University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
DAILY LIVING IN OLDTOWN.

HENCEFORTH my story must be a cord with three strands,
inexplicably intertwisted, and appearing and disappearing
in their regular intervals, as each occupies for the moment the
prominent place. And this threefold cord is composed of myself,
Harry, and Tina. To show how the peculiar life of old
Massachusetts worked upon us, and determined our growth and
character and destinies, is a theme that brings in many personages,
many subjects, many accessories. It is strange that no
human being grows up who does not so intertwist in his growth
the whole idea and spirit of his day, that rightly to dissect out his
history would require one to cut to pieces and analyze society,
law, religion, the metaphysics and the morals of his times; and,
as all these things run back to those of past days, the problem
is still further complicated. The humblest human being is the
sum total of a column of figures which go back through centuries
before he was born.

Old Crab Smith and Miss Asphyxia, if their biographies were
rightly written, would be found to be the result and out-come of
certain moral and social forces, justly to discriminate which
might puzzle a philosopher. But be not alarmed, reader; I am
not going to puzzle you, but to return in the briefest time possible
to my story.

Harry was adopted into our family circle early in the autumn;
and, after much discussion, it was resolved in the family synod
that he and I should go to the common school in the neighborhood
that winter, and out of school-hours share between us certain
family tasks or “chores,” as they were called at home.

Our daily life began at four o'clock in the morning, when the
tapping of Aunt Lois's imperative heels on the back stairs, and
her authoritative rap at our door, dispelled my slumbers. I was

never much of a sleeper; my slumbers at best were light and
cat-like; but Harry required all my help and my nervous wakefulness
to get him to open his drowsy blue eyes, which he always
did with the most perfectly amiable temper. He had that charming
gift of physical good-humor which is often praised as a virtue
in children and in grown people, but which is a mere condition
of the animal nature. We all know that there are good-natured
animals and irritable animals, — that the cow is tranquil
and gentle, and the hyena snarly and fretful; but we never think
of praising and rewarding the one, or punishing the other, for this
obvious conformation. But in the case of the human animal it
always happens that he who has the good luck to have a quiet,
imperturbable nature has also the further good luck of being
praised for it as for a Christian virtue, while he who has the ill
fortune to be born with irritable nerves has the further ill fortune
of being always considered a sinner on account of it.

Nobody that has not suffered from such causes can tell the
amount of torture that a child of a certain nervous formation undergoes
in the mere process of getting accustomed to his body,
to the physical forces of life, and to the ways and doings of that
world of grown-up people who have taken possession of the
earth before him, and are using it, and determined to go on using
it, for their own behoof and convenience, in spite of his childish
efforts to push in his little individuality and seize his little portion
of existence. He is at once laid hold upon by the older majority
as an instrument to work out their views of what is fit and
proper for himself and themselves; and if he proves a hard-working
or creaking instrument, has the further capability of being
rebuked and chastened for it.

My first morning feeling was generally one of anger at the
sound of Aunt Lois's heels, worthy soul! I have lived to see the
day when the tap of those efficient little instruments has seemed
to me a most praiseworthy and desirable sound; but in those days
they seemed only to be the reveille by which I was awakened to
that daily battle of my will with hers which formed so great a
feature in my life. It imposed in the first place the necessity of
my quitting my warm bed in a room where the thermometer

must have stood below zero, and where the snow, drifting through
the loosely framed window, often lay in long wreaths on the
floor.

As Aunt Lois always opened the door and set in a lighted candle,
one of my sinful amusements consisted in lying and admiring
the forest of glittering frost-work which had been made by
our breath freezing upon the threads of the blanket. I sometimes
saw rainbow colors in this frost-work, and went off into
dreams and fancies about it, which ended in a doze, from which
I was awakened, perhaps, by some of the snow from the floor
rubbed smartly on my face, and the words, “How many times
must you be called?” and opened my eyes to the vision of Aunt
Lois standing over me indignant and admonitory.

Then I would wake Harry. We would spring from the bed
and hurry on our clothes, buttoning them with fingers numb with
cold, and run down to the back sink-room, where, in water that
flew off in icy spatters, we performed our morning ablutions, refreshing
our faces and hands by a brisk rub upon a coarse rolling-towel
of brown homespun linen. Then with mittens, hats, and
comforters, we were ready to turn out with old Cæsar to the
barn to help him fodder the cattle. I must say that, when it came
to this, on the whole it began to be grand fun for us. As Cæsar
went ahead of us with his snow-shovel, we plunged laughing and
rolling into the powdery element, with which we plentifully pelted
him. Arrived at the barn we climbed, like cats, upon the mow,
whence we joyously threw down enough for all his foddering
purposes, and with such superabundant good-will in our efforts,
that, had need so required, we would have stayed all day and
flung off all the hay upon the mow; in fact, like the broomstick
in the fable, which would persist in bringing water without rhyme
or reason, so we overwhelmed our sable friend with avalanches
of hay, which we cast down upon him in an inconsiderate fury of
usefulness, and out of which we laughed to see him tear his way,
struggling, gesticulating and remonstrating, till his black face
shone with perspiration, and his woolly head bristled with hayseeds
and morsels of clover.

Then came the feeding of the hens and chickens and other

poultry, a work in which we especially delighted, going altogether
beyond Cæsar in our largesses of corn, and requiring a
constant interposition of his authority to prevent our emptying
the crib on every single occasion.

In very severe weather we sometimes found hens or turkeys
so overcome with the cold as to require, in Cæsar's view, hospital
treatment. This awoke our sympathies, and stimulated our sense
of personal importance, and we were never so happy as when
trudging back through the snow, following Cæsar with a great
cock-turkey lying languidly over his shoulder like a sick baby, his
long neck drooping, his wattles, erst so fiery red with pride and
valor, now blue and despairing. Great on such occasions were
our zeal and excitement, as the cavalcade burst into the kitchen
with much noise, and upturning of everything, changing Aunt
Lois's quiet arrangements into an impromptu sanitary commission.
My grandmother bestirred herself promptly, compounding messes
of Indian-meal enlivened with pepper-corns, which were forced
incontinently down the long throat, and which in due time acted
as a restorative.

A turkey treated in this way soon recovered his wonted pride
of demeanor, and, with an ingratitude which is like the ways of
this world, would be ready to bully my grandmother and fly at
her back when she was picking up chips, and charge down upon
us children with vociferous gobblings, the very first warm day
afterwards. Such toils as these before breakfast gave a zest to
the smoking hot brown bread, the beans and sausages, which
formed our morning meal.

The great abundance of food in our New England life is one
subject quite worthy of reflection, if we consider the hardness of
the soil, the extreme severity of the climate, and the shortness of
the growing season between the late frosts of spring and those
of early autumn. But, as matter of fact, good, plain food was
everywhere in New England so plentiful, that at the day I
write of nobody could really suffer for the want of it. The
theocracy of New England had been so thoroughly saturated
with the humane and charitable spirit of the old laws of
Moses, in which, dealing “bread to the hungry” is so often

reiterated and enforced as foremost among human duties, that no
one ever thought of refusing food to any that appeared to
need it; and a traveller might have walked on foot from one end
of New England to the other, as sure of a meal in its season as
he was that he saw a farm-house. Even if there was now and
then a Nabal like Crab Smith, who, from a native viciousness,
hated to do kindness, there was always sure to be in his family an
Abigail, ashamed of his baseness, who redeemed the credit of
the house by a surreptitious practice of the Christian virtues.

I mention all this because it strikes me, in review of my
childhood, that, although far from wealth, and living in many
respects in a hard and rough way, I remember great enjoyment
in that part of our physical life so important to a child, — the
eating and drinking. Our bread, to be sure, was the black compound
of rye and Indian which the economy of Massachusetts
then made the common form, because it was the result of what
could be most easily raised on her hard and stony soil; but I can
inform all whom it may concern that rye and Indian bread
smoking hot, on a cold winter morning, together with savory
sausages, pork, and beans, formed a breakfast fit for a king, if the
king had earned it by getting up in a cold room, washing in ice-water,
tumbling through snow-drifts, and foddering cattle. We
partook of it with a thorough cheeriness; and black Cæsar, seated
on his block in the chimney-corner, divided his rations with Bose,
the yellow dog of our establishment, with a contentment which
it was pleasant to behold.

After breakfast grandfather conducted family prayers, commencing
always by reading his chapter in the Bible. He read
regularly through in course, as was the custom in those days,
without note, comment, or explanation. Among the many insensible
forces which formed the minds of New England children,
was this constant, daily familiarity with the letter of the Bible.
It was for the most part read twice a day in every family of any
pretensions to respectability, and it was read as a reading-book
in every common school, — in both cases without any attempt at
explanation. Such parts as explained themselves were left to do
so. Such as were beyond our knowledge were still read, and

left to make what impression they would. For my part, I am
impatient of the theory of those who think that nothing that is
not understood makes any valuable impression on the mind of a
child. I am certain that the constant contact of the Bible with
my childish mind was a very great mental stimulant, as it certainly
was a cause of a singular and vague pleasure. The wild, poetic
parts of the prophecies, with their bold figures, vivid exclamations,
and strange Oriental names and images, filled me with a
quaint and solemn delight. Just as a child brought up under the
shadow of the great cathedrals of the Old World, wandering into
them daily, at morning, or eventide, beholding the many-colored
windows flamboyant with strange legends of saints and angels,
and neither understanding the legends, nor comprehending the
architecture, is yet stilled and impressed, till the old minster
grows into his growth and fashions his nature, so this wonderful
old cathedral book insensibly wrought a sort of mystical poetry
into the otherwise hard and sterile life of New England. Its
passionate Oriental phrases, its quaint, pathetic stories, its wild,
transcendent bursts of imagery, fixed an indelible mark in my
imagination. Where Kedar and Tarshish and Pul and Lud,
Chittim and the Isles, Dan and Beersheba, were, or what they
were, I knew not, but they were fixed stations in my realm
of cloud-land. I knew them as well as I knew my grandmother's
rocking-chair, yet the habit of hearing of them only
in solemn tones, and in the readings of religious hours, gave
to them a mysterious charm. I think no New-Englander, brought
up under the régime established by the Puritans, could really
estimate how much of himself had actually been formed by this
constant face-to-face intimacy with Hebrew literature. It is
worthy of remark, too, that, although in details relating to
human crime and vice, the Old Bible is the most plain-spoken
book conceivable, it never violated the chastity of a child's
mind, or stimulated an improper curiosity. I have been astonished
in later years to learn the real meaning of passages to
which, in family prayers, I listened with innocent gravity.

My grandfather's prayers had a regular daily form, to which,
in time, I became quite accustomed. No man of not more than

ordinary capacity ever ministered twice a day the year round, in
the office of priest to his family, without soon learning to repeat
the same ideas in the same phrases, forming to himself a sort of
individual liturgy. My grandfather always prayed standing, and
the image of his mild, silvery head, leaning over the top of the
high-backed chair, always rises before me as I think of early days.
There was no great warmth or fervor in these daily exercises, but
rather a serious and decorous propriety. They were Hebraistic
in their form; they spoke of Zion and Jerusalem, of the God of
Israel, the God of Jacob, as much as if my grandfather had been
a veritable Jew; and except for the closing phrase, “for the
sake of thy Son, our Saviour,” might all have been uttered in
Palestine by a well-trained Jew in the time of David.

When prayers were over every morning, the first move of the
day, announced in Aunt Lois's brief energetic phrases, was to
“get the boys out of the way.” Our dinner was packed in a
small splint basket, and we were started on our way to the district
school, about a mile distant. We had our sleds with us, —
dear winter companions of boys, — not the gayly painted, genteel
little sledges with which Boston boys in these days enliven the
Common, but rude, coarse fabrics, got up by Cæsar in rainy days
out of the odds and ends of old sleigh-runners and such rough
boards as he could rudely fashion with saw and hatchet. Such
as they were, they suited us well, — mine in particular, because
upon it I could draw Tina to school; for already, children as we
were, things had naturally settled themselves between us. She
was supreme mistress, and I the too happy slave, only anxious to
be permitted to do her bidding. With Harry and me she assumed
the negligent airs of a little empress. She gave us her
books to carry, called on us to tie her shoes, charged us to remember
her errands, got us to learn her lessons for her, and to
help her out with whatever she had no mind to labor at; and we
were only too happy to do it. Harry was the most doting of
brothers, and never could look on Tina in any other light than as
one whom he must at any price save from every care and every
exertion; and as for me, I never dreamed of disputing her
supremacy.

One may, perhaps, wonder how a person so extremely aristocratic
in all her ideas of female education as Miss Mehitable
should commit her little charge to the chance comradeship and
unselect society of the district school. But Miss Mehitable, like
many another person who has undertaken the task of bringing
up a human being, found herself reduced to the doing of a great
many things which she had never expected to do. She prepared
for her work in the most thorough manner; she read Locke and
Milton, and Dr. Gregory's “Legacy to his Daughter,” and Mrs.
Chapone on the bringing up of girls, to say nothing of Miss
Hannah More and all the other wise people; and, after forming
some of the most carefully considered and select plans of operation
for herself and her little charge, she was at length driven to
the discovery that in education, as in all other things, people who
cannot do as they would must do as they can. She discovered
that a woman between fifty and sixty years of age, of a peculiar
nature, and with very fixed, set habits, could not undertake to
be the sole companion and educator of a lively, wilful, spirited
little pilgrim of mortality, who was as active as a squirrel,
and as inconsequent and uncertain in all her movements as a
butterfly.

By some rare good fortune of nature or of grace, she found
her little protégée already able to read with fluency, and a tolerable
mistress of the use of the needle and thimble. Thus she possessed
the key of useful knowledge and of useful feminine practice.
But truth compels us to state that there appeared not the smallest
prospect, during the first few weeks of Miss Mehitable's educational
efforts, that she would ever make a good use of either.
In vain Miss Mehitable had written a nice card, marking out
regular hours for sewing, for reading, for geography and grammar,
with suitable intervals of amusement; and in vain Miss Tina,
with edifying enthusiasm, had promised, with large eyes and
most abundant eloquence, and with many overflowing caresses,
to be “so good.” Alas! when it came to carrying out the
programme, all alone in the old house, Mondays, Tuesdays,
Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and all days, Tina gaped and
nestled, and lost her thimble and her needle, and was infinite

in excuses, and infinite in wheedling caresses, and arguments,
enforced with flattering kisses, in favor of putting off the duties
now of this hour and then of that, and substituting something
more to her fancy. She had a thousand plans of her own for
each passing hour, and no end of argument and eloquence to
persuade her old friend to follow her ways, — to hear her read
an old ballad instead of applying herself to her arithmetic lesson,
or listen to her recital of something that she had just picked out
of English history, or let her finish a drawing that she was just
inspired to commence, or spend a bright, sunny hour in flower-gatherings
and rambles by the brown river-side; whence she
would return laden with flowers, and fill every vase in the old,
silent room till it would seem as if the wilderness had literally
blossomed as the rose. Tina's knack for the arranging of vases
and twining of vines and sorting of wild-flowers amounted to a
species of genius; and, as it was something of which Miss
Mehitable had not the slightest comprehension, the child took
the lead in this matter with a confident assurance. And, after
all, the effect was so cheerful and so delightful, that Miss Mehitable
could not find it in her heart to call to the mind of the little
wood-fairy how many hours these cheerful decorations had cost.

Thus poor Miss Mehitable found herself daily being drawn, by
the leash that held this gay bird, into all sorts of unseemly gyrations
and wanderings, instead of using it to tether the bird to her
own well-considered purposes. She could not deny that the
child was making her old days pass in a very amusing manner,
and it was so much easier to follow the lively little sprite in all
her airy ways and caprices, seeing her lively and spirited and
happy, than to watch the ennui and the yawns and the restlessness
that came over her with every effort to conform to the
strict letter of the programme, that good Miss Mehitable was
always yielding. Every night she went to bed with an unquiet
conscience, sensible that, though she had had an entertaining
day, she had been letting Tina govern her, instead of governing
Tina.

Over that grave supposed necessity of governing Tina, this
excellent woman groaned in spirit on many a night after the

little wheedling tongue had become silent, and the bright, deluding
eyes had gone down under their fringy lashes. “The
fact is,” said the sad old woman, “Miss Asphyxia spoke the
truth. It is a fact, I am not fit to bring up a child. She
does rule over me, just as she said she would, and I 'm a poor
old fool; but then, what am I to do? She is so bright and sweet
and pretty, and I 'm a queer-looking, dry, odd old woman, with
nobody to love me if she does n't. If i cross her and tie her to
rules, and am severe with her, she won't love me, and I am too
selfish to risk that. Besides, only think what came of using
severe measures with poor Emily! people can be spoilt by severity
just as much as by indulgence, and more hopelessly. But
what shall I do?”

Miss Mehitable at first had some hope of supporting and
backing up the weaknesses of her own heart by having recourse
to Polly's well-known energy. Polly was a veritable dragon of
education, and strong in the most efficient articles of faith.
Children must have their wills broken, as she expressed it,
“short off”; they must mind the very first time you speak;
they must be kept under and made to go according to rule, and,
if they swerved, Polly recommended measures of most sanguinary
severity.

But somehow or other Tina had contrived to throw over this
grimmest and most Calvinistic of virgins the glamour of her presence,
so that she ruled, reigned, and predominated in the most
awful sanctuaries of Polly's kitchen, with a fearfully unconcerned
and negligent freedom. She dared to peep into her yeast-jug in
the very moment of projection, and to pinch off from her downy
puffs of newly raised bread sly morsels for her own cooking experiments;
she picked from Polly's very hand the raisins which
the good woman was stoning for the most awfully sacred election
cake, and resolutely persisted in hanging on her chair and
chattering in her ear during the evolution of high culinary mysteries
with which the Eleusinian, or any other heathen trumperies
of old, were not to be named. Had n't the receipt for election
cake been in the family for one hundred years? and was not
Polly the sacred ark and tabernacle in which that divine secret

resided? Even Miss Mehitable had always been politely requested
to step out of the kitchen when Polly was composing
her mind for this serious work, but yet Tina neglected her geography
and sewing to be present, chattered all the time, as Polly
remarked, like a grist-mill, tasted the sugar and spices, and
helped herself at intervals to the savory composition as it was
gradually being put together, announcing her opinions, and giving
Polly her advice, with an effrontery to which Polly's submission
was something appalling.

It really used to seem to Miss Mehitable, as she listened to
Polly's dissonant shrieks of laughter from the kitchen, as if that
venerable old girl must be slightly intoxicated. Polly's laughter
was in truth something quite formidable. All the organs in her
which would usually be employed in this exercise were so rusty
for want of use, so choked up with theological dust and débris,
that when brought into exercise they had a wild, grating, dissonant
sound, rather calculated to alarm. Miss Mehitable really
wondered if this could be the same Polly of whom she herself
stood in a certain secret awe, whose premises she never invaded,
and whose will over and about her had been always done instead
of her own; but if she ventured to open the kitchen door and recall
Tina, she was sure to be vigorously snubbed by Polly, who
walked over all her own precepts and maxims in the most
shameless and astonishing manner.

Polly, however, made up for her own compliances by heaping
up censures on poor Miss Mehitable when Tina had gone to bed
at night. When the bright eyes were fairly closed, and the little
bewitching voice hushed in sleep, Polly's conscience awoke
like an armed man, and she atoned for her own sins of compliance
and indulgence by stringently admonishing Miss Mehitable
that she must be more particular about that child, and not let her
get her own head so much, — most unblushingly ignoring her own
share in abetting her transgressions, and covering her own especial
sins under the declaration that “she never had undertaken to
bring the child up, — she had to get along with her the best way
she could, — but the child never would make anything if she
was let to go on so.” Yet, in any particular case that arose,

Polly was always sure to go over to Tina's side and back her
usurpations.

For example, it is to be confessed that Tina never could or
would be got to bed at those hours which are universally admitted
to be canonical for well-brought-up children. As night
drew on, the little one's tongue ran with increasing fluency, and
her powers of entertainment waxed more dizzy and dazzling;
and so, oftentimes, as the drizzling, freezing night shut in, and
the wind piped and howled lonesomely round the corners of the
dusky old mansion, neither of the two forlorn women could find
it in her heart to extinguish the little cheerful candle of their
dwelling in bed; and so she was to them ballet and opera as she
sung and danced, mimicked the dog, mimicked the cat and the
hens and the tom-turkey, and at last talked and flew about the
room like Aunt Lois, stirred up butter and pshawed like grandma,
or invented imaginary scenes and conversations, or improvised
unheard-of costumes out of strange old things she had rummaged
out of Miss Mehitable's dark closets. Neither of the two
worthy women had ever seen the smallest kind of dramatic representation,
so that Tina's histrionic powers fascinated them by
touching upon dormant faculties, and seemed more wonderful for
their utter novelty; and more than once, to the poignant self-reproach
of Miss Mehitable, and Polly's most moral indignation,
nine o'clock struck, in the inevitable tones of the old family timepiece,
before they were well aware what they were doing. Then
Tina would be hustled off to bed, and Polly would preach Miss
Mehitable a strenuous discourse on the necessity of keeping children
to regular hours, interspersed with fragments of quotations
from one of her venerable father's early sermons on the Christian
bringing up of households. Polly would grow inexorable as
conscience on these occasions, and when Miss Mehitable humbly
pleaded in extenuation how charming a little creature it was, and
what a pleasant evening she had given, Polly would shake her
head, and declare that the ways of sin were always pleasant for
a time, but at the last it would “bite like a serpent and sting like
an adder”; and when Miss Mehitable, in the most delicate manner,
would insinuate that Polly had been sharing the forbidden

fruit, such as it was, Polly would flare up in sudden wrath, and declare
that “everything that went wrong was always laid to her.”

In consequence of this, though Miss Mehitable found the first
few weeks with her little charge altogether the gayest and brightest
that had diversified her dreary life, yet there was a bitter
sense of self-condemnation and perplexity with it all. One day
she opened her mind to my grandmother.

“Laws a massy! don't try to teach her yourself,” said that
plain-spoken old individual, — “send her to school with the boys.
Children have to go in droves. What 's the use of fussing with
'em all day? let the schoolmaster take a part of the care. Children
have to be got rid of sometimes, and we come to them all
the fresher for having them out of our sight.”

The consequence was, that Tina rode to school on our sleds in
triumph, and made more fun, and did more mischief, and learned
less, and was more adored and desired, than any other scholar of
us all.