The tale of a plain man

Front matter

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COPYRIGHT DEPQSm

THE TALE

CHAPTER I. Childhood

I have no recollection of being born, but from what has been told me, and other evidence I am convinced that I was born on the 18th day of April, 1846, in Delmar Township, Tioga County, Pennsylvania. My father was a widower when he married my mother by which circumstance I had a half sister and three half brothers. He was a small farmer on a fifty-acre farm and his best crop was children — not in quality perhaps, but quantity, at least the neighbors thought there was enough of us. We were not bad children, but somewhat shiftless, and indifferent to the opinion of the neighbors. My earliest recollection was being hustled out of bed early in the morning by my half brothers to see Santa Claus as he galloped over the brow of the hill in his sleigh behind his reindeers in a scud of blinding, flying snow. I thought I could see him and hear the bells on the reindeers. The others said they could see him and hear the bells jingling. They pointed him out to me and I saw or was persuaded to see him. Afterwards I had some doubt whether I did see him. We often see things through the influence and insistence of others that we cannot see when they are not with us. Santa did not bring me much that Christmas morning, two round bullseye candies and some doughnuts in the shape of elephants and horses. But that was as rriuch as the others got, and it was enough. We were as happy and proud of Santa's gifts as any children could be, and had no doubt of the existence of Santa Claus. The doughnuts looked somewhat like a horse, and we had never seen an elephant.

The next thing that I recall is a slight punishment for Sabbath breaking. My father and mother were very pious God-fearing people and worshipped at the Schoolhouse Meetings, regardless of the denomination of the preacher. My birthday came on Sunday and it was thought by the other boys that something should be done to celebrate it, so I was provided with pole, line, hook, and bait, and caught a fine trout out of the brook running through the farm. When I took it home in great glee to show what I had done I was brought face to face, for the first time, with the enormity of Sabbath desecration. It was a very serious matter, and my father and mother held consultation over it. Finally, I was sentenced to remain in the house all the balance of the day. It made a great impression on me, which I have never outgrown. I am a fisherman. I love the sport and have fished all of my life, more or less, but I have never fished on Sunday since my birthday fishing and its punishment. I have done a great many worse things than to fish on Sunday, I have no doubt, but I have not done them on Sunday. I could never bring myself to play cards nor any other game on Sunday. While I am not prepared to say that it is wrong when not done in public, yet my father and mother believed it to be wrong, and they were honest God-fearing people who not only had my love and veneration, but my respect. Things began to happen then that I recall very vividly. I shall not relate them all, but only those that impressed me most profoundly.

Some two hundred feet from the house was a well of water without any curb or cover over it. My mother, a gentle, quiet, sympathetic soul, with more tears than temper, long suffering and kind, had a hard time with those overgrown, unruly half brothers of mine. There were three of them, with about two years difference in their ages, the youngest about seven. They were not afraid of my mother, and only feared she would tell my father. He was more stern, and his most usual eftective argument was a stick or gad. My mother was always afraid that I would fall in this uncovered well, and she would run up to it and look down, if I was out of sight, and did not answer her call. It was cornhoeing time, and warm. My father was in the field. The four of us went to the well and they put my straw hat down on the top of the water, and we all hid in a big tansy bed near the house. Soon my mother came out of the house and called us. No answer. I wanted to answer, but there Were objections — I had learned that punishment for disobedience to the boys was more swift and certain than to mother. Then she ran up to the well, and seeing my straw hat floating on the top of the water, had no doubt but that I had fallen in and was drowned. She ran rapidly to the house. There was great merriment in the tansy bed, but Soon she reappeared with the dinner horn and gave several sharp loud blasts. It was only ten o'clock, but the horn brought my father hurrying to the house. We saw^ him coming on the run. My mother met him — the -merriment had ceased in the tansy bed. He heard her rapid explanation. He threw up his head and gave on loud short call of "boys." Instantly four heads like snakes rose up out of the tansy bed. He looked at us a moment. The heads were hanging low. Nothing was said. There was an old hickory stump near, out of which had grown up some straight hickory sprouts or shoots. He took his jackknife out of his pocket and cut and trimmed a hickory sprout about three feet long. He was deliberate about it. There was no more merriment nor suppressed laughter in the tansy bed ; but, soon there was wailing and grief, and many tears. A hickory sprout wielded by a strong man makes an impression on a boy, especially in the summer, when his clothes are few and thin. For some time after that there were no more tricks played on my mother.

CHAPTER II. My Sister's Marriage

My father came from Massachusetts in 1831 with his first wife and one daughter. They drove and walked all the way with one horse and a light wagon, bringing various household goods. They settled on an abandoned fifty acres of ground with a log house and some five acres cleared, and lived there all of their lives. Three sons and one daughter were born there of the first marriage. One of the daughters died in infancy. My younger brother and I were the only children of the second marriage. I well remember when my half sister was married. There were very few neighbors. Most of the land was covered with hemlock, pine, beech, hickory, chestnut, oak, maple, iron wood and other hardwood timber. Bear, wolves, deer, and panthers were occasionally seen. We lived about five miles from the nearest village.

The wedding was like other weddings in that vicinity. The bridegroom was a strong, husky, young man. His belongings consisted of what clothes he had and a doublebitted axe which he could swing with great efYect. But my sister was given what was called a setting out — a cow, bed and bedding, cook stove, some dishes and cooking utensils, a few chairs, etc. This was the custom. The wedding was simple. An itinerant preacher, who held forth on Sundays in schoolhouses, performed the marriage ceremony. There was no bridal veil, orange blossoms, bridal tour, nor wedding presents. My sister wore her best dress which she had made herself. I did not notice any change in the apparel of the bridegroom, except that he had on a clean new flannel shirt and a new bandanna neckerchief. They stood up in the spare room, and the preacher performed the service. He did not kiss the bride, nor did any one else — kissing was not so customary then. 1 never saw my father kiss my mother, hold her hand, nor show her any endearing attention, although they loved each other devotedly. I loved my mother, and she loved me with a love that did not die with her, and still lives with me, but she never kissed me. The first time I was ever kissed was by a neighbor girl while we were gathering apples. I did not know what it meant, but I did know that it was good, and I wanted more of it. The preacher was satisfied with his dinner and fifty cents paid him by the bridegroom. Then the bride and groom, she with a little bundle, and he with his axe on his shoulder, started on foot to their new home, about five miles back in the woods, where he had taken up an abandoned claim or tract of sixty acres with a few acres chopped over and a one-roomed log house. My sister's belongings had been taken out there in the morning. That night the customary horning was given by the friends of the groom. No wedding was regarded as properly constituted without it. The more popular the bridegroom, the larger was the attendance at the horning. It commenced just after dark and consisted of every kind of noise and racket that could be contrived. Old horns, bells, tin cans, shooting of guns,

! 11 cheers, yells, and if rosin and a drygoods box could be obtained, the horse fiddle was heard, and when that was working nothing else was heard. Powdered rosin on a drygoods box, over which is pressed and drawn a fence rail, produced a noise more diabolical, infernal and nerveracking, than any other then known, and was regarded as the star actor in a successful horning. It was expected and welcomed by the wedded pair as a proper tribute to them. I have known the bride to complain the next morning because the horse fiddle was omitted at the horning. This was kept up until midnight, when cider was passed out the door in pails with tincups, after partaking of which the homers calling good night, went away. Next day came the infare at the home of the parents of the bridegroom. This was simply a gathering of the relatives of the bride and groom, where a dinner was served and the horning discussed, and the bride and groom were looked over and inventoried and good wishes expressed, after which they were expected to jog along in their proper place in the community without any further nonsense. I don't know how old 1 was at tliis time. I may have been six or seven years, but I remember it well. No great preparations were made for the wedding. I saw my father return from the village with a wooden bucket holding twelve or fourteen quarts of brown sugar. This was all that was purchased for the occasion. My mother was a splendid cook, and it was wonderful to see what she could do with flour, butter, and brown sugar.

CHAPTER III. Stone Soup

My mother was a good cook. The preachers always stopped with us, and nothing pleased my mother better than to cook for and feed them. Her stone soup was famous. She had a round, smooth stone, about as large as a baseball. She would place this in a kettle with water, and boil it, adding flour, salt, suet, pepper, onions or garlic, from time to time. A few small pieces of fresh meat, sage leaves, and other seasoning. After several hours she would take the kettle off the fire and we had a fine stone soup. No one doubted the contribution which the stone made to the soup and it was frequently borrowed by the neighbors. It was the only soup stone in the neighborhood. It was thought that there was some peculiar composition in the stone which added to the flavor of the soup. My mother was very proud of it. One neighbor declared that she had tried to make soup without the stone, using every other ingredient, but the soup was not nearly so good. My father used to laugh at the women. He admitted that the stone in the kettle made better soup, but not because it added anything to the soup, but because the boiling water kept the stone moving and constantly stirring the soup. That any other stone would produce the same result, my mother denied. She would not admit that any other round smooth stone, would make just as good soup as hers — and there I learned that it is human nature to think that what we own is a little bit better than things owned by others. I like this. I like to hear men and women claim that their children, their horses, and everything they possess, is superior to others. It is much more agreeable than to hear them declare that what they have is worse than others I have never just settled, in my own mind, whether my father or my mother, was right in their theory of the stone soup.

CHAPTER IV. The Pikery Bottle and Early Remedies and Doctors

We lived simply and cheaply, but well. Everything was cheap ; whiskey was only three cents a glass, and it always stood on the sideboard with the pickery bottle. The preachers helped themselves to the whiskey, but rarely touched the pikery bottle. A person had to be pretty sick to tackle that. It was a dark liquid, made of aloes and a little of everything that had a bad taste. It was mixed on the theory that the hair of the dog cures the bite, and if you had a pain and took a dose of it, you soon had a worse pain in front which discounted all others. I remember it well. It was a tall bottle with a wooden stopper in it and a string, one end of which was tied around the top of the stopper and the other around the neck of the bottle. My father and mother and the neighbors had great faith in it, but all the chikhcn hated it. I have often concealed and denied illness rather than face the pikery bottle. Doctors were few and far away, and housewife remedies were used with usual good results. My mother was a good nurse and doctor. She gathered each summer boneset leaves, sage leaves, rhubarb roots, lobelia, tansy, blue vervine and many other herbs which she knew when to give. In extreme cases the famous "hemlock sweat" was administered. There was a large kettle of boiling water into which hemlock leaves were placed and the patient sat over it with blankets drawn about in such a way that the steam and evaporations from the boiling leaves could not escape. A violent sweat resulted and was generally sufficient to break up a l^ad cold and put one in a normal condition. If the pikery, liemlock sweat, and other remedies failed, then a doctor must be fetched from the village. The roads were bad in spring and winter and the doctors covered a wide territory, and they were not much more successful in their practice than our mothers. Any one could set up as a doctor without college or office training, and many did so. There were two schools, allopathy and homoeopathy, and opinion ran high among the people as to which was the best. Disputes grew furious, and sometimes people who knew nothing at all about the theory or merits of either school, came to blows. These disputes were frequently fostered and fed by the doctors themselves. But the doctors that kept their mouths shut and did not talk much, generally were regarded as the best. One homeopathic doctor who never talked much obtained a large practice. He would shake his head or nod over his patients and never say whether death or recovery would result, but he possessed a rare natural sympathy and always attended the funeral of his patients. This took much of his time, but he was always on hand, and the people thought highly of him. He knew the merits of aconite and belladona, and this was really all the medicine that he ever gave, and all that he knew anything about. He was supposed to be a very learned man. He was an agreeable conversationalist because he always listened, with looks

IS and nods of approval and never said much. One day he made a fatal mistake.

He had a call ten miles away and wrote on a slate and hung it on his office door: "Gon too Pin Crick, bak too nite." One of his allopathic competitors saw it and spread the news, and before the doctor got back half the town had read it. That ruined his practice. The people could not forgive poor spelling. Those were days of spelling schools or spelling matches, when there were famous spellers in the land, and men and women would stand up in rows and spell each other down, and like Jeems Phillips in the Hoozier Schoolmaster, there were men and women who, without much education could spell correctly nearly every word pronounced to them. Inquiry into Doctor Johnson's former history in the distant village from where he came showed that he had been a blacksmith, and getting tired of it, he had moved into our village, where he was not known, and set up as a doctor. He only had three things, silence, sympathy and some knowledge of aconite and belladona, which were great assistants. While there were good herb remedies given that were generally sufficient for ordinary colds and troubles, there was much faith in foolish and ridiculous remedies., It was generally believed that the entrails of a black tomcat bound around the inflamed part was the best and quickest cure for erysipelas. Pasture ball tea was believed to bring the measles out to the surface. Bleeding was in general practice, and the turnkey forceps were used to pull teeth. The neighborhood blacksmith bled people and pulled their teeth at a shilling an operation. People were bled for being too stout, and others for being too thin, and some were bled regularly each month to prevent sickness. There was no appendicitis, but there were many fatal cases of bowel complaint. Since the discovery of appendicitis I have not heard of bowel complaint.

My mother had an eye stone for removing dirt from the eye which was in frequent demand in the neighborhood. It was a smooth white stone about the shape and size of a half pea. Dip it in vinegar and slip it into the eye. It was supposed to find the dirt and attach itself to it, and then slip out, bringing the dirt with it. We all had great faith in it. It would always remove the dirt unless it had become fast in the eye. It passed from neighbor to neighbor, and generally was in somebody's eye.

CHAPTER V. Matthew Blackwell and Playing Indian

We had a long barrelled, smooth bore rifle. It would shoot shot or bullets, and we' boys kept it busy. It was a notorious kicker. It was a_ mooted question as to which end of it was most dangerous. There were squirrels and pheasants, and in the summer and fall, many pigeons. I have seen a buckwheat field at harvest practically covered with them. The snow was deeper and more of it in the winter and there was colder weather than now. The pigeons are gone and the deep snows and cold winters. I don't know why it is, but I know that it is so. There were brook trout in all the streams, where now there are none. A family moved into a vacant house which stood in a hollow or ravine a short distance from our house. Their name was Blackwell. The man was tall and dignified in appearance, and very courtly. He had a wife and several children. They were poor, but proud and honest. Blackwell was sane from April to November, but in the winter months he was afflicted with a mild sort of delusion, and imagined all sorts of queer things. In his normal hours conversation with my father aroujid the old fire place showed a knowledge of books and men, but when the cold weather came on he would do strange things. He had great belief in a liniment that he called Apedildock. He carried a bottle of it with him and insisted on applying it to every neighbor's ailment. He always wore a Prince Albert coat and a stovepipe hat, well brushed, though much worn, and talked every one into silence. Some one gave him an old blind horse which had outlived its usefulness, and which its owner was too stingy to winter, and too cowardly to shoot.

He bought for a trifle an old cutter or sleigh, and with bits of leather and clothes line rigged up a harness, and started down the creek road in December, to cure the world of its ills with his Apedildock. While passing along the side hill some forty feet above the creek the clothes line rein broke, and pulling suddenly on the line towards the creek, the old blind horse went over the side, and horse, cutter and Blackwell, went end over end, down the hill to the bottom of the ravine. The cutter was smashed, the horses' neck broken, but Blackwell and his bottle of Apedildock escaped unharmed. He built a fire on the bank of the creek and proposed to bring the dead horse to life by the administration of Apedildock. He named the day and hour when the miracle was to be performed, and the people living near came to see it. The stream was frozen and the horse also, but the old man went through his rites rubbing the frozen horse with the liniment and murmuring strange words. But the miracle was not performed, and Blackwell with much reluctance, was led away by the kind-hearted people and cared for. In the spring, when the snow was gone and the wild flowers came and the bobwhites and whippoorwills were singing in the fields, it was hard to stay in the house nights, and the mischievous boys would gather at the corners just above old man Blackwell's house. It amused them to throw a few stones down onto the roof of his house. He would come out and in loud tones rebuke them and swear. One night my older half brothers stole quietly away and I followed them.

They discovered me and sent me home with a pair of long-legged boots which one of them removed, thinking they would be cumbersome for fast running. But I slipped along after them quietly. They met some neighbor boys at the corners and going down the hill road began to throw stones down on the roof of Blackwell's house. They expected him to come out and rant and swear as usual. But they had delayed too long. The spring was too far advanced. Blackwell had become normal, on that night, at least, he had a lucid interval. Instead of storming and swearing he took a stick and quietly slipped along the fence, unseen by them, and before they knew it he was among them. They ran up the hill and I, not knowing the cause, started out of the fence corner where I was hid, and took after them. I was the only one that Blackwell caught. I had not thrown a stone, but that made no difference. I was caught running. The stick fortunately was not a heavy one. It was a thin piece of dry wood, and it soon broke in pieces, and then he took me by the arm and escorted me home. My father responded to his knock, and opened the door. Our boys had gone up a ladder, and got in at the chamber window, and tossed the ladder down into a bed of pie plant and were in bed, and apparently asleep, as evidenced by loud snores upstairs. Blackwell told his story. When my father asked me if our boys were there, I knew better than to admit it, and stoutly denied it, telling him they were Tyler's boys, neighbor boys, quite as bad as ours. As Blackwell did not know who they were, my tale might have been believed, but my father recognized the boots which I had been sent back with, and which I still carried, one in each hand. They were all snoring loudly upstairs. He said nothing, but took down from a shelf, where it was kept when not in use, a wellseasoned hickory gad and hurried upstairs. The boys were wakened. The snoring ceased, and Blackwell went home satisfied, after listening to the responses of forcible discipline, for a few minutes. As I had had mine from Blackwell, I was told to go to bed. His house was not stoned after that.

After Mathew Blackwell moved away a family moved in by the name of Johnson. He was called Honey Jonhson, because he once stole a beehive, honey, bees and all, and was caught with it. He was not prosecuted for it, but was called Honey Johnson until people really thought that was his name. They called him Honey to his face without knowing what it meant to him. His wife would call him Honey, but from my observances of them, I do not think she called him Honey before he stole the bees. If he had been a man of sensitive nature that would have been a worse punishment than imprisonment, but he was not a man of sensitive nature. Far from it. He was a coarse, ignorant man, and his family were coarse and very ignorant. He worked when he could get work from the farmers, and work was hard for him to get, as nearly all of the farmers kept bees. He had three boys, ranging from seven to twelve years; none of the family could read. Our boys loved the dime novel stories of the wild west, and especially tales of

Indians. They were familiar with many tales of burning at the stake, war whoops and scalpings. It was in the fall when elderberries were ripe. Johnson's boys and our boys were out in the woods where a windfall had made a clearing and elderbushes grew. We were sitting on the edge of this clearing. My oldest brother pulled a novel out of his pocket and began to read a harrowing tale about the Indians burning at the stake three boys, taken in a settlement raid. The Johnson boys were excited and somewhat wrought up. Quietly, one by one, my brothers slipped away. In about fifteen minutes there were loud yells and war whoops, and my brothers dashed out of the woods upon us. The Johnson boys started to run, but were soon overtaken, and brought back.

No wonder they ran. Our boys had stained their feet, legs, hands, faces and necks with elderberry juice and stuck feathers, dropped by flying birds, in their caps. They were Indians. They tied their victims to small trees with strips of leatherwood bark and began to gather limbs and sticks in front of them for a fire. The prisoners believed that their captors were Indians. They had seized and tied me up to a tree, and I was quietly told to cry and take on, which I did, and four boys wailed and shrieked out their grief. Soon the fires were kindled amid the shrieks and groans of the victims, our boys dancing around howling and whooping their loudest. It was great fun for them. They had not thought of a rescue. They did not suppose that Deerslayer or any of Coopers heroes were around, but there were rescuers. There had been too much yelling, which, with the smoke, brought help. My father was working in the field not far away, and Honey Johnson was helping him. They came running into the clearing. They put out the fires and cut the strings and liberated the prisoners. Then my father cut something else — a young tree, and trimmed it — about three feet long, one-half inch at the butt, and tapering to a point. Hurried explanations that they intended to put the fire out, and were only in fun, were of no avail. As the Johnson boys and our boys followed their fathers home, it was a question with me, whether our boys had suffered more by the whipping than the Johnson boys by their fright, but then I reflected that the Johnson boys had had no compensation, while our boys had had what they thought was great fun while it lasted.

CHAPTER VI. Our Home Life

We played games, baseball, hornaway, I spy and others. Baseball was not played as they play it now. We called it sock ball. The catcher or person having the ball had to throw it and hit the running batter. The ball was as hard as it is now, and sometimes the fellow that was hit did not feel like playing ball any more that day. There was a neighbor boy of about my age with whom I often played. His mother had made soft soap and had put it in a barrel in the pantry beside some empty barrels. As it was summer time we had on only a shirt and thin trousers and were playing I spy. While I was "blinding" he ran away to hide and conceived the idea to slip into an empty barrel and pull the cover over him. Watching me to see if I peeked he slid the cover over and jumped into a barrel, the barrel was not empty but full of soft soap. He swallowed some and was scared and sick. As they had no bath tub they put him under the pump and pumped water on him. When his clothes were off and he was washed, he was as red as scarlet. There was not a bath tub in the neighborhood.