University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY.
(With a Digression on “Hired Help.”)

“Abel! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and
fetch her round.”

Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was
born in New Hampshire, a queer sort of a State,
with fat streaks of soil and population where
they breed giants in mind and body, and lean
streaks which export imperfectly nourished young
men with promising but neglected appetites, who
may be found in great numbers in all the large
towns, or could be until of late years, when they
have been half driven out of their favorite basement-stories
by foreigners, and half coaxed away
from them by California. New Hampshire is in
more than one sense the Switzerland of New
England. The “Granite State” being naturally
enough deficient in pudding-stone, its children are
apt to wander southward in search of that deposit,
— in the unpetrified condition.

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that
extraordinary hybrid or mule between democracy

and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England
serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all
like him. He is at once an emperor and a subordinate.
In one hand he holds one five-millionth
part (be the same more or less) of the power that
sways the destinies of the Great Republic. His
other hand is in your boot, which he is about to
polish. It is impossible to turn a fellow-citizen
whose vote may make his master — say, rather,
employer — Governor or President, or who may
be one or both himself, into a flunky. That
article must be imported ready-made from other
centres of civilization. When a New Englander
has lost his self-respect as a citizen and as a man,
he is demoralized, and cannot be trusted with the
money to pay for a dinner.

It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional
emperor, this continent-shaper, finds his
position awkward when he goes into service, and
that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing.
It is always under protest that the
hired man does his duty. Every act of service is
subject to the drawback, “I am as good as you
are.” This is so common, at least, as almost to
be the rule, and partly accounts for the rapid disappearance
of the indigenous “domestic” from
the basements above mentioned. Paleontologists
will by-and-by be examining the floors of our
kitchens for tracks of the extinct native species
of serving-man. The female of the same
race is fast dying out; indeed, the time is not far

distant when all the varieties of young woman
will have vanished from New England, as the
dodo has perished in the Mauritius. The young
lady is all that we shall have left, and the mop
and duster of the last Almira or Loïzy will be
stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras
as that famous head and foot of the lost bird are
stared at in the Ashmolean Museum.

Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true
American view of his difficult position. He sold
his time to the Doctor, and, having sold it, he took
care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor,
on his part, treated him, not like a gentleman,
because one does not order a gentleman to bring
up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him
like a man. Every order was given in courteous
terms. His reasonable privileges were respected
as much as if they had been guaranteed under
hand and seal. The Doctor lent him books from
his own library, and gave him all friendly counsel,
as if he were a son or a younger brother.

Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and
though he saw fit to “hire out,” he could never
stand the word “servant,” or consider himself the
inferior one of the two high contracting parties.
When he came to live with the Doctor, he made
up his mind he would dismiss the old gentleman,
if he did not behave according to his notions of
propriety. But he soon found that the Doctor
was one of the right sort, and so determined to
keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side,

that he had a trustworthy, intelligent fellow, who
would be invaluable to him, if he only let him
have his own way of doing what was to be done

The Doctor's hired man had not the manners
of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn
for the most part, he never bowed and rarely
smiled, but was always at work in the daytime
and always reading in the evening. He was hostler,
and did all the housework that a man could
properly do, would go to the door or “tend table,”
bought the provisions for the family, — in short,
did almost everything for them but get their clothing.
There was no office in a perfectly appointed
household, from that of steward down to that of
stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume.
His round of work not consuming all his energies,
he must needs cultivate the Doctor's garden, which
he kept in one perpetual bloom, from the blowing
of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia.

This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen
beds were so many cantos. Nature crowded them
for him with imagery such as no Laureate could
copy in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm
of alternating dawn and sunset, the strophe and
antistrophe still perceptible through all the sudden
shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in
corresponding floral harmonies, made melody in
the soul of Abel, the plain serving-man. It softened
his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped
God according to the strict way of his
fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always colored

by the petals of his flowers, — and Nature
never shows him a black corolla.

He may or may not figure again in this narrative;
but as there must be some who confound
the New-England hired man, native-born, with
the servant of foreign birth, and as there is the
difference of two continents and two civilizations
between them, it did not seem fair to let Abel
bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without
touching his features in half-shadow into our
background.

The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by
her master from her cinnamon color, cassia being
one of the professional names for that spice or
drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or,
as an Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut,
— a genuine “Morgan” mare, with a low forehead,
as is common in this breed, but with strong
quarters and flat hocks, well ribbed up, with a
good eye and a pair of lively ears, — a first-rate
doctor's beast, — would stand until her harness
dropped off her back at the door of a tedious
case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in
three hours, if there was a child in the next county
with a bean in its windpipe and the Doctor
gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not large,
but she had a good deal of action, and was the
Doctor's show-horse. There were two other animals
in his stable: Quassia or Quashy, the black
horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he
jogged round the village.

“A long ride to-day?” said Abel, as he brought
up the equipage.

“Just out of the village, — that's all. — There's
a kink in her mane, — pull it out, will you?”

“Goin' to visit some of the great folks,” Abel
said to himself. “Wonder who it is.” — Then to
the Doctor, — “Anybody get sick at Sprowles's?
They say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin'
some o' their frozen victuals.”

The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon
would do well enough. He was only going to
ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.