University of Virginia Library

2. II.

Mr. Knight informed me as he opened the gate, that he
should be at the cider-press till supper time, but that Rachel
and the girls would entertain me; and he added an expression
of regret that he was not himself more at leisure. As I
entered the yard, I saw that there were no walks cut through
the sod, and that the grass was trampled away as it chanced,
and beneath the tree (there was but one near the house) trodden
quite bare; and torn pieces of calico, bits of boards, and broken
china, spoke of a demolished play-house. There were no

flowers, nor snrubs to be seen, except a spindling “Jacob's
Ladder” which grew in a broken teapot, beneath the parlor
window.

I rapt smartly at the front door, but received no answer.
Indeed, after listening a moment, I was satisfied I should not
be able to make myself heard, for from a chamber window
came a sound like small thunder. The young ladies were
spinning wool, and running races, as it seemed by the whurr,
buzz and tumult, that came to my ears; so, after a little
reflection, I concluded to sit down on the steps and wait the
coming of Mrs. Knight, but the husband, seeing this, called to
me to go right in and make myself at home, and feeling that
my delay would annoy him, I did so. But as he leaned back
over the three bundles of rye through which the gleam of the
red apples shone, I could see that he was not smiling. The
door opened immediately into the parlor, and seating myself
there, I had some leisure for a survey of the style in which our
neighbors were living. The walls were bare, but white-washed;
the floor was covered with a home-made carpet, striped alternately
with green and red and yellow; six black windsor chairs
stood in a straight line against the wall; a bed with a white
muslin tester was in one corner; and an old-fashioned bureau,
on which lay a Bible and hymn-book, and a breakfast table,
covered with a green and red oil-cloth, completed the furniture,
except that the windows were shaded with highly-colored wallpaper.
On one side of the chimney was a cupboard with glazed
doors, originally designed for china, but filled with a variety of
coverlids, varying in color from the faintest blue to the deepest
red that could be dyed with pokeberries and pumpkin rinds.
All was stiff and angular, and a smell of paint pervaded the
atmosphere.

Many times I fancied I heard the creak of the gate; and at
last, weary of waiting, I went to the window, assured that I
detected steps and voices. Nor was I mistaken, for beneath the
window, wringing a fleece of wool from the dye, and spreading
it out on the grass, was Mrs. Knight. I was about tapping
on the window, to inform her of my presence, when she spoke
so harshly to the children, who were getting their play-house to

rights, that I resumed my seat, resolved to await her leisure;
and when her work was completed, with hands the color of an
indigo bag, I perceived that she bent her steps in the direction
of the kitchen.

The time I deemed sufficient for any little preparation she
might wish to make went by, and I began to find my position
rather awkward, especially as I could hear her, apparently
engaged in household duties, as though altogether unadvised of
my being in the house. The children now began to climb up
at the window, and looked in at me, laughing and hiding their
heads alternately.

“Is your mother at home?” I asked, thinking still she was
ignorant of my being there. It was some time before I could
get an intelligible response, and then I was told that she was
making bread in the kitchen.

I was half inclined to return home, but remembering Mr.
Knight's efforts toward sociability, I determined to press still
further, and, retreating from my position, I stepped to the door
of the kitchen, and made a sort of half apologetic observation in
answer to the unsmiling face which presented itself; and on
helping myself to a chair, as I was bidden, I followed my uneasy
salutation with some deprecatory remarks, in a subdued tone,
on the circumstances of our meeting, and of the pleasures of
agreeable neighborhood.

The day was warm, the sun streamed against uncurtained
windows, the wood blazed in the deep fire-place, and the numberless
flies blackened the air; but the woman wrought on unmoved.

I drew my chair to the open door, and, unfolding my work,
began to stitch, with great energy, talking the while of such
things as I supposed would interest her. She said little, however,
and that, as it were, by compulsion.

“Are the young ladies well?” I said, after a long silence,
during which I had been examining the array of pots and
skillets she was bringing about the hearth.

“The gals, if you mean them, are well enough,” she answered.

“I have not seen them for a long while,” I remarked.

“No, I guess you havn't,” she replied; “they are no gadabouts.”

I felt rebuked, but added that I was not often abroad myself,
and so should not be likely to meet them.

“They are spinning, probably?” I continued, after a moment.

She did not reply directly, but wiping her face with her
apron, exclaimed, `Marcysakes on us! I wish I was in Joppa
—it's so hot here!”

“Yes, it is very warm,” I said, “but you have cooler
rooms?”

“I have no time to sit in them,” she said, adding presently,
“I don't know as it is any difference about me—I am not fit
for anything but to work, as I know of.”

I attempted a smile, and suggested that she was fit for anything
proper for a woman, I supposed. She took her chin in
her hand and remained silent, looking as though she might be
musing of the dead.

At this point the youngest child, whose timidity was fast
vanishing, and who felt, no doubt, some desire to amuse me,
sprang upon the table, and seizing a newspaper, from among a
number that were strung over a cord attached to the wall near
the ceiling, began showing me a picture of the president, with
which it was embellished.

“Is that the way you sarve your father's papers!” exclaimed
Mrs. Knight; “I'll president you, if you don't put that up.”

Mr. Knight was a man of some intelligence, took a political
newspaper, which he read, and was pretty well versed in affairs
generally, but to the rest of the family, the paper might as well
have been written in Greek, for all they knew about it. It
was not thought possible, indeed, that they could read or understand
anything contained in it, and as soon as it was read
by the man of the house, it was hung above the reach of the
children, who learned to regard it as something especially
designed for old men in spectacles to look at on Sundays. I
felt in part to blame for the misdemeanor of the child, if misdemeanor
it were, as it was on my account she had violated
what seemed to be the law here. Therefore I was not sorry
when, taking a skimmer in her hand, Mrs. Knight went into the

cellar to attend to some necessary duty, as I supposed, for she
made no explanation or apology. There was thus presented
a fine opportunity for the little girls to display the juvenile
spirit which paternal authority generally kept subdued within
them. They were perhaps a little ambitious too, for the
exhibition of some of their various accomplishments before a
visitor. So, concealing themselves from observation, though
not from hearing, they began.

“It rains, but it don't wet; it's night, but it's not dark;
and if I was at your house I'd go home,” said the youngest
evidently designing that I should make the application.

“Oh, Jane Anne, ain't you ashamed!” exclaimed the eldest,
and then, by way of diverting my thoughts, perhaps, she
repeated a puzzling enigma, which she defied anybody and
everybody to guess: “Four stiff-standers, four down-hangers,
two crook-abouts, two look-abouts, and a whisk-about.”

“Eh! who couldn't guess that?—it's nothing but a cow,”
replied Jane Anne; “I can tell one that's harder: now listen;”
and though probably the sister had heard the riddle a hundred
times before, she was as attentive as if it were the most startling
novelty:

“Well, then, I am wise, for it's frost,” replied Sally; but I
doubt whether she could have come to this conclusion so
readily from any meaning of the words. “Now I'll tell one
you can't guess:

“Tongs, tongs!” shouted Jane Anne, and continued:

“Who don't know that!” said Sally, disdainfully refusing
to guess.

I need not repeat more of the original and ingenious rhymes,
with which they tested each other's wit, further than to state

that they were just breaking up what they termed their riddle
party, in the ceremonial of—

“Out goes she, I think!” exclaimed the mother, suddenly
appearing, with a great basin of milk in her hands, which,
having disposed of, she took the children, one at a time, by the
ear, and leading them directly before me, in order to make
them the more ashamed, imprisoned one in the pantry, and the
other in the smoke-house, where for the present I leave them.

“Dear me, I don't know what will become of us all,” said
the outraged mother, speaking rather to herself than to me, as
the excitement of the arrest subsided a little.

“Children will be children,” said I, by way of consolation,
and supposing she alluded to them.

She was seated on a low door step, near me but not facing
me, and, with her head dropt on her bosom, continued talking
to the air, something after this wise: “Massy on us! I don't
know what to do, nor what will become of us—all will go to
rack and ruin! Chasing the cows and one thing and another—
strange the child had no more consideration—her new frock—
she has torn a great three-cornered place in the skirt, and I
don't see how we are to make any money—apples don't bring
anything—nothing ever does that we have to sell—butter is
down to a quarter, and we eat half we make—if it wasn't, I
can't begin to count my troubles.”

“I suppose,” I interrupted, “we could all recollect some
troubles if we were to try; but if we look round, we may
commonly see people worse off;” and, to divert her thoughts, I
spoke of the widow Day, a poor woman with two little boys,
one of whom was lying sick.

“Yes,” she answered, “there are people even worse off than
we—but we'll all be done with life pretty soon: it won't be long.”

“It seems only a little time to those who stay here longest,”
I said; “but while we are here, it is best to avail ourselves of
every harmless means of enjoyment in our power, and you
have as much to make you happy as most persons.”

“I can work hard and fare hard, and yet no thanks,” she
replied, looking mournfully on the ground, her thin face full of
untimely wrinkles.

There was no need, that I could see, of her working hard or
faring hard. She seemed to like privation, to feel that sacrifice
was not only a duty, but a privilege.

While I was deliberating what I would say next, a man who
was carrying earthen pumps about the country, presented himself,
and asked whether her husband would not like to procure
one; saying, as he glanced at the well, “I see you use the
hard old-fashioned sweep?”

“Yes, and I expect to use it a good while longer,” she
replied: “we don't want any pump, and if we did, we are not
able to get it.”

“You own this farm, I suppose?” the man said, glancing
over the broad, well-cultivated fields.

“Yes, but money don't grow on bushes,” rejoined Mrs.
Knight, “and we have our taxes to pay, and the children will
all be wanting shoes, the first thing, you know—the frosts
come so airly of late years.”

“I sold one at the white house, yonder, and they are
delighted with it. You have no idea of the ease and comfort
and beauty of the thing; and, so far from adulterating the
water, I think it rather has purifying qualities.”

“The folks in the white house are rich,” said the unhappy
woman, “and able to get a gold pump if they wanted it; but
I told you we had no money to spend for pumps, and I shouldn't
want it if we had, for we once had one that fairly made the
water blue.”

The man assured her his patent stone-ware pump was quite
unexceptionable, and saying he would call when her husband
was in, asked the privilege of lighting a cigar, which he had
been twirling in his fingers during the conversation. As he
stooped over the row of skillets, spiders, Dutch ovens, and
the like, in which bread was rising, before fire, hot enough to
roast an ox, he remarked that he was an agent for one of the
most celebrated cooking-stoves in use.

“Well,” said Mrs. Knight, seeing that he paused for a

reply, “keep them, for all me; I don't like your stoves nor
the smell of your tobaccar.”

Though the pump had been far better than represented, she
would have had nothing to do with it. The old way, she said,
was good enough for her—she should not want anything long.
She seemed to think whatever lessened labor was a grievous
wrong; and whatever tended to pleasure, was something with
which she or her family by no possibility could have anything
to do.

Modern fashions were also prohibited; the cut of her gown
and the shape of her bonnet had been common ten or fifteen
years before—it required that length of time for the sinfulness
to get out of their cut, I suppose.

There are people, and Mrs. Knight was of them, who stand
aloof and seem to feel themselves fated to stand aloof from the
general interests and enjoyments of life.

If her husband prevailed on her to go and hear a Fourth of
July oration, she dressed her children like miniature men and
women, in long narrow skirt and fur hats, kept them sitting
stiff and upright close beside her during the blessed intermission,
when other children bought beer and gingercakes, and returned
home before the dinner was served under the long green
arbor; and while other girls marched in procession, with white
dresses, and roses in their hair, to partake of the roast pigs and
green peas, her daughters, in dark calico frocks and winter bonnets,
marched to their usual fried pork and sprouted potatoes.

If they were permitted to go to a quilting, they were
instructed to come home in time to milk, and thus were deprived
of all the real enjoyment of the occasion. It was not
for them to remain to the “play-party,” when the quilt was
swung up to the ceiling, and the young men came in, with candy
and cinnamon in their pockets. Many a time had the young
women gone to bed with aching hearts to hear in dreams the
music of—

They might both have been dreaming and spinning in the old
chamber to this day, as indeed one of them is, but for a little
stratagem, in which I had some share. But I am getting before
my story. The prisons of the little girls were opened at last,
and they came forth—each

but their spirits were elastic, and the excitement of running
down and catching a couple of chickens for supper, soon produced
the wildest gayety.

“Now go long with you and wring off their heads,” said the
mother, “while I grind my butcher-knife.”

And with streaming hair, flushed faces, and dresses torn, they
bore off their captives to execution as jocundly as they would
have fed them. The fun was presently over, however; one of
the party, in racing, had bruised her naked foot on a stone, and
sitting on the ground she took it in her lap and bathed the injured
place with her tears. “If mother would let me wear shoes,”
she said, “I would not have done it,” and half in anger, half in
sorrow she cried aloud.

“Not another word out of your head,” exclaimed the mother;
“ain't you warm enough without your feet bundled up?”

“Yes; but Mary Whitfield wears shoes and stockings too,
all the time.”

“You can't be Mary Whitfield,” replied the mother; “so
twist up your hair and go out and help your sister hoe the currant
bushes.”

“Dingnation on it all!” cried the child, as the mother adjourned
to the vicinity of the pig-pen to pick the feathers from
her chickens, “I wish I had hurt myself so bad that I could not
work.”

“Come on, Sal,” said Jane, bringing two hoes from the smoke
house, “come on and cut your toe off;” and wiping her face,
bloody with her late murderous work, on her sleeves, she gave
a series of jumps beside the long hoe handles, calling it riding
on horseback, and disappeared in the garden. Sally prepared
to follow, hobbling on her heel to keep the bruised portion of

her foot off the ground; but the tears were yet on her face; and
I called to her to wait a moment. It was not much, but I did
what I could; and when her foot had been bathed and bandaged,
her face washed, and her head combed, the grateful smile
that lit up her countenance made her almost beautiful. I could
not help feeling what a pity and shame it was that all refinement
must be drilled out of her nature, and all its graces
blunted and dimmed, by the drudgery of unwomanly tasks.
She was a much prettier and more springly girl than Mary
Whitfield; but so far from having her natural attractions heightened
by education and any familiarity with refined society, as
hers were, she was growing into womanhood, not merely in rusticity,
but so encrusted with actual vulgarity, that she would
not be able to break out of it by any efforts of maturer years.
Sally Knight sounded as well as Mary Whitfield, for ought I could
see, and with the same advantages the former would have been
vastly superior to the latter; but in her mother's opinion she
was proscribed. True, she was a farmer's daughter, and would
probably be a farmer's wife; but for that reason must she be
debarred all the little accomplishments which chiefly distinguish
civilized from savage life? I thought not. In this democratic
country, where the humblest girl may, under possible circumstances,
aspire to the highest positions, it is a wickedness for parents,
or any one in authority, to fasten a brand of ignominy
on a child, as it were, crippling her energies and circumscribing
her movements for life. If the complexion must be scorched
and roughened, the joints stiffened and enlarged by overtasks,
the mind vulgarized by epithets required or continually used in
coarse employments, let it be at the demand of inevitable misfortune,
not at that of a misguided will.

Mrs. Knight had been mortified when she found her daughters
indulging in the jargon I have reported, and so imprisoned them,
as I have described; but if she had accustomed herself to
spend some portion of the day devoted to scolding the children,
in their cultivation, few punishments of any kind would
have been required. If they had known anything sensible,
they would probably not have been repeating the nonsense
which seemed to please them so. But they had no books

suited to their years, and consequently they thought books
only designed for wise old men and preachers; as for the
newspaper, they supposed it was all one long president's
message, or something of that sort, for none of its lighter
articles did they ever hear, and it was no wonder they grew
tired and fell asleep when required to sit still through the
reading of a congressional speech; and of course they never
touched the paper except to hang it against the ceiling. When
I told Mrs. Knight that I had some prettily illustrated stories
at home which might please her little girls, she said she had
something else for them to do; and when I asked if they were
to go to the new academy, she replied that they had as much
education now as ever their mother had, and besides, they had
not the money to spare, and their troubles were not to be lessened
in any way that she knew of; but if they were, academies
were not built for the like of her girls. She kept so busy
during all the afternoon, that I felt sadly intrusive, but she told
me I could never have been less troublesome than then, if I
had waited twenty years, and with this comforting assurance I
remained to tea.