University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

The house where Margaret lived, of a type common in the
early history of New England, and still seen in the regions of
the West, was constructed of round logs sealed with mud and
clay; the roof was a thatch composed of white-birch twigs,
sweet-flag and straw wattled together, and overlaid with a
slight battening of boards; from the ridge sprang a low stack
of stones indicating the chimney-top. Glass-windows there
were none, and in place thereof swung wooden shutters fastened
on the inside by strings. The house was divided by
the chimney into two principal apartments, one being the
kitchen or commons, the other a work-shop. In the former,
were prominently a turn-up bed used by the heads of the
family, and a fireplace; this last, built of slabs of rough
granite, was colossal in height, width, and depth; for dogs or
andirons were splinters of stone. A handle of wood thrust
into the socket of a broken spade supplied the place of a
shovel. The room was neither boarded nor plastered; a
varnish of smoke from tobacco pipes and pine-knots possibly
answering in stead; and the naked stones of the chimney
were blackened and polished by occasional effusions of steam
and smoke from the fire. The room also contained the
table-board, block, and rag-bottom chairs, and little stool for
Margaret before mentioned. In one corner stood a broom
made of hemlock twigs. On pegs driven into the logs, hung
sundry articles of wearing apparel; sustained by crotched
sticks nailed to the sleepers above, were a rifle and one or two
muskets; a swing shelf was loaded with shot-pouches, bullet-moulds,
powder-horns, fishing tackle, &c.; on the projecting
stones of the chimney were sundry culinary articles, and conspicuously
a one-gallon wooden rum-keg, and the silver
tankard, as likewise pipes and tobacco. In the room, which
we should say was quite capacious, hung two cages, one for a
Robin, the other with a revolving apartment for a grey squirrel,
called Dick. You would not also forget to notice a violin
in a green baize bag, suspended on the walls, which belonged
to Chilion, and was an important household article. On a

post, near the chimney, were fastened some leaves of a book,
which in examining you would find taken from the Bible,
and consisting chiefly of statistical portions of the Old Testament.
There were two windows or wall-openings in the
kitchen, on the south and west sides. The floor of the room
was warped in every direction, slivered and gaping at the
joints; and, being made of knotty boards, the softer portions
of which were worn down, these knots stood in ridges and
hillocks all over the apartment. The workshop, of smaller
dimensions, was similar, in its general outline, to the kitchen;
it contained a loom, a kit where the father of Margaret sometimes
made shoes, a common reel, hand reel, a pair of swifts,
blades, or windle, a large, small, and quilling wheel, a dye
tub, while yarn of all colors hung on the walls. The garret
was divided by the chimney in a manner similar to the rooms
below; on one side Margaret slept, and her brothers on the
other; her bed consisted simply of a mattrass of beech leaves
spread on the floor, with tow and wool coverlids, and coarse
linen sheets. At each end of the garret was a window, like
those in the kitchen. The ascent to this upper story was
by a ladder. From the back side of the kitchen, a door opened
into the shed, a rough frame of slabs and poles. Here
were a draw-shave, a cross-cut saw, an axe, beetle and wedges,
an ox-yoke, hog and geese yokes, barking irons, a scythe, rakes,
a brush-bill, fox-traps, frows, sap-buckets, a leach-tub, a small
pile of wood and bark; here also hens roosted. At one corner
of the shed was a half-barrel cistern, into which the water
was brought by bark troughs from the hill near by, forming an
ever flowing, ever musical, cool bright stream, passing off in
a runnel, shaded by weeds and grasses. On all sides of the
house, at some seasons of the year, might be seen the skins of
various animals drying; the flesh side out, and fastened at the
extremities; silver-grey and red foxes, wood-chucks, squirrels,
martins, minks, musquashes, weazles, raccoons, and sometimes
even bears and wolves; the many-colored tails of which,
pendant, had an ornamental appearance. The house was on
the west side of the road, and fronted the south. Opposite
the house to the south, across what might have been a yard,
saving that there were no fences, was a butternut tree, — the
Butternut par excellence—having great extension of limb, and
beautiful drooping willow-like foliage; near this was the Peach
tree which has been noticed. Beyond lay the eastern extremity
of the Pond. On the north was a small garden enclosed by a
rude brush hedge. On the east side of the road was a log-barn,
covered with thatch, and supported in part by the trunks
of two trees.

The name of the family whose residence we have explored
was Hart, and it consisted essentially of six members; Mr.
and Mrs. Hart, their three sons, Nimrod, Hash and Chilion,
and Margaret. We should remark that the heads of this
house were never or rarely known by their proper names.
Mr. Hart at some period had received the soubriquet of Head
and Pluck, by the latter part of which he was generally designated;
his wife was more commonly known as Brown Moll.
Mr. Hart had also a fancy for giving his children scriptural
names; his first-born he called Nimrod; his second, Maharshalalhashbaz,
abbreviated into Hash; and for his next son he
chose that of Chilion. It must not be thought he had any
reverence for the Bible; his conduct would belie any such
supposition. He may have been superstitious; if it were so,
that certainly was the extent of his devotion. The subject of
this Memoir was sometimes called after her mother, Mary or
Molly, and from regard to one long since deceased she had
received the name of Margaret. Her father and mother were
fond of contradicting each other, especially in matters of small
moment, and while the latter called her Margaret or Peggy,
the former was wont to address her as Molly. Her brothers
gave her, one, one name, another, another.

Nimrod, the oldest son, was absent from home most of the
year; how employed we shall have occasion hereafter to
notice. Hash worked the farm, if farm it might be called,
burnt coal in the fall, made sugar in the spring, drank, smoked,
and teazed Margaret the rest of the time. Chilion fished,
hunted, laid traps for foxes, drowned out woodchucks, &c.;
he was also the artizan of the family, and with such instruments
as he could command, constructed sap-buckets and
spouts, chairs, a cart, cages, hencoops, sleds, yokes, traps,
trellises, &c. He was very fond of music, and played on the
violin and fife; in this also he instructed Margaret, whom he
found a ready pupil; taught her the language of music, sang
songs with her; he also told her the common names of many
birds and flowers. He was somewhat diffident, reserved, or
whatever it might be; and while he had manifestly a deep
affection for his sister he never expressed himself very freely
to her. Mr. Hart, or Pluck, if we give him the name by
which he was universally recognized, helped Hash on the
farm, broke flax, made shoes, a trade he prosecuted in an
itinerating manner from house to house, “whipping the cat,”

as it was termed, and drank excessively. Mrs. Hart, or Brown
Moll, carded, spun, colored and wove, for herself and more
for others, nipped and beaked her husband, drank and smoked.
At the present time she was about forty-five or fifty; she had
seen care and trouble, and seemed almost broken down alike
by her habits and her misfortunes. She was wrinkled, faded
and grey; her complexion was sallow, dark and dry; her
expression, if it were not positively stern, was far from being
amiable; she was a patient weaver, impatient with everything
else. Her dress was a blue-striped linen short-gown, wrapper,
or long-short, a coarse yellow petticoat and checked apron;
short grizzly hairs bristled in all directions over her head. If
in this family you could detect some trace of refinement, it
would not be easy to discriminate its origin or to say how far
removed it might be from unmixed vulgarity.

The term Pond, applied to the spot where this family dwelt,
comprised not only the sheet of water therein situated but also
the entire neighborhood. In the records of the town the
place was denominated the West District. Sometimes it was
called the Head, or Indian's Head, from a hill thereon to
which we shall presently refer, and the inhabitants were called
Indians from this circumstance. An almost unbroken forest
bounded the vision and skirted the abode of this family. They
had only one neighbor, a widow lady, who resided at the north
about half a mile. A road extending across the place from
north to south terminated in the latter direction, about the
same distance below Mr. Hart's, at a hamlet known as No. 4.
In the other course, directly or divergingly, this road led to
sections called Snakehill, Five-mile-lot, and the Ledge. On
the south-west was a plantation that had been christened
Breakneck. The village of Livingston, or Settlement, as it
was sometimes termed, lay to the east about two miles in a
straight line. If a stranger should approach the Pond from
the village he would receive the impression that it was singularly
situated up among high hills, or even on a mountain,
since his route would be one of continual and perhaps tedious
ascent. But those who abode there had no idea their locality
was more raised than that of the rest of the world, so sensibly
are our notions of height and depression affected by residence.
From the village you could descry the top of the Head, like a
tower upon a mountain, elevated far into the heavens. To
this hill, it being a striking characteristic of the Pond, we ask
attention. Directly to the west of Mr. Hart's house and not
more than six rods distant its ascent commenced. It rose

with an abrupt acclivity to the height of nearly one hundred
feet. Its surface was ragged and rocky, and interspersed
with various kinds of shrubs. From the edge of the water its
south front sprang straight and sheer like a castle-wall. The
top was flat and nearly bare of vegetation save the dead and
barkless trunk of a hemlock, which, solitary and alone, shot
up therefrom, and was sometimes called the Indian's Feather.
This hill derived its specific name, Indian's Head, from a rude
resemblance to a man's face that could be traced on the south
front. This particular eminence was not, however, a detached
pinnacle; it seemed rather to form the abrupt and crowned
terminus of a mountainous range that swept far to the north
and ultimately merged in those eternal hills that in-wall every
horizon. Behind the hill, at the northern extremity of the
Pond proper, where its waters were gathered to a head by a
dam, and a saw-mill had been erected, was the Outlet; which
became the source of a stream, that, proceeding circuitously to
No. 4, and turning towards the village where it was again
employed for milling purposes, had been denominated Mill
Brook.

Mr. Hart had cleared a few acres in the vicinity of his
house, for corn, potatoes and flax, and burnt over more for
grain. He enjoyed also the liberty of brooks, rivulets and
swamps, whence he gathered grass, brakes and whatever he
could find to store his barn. Beyond the barn was a lot of
five or six acres, known as the Mowing or Chesnuts. It was
cleared, and partially cultivated with clover and herdsgrass.
This consisted originally of a grove of chesnut trees, which
not being felled, but killed by girdling, had become entirely
divested of bark even to the tips of the limbs, and now stood,
in number two or three score, in height fifty or seventy-five
feet, denuded, blanched, a resort for crows, where wood-peckers
hammered and blue-linnets sung. The otherwise
sombre aspect of this lot was agreeably relieved, though we
cannot say its solid advantages were enhanced, by a variety of
shrubs, small green chesnuts starting from the roots of the
old ones, white birches, choke cherries and others.

When Margaret had done her task, she was at liberty to
repair the effect of Hash's spleen and attend to her other own
little affairs. Obed Wright, the son and only child of their
only neighbor, was at hand to assist her. She had beans,
hops and virgin's bower trained up the side of the house, and
even shading her chamber window. To prevent the ravages
of hogs and geese, Chilion had fenced in a little spot for her

near the house. Obed brought her new flowers from the
woods and instructed her how to plant them. He was thirteen
or fifteen years of age, homely but clever, as we say, a
tall knuckle-jointed, shad-faced youth; his hair was red, his
cheeks freckled; his hands and feet were immense, his arms
long and stout. He suffered from near-sightedness. He was
dressed like his neighbors, in a shirt and skilts, excepting that
his collar and waist-bands were fastened by silver buttons;
and he wore a cocked hat. It seemed to please him to help
Margaret, and he stayed till almost sunset, when Hash came
in from his work. Hash hated or spited Obed partly on Margaret's
account, partly because of misunderstandings with his
mother, and partly from the perverseness of his own nature;
and he annoyed him with the dog, Bull, who always growled
and glared when he saw the boy. Margaret stood between
him and the dog and saved him from serious harm. In the
present instance, she held Bull by the neck, till Obed had
time to run round the corner of the house and make his
escape.

Margaret seated herself on the door-step to eat her supper,
consisting of toasted brown bread and watered cider, served in
a curiously wrought cherry-bowl and spoon. The family were
taking their meal of bread, potatoes and cold pork in the
kitchen. The sun had gone down. The whippoorwill came
and sat on the Butternut, and sang his evening note, always
plaintive, always welcome. The night-hawk dashed and hissed
through the woods and the air on long, slim, quivering wings.
A solitary robin chanted sweetly a long time from the hill.
Myriads of insects swarmed and murmured over her head.
Crickets chirped in the grass and under the decaying sills of
the house. She heard the voice of the waterfall at the Outlet,
and the croaking of a thousand frogs on the Pond. She saw
the stars come out, Lyra, the Northern Crown, the Serpent.
She looked into the heavens, she opened her ears to the dim
evening melodies of the universe; yet as a child She was interrupted
by the sharp voice of her mother, “Go to your roost,
Peggy!”

“Yes, Molly dear,” said her father, very softly, “Dick and
Robin are asleep; see who will be up first, you or the silver
rooster; who will open your eyes first, you or the dandelion?”

“Kiss me, Margery,” said Chilion, as she went through the
room,—she climbed into her chamber, she sank on her pallet,
she closed her eyes, she fell into dreams of beauty and heaven,

of other forms than those daily about her, of sweeter voices
than either father or mother.

We conclude this chapter by remarking, that the scenes
and events of this Memoir belong to what may be termed the
mediæval or transition period of New England history, that
lying between the close of the war of our Revolution, and the
commencement of the present century.