University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

It is a noticeable fact, that we of the present age have
fewer holidays than our puritanical ancestors. “The King's
Birth Day,” was formerly celebrated with great pomp; in addition
there were enjoyed “Coronation Days,” the “Birth of
a Prince,” Accessions and Burials of Governors, Victories in
War, Masonic Festivals, to say nothing of Military Reviews,
Election Days, Ordination of Ministers, Executions for
Murder; and at a still later period Washington's Birth Day,
now almost forgotten, The Fourth of July, at present diverted
to a Sunday-school or Temperance Festival. But of Thanksgiving;
a day devoted to mirth, gratefulness, hospitality,
family love, eating, drinking; a day sometimes externally
snowy, rainy, benumbing, drenching; internally so elastic,
smiling, lark-like, verdant, blithe; it is not sanctified or
squandered like Merry Christmas in the Old World; it has no
gooding, candles, clog, carol, box, or hobby-horse; it has no
poetry or song; it does not come in the calendar, only by the
Governor's proclamation; New Englanders can sing with Old
Englanders, mutatis mutandis:

they cannot add,

Our houses and churches are brown and sear as the gardens
and orchards about them. The cedar may be green in the

woods, the box-tree, the fir and the pine together, we never
use them. In both cases, there is, or was, an abundance of
wassailing, dancing, gaming, shooting, and if one pleases to
say, “Heathenrie, Divelrie, Dronkennesse, Pride.” We have
no budding oak or holy-thorn, which sprang from the staff of
Joseph of Arimathea, and bears milk-white blossoms every
Christmas day, in the forests of Glastonbury; although we
have no doubt such trees might be found in our woods. Unlike
Christmas, bread baked Thanksgiving Eve moulds never
the slower. Yet, bating ecclesiastical days and a few calendar
superstitions, which the dissenting Colonists left behind, how
much did they not bring with them from their native soil!
“We owe,” says the Democratic Review, “our political
institutions, and nearly all the arrangements of our public,
social and domestic life, to our English ancestors.” In addition
to religion, language, habits, costume, fashions, science,
art, architecture, agriculture, the military and naval art,
horses, carriages, cows, sheep, grasses, bells, knives and forks,
crockery and glass ware, apples, pears, peaches, etc. etc.,
there floated across the sea, and has descended the stream of
time, idiosyncrasies of temper, idioms of speech, rhetorical
figures, colloquial metaphors, an entire dialect of vulgarisms,
ballads, madrigals, maxims, apologues, saws, witticisms, jokes,
snibs, witchcraft, bigotry, omens, signs, a thousand and one
fanciful calculations on the moon, the weather, beasts, birds,
persons, — a whole argosy. Some of these may be traced to
the Saxons and Britons, in unbroken succession. They still
exist in England, Germany, Sweden, nay, everywhere. We
must look perhaps for some great Oriental centre, some fountain
head beyond the Indus. The fathers of the Sanscrit,
the authors of the Vedas, the original Brahmins, whoever they
may have been, possibly the step-sons of Noah, seem to have
given population, language, law, philosophy, superstition, and,
saving Christ, religion to the world.

John Bull and Brother Jonathan, a North Briton and a
Yankee, have the same flesh and blood, the same corpuscular
ingredients, the same inspiration of the Almighty. The latter
differs from the former chiefly in this, breadth; his legs are
longer and his feet larger, because he has higher fences and
steeper hills to climb, and longer roads to travel; he is more
lank because he has not time to laugh so much, since it takes
him so long to go to mill, to pasture, to his neighbors; he is
less succulent and oozy because he gets dry and hardened in
the extensive tracts of open air he has to traverse; he is

more suspicious because in his circuits he meets with more
strangers; he is more curious for the same reason; he is
more inventive and calculating for this same breadth, that he
has not aids at hand, and must depend on himself; his eye is
keener because he sees his objects at a greater distance; he
is more religious because he has farther to go for his religion,
that is to say, to meeting; men valuing what costs them
much; — the whole difference is breadth, interminable forests,
rivers, mountains, platitudinous farms, families reaching from
the Madawaska to the Yazoo. The same cause operates to
distinguish the Kentucky hunter from the Yankee, cypress
swamps, alligators, catamounts, the Indians, the Mississippi.
Sam Slick is an elongated and skinny John Browdie, and
David Crockett is the same “critter,” knobbed and gnarled.

Thanksgiving was an anti-Christmas festival, established as
a kind of off-set to that. Yet both are a fealty paid to the
universal gala-sentiment. We cannot always work, we cannot
always pray. So say young and old, grave and gay. Hence,
Hindoo Doorga, Celtic Juul, Jewish Succoth, Japanese
Majira, the Panathenæa, Fête des Fous, Volks-fest, Carnival,
Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgivings have been observed — what do we say?
The first Thanksgiving must have been of God's own ordaining
about the beginning of the new year 1621, that is to say, the
25th of March, at New Plymouth, after a dismal winter of
destitution, disease and alarm, when the snows were melting,
and “brooks of sweet fresh water” broke loose, the children
found a new May-flower peeping from the dead leaves, the
buds of the dog-wood began to swell, and the birds to sing,
the “sick and lame recovered apace,” and the Colonists saw
something that looked like living and home. The first Thanksgiving
“by authority,” was, if we are agreed, June 13, 1632.
We can hardly call this a New England Thanksgiving, inasmuch
as it embraced but a handful of the people. The Indians
must have kept it as a Fast.

Thanksgivings were appointed for “the removal of sickness,”
“the precious life of our Sovereign;” “success of
the king of Prussia,” “the conquest of Martinico,” that “God
had been pleased to support our most gracious Queen in the
perils of childbirth,” “for success against the Indians, so that
scarce a name or family remain in their former habitation,”
“the suppression of rebellion in Great Britain,” “the near
view of peace.” Fasts, the antipodal holiday, were proclaimed
by reason of “the small-pox,” “earthquakes, inundations,

and other calamities in Europe,” “distressing Indian
wars,” “that we may be preserved against the rage of the
heathen,” “the great number of insects,” “drought,” “unseasonable
rains,” “divisions in our churches,” “the Ranters
and Quakers,” “the low estate of the people of God,” “some
heathen yet in hostility,” “the great distresses of Ministers,
their salaries being paid in depreciated paper.”

Thanksgiving was at hand for Livingston, the Pond, Nimrod,
Margaret. Its succedanea, as respects the latter, were a
turkey shoot the next day, and a ball the following night, at
No. 4. If Margaret had lived in the village, or almost any
where else than at the Pond, she might have enjoyed the meeting
of families, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren,
uncles and aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins; she
might have partaken in the consumption of pigs, turkeys, geese,
ducks, chickens, plum-pudding and plum-cake, pumpkin,
mince and apple pies, beer, cider, flip; she might have gone
to church and heard a discourse from Parson Welles on the
distressing state of the times, and the imminent danger from
French influence, and learned what a Philistine Napoleon
Bonaparte was; she might have gone to a party of boys and
girls at Esq. Weeks's, and played “blind-man's-buff,” “run
round the chimney,” and “button, button, who's got the
button;” but she did not. Yet she was quite busy at home.
Two or three of the preceding days she spent riding about
with Nimrod to invite company and arouse interest for the
ball. They went to Mr. Pottle's at Snake Hill, and Mr. Dunlap's
at Five-mile-lot, where they also encountered the camp
Preacher sedulously disputing the field with them. They went
also to the Ledge, where the Preacher followed. But Mistress
Palmer decided the question by saying that Roderick, her
oldest son, had professed a hope and would not think of going,
but that Rhody had not come forward at all, and she thought
it would do her good to have the exercise, and that Rufus, if
he had been serious, had lost his impressions, and it would not
do him any harm to go. They went into the various districts,
and left some invitations in the edge of Dunwich and Brandon.
The party was designed to be select, and all people of a certain
caste and character were carefully omitted. Thanksgiving
Eve was kept at the Pond in this wise; their candles were pine
torches, which they flourished about the premises, under trees,
in the shed, in pursuit of hens and turkeys; their clogs were
large clumps of wood, stumps, twigs, &c. crowded into the
immense fire-place; their carol consisted of oaths, smirks,
songs; for ale they had an abundance of pupelo. No St.

Nicholas watched about the chimney during the night, or filled
Margaret's stocking in the morning. Who is the patron saint
of Thanksgiving?

Only Chilion made her a present of a beautiful blue-painted
sled to coast with when the snows came. It was
framed of the best materials, put together in the form most
fitted for speed, shod with highly polished steel, and named
Humming Bird. They had stewed chicken and crust coffee
for breakfast, and for dinner chickens roasted by strings suspended
before the fire, potatoes, brown bread and cider. Pies
and cakes were wanting. The remainder of the time was
occupied in preparing for the events of the next day, scouring
guns, brushing shoes and coats, polishing buckles, &c. Nimrod
took occasion to renew his instructions to Margaret in the
dancing art, and Chilion intimated some of his best tunes.
No. 4, to which the attention of the family was now directed,
lay in a valley below the Pond, formed by the passage of Mill
Brook, and was enriched by nature with fine intervals and
excellent drainages. The approach to the place was by a narrow,
woody, rocky road or lane. Opposite you, on the south,
rose a gradually ascending eminence and range of hills that
jointed the horizon. Through No. 4 ran the highway from the
village of Livingston to Brandon, a town on the south-west.
Here was a large tavern, known as Smith's, and a distillery
owned by the same gentleman. In the language of a writer
of the times, this hamlet presented a spectacle of “houses
without windows, barns without roofs, gardens without enclosures,
fields without fences, hogs without yokes, sheep without
wool, meagre cattle, feeble horses, and half clad, dirty
children, without manners, principles or morals.” The people
were loungers about the tavern, which seemed to have exhausted
the life of the place, and to have diffused over it instead,
dearth, indolence, dreariness and sterility. This was a
large two-story house, having a long stoop in front. Between
it and the Brook was the Still, a long black building, surrounded
by barrels and hogsheads of cider. Near the tavern was held
the turkey shoot, the day after Thanksgiving, to which Nimrod
took Margaret, and Hash carried one or two turkeys. It was
chilly and drizzling, and Margaret was deposited in the kitchen
of the tavern, where she had a chance to become acquainted
with Mr. Smith's daughters, the Gubtail's, Hatch's, Tapley's
from the neighborhood, Paulina Whiston, Grace Joy and Beulah
Ann Orff from Breakneck. The bar-room was filled with men
and boys, fumes of rum and tobacco, and a jargon of voices;

the air about was charged with the smoke of powder; the
turkeys were perched on a stump and tied by the leg: there
were the report of rifles, the running to and fro of men and
boys; disputes about the shots; wrangling, wrestling; in all
which Margaret had no share. Thus passed the fore part of
the day.

In the evening, Nimrod, as one of the masters of arrangements,
with Margaret, came early to the tavern. Soon the
ladies and gentlemen began to assemble. Of the number
were Pluck and his wife, the Widow Wright and Obed, and
Sibyl Radney; among the spectators were several elderly men
and women from the neighborhood; among the loafers were
Abel Wilcox, the clerk, Hancock Welles, grandson of the
Parson, from the village. The hall was a long unfinished
upper room; the naked timbers, joists and sleepers, were garnished
with branches of pine and hemlock, laced with wreaths
of ground laurel. Tallow candles were supported in wooden
blocks on the walls, and rude benches were fixed to the sides
of the room. The ladies' dresses presented considerable variety;
some had made requisition on the wardrobes of their grandmothers,
some had borrowed from their neighbors, servants
from their mistresses; in some appeared the latest style of the
cities; several wore gowns of their own manufacture, striped
or checked linen, with flowers elaborately wrought with the
needle. There were sacques, trails and one or two hoops.
There were corsages long and pointed, round and medium,
high and narrow. Sleeves were tight, short and bordered with
ruffles. All had necklaces of gold, glass, or waxen beads.
The coiffures were equally diversified, ringlets, crockets,
twists, tye-tops, crape cushions, toupees, sustained and enriched
with brass and gilt clasps, pins, silk and velvet fillets,
feathers and flowers. The shoes were striped with a white
welt. There was an agreeable intermixture of old and faded
brocades and damasks, rustling padusoys, shining lutestrings,
changeables, embossed linens, and plain white muslins. Many
wore ear-hoops of pinch-beck, as large as a dollar. On the
side of the gentlemen was a similar blending of old and new
patterns. If Joseph's coat of many colors had been miraculously
enlarged, and cut up into separate garments, it would
form the appropriate suit of this assemblage, in which red,
blue, yellow, chocolate, butternut, green and all hues but
black, were represented. Some wore a costume resembling
that of the Master's, we have before described. The hair of
most of the gentlemen was powdered, and some had it done in

tyes, queues, frizzes. Of buckles there were silver, plated,
brass, iron, steel, pewter and paste. Most of them sported
ruffle cuffs. Margaret wore the new dress Nimrod bought her,
and her moccasins. Pluck retained his leather apron, his
wife had donned a clean long-short. Chilion, the chief
musician, wore a pearl-colored coat, buff swansdown vest,
white worsted breeches and ribbed stockings. Tony Washington,
the negro barber from the village, and assistant violinist,
had his head powdered, wore a crimson silk faded coat with
long skirts, ruffle cuffs and white smalls. It was a singularly
freaked and speckled group. There were burly, weather-beaten
faces under powder and curls; broad, hard hands in kid gloves;
thewy, red elbows that had plied brooms, shuttles, cards,
frisking lace ruffles; there were bright eyes, smiling faces and
many pleasant words. Chilion, whose general manner was
reserved and obscure, grew animated when the dance began.
Margaret, omitted at first, was presently called up by Rufus
Palmer. None were so young and small as she; but she
enacted her part with vigor and precision. Her father asked
her for a partner, and it gave her new life when she saw she
pleased him. She was, for the most part, among strangers, in
a strange place and strangely occupied. The lights, the open
fantastically shadowed garret above, the evergreens, the windows
shining with the dew of so many breaths, the mystic
motion, steps which one takes and comprehends not, balancing,
gallopading, confusion harmonized, oiled intricacies, ploughboys
graceful and boors mannerly, earnestness of participation,
so earnest that even in the height of the game no one smiles;
and then above all and in all, the clear, exhilarating, penetrating
notes of the violin, and Chilion's violin, that she always
loved to hear, played in its best way; the life of all this life,
the motion of this motion, the inspirer and regulator of this
maze,—she felt grateful to her brother, and for the rest, she
seemed to enjoy it with a deep unconsciousness of joy. One
might have noticed her brother Chilion peculiarly employed.
He not only controlled the action, but seemed to gratify himself
in varying and modifying it. He evidently fantasied with
the company. He made them move faster or slower as he
pleased. He might have been seen watching the effect of his
viol, or his own effect through it. Whatever power he possessed
he exerted to the utmost. He seemed to be playing
more upon the dancers than upon his instrument. In the
midst of a figure he would accelerate the parties, drive them
from point to point with the wildest rapidity. In a contradance,
to the “Campbells are Coming,” never did plaided
Highlander leap down his native rocks with a more headlong
step than those same pied bumpkins sprang over that hall floor.
He slackened the motion at the close, and dismissed them
quietly to their seats. In one of the intermissions, might have
been seen entering the place the indefatigable Preacher. He
stole through the crowd, erected his tall dark form on a bench,
and taking advantage of the pause, broke upon them like a
thunder gust. His loud, guttural, solemn voice, rang through
the room.

“Thus saith the Lord God, thy pomp shall be brought down
to the grave, and the noise of thy viols!”

“A sermon! A sermon!” cried Abel Wilcox.

Preacher. “You look fair and seemly, but you are stench
in the nostrils of the Almighty.”

Crowd. “Another set, who'll lead off?”

Preacher. “The Lord will take away the bravery of your
tinkling ornaments, your cauls and round tires like the moon,
your chains and bracelets and mufflers.”

Pluck. “Let us praise God in the dance, praise him with
the stringed instruments. Let us, as David did, dance before
the Lord.”

Preacher. “This place shall be as God overthrew Sodom
and Gomorrah; owls shall dwell here, and satyrs shall dance
here.”

Crowd. “Peggy and Molly!” “The Haymakers,” “Here's
Zenas Joy and Delinda Hoag want `Come haste to the
Wedding!' ”

Preacher. “You stand on slippery places, your feet shall
stumble on the dark mountains.”

Crowd. “Chorus Jig! Hoa! Chilion, where are you?”

Chilion. “Take your partners.”

Preacher. “Rhody Palmer! Sylvina Pottle! Myra Dunlap!
are you in this scene of noise and confusion? Didn't you
come forward to be prayed for? Myra, didn't you profess to
have submitted? Oh! oh! God has been at Snake Hill, Five-mile-lot
and the Ledge, and he would have gone clear through
Breakneck and No. 4, but for this dance! And here I espy
the arch-adversary of souls, the contriver of your eternal ruin,
the very devil himself in your midst.”

Nimrod. “The devil you do.”

Preacher. “Young man, you will have your portion in
hell-fire.”

Nimrod. “I go to hell if I do.”

Preacher. “The deep damnation of God is prepared for
you.”

Nimrod. “I be damned if it is.”

Preacher. “What profanity! what blasphemy to add to the
catalogue of your sins.”

Chilion. “All ready.”

The words of the Preacher, as not unusually happens, were
disregarded. He pitched his voice still higher. They danced
the faster, Chilion played with the greater energy. The
Preacher himself exhausted, or discouraged, became at length
a listener, and finally his eye was rivetted to the scene before
him. Chilion played on almost wildly. Tony seconded the
purposes of his master to the best of his endeavors, his teeth
and eyes shone with a terrified whiteness, and the powder from
his hair sprinkled his face. Chilion was unmoved in the storm
he raised. Curls uncurled, ruffles were ruffled, trains trailed;
but the dance went on. Margaret revelled in the movement;
she danced as to the winds; she knew her brother, she loved
his power, she leaped out his spirit and tones. She sprang
through the figure like a shuttle, she spun round and round like
a top. Chilion, in his own time, softened the measure, and
suffered the piece to glide away in the gentlest pulsations.
The night waxed and waned. The Preacher, the elderly
people and children, and other spectators had gone; most of
the dancers left.

Here we must recede a moment to relate that in the
forenoon, Hash the brother of Margaret, and Zenas Joy, a
resident of the place called Breakneck, had a serious misunderstanding
about a shot the latter made at a turkey set
up by the former. Numbers came forward to the arbitration,
and in the result it happened that the interests and jealousies
of all parties became joined in issue, and the strength and
prowess of the several neighborhoods were arranged under the
respective standards of the Pond and Breakneck. It was proposed
to adjust the difficulty by a champion from each side in
a wrestling match. A rain, however, separated the combatants,
and broke up the ring. At the supper-table in the
evening, the subject was renewed. Again at this late hour of
the night, there were not wanting causes to stimulate the feud
in such as remained. Mr. Smith, the tavern-keeper, brought
forward a fresh supply of liquors, of which both gentlemen
and ladies freely drank; and the two young men from the
village had no other business than to foment and egg on the
rivalships of the several districts. A final dance was called

for; but there appeared little self-possession, either in respect
of temper or limb. Chilion played a while, and then relinquished
his instrument. Zenas Joy seized Hash by the
collar; Joseph Whiston tripped Obed, who, poor youth, was
already nearly down with liquor; Abel Wilcox spurred Rufus
Palmer to tread on Beulah Ann Orff's trail; Grace Joy taunted
Nimrod with a false step Margaret had taken; Sibyl Radney
rushed into the fray, pounced upon Zenas Joy, and sent him
whirling about the room, as she would a spinning wheel. So
one and another were engaged. Margaret, who had left the
floor, was standing by the side of Chilion. She looked at the
quarrellers, and then at her brother. He snapped his viol
strings, and was silent.

“Sing, Margery,” at length he said. He began a familiar
tune, “Mary's Dream,” — he played and she sang. This
twofold melody, sweet and plaintive, seemed to touch the
hearts of those excited people. They stopped to hear, they
heard to be won. They moved towards the music; they were
hushed if not subdued, they parted in peace if not in harmony.
Thus ended their Thanksgiving, and we must end
ours, and turn to other times and scenes.