.
His name was given him by the village school-teacher, a young college
student who chanced to come frequently to call on the boy’s sister,
Mary Prime. Gobbo was chosen as their handsel because he was such a
mammoth turkey-chick, a nine-days’-old wonder; and by tender cherishing
he had fulfilled the great promise of his youth.
This great size had been aided by careful feeding, on a composite
diet, of Narragansett fashion, extended by Oriental suggestion. His
first food was such as all well-reared Narragansett turkeys have, milk
curdled with rennet, by which the gasps and stomach-ache so fatal to
turkey infancy were avoided. Then came the natural food-supply of
grasshoppers and Rhode Island whole corn. The Prime boys had few books
to read; among them were several dry and colorless memoirs of sainted
missionaries to the East. There was one nutritious kernel, however,
in one of these rustling husks of books; it was an account of the
preparation of locusts as food, the roasting, frying, and drying them
for grinding them into meal. Bill Prime was an inventive genius, a true
Yankee, ever ready to take a hint; moreover, he was animated by sincere
affection for his pet, and pride in his size; and as he read the
meagre missionary accounts he conceived the notion of supplying Gobbo
with his dearly loved grasshoppers after autumnal winds had chilled and
cleared the fields of vegetable and insect life.
It was not as easy a task to catch and dry these American grasshoppers
as Oriental locusts, but love laughs at limitations; just as Gobbo
laughed when his daily dole of grasshoppers was dealt out to him on
chill October and November mornings, with the Tallman sweetings that
formed his dessert. “Laugh and grow fat” is the old saying; and as
Gobbo laughed he also grew fat, and he waxed taller and taller. Ralph
thought Gobbo weighed thirty pounds; Bill set the weight at least five
pounds higher. As the turkey was full and rich of feather he looked to
me twice as large as any other I had ever seen; really big enough to
reach the seventeenth-century standard of “three score pound in weight.”
But Gobbo had other claims to consideration besides his size or his
distinguished name; he was an accomplished turkey--a trick-performer.
Like Shakespeare’s famous Gobbo for whom he was named, he “used his
heels at his master’s commands.” When Bill struck the ground near him
with a stick and called out “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies,” and
set up a shrill fife-like whistle, Gobbo spread his great fan-like
tail, and nodded and bowed his head, and circled and hopped around
in exact time with the rapping of the stick, in the most pompous,
ridiculous, mirth-provoking caricature of a dance that ever was footed
or clawed. He posed before the whole town as a show-bird. Stolid
Narragansett farmers and fishermen for miles around came to see him,
and roared aloud at his dancing, which he had to exhibit every day in
the week. Even on Sunday, at the nooning, Bill proudly but secretly led
the neighbors’ boys home to the farm and behind the barn; though the
deacon sternly frowned on a Sunday dance, even by a turkey who had no
soul to be saved.
It was the second week of November; Gobbo was still growing and still
dancing, when one day a gayly painted vehicle with a smart horse came
dashing into town. The wagon had an enclosed box behind the chaise
front. It might be taken for a peddler’s cart or a patent-medicine
coach, but it was neither; it was the collecting-van of a Boston
“antique-man.” Persuasive, smiling, flattering, peering into every
kitchen, cupboard, and dresser, in every parlor closet, in every
bedroom and gabled attic, he gathered in his lucrative autumnal
harvest of brass andirons and candlesticks, of old blue dishes and
copper lustre pitchers, of harp-back chairs and spinning-wheels. He
débonnairly purchased two pewter porringers, a sampler, and an old
mirror of Mrs. Prime, while he effusively praised the farm and the
cattle. And as he partook of the apples and cider generously set
before him, he shouted with laughter at Gobbo, who proudly danced
for him again and again. As the early twilight began to lower, the
“antique-man” called out a cheerful good-night and drove away. Gobbo
also stalked off--and forever--from the Prime door-yard, for in the
morning he had vanished from the farm as completely as if he had
evaporated.
How the boys stormed and mourned! how fiercely they descended
on the “colored” Johnsons, more than suspected in the past of
chicken-stealing! how they hunted the woods and meadows! how they
fretted and fumed!--but to no avail. To check their worry and anger,
their mother sent them off to Boston to spend Thanksgiving week with
their married sister.
With the sea-loving curiosity of all boys, they haunted the wharves
and lower portions of the city, and on the day before Thanksgiving, as
they wandered up from the docks through a crowded and noisy street,
they joined a little group gathered around the show-window of a “dime
musee,” for in the window stood as a lure, a promise of treasures and
wonders within, an enormous turkey, penned in a wire coop, drooping of
feather, and listlessly feeding.
“He isn’t nearly as big as Gobbo,” said Bill, contemptuously. “Not
much,” answered Ralph; but even as they spoke there gathered in their
questioning brains, in their eager eyes, a conviction which burst forth
from their lips: “It is Gobbo!”
Now they were Yankee boys, slow but shrewd, and they knew every feather
of the wings, every fold of the comb and wattle of their pet; but each
paid his dime and entered the museum to be sure. Past the voluble
showman, the wax figures, the stuffed animals, they silently strolled
to the window. No one else stood near within doors. “Dance, Gobbo,
dance for the ladies!” cried Bill, excitedly, striking the floor
with his cane, and his heart beat high. Oh! how the crowd outside on
the street laughed as Gobbo spread his tail and danced “most high and
disposedly,” as the French ambassador said of Queen Elizabeth in the
gavotte.
A great printed card hung over Gobbo’s pen; he was to be raffled that
very night. Made suspicious by fraud, the boys scarcely dared leave
the hall even for food, but with the instinctive good sense of many of
country birth, Bill interviewed a friendly policeman on the beat, and
another policeman appeared at the raffling at eight o’clock and sat
near the Prime boys on the front row of seats in the hall.
At the appointed hour a noisy but not disorderly crowd had gathered.
The master of ceremonies removed the wire netting from around Gobbo,
who was still feeding and still fattening. The showman entreated
silence, and in a reasonable stillness began: “Gentlemen, this
magnificent turkey, the biggest ever known in the civilized world, the
feathered monarch of the ornithological world, will--” when a shrill
whistle pierced the air, and “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies!” was
roared out. The turkey reared his long neck and head like a snake, and
with a piercing gobble literally flew from the platform to his friend
Bill, with a force that almost stunned the boy. The showman advanced:
“What does this mean?” he shouted. “Don’t you touch him,” screamed
Bill, and “Don’t you touch him,” confirmed with emphasis the policeman,
while Ralph explained to the inquisitive and sympathizing ’longshoremen
and sailors who crowded around him, how the turkey had been lost and
found; not without some bitter aspersions on the character of the
antique-man.
An adjourned meeting was held at the police-station the following
morning, when the Prime boys testified and Gobbo danced, and a gay
session it was in those dingy rooms; and the showman with a sham
good-humor resigned his claims to what had proved to him a very
lucrative drawing-card.
There ought to be a romantic ending to this tale of a lost love; but
every turkey has his day, and this was Gobbo’s. He was too big to keep
in a city yard, and too big to take home in the cars; thus did his
greatness, as did Cardinal Wolsey’s, prove his destruction. Even his
accomplishments were a snare; for when it was known he could dance,
his talent could not be hidden under a bushel in obscure country-life.
He had ever been destined for a city market, and soon again he graced
a window, this time of a great city poulterer; and on the eve of
Thanksgiving he was again raffled--the second time, alas! with hanging
wings, and plucked sides, and drooping head.
CUDDYMONK’S GHOST
Black Cuddymonk and his wife Rosann were holding an animated discussion
as they sat before the fire in their cheerful kitchen in old
Narragansett. That is, Cuddymonk was talking loudly and effusively,
while Rosann said little, but said it firmly; and in the end succeeded
in having her own way, as such stubborn, talk-less persons usually do,
whether they be black or white. Cuddy had had an offer of employment
for a month, and he was unwilling to accept the position and do the
work; but Rosann calmly overruled him and he had to yield. It was not
that the work was hard, or that the pay was poor, but simply that Cuddy
was afraid, he was too superstitious to dare to face the terrors that
the performance of his duties might bring forth. And yet it seemed
simple enough! Old Dr. Greene had the rheumatism and could not hold the
reins to drive, and he wanted to hire Cuddy to drive in his chaise
with him when he went on his daily round of visits, and to care for
the horse when he returned home. Cuddy would have loved to feed and
rub down the horse, and drive through the sunny lanes and green woods,
and sit in the sun while the Doctor visited and dosed and bled within
doors. It would be like making a round of visits himself, for he was
then “Black Gov’nor,” and at every house in village or on farm he would
find some friend or constituent to chat and gossip with. But alas! all
the Doctor’s visits were not made in the daytime, and Cuddy shrank from
the thought of driving all over Narragansett in the night. He thus
complained to Rosann: “I wouldn’t care if it warn’t for dem darminted
graveyards. Dere’s a graveyard on ebery farm all ober dis country. I
nebber see sech fools es folks is in Narragansett. Dey warnts ter hab
ghosts ebberywhere. Why don’t dey keep ’em all in de ole church-yard
ober ter Fender Zeke’s corner, den yer can go de road dat leads round
de udder way, an’ not meet ’em. Down Boston way dey buries folks in
church-yards an’ keeps der ghosts where dey belongs.”
Cuddymonk had travelled, and knew how things should be; he had ridden
to Boston thirty years previously with Judge Potter; and the strange
sights he had seen, and the new ways he had learned at that metropolis,
had been his chief stock-in-trade ever since, and, indeed, had formed
one of his great qualifications for election as Black Governor.
Rosann answered him calmly and coldly: “I’s sick er ghosts, Cuddymonk.
I’se been mar’d forty year, and you’s a-talkin’ about ghosts all de
whole during time an’ a-speerin’ for ghosts all dem years, an’ yer
ain’t nebber seed one yit. You’s jess got ter go ter de Doctor’s
termorrer an’ dribe for him.”
“Rosann, when yer sees me brung home a ragin’ luniac wid misery ob
de head, yer’ll wish yer hadn’ drove yer ole man erway from yer bed
’n’ b’ord ter go foolin’ all ober de country in de night-time, seein’
ghosts and sperits an’ witches. P’raps I sha’n’t nebber come home
alibe, anyway.”
“You’s got ter go, Cuddy, an’ dar ain’t no use er talkin’ ’bout it. I
guess de ole Doctor kin charm off any ghost you’ll eber see. ’Sides,
he won’t be out much nights when he got de rheumatiz ser bad. ’Tain’t
ebry day yer kin git yer keep an’ ten dollars a month, an’ yer ought
ter dribe fer him anyway, ter ’comerdate him, when he sabed yer troo de
bronchiters.”
So Cuddy went to the Doctor, and for a week all was well with him. He
drove to all points from Wickford to Biscuit Town, and received such
greeting and honor from all of his race as was due a governor. But an
end came to all this content, for late on a misty, miserable September
afternoon young Joe Champlin came riding up to the doctor’s door in
great speed, and in a few moments the Doctor shouted out to Cuddy to
harness up Peggy. Cuddy was wretched. He knew well where the Champlin
farm lay--far up on Boston Neck--and he thought with keen terror of the
lonely road, of the many little enclosed graveyards that lay between
him and the Champlin homestead. Fear made him bold, and he managed to
stammer out to the Doctor the request that he would have Joe Champlin
hitch his saddle-horse behind the chaise and drive the Doctor to the
farm, where horse and chaise and doctor could remain all night; then he
(Cuddy) would walk up early in the morning to drive back. The Doctor
scoffed at the ridiculous proposition, and barely gave Cuddy time ere
they started to put on his coat and waistcoat wrong side out--a sure
safeguard against ghosts. As they drove up Boston Neck in the misty
twilight Cuddy suffered keen thrills of terror whenever he got down
from the chaise to let down bars or open gates; for the only roads at
that time in that region of Narragansett were drift-ways through the
fields--well-travelled, to be sure--but still kept closed by gates.
Cuddy clambered in and out of the chaise, and opened and closed the
gates with an agility that amazed the Doctor, who had previously had
frequent occasions in the daytime to revile him for his laziness in
like duties. He also glanced with apprehension and dread at the family
burying-grounds they passed, counting to himself the whole dreary
number that would have to be repassed on the way home.
These sad little resting-places are dotted all over Narragansett. In
olden times each family was buried in some corner on the family-farm.
Sometimes the burying-place was enclosed in a high stone wall; often
they were overgrown with great pine or hemlock trees, or half-shaded
with airy locust-trees. Ugly little gravestones were clustered in
these family resting-places--slate head-stones carved with winged
cherub heads and quaint old names, and lists of the virtues of the
lost ones; and all the simple but tender stone-script of the country
stone-cutter’s lore--hackneyed but loving verses--repeated on stone
after stone. Beautifully ideal is the thought and reality of these
old Narragansett planters and their wives and children resting in the
ground they loved so dearly, and so faithfully worked for. But there
was nothing beautiful in the thought to Cuddy; he groaned as he passed
them, and thought of his midnight return; and he tried to learn from
the Doctor how long he would probably be detained at the Champlin farm.
But Dr. Greene, accustomed to ride alone for hours through the country,
was taciturn and gruff, and kept Cuddy in ignorance of both the name
and ailment of the patient.
When they reached the Champlin farm Cuddy ventured to say, with a
cheerful assumption of interest: “’S’pose you’ll stay here all night,
Doctor, it’s so cole an’ damp an’ so bad fer yer rheumatiz. I’ll sleep
in de hay in de barn an’ won’t bodder nobody.”
“No, indeed,” answered the Doctor, sharply, “we’ll start back in half
an hour.” Cuddymonk gloomily hitched and blanketed the horse, and
walked into the great kitchen, where, nodding and dozing, sat old Ruth
Champlin, the negro cook. When Ruth saw his reversed clothing, she did
not dream of smiling at his absurd appearance, but at once sympathized
with him in his gloomy forebodings; and while she filled him with
metheglin--a fermented mead made of water, honey, and locust-beans--she
also filled him with fresh stories of witches and ghosts until the time
came to start on the homeward drive, when the poor “Black Gov’nor’s”
nerves were completely unstrung.
I will not give a list of the terrors that assailed Cuddy from the
first moment of his ride home. A rustling leaf, a cracking branch, a
sighing wind, were magnified into groans and wails. Every stone, every
bush, seemed an uncanny form; every cluster of blackberry bushes, every
hay-rick, a looming monster. And when Dr. Greene decided to return by
Pender Zeke’s corner, and thus pass the old church foundation of the
Narragansett Church and its cluster of deserted gravestones, Cuddy’s
terror found words.
“Don’ do it, Doctor; don’ go by dat darminted ole church foundashum.
It’s a dreffle lonely road, an’ ebberybody knows dere’s ghosts in dat
ole church-yard ebbery night. Ole Mum Amey seed one a-dancin’ on ole
Brenton’s table-stone. Fer de lub ob praise, Doctor, don’ less go
dere to-night. Ole Tuggie Bannocks an’ all dem dashted ole witches
gadders in de ole noon-house dat stan’s in de church-yard an’ brews
dere witch-broth; an’ ef anyone sees ’em a-brewin’ dey can nebber eat
nothin’ else, an’ pines away wid misery ob de stummick an’ dies.”
The Doctor only answered, gruffly, “Go by the corners, Cuddy; I’ll
drive off the ghost.”
As they approached the haunted church-yard Cuddy was fairly speechless
with apprehension. His teeth chattered, and he held the whip in one
trembling hand to ward off any ghostly or witchly attack. Words would
fail in attempting to express the horror, the agony, which seized him,
which overwhelmed him when he saw as he passed the old noon-house an
unearthly, an appalling, object, which he could not bear to look at,
nor could he force his staring eyes to look away from. The Doctor saw
it, too--a tall slender column, about seven feet in height, of faintly
shimmering light vaguely outlining a robed figure, not of a human
being, but plainly of a ghost. It appeared to be about a hundred feet
from the road, though it could be clearly seen through the mist, and
it seemed palpitating with a faint, uncanny radiance. “Stop, Cuddy,”
eagerly roared the Doctor, “I want to see what that is!” And as Cuddy
showed no sign of stopping the horse’s progress, he seized the reins
from the negro’s shaking hands. Cuddy, frightened out of all sense of
respect or deference, shouted out, “G’lang, git up,” and attempted to
whip the steed.
“Cuddy, you black imp! if you dare to do that again, I’ll whip you
within an inch of your life. I’m going to get out and see what that is.
It is a very interesting physical phenomenon.”
“Oh, Doctor dear, you’s bewitched a’ready. Dere ain’t no physic about
dat, it’s a moonack. Fer de lub of God, don’t go near it--you’ll nebber
walk out alibe”--and with that the unhappy black man fairly burst into
tears and threw his restraining arms around the Doctor’s neck.
The unheeding Doctor jumped from the side of the chaise with a force
that nearly dragged Cuddymonk with him. The weeping negro’s affection
and interest would carry him no farther, and as the Doctor walked
sturdily across the church-green, Cuddy, moaning and groaning in
despair, gathered up the reins, ready, at any motion or sound of the
ghost, to start the horse down the road and wholly desert the Doctor.
The brave ghost-investigator walked up the four narrow stone steps that
once led to the church door--but now, alas! lead sadly nowhere--then
turned into the graveyard. As he stumbled eagerly along through the
high grass and tangled blackberry-bushes, and as he passed under the
shading branches of a wild-cherry tree, a most terrifying catastrophe
took place--he plunged and slid into an open grave containing about
a foot of water. Cuddy heard the splash, and it indicated to him the
Doctor’s utter annihilation. He gathered the reins up with a groan of
despair and prepared to drive off with speed, lest the moonack chase
and overwhelm him also, when he heard the Doctor’s voice. The instinct
of obedience was strong in him--for he had been born a slave--and
he delayed a moment to listen. “Come here, Cuddy,” shouted the
Doctor, “I’ve fallen into the grave they’ve dug for old Tom Hazard.”
Cuddy groaned, but did not move, either to drive, or to fly to the
Doctor’s rescue. “Come here, I say, and help me out; I shall die of
the rheumatism if I stay here.” Another groan, but still no motion to
render assistance. “Cuddy, if you don’t come, I’ll conjure you with
that big skeleton in my closet.” Still no answer, and at last, the
Doctor, by dint of struggling and breaking away the earth, managed
to drag himself out of the shallow grave. Undaunted by a mishap that
would have both mentally unnerved and physically exhausted anyone but
a country doctor, unchilled in spirit though shivering in body, the
determined investigator walked up to the ghost.
He took one glance and at once turned, and, avoiding the open grave,
ran down the steps and across the green. “Come here, Cuddy; if I die
of rheumatism I’ll take you up and show you that ghost. I’ll conjure
you with every charm in the witch-book if you don’t come.” Cuddy was
weak with terror, and the Doctor seized him by the collar, pulled him
out of the chaise and up the steps. With chattering teeth and closed
eyes he stumbled along by the Doctor’s side, clutching his leader’s arm
and muttering words of Voodoo charms. When they reached the faintly
shining ghost, the Doctor shouted, “Open your eyes, Cuddy,” and his
power fairly forced Cuddy to comply. The Doctor raised his whip and
brought it down on the shining ghost; a great swarm of fire-flies rose
in the air, leaving disclosed a juniper-tree, which had chanced to
grow somewhat in the form of a human figure. This strange phenomenon I
cannot explain, but it is not the only time that a juniper-tree on a
misty night in fall has attracted a swarm of fire-flies to light upon
it.
Cuddy nearly fainted in revulsion of feeling. Both returned to the road
and clambered into the chaise. The Doctor was now thoroughly chilled.
He took from the medicine-chest that he always carried (“the Doctor’s
bag o’ tools,” Cuddy called it) a flask that may have contained
medicine, but which smelled more like “kill-devil,” and bade Cuddy
drive with speed to Zeke Gardiner’s; for when the heat of the chase was
over, the valiant old Doctor began to feel the twinges of an enemy that
he dreaded more than any ghost--his rheumatism--and he dare not ride
home dripping with icy grave-water, even if he were full of Jamaica rum.
No lights were seen at Zeke’s, but a vigorous knocking at the door
roused the entire amazed and sympathetic family; and while one blew up
a roaring fire in the chimney, another heated a warming-pan, another
took off the Doctor’s muddy clothes, and Mistress Gardiner concocted a
terrible mixture--a compound tea of boneset, snakeroot, and chamomile,
which, in spite of the Doctor’s fierce remonstrances and entreaties for
a mug of flip instead, she poured down his throat, thus cancelling in
one fell dose many a debt of nauseous bolus, pill, or draught that she
owed to him.
The perspiring Doctor, as he was being smothered in the great
feather-bed, and singed with the warming-pan, and filled to the teeth
with scalding herb-tea, gave his parting order to Cuddy--to drive home
and tell Mrs. Greene that he had been detained at the Gardiners’ all
night “on account of an overdose of spirits,” and then to come for him
in the morning. Cuddy listened respectfully and answered obediently,
went quietly around behind the Gardiners’ house, calmly placed the
horse in the Gardiners’ stable and the chaise in the Gardiners’ barn,
slept the sleep of the brave, the obedient, the unhaunted, in the hay
in the upper hay-mow, and appeared, as ordered, with horse and chaise
at the front door the following morning.
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