 | Tales of Glauber-Spa |  |
INTRODUCTION.
at their store in New-York City.
This letter my son, Eli Clapp, will hand you, along
with the parcel. I do not suppose you know me,
though I have advertised once in one of your York papers;
and the only way I came to know you was by seeing
in it that you printed all the books, and I take the
freedom of writing to you on the strength of it.
I have lived at Sheep's Neck since I was a boy, and
so did my father before me; but we have altered the
name lately to Glauber-spaw, and call the Old Ram'salley
Epsom-walk, out of a notion of the doctor's and
my daughters. I will tell you how it happened, or else
you would not understand how I came to write to you.
I lived on the old homestead, man and boy, and was
married and had a family of children, for forty years and
rising, when my wife would send my daughters to a
fashionable school in Wetherville, to learn French and
darning-work and the forte-piano. I cannot say I had
much peace after that. From one thing to another, I
was obliged to build two new wings and a back-kitchen
to the old house; and when those were finished, that
was pulled down and another built, as they said it was
not in good taste. It tasted better to me altogether
than the new place; for I was obliged to raise money
after they had cut down all the willers that were to be
found upon it. They found the furniture, too, but I had
to pay for it; and when it was in order, as they said, it
was such a trumpery, bandbox-looking place, that I
could not spit in it with any comfort.
The next thing they did, and by this time they had
got my wife and youngest son all on their side (though
Eli, who is a discreet lad, went and lived in the barn,
and would not come inside of their shingle-shanty, as
he called it), was to say that Sheep's Neck was no name
at all for the farm. I told them they might call it Clapp's
Folly, if they liked; at which they turned up their
noses, and talked about St. Romans, and Tully-veal-and-lamb,
and Mount-Peeler, and Bawl-town, and other
names, to which I did not see no likeness in the premises.
Just about this time young Doctor Jodine, who had
come to settle in the village, and soon got thick with my
wife and daughters, began to analyze, as he called it, the
waters of my spring, which we had all been drinking
for ever, taking it to be plain water. But it was no
such thing. The doctor made a memorandum of what
it was, which he had published in a pamphlet, now for
sale at the bookstore in Sheep's Neck Village. It had
saline and gaseous properties, and was made out of different
kinds of stuff, in which there was plenty of ox-hides
and gin, as far as I can understand it, with a good
deal of sulphur and soda. It is strange how the water
did not seem to affect us any before the doctor had analyzed
it. But after he had had the spring walled in,
and let it off through logs so as to make it squirt up in
a fountain, it is really astonishing how we came to find
out its properties, and the kimistry of it. I take this
opportunity of begging you to contradict a false tale
which some of the neighbours who go to the second
meeting-house got up, and which I have denied in my
and potashes under the spring, which I know not to be
the fact.
The kimistry of this water, after it was found out,
troubled me considerable. I suffered in body and estate;
as the doctor's bill was highish, and I lost a fine
heifer and two of my best hogs, who drank out of the
fountain by mistake. There was little left of the poor
things but the hide and bristles. The doctor said that
the Spaw, as he called it, was medicine-like, and must
only be taken by advice, as it was good for vallydinarians.
We had a fine well on the farm, in which there
is no flavour of hides or potashes that ever I tasted. I
took to drinking that out of the bucket, to avoid mistakes;
but my wife and daughters took half a tumbler
of the Spaw every morning before breakfast, by the
doctor's advice, as he observed they seemed to be in
delicate health—which they did. They were almost as
lean as the poor heifer and swine; and are not much
better off in flesh now, though they have left off drinking
the Spaw, and been taking what the doctor calls
tunnicks.
It was not long after he had fixed up the spring, before
my neighbour Woolley Lamb, who keeps the tavern and
post-office at Sheep's Neck Village, sent his son Chris
one evening to tell our folks that a carriage-load of
people were asking him where the Spaw was, and
whether they could get boarded there. My wife and
daughters overheard the message, and very much to my
surprise came fluttering out, like a clothes-wash in a
gale of wind. I had boarded the Yankee schoolmaster,
off and on, several years before; and some high-flying
girls that had been at school with mine had come to see
them for a spell, after they had reformed the house, as
they called it; during which I spent the most of my
spare hours in the barn, along with Eli. But I had no
idea of taking regular boarders, though for that matter,
Presently the doctor came up in the wagon, with my
youngest son Cush, who had a load of unaccountable
victuals and sauce, enough to last a whole winter. The
doctor said that a member of Congress's family had
come; and that two of the ladies were vallydinarians,
who had been sent from away south to Glauber-Spaw,
as the only place where they could get rid of their pulmonitory
symptoms, and be saved from dying a natural
death.
How my wife and daughters fixed it, I did not know,
and hardly understand to this day. The party presently
came up in a great coach and four, and a gig with two
negroes a-horseback. I thought it was none of my
business to help them in, as I was not allowed to hinder
them from doing it. The carriages and all the
cattle, as I found on coming back at evening, had been
put into the barn, and poor Eli's chamber was broken
up; and there was a great deal of clatter in the house,
and my wife and daughters were so busy, and looked so
airy, that there was no getting a word out of them. I
was put down by being told by my woman, when I came
to talk to her, that if I would only mind the farm, she
would make a mint of money, that the girls would get
well married, and that I need not trouble myself about
the Spaw House, as Cush would see about it all.
Not to be too long with my story, I made myself as
busy as I could with working the farm, and got my
meals in the kitchen or in the fields, not troubling myself
with the traps that they had up stairs, though I saw
much coming and going, and some new faces. Cold
weather came, and the house was empty; and some
people that my wife had hired, unbeknown to me, were
sent off. They looked as fine, almost, as the boarders,
and had shown no more respect to me when they came
straggling about, than if the land did not belong to me.
As they were going out of the gate the sarciest one of
manner, and said, "Good-by, daddy." I gave him a
few kicks that sent him rather anyhow into Merino
Creek, that they now called Magnesia Springs; and
Eli, taking his ox-goad to the balance of them, made
them "walk Spanish," as they say here. They sued
us for it, and the case is not tried yet. I don't see how
they are to get any witnesses.
Eli told me he was going to be married to a neighbour's
daughter, and live on his farm; though he would
help me to work mine for fair wages, and carry the
stuff to market for me in partnership. He never asked
his mother and sisters to the wedding, and so they don't
speak. Presently my neighbour Colonel Cross, who
had the mortgage, came for a year's interest, and part
of the principal, which he had a right to ask for. My
crops had been bad, and though I had cut considerable
hay, what with mending fences when the high-flyers at
the Spaw House had broken them, paying the hands,
and getting little or nothing from the market for vegetables,
as the most of them had been wasted in the
house, I had not ready money enough to pay even the
interest. So I went to my wife, who had all along
been blarneying me, when she got time to talk, about
her great prospects. But she opened her eyes, and
asked me if I was crazy, to think she could catch money
at once, out of the clouds, after all the expense she
had been at? I never heard her talk such hard words
before, as she had picked up from the strangers she had
been waiting on; and I do not wonder at it, for I heard
that some of them were Nullyflyers; and I am told
that those sort of people are not Christians, and are a
kind of unnat'ral like. She talked about divestments,
and futer returns, and the goose that laid the golden
eggs. This was all I understood of her new-fashioned
prose; and I could not help saying rather passionate-like,
"Burn my old clothes, misses, if you haven't divested
to it, that's flat. You're a goose yourself, and
have made a gander of me, and where are the golden
eggs?" Then she showed me all the bills for furniture,
and groceries, and servants (she paid them vagabonds
more for a month than I can make off the farm), and
told me she had paid nearly half of them. And she
said that next season she could make an estate, as all
the company had promised to come back and bring good
society with them, if she would make more room for
them. And she showed me a parcel of trash that had
been given to the girls,—singing-books, and old clothes,
and poetry-works, and smelling-bottles, which she said
were invaluable proofs of regard from the genteel ladies
that would take care of Sally and Nancy.
I saw that I was in a hobbleshow, and I knew that
Colonel Cross was twistical; but I did not know how
to help myself, when he came and said that he must
have money, and could not afford to wait for it; but
that if I would give another mortgage for three times
as much as the principal and interest came to on the
whole farm, he would lift the other, as he knew a man
in Wetherville who would advance it if I would make
further improvements, so as to accommodate all the company
that would like to come. He said my wife and
daughters were smart and active; and that, as I did not
know any thing about it, he would see to the improvements
himself, if I would give him a commission. I
did not know what he meant, and told him he must go
to the governor for that, but found out that he wanted
to be paid for his trouble.
I had a heavy heart enough when I signed the new
mortgage, and did not get a cent of the money; which
the colonel put into the bank to pay for the improvements;
and I spent a melancholy winter, having no
good of my family, and being often driven out of doors
in cold weather by the everlasting strumming that was
comfort, was to be changed for a new one. The spring
had hardly come when the whole place was covered
with timber and carpenters. The colonel was boss,
and I was told I had nothing to do with it, though I had
made up my mind to that before. Another story was
put upon the house, with long painted shanties, and
sheds, and stables, and boxes with crosses and vanes
upon them, all about the premises. They put one of
these up on the hill we used to call Sheep's Misery,
which they called New 'Limpus, over Merino Creek;
and in the next general rain it limped down of its own
accord; and it cost more, I was told, to put it up the
second time than it had done the first.
They had not got every thing painted and varnished
and gilded, and cleared away the chips, and got in the
wagon-loads of curosities that they bought for furniture,
before we heard that the cholera morbus had come over
along with twenty thousand paddies and radikles into
Canada, up to the north; and the people talked about
nothing but whether it would come into these parts.
The doctor had newspapers and tracts which he brought
every day, and said he could cure it with the Spaw.
Sometimes he said it was the real sphixy that had killed
so many abroad, and then he said it wasn't. And he
talked about premonitories, and made us show our
tongues. He wanted me to take some pills; but I
told him it was out of the contract, and I did not belong
to the Spaw. But my wife and daughters took them,
and a sorrowful time they had of it. I believe he
would have gone on physicking them, and killed them,
as he did an old maid in the village, if it had not been
that he would have had no patients at the house if there
had been no one to keep it.
We soon heard that the cholera had got into York
State. We had then but a few boarders, who all drank
regularly of the water, and yet had premonitories all
city, there was in a few weeks such a run of people
that the house would hold no more, and they boarded
about with all the neighbours. Among them was a
town doctor, who said his nerves could not stand the
sight of the disease; and he too talked about nothing
but premonitories. Our doctor and he at first had a
quarrel, and my wife talked of turning him out of doors,
when he said it would be certain death to drink the
Spaw. But the two doctors soon made it up, as they
seemed to be likely to have business enough for both.
Then our doctor gave notice that he would give a public
lecture gratis about the disease, in the meeting-house,
and we all went to it. I did not pretend to understand
it, nor did I find any one who did; only it was fixed now
that it was the real sphixy, and that a collapse couldn't
be cured. I believed as much, for I was aboard of a
steamboat when one of the flues bursted. They called
it a collapse; and I am certain it was easier to make a
new one than to mend that. When he came to talk
about the premonitories and the spasms, there began
soon to be a sighing and grunting, and finally a general
groaning, for all the world like anxious meeting.
Everybody, women and all, were putting their hands
over their bowels; and my neighbour Slaughter, the
butcher, who weighs twenty-three stone, clapped his on
each of his sides, and getting up to give them a squeeze,
set up a sort of a bellow like one of his own bullocks
going to be killed. I felt a little squirmish myself,
though I had not noticed it before. When he came to
tell what was good to eat and drink, it was curious to
hear him. I did not see that he left any thing for our
victuals but beef and rice. Neighbour Slaughter
stroked down his jacket as if he felt a little more comfortable,
when he talked of beef; but I felt more uneasy
than before, thinking what was to become of all
my peas, and beans, and beets, and onions, and all kinds
would be wilful murder to eat. All liquids he said
must be avoided; and as for the Spaw, he explained
how the air was so peculiar-like, that what was good
physic in common times was poison now, and a kind
of worked backwards. But he said that as long as the
people staid quiet there, the air was better than it was
anywhere else; and if they minded the premonitories,
and sent for him or his friend Doctor Nervy when
they got them, there was no manner of danger. He
also gave notice that he would make out a list of what
was proper to be eaten at the Spaw House for the benefit
of strangers.
For the matter of that, though I only saw what was
going on in the kitchen sometimes, they seemed to have
pretty much the same cooking that they had the year
before, when the Congress-people and Nullyflyers had
been there; except that all the beautiful vegetables,
which never looked nicer before, were left alone. I
was not sorry for this, except that I could not have them
cooked for myself without going over to Eli's, where I
soon made a bargain to get my dinner regular and comfortable.
But after he had been to market a few times,
and come back complaining that he could not sell his
load to the huckster-women, he returned at last with the
whole load; saying he had been ordered off by the
mare's men in the market; that all the shops were shut,
and the streets whitewashed; and that everybody that
died had eaten some premonitory or another. And
being a hasty man, who has not yet got religion, he
damned the cholera morbus, and the mare, and the vegetables
too, in a profane manner—though that you need
not mention.
Half the people were kept half-sick, and the rest did
not look well, and the two doctors had business all the
time; and I began to think my wife might make something
of a spec out of the business, as the boarders
could. Two or three times when I looked in by accident,
at night, I saw a party in one room that were reading
written papers aloud; and from what I heard my
wife and daughters talking about it, I gathered that they
amused themselves with it, and that it was made out
of their own heads. I thought it as good a way of
killing time as any, and better than strumming on the
forte-piano, which was kept a-going from morning till
night, till a child fell through the cover one day, and
smashed all the wire-works. I was plaguy glad of
this, for I didn't mind the fidells, and flutes, and tambyreens
that they got to dance to, half so bad as the nasty
noise, to no tune at all, that they made with the piano.
Luckily there was nobody to mend it, and the poor
thing stays smashed to this minute. I don't believe it
will fetch much.
But to come to the marrow of the matter, after these
premonitories, one night, about two weeks ago, my old
negro Samboney, who lives with his wife Dinah in a little
old stone house near the Spaw, complained of a great
many of them. I didn't see any good the doctors did,
and Samboney was awful afraid of them. He said he
had drunk nothing all day but hard cider, and eat nothing
but salt pork and plenty of the nice vegetables
Master Eli gave him (being some of the same that
would have been wasted otherwise), and some water-milions,
hard biled eggs, and nice green apples. Dinah
said he had taken near a pint of spirits too, which was
but natural in the poor neger; for after such a mess I
should have taken some myself, for all Doctor Skinner
and Doctor Nervy might have said. I told him to be
quiet, and Dinah to kiver him up; but I had hardly
sneaked into bed in the little room on the ground-floor,
where my wife had put me since the company
came, and begun to get asleep, when I heard Dinah
screaming and thumping at the door, and bawling out,
kicking down the house!—Cholera!—Cholera!" loud
enough to wake the dead, and scare all the vallydinarians
out of all the life that was left in them. I got up,
while she kept on hollering; and when I went out, it
was a curious thing to see and hear. There was all
the people in the windows and piazzas to the back of
the house, in their night-clothes, some screeching as if
they had fits; and there was the nigger-wench in her
white shimmey, dancing a rigadoon on the grass, and
pulling out her wool, and thumping herself like a possessed
body in the New Testament. And when she
yelled out "Cholera!—Cholera!" it put me in mind of
the cry of wo set up in the streets of the old Jerusalem
by a crazy man, which I used to read about in Josephus,
when I had a clean place to set down in and read any
thing.
There was a general mixture of noises and running
about the house; but I could hear calls for Doctor
Nervy, and cries of "Send for Doctor Skinner," more
than any thing else. Doctor Nervy at last came out
on the upper piazza in his flannel night-gown, with a
blanket over it, though the nights were as hot as Tophet
(as I had heard Eli profanely remark), with a bottle at
his nose, and a candle in his hand, to help him see the
moonshine. When he heard and saw Dinah, he looked
flustrated, and said she was crazy, and must be tied and
taken away, till he could attend to her in the morning.
The wench was in a great passion to hear him say this,
and went on screaming, "You no tie me!—Come tie
Samboney!—Cholera got him!—He kick down de
house and bedstead!—Cholera!—Cholera!—C'lapses,
spazemzes, and plemoneraries—he got um all!"
The doctor said if Dinah wasn't tied he could not
answer for the health of his nervous patients; whom
he besought to get into bed, as he meant to do himself.
Some of the servants run to the village for Docter
however, as I pushed Dinah ahead, and followed
her to the house. Sure enough, poor Samboney had
kicked out the foot-board of the bed, and thrown off all
the clothes. He was an awful spectacle, and roared
terribly. We could not keep clothes on him, or make
him be quiet, until he became so of his own accord,
after an hour or more. Then his nails were as blue as
indigo. We could hardly say whether be breathed or
not, and he lay with his eyes open, quite resigned-like,
as if he had given up fighting the cholera, and meant to
leave the end to Providence. He was just so when
the doctor came. He did not know, I believe, whether
Sam was alive or dead. He talked a good deal of
what he could do if he could get apparatus, and said he
must have a consultation with Doctor Nervy. But he
wouldn't come, and had locked his door, ordering from
the window that no one should be let into the room who
had been near the case. Doctor Skinner then stuck a
lancet into Samboney, but no blood came that would
trickle; and he got the whiskey-bottle, and would have
crammed the muzzle into the poor fellow's mouth, but
his teeth were set so tight that he only spilled it all over
him. The short and long of it was, that Sam died an
hour before daylight; and the peculiarest part of all was,
that he began to kick again after he was a dead corpse.
When daylight did come, every carriage was ordered
up to the door, and such as had none were off on foot
to the village, some of them without remembering even
to ask for their bills. My wife and daughters stood on
the steps with real tears in their eyes; and I cannot
but say, that the two latter were served shabbily enough.
Mrs. Mullock had been pressing them hard to take a
short jaunt with her to the Falls; and now they wanted
to go there out of pure fright. But though there was
plenty of room in the carriage, she crammed it full of
bandboxes and unwashed clothes, to show the impossibility
them in Alabama next season.
Before breakfast-time not a stranger was left in the
house. Doctor Nervy was one of the first who run
off. And though there has been but one case in the
neighbourhood since, and that five miles distant, not a
soul has come to the Spaw.
What is to become of my farm and the fine house I
do not know. I suppose neighbour Cross must have
both.
On looking about the rooms, and at the various rubbish
which had been left, I found, in one where the
reading-party used to meet by themselves, a great pile
of papers, making, I should say, many quires of foolscap.
I thought, though they had been left as good for
nothing, and were of no use to me, they might turn to
some account. But I resolved to have the speculation
all to myself; and on talking to Eli, he thought there
would be no harm in seeing what the papers were
worth. They have not been inquired after in two
weeks, and I do not know whose they are; so I conclude
they belong to me. If you will give any thing
for them, I will trust to you to fix the price. I am an
unfortunate man; and every trifle will help me that I
can come by in an honest way. There were other
scraps and blotted papers about the house, and some
love-letters and verses; but I take it for granted they
are not worth any thing.
| Tales of Glauber-Spa | |