 | CHAPTER II.
THE GOOD RURAL MATRON. The boy of Mount Rhigi |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
THE GOOD RURAL MATRON.
Nor deem it void of power;
There's fruit in each wind-wafted seed,
Waiting its natal hour.”
Clapham had given to Harry some “posies,” as he
called a bunch of lovely fringed gentians, for his
sister Annie, and the boys had separated. Clapham
took a foot-path, which led through woods, to his home,
a wretched, lonely hut, on the mountain side, some two
miles from the village of Salisbury. It had originally
been put up for a few weeks' shelter to a collier. It
was not so comfortable as an Indian wigwam, and little
better than the den of a wild beast; but, such as it was,
Norman Dunn and his wife Massy were content to
inhabit it, or rather to make it their head-quarters,
whence to go forth to prey on society.
Harry Davis's home was a small house on the out-skirts
perpetual song of the little brook with which our readers
have been made acquainted, and which, as it crosses
the valley, widens to a stream as ornamental as a string
of pearls on a lady's neck. An interval of sunny land,
between the hill side and the brook, gave space for a
garden.
“I suppose your husband takes care of your garden,
Mrs. Davis?” said a lady visitor, who one day dropped in.
“Not I, indeed,” said Davis, looking up from his
writing. “I have always something of rather more
consequence than that on hand.”
“How do you manage to keep it so nicely, then?”
asked the lady, “with all you have to do?”
“Why, I must have a garden,” replied Mrs. Davis.
“Mr. Davis don't refuse to plant the potatoes, and the
little girls are helpful at the weeds. And Harry works
in it at all his odds and ends of time, and I love it
so well, it's no chore to do what I can.”
“Your potatoes look finely, Mrs. Davis.”
“Yes, ma'am, thanks to Harry; he never neglects
hoeing them; he knows they are my dependence.”
“But I am sorry to see so much room taken up
with cabbages, Mrs. Davis, they are so unwholesome.”
“Why, I don't know, ma'am. Working people don't
find so many things unwholesome as ladies do. Besides,
my husband is very partial to cabbages, and I like to
have him suited.”
“What is that beyond the beans?”
“A bed of parsnips. They are relishing in the
spring, and my husband is fond of them. So, we never
spare parsnip seed. I have plenty of beans, too, you
see. The children are fond of beans, and they are
profitable; they go a great way.”
“I should not think it very profitable, Mrs. Davis, for
you to cultivate lettuces in that way. Does it not take
a great deal of time to tie them up so nicely?”
“There's but a few tied up, and those are just to
please old Mrs. Allen. The old lady thinks every thing
of head-lettuce, and her people don't make much of a
garden.”
“I suspect you make little account of trouble,” said
the lady. “You have peas, I see. Our landlord at the
inn tells us, in excuse for having no peas, that they
be at the trouble of them.”
“But when it's for their own children, no one thinks
of trouble. I like to be sure of green peas and roast
lamb, Independence day. The children enjoy it, and it
somehow sets out the day from the rest of the year.”
“And for whom are the peonies, and pinks, and
lilies, so well taken care of, dear Mrs. Davis, and the
roses so skilfully tied up and trained? And there's a
honeysuckle, too, my favorite flower.”
“Why, ma'am, for every one that loves to enjoy
them. They can't be confined to any body in particular.
God seems to me to have provided them, as he
does the rain, for the just and unjust. It's a pleasure
to me to see people stop and look over into the garden;
and to a poor person, that has but little to give away,
it's a pleasure to give a bunch of flowers to a child,
or send it to a sick body.”
“God bless you, Mrs. Davis,” said the lady, as she
took her leave; “I could not have believed that the
woman to whom I send my clothes to be washed could
give me such instruction as to the use of my facties,
It is hardly necessary to describe Mr. Davis's dwelling
to convince our readers that, though in a ruinous
condition, it had all the decency and comfort that energy
and neatness in the mistress could give it. The
furniture, though racked by more moves than three,
which Franklin pronounces to be equivalent in destruction
to a fire, was yet decent, and indicated a history
of better times.
There was one valuable piece of furniture in the
room that served Mrs. Davis's family for kitchen and
parlor — a capacious old-fashioned bureau, surmounted
by a writing-desk and book-case, in which, with a few
volumes of history, poetry, and travels, and some well-preserved
school-books, there was a large family Bible,
not a grease-spot to be found on its well-read leaves,
not a dog's-ear on their corners. It had been used
with care and reverence. It is worth while to extract
a passage from good old Mr. Bethan's will — Mr. Bethan
was Mrs. Davis's father — concerning this Bible.
“Besides the five hundred dollars aforesaid, I give
Bible, the same received from my honored father on
my wedding-day. I have brought up my children —
ten in number — on the milk and meat of its holy
word, and I recommend to my daughter Martha,
aforesaid, to do the same; and may its nurture and admonition
prosper with future generations, as, by the
blessing of God, they have done with my aforesaid
daughter Martha.” The good man's pious prayer was
granted.
Mrs. Davis did not lay her Bible on the shelf,
but she put it to the holy use suggested by her
father. She read in it daily to her children, and
explained it as well as she was able. She took
care not to weary them with the reading. She
turned to the Bible whenever she had occasion to
instruct them in a particular duty, or to reprove or
admonish them. If the children were out of humor,
and quarrelsome, she found in her Bible an admonition
to peace and brotherly love; if they were
selfish, she showed them the requirement to do unto
others as you would that others should do to you —
selfishness. If they were unjust, unkind in their
judgment of others, impatient or discontented, — if
any thing went wrong, — instead of flying out upon
them, and scolding, she took the right moment, and
opened that precious gift of her father; and, in a
sweet and tender, and never an angry voice, she read
to them some passage which plainly forbade their
wrong-doing or feeling; and then she would turn to
some word of encouragement, some promise of good
or favor, which made the children feel that He who
gave the law was their Benefactor as well as Judge.
“No tongue can tell,” Mrs. Davis would say, “how
I feel my weakness in bringing up my children,
especially in correcting them; but when I open my
Bible, there is strength and authority.”
But to return to the book-case. One of the
shelves was appropriated to Mr. Davis's use. This
was filled with pamphlets and newspapers, one large
volume entitled “Wonderful Shipwrecks,” a dream-book,
and a history of remarkable inventions, with
sketches of the lives of inventors — rather apocalyptic.
On the evening of Harry's return from his fishing,
Davis was seated at his desk, with a large sheet
of paper before him, on which he was drawing the
figure of a plough he was in the act of inventing.
“Is that you, Harry?” he said; “I have wanted
you confoundedly, to copy this drawing for me; you
can draw better than I, and it's fair I should get
something for the time you have wasted learning.”
“Wasted, father! I hope not. I have got a
great many ideas from it already, as Mr. Lyman
says, and I am sure I have had a great deal of
pleasure, and that's worth something. And Mr. Lyman
says, if any one has the art of doing any
thing well, it will be sure to turn to account.
What would poor Mr. Lyman himself do, if it were
not for his knowledge of drawing?”
“Pooh! nonsense! `Luck is a lord,' and Lyman
is lucky.”
“I should not call it luck exactly, sir.”
“No matter what you call it. I want to send
a drawing of this to Washington,”—holding up the
sheet of paper on which his plough was clumsily
evening, and make all these lines that are a little
agee and blotted, straight — you see my hand trembles.
Will you do it?”
Lyman was a young man in the village who
had lost the use of one leg by a fall in his childhood.
When about fifteen, he had been sent to the
Boston Hospital for surgical aid. He was a long
time under medical treatment, but without material
benefit. Mrs. — heard his melancholy case spoken
of with much interest by a medical friend, and
heard, at the same time, that his only pastime
was drawing, for which he had a gift. Mrs. —,
though the working head of a large establishment,
with unnumbered occupations, went to the Hospital
and instructed the lad in the science of perspective,
which she thoroughly understood, and gave him lessons
in drawing. This is but one of a hundred
similar acts of efficient charity of Mrs. —. “What
a singular woman is Mrs. —!” said one of her
fashionable friends, with a curl of her lip. Would
to Heaven she were not singular, but that many
into daily bread for the less favored or unfortunate!
Daily bread it proved to young Lyman. He did
not recover his leg, but he went home with the
means of gaining his living. He diligently practised
the lessons he received; and he has since had
plenty of employment from engravers, from an oculist
to illustrate diseases of the eye, and from
engineers to make drafts.
Lyman acted on Dr. Franklin's principle, — he
“made the favor go round.” He could only return
gratitude to his benefactress; but when he found
our friend Harry had a taste for drawing, and an
inclination to improve it, he gave him an hour of
his winter's evenings.
Harry had cheerfully promised to comply with
his father's wishes, and make the drawing, when
Davis gave utterance to a new want. “It's getting
dark,” he said; “do, Martha, light a candle.”
“We have not one in the house,” replied his
wife, who was jogging the cradle with one foot,
while she chopped some potatoes for supper.
“Have not? Well, send Annie over to Mrs.
Hubbard's, and borrow one.”
“If I could see any way to pay it, I would.”
“The wicked borrow, and never return,” interposed
little Annie.
“You will have to make out as I do, father,”
continued Mrs. Davis, without heeding Annie's reply;
and she took from a closet some pine knots Harry
had collected, and, throwing one on the fire, it flamed
up and diffused a brilliant light through the room.
“This will do for the present,” said Davis; “but
we must have a candle after supper. I have here
the most wonderful thing you ever heard of.—Are
the fish almost ready to fry, Harry? I begin to feel
sharp. — It beats the world. It is a self-moving
plough. It's all done to the moving power, and
that I shall work out in the course of the night.
—Mind and fry some pork, that's thicker than a wafer,
with your fish, Martha. — Talk about a candle!
Why, in less than a year after the plough is on
sale, we'll have them by the box. There was never
such an invention heard of as a self-moving plough.
there's no limit to the demand. — Cut a pie for supper,
mother; we had a slim dinner. — There's no
calculating what my patent may be worth to me!”
“As much, may be, Thomas, as your patent for
the `Self-Churning Churn,' or the `Independent Washing-Machine.”'
Mrs. Davis spoke with a smile, half
sad, half incredulous, but not tauntingly; and, as if
conscious of some difference of feeling between herself
and her husband, to soften it, she threw another
pine knot on the fire for his benefit.
“The churn, to be sure,” said Davis, in rather
a meek tone, “had one fault — it would not bring
the butter; but the `Independent Washing-Machine' was
complete, only the women-folks are so full of prejudice,
they would not use it. Desire Nash herself
told me it saved half the soap.” And she might
have saved the other half too, for any good it did
the clothes in that machine, Martha Davis could have
retorted; but she was not in the habit of speaking
words that would irritate without doing any possible
good. She had lived with her husband fifteen
man. He had a mechanical turn, and, if he had
kept steadily to the trade of a cooper, to which he
was bred, he would by this time have been a man
of substance; but, being lazy as far as bodily exertion
goes, he was always contriving some short
and easy road to fortune. He would rather sit down
to the old desk and invent a plough, than to plough
a furrow. Wiser men than Thomas Davis have
miscalculated their powers, and mistaken their calling.
That which spoils many a decent mechanic
had ruined him, — an over-conceit of himself, and
an indolent disposition. His churn, he declared in
his puffing advertisements, “might be managed by
a child six years old; and a woman might sew,
knit, or read, while she churned.” One poor woman,
who perseveringly tried it, said “she might have
read through Scott's Bible, notes and all, before the
butter came.”
A bright vision of the “Independent Washing-Machine”
followed the churn. The getting up of these
cost vastly more. Once wound up, they went of themselves;
obstructed by some imperfection in the machinery, and,
like Balaam's ass, go they would not; and those who
had been persuaded to try them, gave them so bad a
name that the greater number unsold, decayed and fell
to pieces. Poor Mrs. Davis's little inheritance all went
to pay for the patents, the advertisements, and the
manufacture of the machines. One might hope that
this experience would teach Davis that his genius did
not lie in invention. Not at all. By this time, he had
neither workshop nor tools of his own; and once in a
while, when his wife's productive labors were suspended
by a lying-in, he turned into some other man's workshop,
and earned enough to supply the most pressing
wants of his family. Davis had rather work than forego
his three meals a day, and, to do him justice, he
was good-natured, and could not quietly see his family
suffer; but, the pressure removed, he reverted to his
old occupations, and was again at his desk, drawing
plans for patent clocks, patent axles, patent hoes; and
now he had been a month working out his design for
the “Self-Moving Plough.” One of the mischiefs of
was a perpetual moving from place to place,
now to some little trading town on the Hudson, where
he expected new facilities, then back into the interior,
for some visionary advantage. Always to be blessed.
Each remove involved fatigue and loss to his much-enduring
wife.
Davis willingly left his desk for the savory invitation
of the supper-table, and, when there, after helping
his wife and children to the perch and sunfish, he
coolly took the trout to himself, saying that he had
always been remarkable for his love of trout.
“Don't you like trout, too, mother?” asked little
Lucy.
“Yes, Lucy, but your father cares more about them
than I do.”
“Surely, Martha,” said Davis, helping himself to
the last trout in the dish, “you did not cook all
the trout Harry caught. My appetite is only just
whetted.”
“I did save out a relish for old Mrs. Allen's breakfast.
The old lady is partial to trout.”
“Pooh! Old folks should not be setting their hearts
on such things.”
“O father!” exclaimed little Lucy. The others
said nothing. Harry blushed, and they all felt their
father's coarse selfishness.
“Why upon earth, Martha,” asked Davis, while he
gleaned out every morsel, “did you not put more pork
with the fish? I desired you to.”
“There is no more in the house.”
“But there is plenty at Smith's. A little more
sugar in my tea, Martha.”
“I put in the last spoonful.”
“Well, wife, I don't see the use of your slaving
yourself all summer washing for those New York gentry
up at the tavern, if we can't get sugar for our
tea.”
“We have many other things besides sugar to
get.”
“Never mind; we'll have sugar plenty, and of the
best, when my ploughs begin to turn up the ground.”
| CHAPTER II.
THE GOOD RURAL MATRON. The boy of Mount Rhigi | |