Читать книгу Peter Parley's Own Story - Samuel G. Goodrich - Страница 7

MAKING MAPLE-SUGAR.

Rum was largely consumed, but our distilleries had scarcely begun. A half-pint of it was given as a matter of course to every day laborer, more particularly in the summer season. In all families, rich or poor, it was offered to male visitors as an essential point of hospitality, or even good manners. Women—I beg pardon—ladies, took their schnapps, then named "Hopkins' Elixir," which was the most delicious and seductive means of getting tipsy that has been invented. Crying babies were silenced with hot toddy. Every man imbibed his morning dram, and this was esteemed temperance. There is a story of a preacher, about those days, who thus lectured his parish: "I say nothing, my beloved brethren, against taking a little bitters before breakfast, and after breakfast; especially if you are used to it. What I contend against is, this dramming, dramming, dramming, at all hours of the day. There are some men who take a glass at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and at four in the afternoon. I do not purpose to contend against old-established customs, my brethren, rendered respectable by time and authority; but this dramming, dramming, is a crying sin in the land."

As to brandy, I scarcely heard of it, so far as I can recollect, till I was sixteen years old, and, as an apprentice in a country store, was called upon to sell it. Cider was the universal table beverage. Brandy and whisky soon after came into use. I remember, in my boyhood, to have seen a strange zigzag tin tube, denominated a "still," belonging to one of our neighbors, converting, drop by drop, certain innocent liquids into "fire-water." But, in the days I speak of, French brandy was confined to the houses of the rich, and to the drug-shop.

Wine, in our country towns, was then almost exclusively used for the sacrament.

There was, of course, no baker in Ridgefield; each family not only made its own bread, cakes, and pies, but its own soap, candles, butter, cheese, and the like. The manufacture of linen and woollen cloth was no less a domestic operation. Cotton—that is, raw cotton—was then wholly unknown among us at the North, except as a mere curiosity, produced somewhere in the tropics; but whether it grew on a plant, or an animal, was not clearly settled in the public mind.

We raised our own flax, rotted it, hackled it, dressed it, and spun it. The little wheel, turned by the foot, had its place, and was as familiar as if it had been a member of the family. How often have I seen my mother, and my grandmother, too, sit down to it—though this, as I remember, was for the purpose of spinning some finer kind of thread—the burden of the spinning being done by a neighbor of ours, Sally St. John. By the way, she was a good-hearted, cheerful old maid, who petted me beyond my deserts. I grieve to say, that I repaid her partiality by many mischievous pranks; for which I should have been roundly punished, had not the good creature forgiven and concealed my offences. I did, indeed, get fillipped for catching her foot one day in a steel-trap; but I declare that I was innocent of malice prepense, inasmuch as I had set the trap for a rat, instead of the said Sally. Nevertheless, the verdict was against me; not wholly on account of my misdemeanor in this particular instance, but because, if I did not deserve punishment for that, I had deserved it, and should deserve it for something else; and so it was safe to administer it.

The wool was also spun in the family; partly by my sisters, and partly by Molly Gregory, daughter of our neighbor, the town carpenter. I remember her well as she sang and spun aloft in the attic. In those days, church-singing was the only one of the fine arts which flourished in Ridgefield, except the music of the drum and fife. The choir was divided into four parts, ranged on three sides of the meeting-house gallery. The tenor, led by Deacon Hawley, was in front of the pulpit, the bass to the left, and the treble and counter to the right; the whole being set in motion by a pitch-pipe, made by the deacon himself, who was a cabinet-maker. Molly took upon herself the entire counter, for she had excellent lungs. The fuguing tunes, which had then run a little mad, were her delight. In her solitary operations aloft I have often heard her send forth, from the attic windows, the droning hum of her wheel, with fitful snatches of a hymn, in which the bass began, the tenor followed, then the treble, and, finally, the counter—winding up with irresistible pathos. Molly singing to herself, and all unconscious of eavesdroppers, carried on all the parts thus:—

Bass. "Long for a cooling— Tenor. "Long for a cooling— Treble. "Long for a cooling— Counter. "Long for a cooling stream at hand, And they must drink or die!"

The knitting of stockings was performed by the women of the family in the evening, and especially at tea-parties. This was considered a moral, as well as an economical, employment; for people held, with Dr. Watts, that

"Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do."

Satan, however, dodged the question: for if the hands were occupied the tongue was loose; and it was said that, in some families, he kept them well occupied with idle gossip. At all events, pianos, chess-boards, graces, battledoors and shuttlecocks, with other safety-valves of the kind, were only known by the hearing of the ear, as belonging to some such Vanity Fair as New York or Boston.

The weaving of cloth—linen as well as woollen—was performed by an itinerant workman, who came to the house, put up his loom, and threw his shuttle, till the season's work was done. The linen was bleached and made up by the family; the woollen cloth was sent to the fuller to be dyed and dressed. Twice a-year, that is, in the spring and autumn, the tailor came to the house and made a stock of clothes for the male members; this was called "whipping the cat."

Mantuamakers and milliners came, in their turn, to fit out the female members of the family. There was a similar process as to boots and shoes. We sent the hides of the cattle—cows and calves we had killed—to the tanner, and these came back in assorted leather. Occasionally a little morocco, then wholly a foreign manufacture, was bought at the store, and made up for the ladies' best shoes. Amby Benedict, the travelling shoemaker, came with his bench, lapstone, and awls, and converted some little room into a shop, till the household was duly shod. He was a merry fellow, and threw in lots of singing gratis. He played all the popular airs upon his lapstone—as hurdygurdies and hand-organs do now.

Carpets were then only known in a few families, and were confined to the keeping-room and parlor. They were all home-made: the warp consisting of woollen yarn, and the woof of lists and old woollen cloth, cut into strips, and sewed together at the ends. Coverlids generally consisted of quilts, made of pieces of waste calico, sewed together in octagons, and quilted in rectangles, giving the whole a gay and rich appearance. This process of quilting generally brought together the women of the neighborhood, married and single; and a great time they had of it, what with tea, talk, and stitching. In the evening the men were admitted; so that a quilting was a real festival, not unfrequently leading to love-making and marriage among the young people.

This reminds me of a sort of communism or socialism, which prevailed in our rural districts long before Owen or Fourier was born. At Ridgefield we used to have "stone bees," when all the men of a village or hamlet came together with their draught cattle, and united to clear some patch of earth of stones and rocks. All this labor was gratuitously rendered, save only that the proprietor of the land furnished the grog. Such a meeting was always, of course, a very social and sociable affair.

When the work was done, gymnastic exercises—such as hopping, wrestling, and foot-racing—took place among the athletic young men. My father generally attended these celebrations as a looker-on. It was, indeed, the custom for the clergy of the olden time to mingle with the people, even in their labors and their pastimes. For some reason or other, it seemed that things went better when the parson gave them his countenance. I followed my father's example, and attended these cheerful and beneficial gatherings. Most of the boys of the town did the same. I may add that, if I may trust the traditions of Ridgefield, the cellar of our new house was dug by a "bee" in a single day, and that was Christmas.

House-raising and barn-raising, the framework being always of wood, were done in the same way by a neighborly gathering of the people. I remember an anecdote of a church-raising, which I may as well relate here. In the eastern part of the State, I think at Lyme, or Pautipaug, a meeting-house was destroyed by lightning. After a year or two the society mustered its energies, and raised the frame of another on the site of the old one. It stood about six months, and was then blown over. In due time another frame was prepared, and the neighborhood gathered together to raise it. It was now proposed by Deacon Hart that they should commence the performances by a prayer and hymn, it having been suggested that perhaps the want of these pious preliminaries on former occasions had something to do with the calamitous results which attended them. When all was ready, therefore, a prayer was made, and the chorister of the place gave out two lines of the hymn, thus:—

"If God to build the house deny,

The builders work in vain."

This being sung, the chorister completed the verse thus, adapting the lines to the occasion:—

"Unless the Lord doth shingle it,

It will blow down agin!"

I must not fail to give you a portrait of one of our village homes, of the middle class, at this era. I take as an example that of our neighbor, J. B., who had been a tailor, but having thriven in his affairs, and being now some fifty years old, had become a farmer. It was situated on the road leading to Salem, there being a wide space in front occupied by the wood-pile, which in these days was not only a matter of great importance, but of formidable bulk. The size of the wood-pile was, indeed, in some sort an index to the rank and condition of the proprietor. The house itself was a low edifice, forty feet long, and of two stories in front; the rear being what was called a breakback—that is, sloping down to a height of ten feet; this low part furnishing a shelter for garden tools and various household instruments. The whole was constructed of wood, the outside being of the dun complexion assumed by unpainted wood, exposed to the weather for twenty or thirty years, save only that the roof was tinged of a reddish brown by a fine moss that found sustenance in the chestnut shingles.

To the left was the garden, which in the productive season was a wilderness of onions, squashes, cucumbers, beets, parsnips, and currants, with the never-failing tansy for bitters, horseradish for seasoning, and fennel for keeping old women awake in church time.

The interior of the house presented a parlor with plain, whitewashed walls, a home-made carpet upon the floor, calico curtains at the window, and a mirror three feet by two against the side, with a mahogany frame: to these must be added eight chairs and a cherry table, of the manufacture of Deacon Hawley. The "keeping" or sitting-room had also a carpet, a dozen rush-bottom chairs, a table, &c. The kitchen was large—fully twenty feet square, with a fireplace six feet wide and four feet deep. On one side it looked out upon the garden, the squashes and cucumbers climbing up and forming festoons over the door; on the other it commanded a view of the orchard, embracing first a circle of peaches, pears, and plums; and beyond, a wide-spread clover-field, embowered with apple-trees. Just by was the well, with its tall sweep, the old oaken bucket dangling from the pole. The kitchen was, in fact, the most comfortable room in the house; cool in summer, and perfumed with the breath of the garden and the orchard: in winter, with its roaring blaze of hickory, it was a cosy resort, defying the bitterest blasts of the season. Here the whole family assembled at meals, except when the presence of company made it proper to serve tea in the parlor.

The bed-rooms were all without carpets, and the furniture was generally of a simple character. The beds, however, were of ample size, and well filled with geese feathers, these being deemed essential for comfortable people. I must say, by the way, that every decent family had its flock of geese, of course, which was picked thrice a-year, despite the noisy remonstrances of both goose and gander. The sheets of the bed, though of home-made linen, were as white as the driven snow. Indeed, the beds of this era showed that sleep was a luxury, well understood and duly cherished by all classes. The cellar, extending under the whole house, was by no means the least important part of the establishment. In the autumn, it was supplied with three barrels of beef and as many of pork, twenty barrels of cider, with numerous bins of potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, and cabbages. The garret, which was of huge dimensions, at the same time displayed a labyrinth of dried pumpkins, peaches, and apples, hung in festoons upon the rafters, amid bunches of summer savory, boneset, fennel, and other herbs, the floor being occupied by heaps of wool, flax, tow, and the like.

The barn corresponded to the house. It was a low brown structure, having abundance of sheds built on to it, without the least regard to symmetry. It was well stocked with hay, oats, rye, and buckwheat. Six cows, one or two horses, three dozen sheep, and an ample supply of poultry, including two or three broods of turkeys, constituted its living tenants.

The farm I need not describe in detail, but the orchard must not be overlooked. This consisted of three acres, covered, as I have said, with apple-trees, yielding abundantly—as well for the cider-mill as for the table, including the indispensable winter apple-sauce—according to their kinds. I think an apple orchard in the spring is one of the most beautiful objects in the world. How often have I ventured into Uncle Josey's ample orchard at this joyous season, and stood entranced among the robins, blackbirds, woodpeckers, bluebirds, jays, and orioles—all seeming to me like playmates, racing, chasing, singing, rollicking, in the exuberance of their joy, or perchance slily pursuing their courtships, or even more slily building their nests and rearing their young.

The inmates of the house I need not describe, further than to say that Uncle Josey himself was a little deaf, and of moderate abilities; yet he lived to good account, for he reared a large family, and was gathered to his fathers at a good old age, leaving behind him a handsome estate, a fair name, and a good example. His wife, who spent her early life at service in a kitchen, was a handsome, lively, efficient woman, and a universal favorite in the neighborhood.

This is the homely picture of a Ridgefield farmer's home half a century ago. There were other establishments more extensive and more sumptuous in the town, as there were others also of an inferior grade; but this was a fair sample of the houses, barns, and farms of the middle class.