University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

“Mother wants your sifter,” said Miss Ianthe Howard,
a young lady of six years' standing, attired in a
tattered calico, thickened with dirt; her unkempt locks
straggling from under that hideous substitute for a bonnet,
so universal in the western country, a dirty cotton
handkerchief, which is used, ad nauseam, for all sorts
of purposes.

“Mother wants your sifter, and she says she guesses
you can let her have some sugar and tea, 'cause you've
got plenty.”

This excellent reason, “'cause you've got plenty,”
is conclusive as to sharing with your neighbours. Whoever
comes into Michigan with nothing, will be sure to
better his condition; but wo to him that brings with
him any thing like an appearance of abundance, whether
of money or mere household conveniences. To
have them, and not be willing to share them in some
sort with the whole community, is an unpardonable
crime. You must lend your best horse to qui que ce
soit, to go ten miles over hill and marsh, in the darkest
night, for a doctor; or your team to travel twenty

after a “gal;” your wheel-barrows, your shovels, your
utensils of all sorts, belong, not to yourself, but to the
public, who do not think it necessary even to ask a
loan, but take it for granted. The two saddles and
bridles of Montacute spend most of their time travelling
from house to house a-manback; and I have actually
known a stray martingale to be traced to four dwellings
two miles apart, having been lent from one to another,
without a word to the original proprietor, who
sat waiting, not very patiently, to commence a journey.

Then within doors, an inventory of your plenishing
of all sorts, would scarcely more than include the articles
which you are solicited to lend. Not only are all
kitchen utensils as much your neighbours as your own,
but bedsteads, beds, blankets, sheets, travel from house
to house, a pleasant and effectual mode of securing the
perpetuity of certain efflorescent peculiarities of the
skin, for which Michigan is becoming almost as famous
as the land “'twixt Maidenkirk and John o' Groat's.”
Sieves, smoothing irons, and churns run about as if
they had legs; one brass kettle is enough for a whole
neighbourhood; and I could point to a cradle which
has rocked half the babies in Montacute. For my own
part, I have lent my broom, my thread, my tape, my
spoons, my cat, my thimble, my scissors, my shawl, my
shoes; and have been asked for my combs and brushes:
and my husband, for his shaving apparatus and his
pantaloons.

But the cream of the joke lies in the manner of the
thing. It is so straight-forward and honest, none of
your hypocritical civility and servile gratitude! Your
true republican, when he finds that you possess any

thing which would contribute to his convenience, walks
in with, “Are you going to use your horses to-day?”
if horses happen to be the thing he needs.

“Yes, I shall probably want them.”

“Oh, well; if you want them—I was thinking
to get 'em to go up north a piece.”

Or perhaps the desired article comes within the female
department.

“Mother wants to get some butter: that 'ere butter
you bought of Miss Barton this mornin'.”

And away goes your golden store, to be repaid perhaps
with some cheesy, greasy stuff, brought in a dirty
pail, with, “Here's your butter!”

A girl came in to borrow a “wash-dish,” “because
we've got company.” Presently she came back:
“Mother says you've forgot to send a towel.”

“The pen and ink and a sheet o' paper and a wafer,”
is no unusual request; and when the pen is returned,
you are generally informed that you sent “an awful
bad pen.”

I have been frequently reminded of one of Johnson's
humorous sketches. A man returning a broken wheel-barrow
to a Quaker, with, “Here I've broke your
rotten wheel-barrow usin' on't. I wish you'd get it
mended right off, 'cause I want to borrow it again this
afternoon.” The Quaker is made to reply, “Friend,
it shall be done:” and I wish I possessed more of his
spirit.

But I did not intend to write a chapter on involuntary
loans; I have a story to tell.

One of my best neighbours is Mr. Philo Doubleday,
a long, awkward, honest, hard-working Maine-man, or

Mainote I suppose one might say; so good-natured,
that he might be mistaken for a simpleton; but that
must be by those that do not know him. He is quite
an old settler, came in four years ago, bringing with
him a wife who is to him as vinegar-bottle to oil-cruet,
or as mustard to the sugar which is used to soften its
biting qualities. Mrs. Doubleday has the sharpest
eyes, the sharpest nose, the sharpest tongue, the sharpest
elbows, and above all, the sharpest voice that ever
“penetrated the interior” of Michigan. She has a tall,
straight, bony figure, in contour somewhat resembling
two hard-oak planks fastened together and stood on end;
and, strange to say! she was full five-and-thirty when
her mature graces attracted the eye and won the affections
of the worthy Philo. What eclipse had come over
Mr. Doubleday's usual sagacity when he made choice of
his Polly, I am sure I never could guess; but he is certainly
the only man in the wide world who could possibly
have lived with her; and he makes her a most excellent
husband.

She is possessed with a neat devil; I have known
many such cases; her floor is scoured every night,
after all are in bed but the unlucky scrubber, Betsey,
the maid of all work; and wo to the unfortunate
“indiffidle,” as neighbour Jenkins says, who first sets
dirty boot on it in the morning. If men come in to
talk over road business, for Philo is much sought when
“the public” has any work to do, or school-business,
for that being very troublesome, and quite devoid of
profit, is often conferred upon Philo, Mrs. Doubleday
makes twenty errands into the room, expressing in her
visage all the force of Mrs. Raddle's inquiry, “Is them

wretches going?” And when at length their backs
are turned, out comes the bottled vengeance. The
sharp eyes, tongue, elbow, and voice, are all in instant
requisition.

“Fetch the broom, Betsey! and the scrub-broom,
Betsey! and the mop, and that 'ere dish of soap, Betsey;
and why on earth did n't you bring some ashes?
You did n't expect to clean such a floor as this without
ashes, did you?”—“What time are you going to have
dinner, my dear?” says the imperturbable Philo, who
is getting ready to go out.

“Dinner! I'm sure I do n't know! there's no time
to cook dinner in this house! nothing but slave, slave,
slave, from morning till night, cleaning up after a set
of nasty, dirty,” &c. &c. “Phew!” says Mr. Double-day,
looking at his fuming helpmate with a calm smile,
“It'll all rub out when it's dry, if you'll only let it
alone.”

“Yes, yes; and it would be plenty clean enough for
you if there had been forty horses in here.”

Philo on some such occasion waited till his Polly
had stepped out of the room, and then with a bit of
chalk wrote on the broad black-walnut mantel-piece:

and then took his hat and walked off.

This is his favourite mode of vengeance—“poetical
justice” he calls it; and as he is never at a loss for a

rhyme of his own or other people's, Mrs. Doubleday
stands in no small dread of these efforts of genius.
Once, when Philo's crony, James Porter, the black-smith,
had left the print of his blackened knuckles on
the outside of the oft-scrubbed door, and was the subject
of some rather severe remarks from the gentle
Polly, Philo, as he left the house with his friend, turned
and wrote over the offended spot:

P.D.

and the very next person that came was Mrs. Skinner,
the merchant's wife, all drest in her red merino, to make
a visit. Mrs. Skinner, who did not possess an unusual
share of tact, walked gravely round to the back-door,
and there was Mrs. Doubleday up to the eyes in soap-making.
Dire was the mortification, and point-blank
were the questions as to how the visiter came to go
round that way; and when the warning couplet was
produced in justification, we must draw a veil over what
followed—as the novelists say.

Sometimes these poeticals came in aid of poor Betsey;
as once, when on hearing a crash in the little
shanty-kitchen, Mrs. Doubleday called in her shrillest
tones, “Betsy! what on earth's the matter?” Poor
Betsey, knowing what was coming, answered in a deprecatory
whine, “The cow's kicked over the buck-wheat
batter!”

When the clear, hilarous voice of Philo from the
yard, where he was chopping, instantly completed the
triplet—

“Take up the pieces and throw 'em at her!” for
once the grim features of his spouse relaxed into a
smile, and Betsey escaped her scolding.

Yet, Mrs. Doubleday is not without her excellent
qualities as a wife, a friend, and a neighbour. She
keeps her husband's house and stockings in unexceptionable
trim. Her emptin's are the envy of the neighbourhood.
Her vinegar is, as how could it fail? the
ne plus ultra of sharpness; and her pickles are greener
than the grass of the field. She will watch night after
night with the sick, perform the last sad offices for the
dead, or take to her home and heart the little ones
whose mother is removed forever from her place at the
fireside. All this she can do cheerfully, and she will
not repay herself as many good people do by recounting
every word of the querulous sick man, or the desolate
mourner with added hints of tumbled drawers,
closets all in heaps, or awful dirty kitchens.

I was sitting one morning with my neighbour Mrs.
Jenkins, who is a sister of Mr. Doubleday, when Betsey,
Mrs. Doubleday's “hired girl” came in with one of
the shingles of Philo's handiwork in her hand, which
bore in Mr. Doubleday's well-known chalk marks—

And the next intelligence was of a fine new pair of
lungs at that hitherto silent mansion. I called very
soon after to take a peep at the “latest found;” and if

the suppressed delight of the new papa was a treat, how
much more was the softened aspect, the womanized
tone of the proud and happy mother. I never saw a
being so completely transformed. She would almost
forget to answer me in her absorbed watching of the
breath of the little sleeper. Even when trying to be
polite, and to say what the occasion demanded, her
eyes would not be withdrawn from the tiny face. Conversation
on any subject but the ever-new theme of
“babies” was out of the question. Whatever we began
upon whirled round sooner or later to the one point.
The needle may tremble, but it turns not with the less
constancy to the pole.

As I pass for an oracle in the matter of paps and
possets, I had frequent communication with my now
happy neighbour, who had forgotten to scold her husband,
learned to let Betsey have time to eat, and omitted
the nightly scouring of the floor, lest so much
dampness might be bad for the baby. We were in deep
consultation one morning on some important point
touching the well-being of this sole object of Mrs.
Doubleday's thoughts and dreams, when the very same
little Ianthe Howard, dirty as ever, presented herself.
She sat down and stared awhile without speaking, à
l' ordinaire; and then informed us that her mother
“wanted Miss Doubleday to let her have her baby for
a little while, 'cause Benny's mouth's so sore that”—
but she had no time to finish the sentence.

“Lend my baby!!!”—and her utterance failed.
The new mother's feelings were fortunately too big for
speech, and Ianthe wisely disappeared before Mrs.
Doubleday found her tongue. Philo, who entered on

the instant, burst into one of his electrifying laughs
with—
—and I could not help thinking that one must come
“west” in order to learn a little of every thing.

The identical glass-tube which I offered Mrs. Howard,
as a substitute for Mrs. Doubleday's baby, and
which had already, frail as it is, threaded the country
for miles in all directions, is, even as I write, in
demand; a man on horse-back comes from somewhere
near Danforth's, and asks in mysterious whispers for
—but I shall not tell what he calls it. The reader
must come to Michigan.