 | III. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
3. III.
The sunshine was streaming across the porch where I was
sitting, and Mrs. Knight was preading her table, when the
children came galloping breathlessly in, informing her that Mr.
Sisco was coming. Suddenly the wheels ceased their rumbling
and a rap sounded on the front door.
“Mammy, mammy, shall I go?” asked the girls.
“No; if he want's to see folks, let him come where folks
are; go up-stairs and tell your sisters to get on with their
spinning;” and presently the wheels began to rumble, and
the young man came back to the kitchen.
He was evidently returning from a military muster, for a
dashing cockade ornamented his hat, strips of red tape covered
the outer seams of his trowsers, and a blue sash formed his
girdle, and hung in long floats over the scabbard of his sword.
He seemed from his flushed countenance and the bloody spurs
attached to his boots, to have been “pricking hard.” In his
had recently been deprived, and with this he inflicted a series
of sharp quick blows on his lower limbs, which, from their
shrinking and trembling, I could not help believing were quite
undeserving of such treatment. He perhaps intended it as a
penance for the sin he was committing in calling on the young
ladies in a busy week-day afternoon, for doubtless the visit was
designed for them, though he did not mention their names.
Mrs. Knight continued her preparations for supper, neither
making me acquainted with the stranger, nor saying anything
to him herself. His ostensible object was to procure a glass
of water, but from his wistful and embarrassed look I inferred
another motive, and so essayed my powers of detaining and
entertaining him, till Jemima and Hetty should come down.
“A very warm day, sir, for the season,” I said.
“Yes 'am, 'tis very warm.”
“It is time for us to expect the long autumn rains,” I continued,
“but I see no clouds.”
“No, mem.”
I was at a loss what to say, but his regalia suggested:
“Training day, it has been with you, I see.”
“Yes, mem.”
“There is some falling off of interest in these exercises of
late years?”
He made no immediate reply, but soon looked more directly
toward me, and said, “What did you observe?”
“Musters are not so attractive as they used to be.”
“No, mem.”
“I have been inclined to think the most undisciplined soldiers
fight as well as you who are skilled in arms,” I said; but the
compliment disconcerted him, and he abruptly said “Good
evening, mem,” and turned toward the door.
“What is your hurry?” asked Mr. Knight, just returned
home from the cider-press. “Sit down, sit down, and let me
take your hat.” So saying, he carried it off, cockade and all,
into the front room, where, when the windows were thrown
open, we were invited to sit.
“Mother,” he said, when, having performed his ablutions, he
in the world did n't you open the big room before?”
She made no reply; and the good man, having sent Jane
Anne above stairs to tell her sisters to come below, joined us
in the parlor.
“How is the potato crop with you?” he inquired, tipping his
chair against the bed, the starry counterpane of which was
surmounted by the young man's hat.
“Our late potaters are spilt with the rot, and our airly ones
were pretty much eat up with bugs—little yaller and black
fellers. Mammy took a bresh one morning and breshed them
out of the garden patch; it appeared like the whole kentry
would be overrun with them, there was so many, she said,
when they buzzed up.”
“The moles have been at work in mine pretty badly,” said
the farmer; “I wish I knew how to get rid of them.”
“If some dogs were as good to ketch moles as they be to
ketch sheep, you might get shut of them.”
“Why—any disturbance among the folds hereabouts?”
“Ourn was disturbed night-afore last a little, I should think;
we only lost fifteen!” And Mr. Sisco took a large bandanna
from one pocket and placed it in another.
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Knight; “and you knew
nothing of it?”
“I,” replied the military youth, “slep as sound as a roach,
but mammy said she was awake along in the night, and she
heard Towser bark as cross as he could be, and thought the
fence rattled too, she said; but she was dozy-like, and went to
sleep again, and in the mornin she alowed how if she had got
up she might have seen the dogs, for like enough they had one
of the old ewes down then.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Knight, and really I don't know what
better he could have said; and rising, he brought in a pitcher
of sweet cider, and a small basket of very fine apples.
Meantime the wheels stood still; and from the frequent
and lively snappings of the reel, it appeared that the yarn was
being wound from the spindles. Then came a creaking and
squeaking of the floor, as the bare fect pattered briskly across
young ladies were evidently preparing to descend. In this
opinion I was confirmed when Sally hobbled past the steps
with her bib full of fresh-gathered mullen leaves. Cheeks were
to be made red—there was no doubt about it. Half an hour
later, when the sun burned faintly through the tree tops, Mrs.
Knight took from the nail where it hung, a long tin horn, and
blew as though she meant to be heard half through the
country.
“Now run right along for the cows,” she said; and “forth
limped, with slow and crippled pace,” poor Sally, preceded by
the more nimble and light-hearted Jane. They did n't leave the
warm preeinets of the supper, however, without casting “many
a longing, lingering look behind.”
“Go 'long,” called the mother; “who do you think wants
you?”
Thus depreciated and warned, they skulked by the fenceside
as though they were scarcely privileged to walk directly
and upright, even to drive home the cows. Poor children—
their mother was quite too meek. Unless she taught them to
show in action that they respected themselves, how could she
hope for others to respect them!
Shaming the sunset, were the fiery spots, with jagged edges,
that burned in the cheeks of the young women, as they curtsied,
and shook hands across the plate of chicken; for they had
hurried past the parlor without making any salutation.
The arrangement of their hair was without any regard to
modern fashion; their dresses were neither new nor clean; they
were without stockings, and their shoes were of thick calfskin.
Though naturally intelligent enough, and pretty enough, under
their accumulated disadvantages, the woods certainly seemed to
be the fittest place for them, and when they had said “How do
you do, Mr. Francisco?” and he had replied, “Hearty as a buck
—how do you do yourselves?” there seemed to be nothing further
to say—especially in the terribly restraining presence of
the mother. When she had served the tea, and while the large-bladed
knives were going from hand to mouth, and indiscriminately
from dish to dish, she removed her chair half a yard from
on the dozen pins that were stuck in the upper part of her sleeve.
“What part of the chicken will you have, mother?” said the
husband, raising a piece on his fork, and looking toward her.
She shook her head, still looking at the pins.
“Don't eat the crust,” he said, passing a fresh slice of bread,
“it must hurt your teeth.”
“It's no difference,” she answered.
He next offered her a piece of apple-pie, baked on a red
earthen dish about as large as the full moon; but this she refused,
as also the dough-nuts. “Why, mother, ain't you going to
eat any supper?” he said, really distressed.
“I don't know as it would do any good, any way,” replied the
wife mournfully; and with lips pursed up, she continued to work
at the crust with her two or three front teeth. “Now, girls, go
right along and milk,” she said, as soon as we had risen from the
table.
And, mounting on his steed, the young man went his way, while
the girls, from the milk yard, waved their adieus to him; and
this was all the humanizing intercourse on which they ventured
during the gallant's visit.
I smiled as Hetty began to milk on the left-hand side of her
cow, but my attention was speedily arrested by the stepping on
to the porch of Mrs. Lytle. She looked tidy, brisk and smiling,
and was bearing on her arm a large basket of apples which she
had just gathered; for she was the tenant of Mr. Knight and
lived in the old cabin, with her two daughters, Kitty and Ady.
I could not help contrasting her dress, cheerful demeanor, and the
living interest she seemed to feel in the world, with the meek
despondency of Mrs. Knight, and when she insisted that I should
visit her the day after the next, I readily assented.
The reader must not suppose the Knights representatives of
country people generally—at least, they are not fair specimens
of such as I have known; but I am sorry to say there are some
such unhappy exceptions to the general character of the rural
population in all the farming states in which I have any
acquaintance. The young man I have introduced, is a species
of bumpkin found no where but in the country; nevertheless, it
deal more despicable order of being. Naturally simple-minded,
and with only the blood of a hundred generations of yeomen in
his veins, his thoughts seldom traveled beyond the market town
and the woods where the sun seemed to set, except when he
went to the election, and voted for the ticket which had been
supported by his father.
The lines which divide rusticity from the affluent life in country
places, or the experience of the middle classes in towns, are
very sharply defined; but there are a thousand little redeeming
graces belonging to all humanity alike, though uneducated persons
are hard to be persuaded that every thing pertaining to
gentle pleasures and courtesy, does not necessarily attach only to
the “rich and well-born.” Flowers are God's beautiful and free
gift, and they expand as purely white or as deeply scarlet under
the window of the poor man's cottage as in the gardens of kings.
| III. Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |