Читать книгу The Canadian Settler's Guide - Catharine Parr Traill - Страница 16

It is a matter of surprize to many persons to see the great amount of energy of mind and personal exertion that women will make under the most adverse circumstances in this country. I have marked with astonishment and admiration acts of female heroism, for such it may be termed in women whose former habits of life had exempted them from any kind of laborious work, urged by some unforeseen exigency, perform tasks from which many men would have shrunk. Sometimes aroused by the indolence and inactivity of their husbands or sons, they have resolutely set their own shoulders to the wheel, and borne the burden with unshrinking perseverence unaided; forming a bright example to all around them, and showing what can be done when the mind is capable of overcoming the weakness of the body.

A poor settler was killed by the fall of a tree, in his fallow. The wife was left with six children, the youngest a babe, the eldest a boy of fourteen. This family belonged to the labouring class. The widow did not sit down and fold her hands in utter despair, in this sad situation; but when the first natural grief had subsided, she roused herself to do what she could for the sake of her infants. Some help no doubt she got from kind neighbours; but she did not depend on them alone. She and her eldest son together, piled the brush on the new fallow; and with their united exertions and the help of the oxen, they managed to log and burn off the Spring fallow. I dare say they got some help, or called a logging Bee, to aid in this work.—They managed, this poor widow and her children, to get two or three acres of wheat in, and potatoes, and a patch of corn; and to raise a few vegetables. They made a brush fence and secured the fields from cattle breaking in, and then harvested the crops in due time, the lad working out sometimes for a week or so, to help earn a trifle to assist them.

That fall they underbrushed a few acres more land, the mother helping to chop the small trees herself, and young ones piling the brush. They had some ague, and lost one cow, during that year; but still they fainted not, and put trust in Him who is the helper of the widow and fatherless. Many little sums of money were earned by the boys shaping axe-handles, which they sold at the stores, and beech brooms: these are much used about barns and in rough work. They are like the Indian brooms, peeled from a stick of ironwood, blue-beech, or oak. Whip-handles of hickory, too, they made. They sold that winter maple sugar and molasses; and the widow knitted socks for some of the neighbours, and made slippers of listing. The boys also made some money by carrying in loads of oak and hemlock bark, to the tanners, from whom they got orders on the stores for groceries, clothes and such things. By degrees their stock increased, and they managed by dint of care and incessant labour to pay up small instalments on their land. How this was all done by a weak woman and her children, seems almost a miracle, but they brought the strong will to help the weak arm.

I heard this story from good authority, from the physician who attended upon one of the children in sickness, and who had been called in at the inquest that was held on the body of her husband.

Dr. H. often named this woman as an example of female energy under the most trying circumstances; and I give it to show what even a poor, desolate widow may do, even in a situation of such dire distress.