Читать книгу The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker - Ezra Meeker Meeker - Страница 6

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

I was born near Huntsville, Butler County, Ohio, about ten miles east of Hamilton, Ohio. This, to me, important event occurred on December 29, AD 1830, hence I am many years past the usual limit of three score years and ten.

My father's ancestors came from England in 1637 and in 1665 settled near Elizabeth City, New Jersey, built a very substantial house which is still preserved, furnished more than a score of hardy soldiers in the War of Independence, and were noted for their stalwart strength, steady habits, and patriotic ardor. My father had lost nothing of the original sturdy instincts of the stock nor of the stalwart strength, incident to his ancestral breeding. I remember that for three years, at Carlyle's flouring mill in the then western suburbs of Indianapolis, Ind., he worked 18 hours a day, as miller. He had to be on duty by 7 o'clock a. m., and remained on duty until 1 o'clock the next morning, and could not leave the mill for dinner;—all this for $20 per month, and bran for the cow, and yet his health was good and strength seemed the same as when he began the ordeal. My mother's maiden name was Phoeba Baker. A strong English and Welch strain of blood ran in her veins, but I know nothing farther back than my grandfather Baker, who settled in Butler County, Ohio, in the year 1804, or thereabouts. My mother, like my father, could and did endure continuous long hours of severe labor without much discomfort, in her household duties. I have known her frequently to patch and mend our clothing until 11 o'clock at night and yet would invariably be up in the morning by 4:00 and resume her labors.

The Ancestral Old Homestead, Built 1676.

Both my parents were sincere, though not austere Christian people, my mother in particular inclining to a liberal faith, but both were in early days members of the "Disciples," or as sometimes known as "Newlites," afterwards, I believe, merged with the "Christian" church, popularly known as the "Campbellites" and were ardent admirers of Love Jameson, who presided so long over the Christian organization at Indianapolis, and whom I particularly remember as one of the sweetest singers that I ever heard.

Small wonder that with such parents and with such surroundings I am able to say that for fifty-eight years of married life I have never been sick in bed a single day, and that I can and have endured long hours of labor during my whole life, and what is particularly gratifying that I can truthfully say that I have always loved my work and that I never watched for the sun to go down to relieve me from the burden of labor.

"Burden of labor?" Why should any man call labor a burden? It's the sweetest pleasure of life, if we will but look aright. Give me nothing of the "man with the hoe" sentiment, as depicted by Markham, but let me see the man with a light heart; that labors; that fulfills a destiny the good God has given him; that fills an honored place in life even if in an humble station; that looks upon the bright side of life while striving as best he may to do his duty. I am led into these thoughts by what I see around about me, so changed from that of my boyhood days where labor was held to be honorable, even though in humble stations.

But, to return to my story. My earliest recollection, curiously enough, is of my schoolboy days, of which I had so few. I was certainly not five years old when a drunken, brutal school teacher undertook to spank me while holding me on his knees because I did not speak a word plainly. That is the first fight I have any recollection of, and would hardly remember that but for the witnesses, one of them my oldest brother, who saw the struggle, where my teeth did such excellent work as to draw blood quite freely. What a spectacle that, of a half-drunken teacher maltreating his scholars! But then that was a time before a free school system, and when the parson would not hesitate to take a "wee bit," and when, if the decanter was not on the sideboard, the jug and gourd served well in the field or house. To harvest without whisky in the field was not to be thought of; nobody ever heard of a log-rolling or barn-raising without whisky. And so I will say to the zealous temperance reformers, be of good cheer, for the world has moved in these eighty-five years. Be it said, though, to the everlasting honor of my father, that he set his head firmly against the practice, and said his grain should rot in the field before he would supply whisky to his harvest hands, and I have no recollections of ever but once tasting any alcoholic liquors in my boyhood days.

I did, however, learn to smoke when very young. It came about in this way: My mother always smoked, as long as I can remember. Women those days smoked as well as men, and nothing was thought of it.

Well, that was before the time of matches, or leastwise, it was a time when it was thought necessary to economize in their use, and mother, who was a corpulent woman, would send me to put a coal in her pipe, and so I would take a whiff or two, just to get it started, you know, which, however, soon developed into the habit of lingering to keep it going. But let me be just to myself—for more than thirty years ago I threw away my pipe and have never smoked since, and never will, and now to those smokers who say they "can't quit" I want to call their attention to one case of a man who did.

My next recollection of school-days was after father had moved to Lockland, Ohio, then ten miles north of Cincinnati, now, I presume, a suburb of that great city. I played "hookey" instead of going to school, but one day while under the canal bridge the noise of passing teams so frightened me that I ran home and betrayed himself. Did my mother whip me? Why, God bless her dear old soul, no. Whipping of children, though, both at home and in the school-room, was then about as common as eating one's breakfast; but my parents did not think it was necessary to rule by the rod, though then their family government was exceptional. And so we see now a different rule prevailing, and see that the world does move and is getting better.

After my father's removal to Indiana times were "hard," as the common expression goes, and all members of the household for a season were called upon to contribute their mite. I drove four yoke of oxen for twenty-five cents a day, and a part of that time boarded at home at that. This was on the Wabash where oak grubs grew, as father often said, "as thick as hair on a dog's back," but not so thick as that. But we used to force the big plow through and cut grubs with the plow shear, as big as my wrist; and when we saw a patch of them ahead, then was when I learned how to halloo and rave at the poor oxen and inconsiderately whip them, but father wouldn't let me swear at them. Let me say parenthetically that I have long since discontinued such a foolish practice, and that I now talk to my oxen in a conversational tone of voice and use the whip sparingly. When father moved to Indianapolis, I think in 1842, "times" seemed harder than ever, and I was put to work wherever an opportunity for employment offered, and encouraged by my mother to seek odd jobs and keep the money myself, she, however, becoming my banker; and in three years I had actually accumulated $37.00. My! but what a treasure that was to me, and what a bond of confidence between my mother and myself, for no one else, as I thought, knew about my treasure. I found out afterwards, though, that father knew about it all the time.

My ambition was to get some land. I had heard there was a forty-acre tract in Hendricks County (Indiana) yet to be entered at $1.25 per acre, and as soon as I could get $50.00 together I meant to hunt up that land and secure it. I used to dream about that land day times as well as at night. I sawed wood and cut each stick twice for twenty-five cents a cord, and enjoyed the experience, for at night I could add to my treasure. It was because my mind did not run on school work and because of my restless disposition that my mother allowed me to do this instead of compelling me to attend school, and which cut down my real schoolboy days to less than six months. It was, to say the least, a dangerous experiment and one which only a mother (who knows her child better than all others) dare take, and I will not by any means advise other mothers to adopt such a course.

Then when did you get your education? the casual reader may ask. I will tell you a story. When in 1870 I wrote my first book (long since out of print), "Washington Territory West of the Cascade Mountains," and submitted the work to the Eastern public, a copy fell into the hands of Jay Cooke, who then had six power presses running advertising the Northern Pacific railroad, and he at once took up my whole edition. Mr. Cooke, whom I met, closely questioned me as to where I was educated. After having answered his many queries about my life on the frontier he would not listen to my disclaimer that I was not an educated man, referring to the work in his hand. The fact then dawned on me that it was the reading of the then current literature of the day that had taught me. I answered that the New York Tribune had educated me, as I had then been a close reader of that paper for eighteen years, and it was there I got my pure English diction, if I possessed it. We received mails only twice a month for a long time, and sometimes only once a month, and it is needless to say that all the matter in the paper was read and much of it re-read and studied in the cabin and practiced in the field. However, I do not set my face against school training, but can better express my meaning by the quaint saying that "too much of a good thing is more than enough," a phrase in a way senseless, which yet conveys a deeper meaning than the literal words express. The context will show the lack of a common school education, after all, was not entirely for want of an opportunity, but from my aversion to confinement and preference for work to study.

In those days apprenticeship was quite common, and it was not thought to be a disgrace for a child to be "bound out" until he was twenty-one, the more especially if this involved learning a trade. Father took a notion he would "bind me out" to a Mr. Arthens, the mill owner at Lockland, who was childless, and took me with him one day to talk it over. Finally, when asked how I would like the change, I promptly replied that it would be all right if Mrs. Arthens would "do up my sore toes", whereupon there was such an outburst of merriment that I always remembered it. We must remember that boys in those days did not wear shoes in summer and quite often not in winter either. But mother put a quietus on the whole business and said the family must not be divided, and it was not, and in that she was right. Give me the humble home for a child, that is a home in fact, rather than the grandest palace where home life is but a sham.

I come now to an important event of my life, when father moved from Lockland, Ohio, to near Covington, Indiana. I was not yet seven years old, but walked all the way behind the wagon and began building "castles in the air," which is the first (but by no means the last) that I remember. We were going out to Indiana to be farmers, and it was here, near the banks of the Wabash, that I learned the art of driving four yoke of oxen to a breaking plow, without swearing.

That reminds me of an after-experience, the summer I was nineteen. Uncle John Kinworthy (good old soul he was), an ardent Quaker, who lived a mile or so out from Bridgeport, Indiana, asked me one day while I was passing his place with three yoke of oxen to haul a heavy cider press beam in place. This led the oxen through the front dooryard and in full sight and hearing of three buxom Quaker girls, who either stood in the door or poked their heads out of the window, in company with their good mother. Go through the front yard past those girls the cattle would not, and kept doubling back, first on one side and then on the other. Uncle Johnny, noticing I did not swear at the cattle, and attributing the absence of oaths to the presence of ladies, or maybe, like a good many others, he thought oxen could not be driven without swearing at them, sought an opportunity, when the mistress of the house could not hear him, and said in a low tone, "If thee can do any better, thee had better let out the word." Poor, good old soul, he doubtless justified himself in his own mind that it was no more sin to swear all the time than part of the time; and why is it? I leave the answer to that person, if he can be found, that never swears.

Yes, I say again, give me the humble home for a child, that is a home in fact, rather than the grandest palace where home life is but a sham. And right here is where this generation has a grave problem to solve, if it's not the gravest of the age, the severance of child life from the real home and the real home influences, by the factory child labor, the boarding schools, the rush for city life, and so many others of like influences at work, that one can only take time to mention examples.

And now the reader will ask, What do you mean by the home life? and to answer that I will relate some features of my early home life, though by no means would say that I would want to return to all the ways of "ye olden times."

My mother always expected each child to have a duty to perform, as well as time to play. Light labor, to be sure, but labor; something of service. Our diet was so simple, the mere mention of it may create a smile with the casual reader. The mush pot was a great factor in our home life; a great heavy iron pot that hung on the crane in the chimney corner where the mush would slowly bubble and splutter over or near a bed of oak coals for half the afternoon. And such mush, always made from yellow corn meal and cooked three hours or more. This, eaten with plenty of fresh, rich milk comprised the supper for the children. Tea? Not to be thought of. Sugar? It was too expensive—cost fifteen to eighteen cents a pound, and at a time it took a week's labor to earn as much as a day's labor now. Cheap molasses, sometimes, but not often. Meat, not more than once a day, but eggs in abundance. Everything father had to sell was low-priced, while everything mother must buy at the store was high. Only to think of it, you who complain of the hard lot of the workers of this generation: wheat twenty-five cents a bushel, corn fifteen cents, pork two and two and a half cents a pound, with bacon sometimes used as fuel by the reckless, racing steamboat captains of the Ohio and Mississippi. But when we got onto the farm with abundance of fruit and vegetables, with plenty of pumpkin pies and apple dumplings, our cup of joy was full, and we were the happiest mortals on earth. As I have said, 4:00 o'clock scarcely ever found mother in bed, and until within very recent years I can say that 5:00 o'clock almost invariably finds me up. Habit, do you say? No, not wholly, though that may have something to do with it, but I get up early because I want to, and because I have something to do.

When I was born, thirty miles of railroad comprised the whole mileage of the United States, and this only a tramway. Now, how many hundred thousand miles I know not, but many miles over the two hundred thousand mark. When I crossed the great states of Illinois and Iowa on my way to Oregon in 1852 not a mile of railroad was seen in either state. Only four years before, the first line was built in Indiana, really a tramway, from Madison, on the Ohio River, to Indianapolis. What a furore the building of that railroad created! Earnest, honest men opposed the building just as sincerely as men now advocate public ownership; both propositions are fallacious, the one long since exploded, the other in due time, as sure to die out as the first. My father was a strong advocate of the railroads, but I caught the arguments on the other side advocated with such vehemence as to have the sound of anger. What will our farmers do with their hay if all the teams that are hauling freight to the Ohio River are thrown out of employment? What will the tavern keepers do? What will become of the wagoners? A hundred such queries would be asked by the opponents of the railroad and, to themselves, triumphantly answered that the country would be ruined if railroads were built. Nevertheless, Indianapolis has grown from ten thousand to much over two hundred thousand, notwithstanding the city enjoyed the unusual distinction of being the first terminal city in the state of Indiana. I remember it was the boast of the railroad magnates of that day that they would soon increase the speed of their trains to fourteen miles an hour—this when they were running twelve.

In the year 1845 a letter came from Grandfather Baker to my mother that he would give her a thousand dollars with which to buy a farm. The burning question with my father and mother was how to get that money out from Ohio to Indiana. They actually went in a covered wagon to Ohio for it and hauled it home, all silver, in a box. This silver was nearly all foreign coin. Prior to that time, but a few million dollars had been coined by the United States Government. Grandfather Baker had accumulated this money by marketing small things in Cincinnati, twenty-five miles distant. I have heard my mother tell of going to market on horseback with grandfather many times, carrying eggs, butter and even live chickens on the horse she rode. Grandfather would not go in debt, and so he lived on his farm a long time without a wagon, but finally became wealthy, and was reputed to have a "barrel of money" (silver, of course), out of which store the thousand dollars mentioned came. It took nearly a whole day to count this thousand dollars, as there seemed to be nearly every nation's coin on earth represented, and the "tables" (of value) had to be consulted, the particular coins counted, and their aggregate value computed.

It was this money that bought the farm five miles southwest of Indianapolis, where I received my first real farm training. Father had advanced ideas about farming, though a miller by trade, and early taught me some valuable lessons I never forgot. We (I say "we" advisedly, as father continued to work in the mill and left me in charge of the farm) soon brought up the run-down farm to produce twenty-three bushels of wheat per acre instead of ten, by the rotation of corn, and clover and then wheat. But there was no money in farming at the then prevailing prices, and the land, for which father paid ten dollars an acre, would not yield a rental equal to the interest on the money. Now that same land has recently sold for six hundred dollars an acre.

For a time I worked in the Journal printing office for S. V. B. Noel, who, I think, was the publisher of the Journal, and also printed a free-soil paper. A part of my duty was to deliver those papers to subscribers, who treated me civilly, but when I was caught on the streets of Indianapolis with the papers in my hand I was sure of abuse from some one, and a number of times narrowly escaped personal violence. In the office I worked as roller boy, but known as "the devil," a term that annoyed me not a little. The pressman was a man by the name of Wood. In the same room was a power press, the power being a stalwart negro who turned a crank. We used to race with the power press, when I would fly the sheets, that is, take them off when printed with one hand and roll the type with the other. This so pleased Noel that he advanced my wages to $1.50 a week.

The present generation can have no conception of the brutal virulence of the advocates of slavery against the "nigger" and "nigger lovers," as all were known who did not join in the crusade against the negroes.

One day we heard a commotion on the streets, and upon inquiry were told that "they had just killed a nigger up the street, that's all," and went back to work shocked, but could do nothing. But when a little later word came that it was Wood's brother that had led the mob and that it was "old Jimmy Blake's man" (who was known as a sober, inoffensive colored man) consternation seized Wood as with an iron grip. His grief was inconsolable. The negro had been set upon by the mob just because he was a negro and for no other reason, and brutally murdered. That murder, coupled with the abuse I had received at the hands of this same element, set me to thinking, and I then and there embraced the anti-slavery doctrines and ever after adhered to them until the question was settled.

One of the subscribers to whom I delivered that anti-slavery paper was Henry Ward Beecher, who had then not attained the fame that came to him later in life, but to whom I became attached by his kind treatment and gentle words he always found time to utter. He was then, I think the pastor of the Congregational Church that faced the "Governor's Circle." The church has long since been torn down.

One episode of my life I remember because I thought my parents were in the wrong. Vocal music was taught in singing school, almost, I might say, as regular as day schools. I was passionately fond of music, and before the change came had a splendid alto voice, and became a leader in my part of the class. This coming to the notice of the trustees of Beecher's church, an effort was made to have me join the choir. Mother first objected because my clothes were not good enough, whereupon an offer was made to suitably clothe me and pay something besides; but father objected because he did not want me to listen to preaching other than the sect (Campbellite) to which he belonged. The incident set me to thinking, and finally drove me, young as I was, into the liberal faith, though I dared not openly espouse it. In those days many ministers openly preached of endless punishment in a lake of fire, but I never could believe that doctrine, and yet their words would carry terror into my heart. The ways of the world are better now in this, as in many other respects.

Another episode of my life while working in the printing office I have remembered vividly all these years. During the campaign of 1844 the Whigs held a second gathering on the Tippecanoe battle-ground. It could hardly be called a convention. A better name for the gathering would be a political camp-meeting. The people came in wagons, on horseback, afoot—any way to get there—and camped just like people used to do in their religious camp-meetings. The journeymen printers of the Journal office planned to go in a covered dead-ax wagon, and signified they would make a place for the "devil," if his parents would let him go along. This was speedily arranged with mother, who always took charge of such matters. The proposition coming to Noel's ears he said for the men to print me some campaign songs, which they did with a will, Wood running them off the press after night while I rolled the type for him. My! wasn't I the proudest boy that ever walked the earth? Visions of a pocket full of money haunted me almost day and night until we arrived on the battlefield. But lo and behold, nobody would pay any attention to me. Bands of music were playing here and there; glee clubs would sing and march first on one side of the ground and then the other; processions were marching and the crowds surging, making it necessary for one to look out and not get run over. Coupled with this, the rain would pour down in torrents, but the marching and countermarching went on all the same and continued for a week. An elderly journeyman printer named May, who in a way stood sponsor for our party, told me if I would get up on the fence and sing my songs the people would buy them, and sure enough the crowds came and I sold every copy I had, and went home with eleven dollars in my pocket, the richest boy on earth.

It was about this time the start was made of printing the Indianapolis News, a paper that has thriven all these after years. These same rollicking printers that comprised the party to the battle-ground put their heads together to have some fun, and began printing out of hours a small 9x11 sheet filled with short paragraphs of sharp sayings of men and things about town, some more expressive than elegant, and some, in fact, not fit for polite ears; but the pith of the matter was they treated only of things that were true and of men moving in the highest circles. I cannot recall the given names of any of these men. May, the elderly man before referred to, a man named Finly, and another, Elder, were the leading spirits in the enterprise. Wood did the presswork and my share was to ink the type and in part stealthily distribute the papers, for it was a great secret where they came from at the start—all this "just for the fun of the thing," but the sheet caused so much comment and became sought after so much that the mask was thrown off and the little paper launched as a "semi-occasional" publication and "sold by carrier only," all this after hours, when the regular day's work was finished. I picked up quite a good many fip-i-na-bits (a coin representing the value of 6¼ cents) myself from the sale of these. After a while the paper was published regularly, a rate established, and the little paper took its place among the regular publications of the day. This writing is altogether from memory of occurrences seventy years ago, and may be faulty in detail, but the main facts are true, which probably will be borne out by the files of the great newspaper that has grown from the seed sown by those restless journeymen printers.

It seems though that I was not "cut out" for a printer. My inclination ran more to the open air life, and so father placed me on the farm as soon as the purchase was made and left me in full charge of the work, while he turned his attention to milling. Be it said that I early turned my attention to the girls as well as to the farm, married young—before I had reached the age of twenty-one, and can truly say this was a happy venture, for we lived happily together for fifty-eight years before the call came and now there are thirty-six descendants to revere the name of the sainted mother.

And now for a little insight into these times of precious memories that never fade, and always lend gladness to the heart.