The marching years

Contents

CHAPTER __ PAGE

Introduction ---------- l

I The Tribe 3

Introduction

IT is the fate of many men of advancing years to be given to reminiscence, and ofttimes to think of their own family

history. They feel a tenderness for their old friends, and find it easy to recall things of long ago, while memory begins to show treachery for names and events of more recent time. As their vigor diminishes, their families and friends grow solicitous for them, tell them to watch their steps, and be sure to have within reach always an overcoat or a cane — or both. As the solicitude deepens and business cares decrease, some of them are urged to write memoirs of their lives — of such consequence do they seem to those who are nearest to them.

This is not an unlaudable purpose, and men like to talk and sometimes write about their own lives, especially about their boyhood and youth. To do so creates and indulges an egoistic warmth that is common to us all, and that, under restraint, may escape being an infliction to neighbors and friends.

I have a suspicion that the urging of such exploits, by those who love us, often has back of it unwittingly a vision — perhaps hazy and indefinite — of an autobiographical hiding of various stumblings and faults, in a glamour of magnified virtues, successes and wisdom. Anyway, we like to see these last in a concave mirror, for this is a universal weakness. We love stories, and if they are often enough retold they are apt to grow in the qualities and shadings that we like. So gentle fiction may even come to be a very seeming of truth.

It is probably true that most men who, by the urge of friends or their own impulses, come to write the story of their lives, endeavor to give a truthful account; but no man, however candid, could tell the whole story if he tried to; or even a large fraction of it without some coloration or varnish in spots — so unavoidable is bias, and so certain is some measure of egoism.

The average autobiography is written to satisfy the desire of the subject, or for his family and friends — or for his critics, or to settle with enemies if he has such. Few such writings are of much consequence to the general public — outside of those who have known the author or have been interested in the purposes of his life or his opinions. In apology for inflicting such a work on a public larger than his immediate group of relatives and friends, the present writer ventures to hope that, apart from his own personality which must run through it like a red line, he has succeeded in infusing the record with some not unprofitable light of his time and thought.

Chapter I. The Tribe

IN 1632 John Bridge came to this country from England and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He soon became a citizen of importance, and was made a Deacon in the Church, which was itself the most vital institution in the new settlement. He was a Deacon for twenty-three years. To be a Deacon was then the highest certificate of character, as well as of responsibility. In this settlement at that early day the only land owners were the church members; and the officers of the Church, chiefly the Pastor and Deacons, were sometimes required to act in the capacity of Magistrate in matters concerning landed ''property. He owned and lived on the land on which was afterwards built the Craigie House, Washington's Headquarters, later the home of the poet Longfellow.

In a small park in front of one of the buildings of Harvard University stands a bronze statue of John Bridge in the guise of a Puritan, which was erected to his memory in 1882. It bears a legend recording his usefulness and uprightness and the fact that he was a Deacon. It is said that he was indirectly responsible for the present location in Cambridge of Harvard University.

The present writer is of the eighth generation in direct descent from Deacon John. In the fifth generation was one Ebenezer Bridge, a Colonel in General Washington's army. His home before the Revolution was Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Before the war he was forehanded; after the war was over he found himself a poor man, and then moved with his large family to Vermont. Several of his sons became farmers; but some of the next generation were merchants and manufacturers.

My father, James Madison Bridge, only child of James B., and grandson of the Colonel, was a farmer in a small way in West Windsor, Vermont, on a little tract of about eighty, possibly one hundred acres, largely of unarable hills, mostly belonging to his father. The farm, before he and his father bought it, had been the poor-farm of the town, and some years after we left for the West it once again became the property of the town, and housed its few paupers. In 1906 I visited the old home and was allowed by the custodian to remove and bring away for trophies some of the ancient forged hinges and hooks from one of the buildings. The town of West Windsor was, at the time of my birth, a part of the town of Windsor, from which it was excised by the Legislature in 1848. My father's parents lived with us, in a separate part of the house, until we moved to Illinois at the end of 1856. In two years they followed us and lived in our family until their death, a few years later. This grandfather was, during all my memory of him, a valetudinarian — weakly and unvigorous, but never very sick. My grandmother, Susan Ralph Bridge, came of a large family of stalwart and hard working people.

My mother was Nancy Ann (Bagley) Bridge, daughter of Thomas and Nancy Marsh Bagley. This branch of the Bagley family is descended from one Orlando Bagley of Massachusetts. He was married in 1653 to Sarah Colby, who died in Boston ten years later, after bearing five children. The family probably was of English stock, although there is some evidence of its Irish origin. There was a tradition in the family that the mother of my Grandfather Bagley had Indian blood in her veins; it was said that she showed it in her face — and some members of the family were rather proud to believe it. But later research and the discovery of recorded evidence of authenticity, show that, with scarcely a doubt, the tradition was a myth, founded on nothing better than the brunette complexion and strong features of the woman, and the fact that one of her progenitors had been shot to death by Indians in front of his own door.

My Great-grandfather Bagley, Thomas, Sr., was a soldier of the Revolution, and during the war lost whatsoever fortune he had. He had several sons and one daughter.

My mother was the eldest of eight children. Her youth was passed in a time of great privation, and no family ever grew up with a keener appreciation of the value of money. Their educational advantages were most meagre, and my mother was the greatest sufferer of the family in this particular. One or two terms in a country school gave all the formal education she ever had. She helped her mother raise her younger children. The youngest, twenty years her junior, was John Parker B. who was killed in the battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862.

Of my mother's three children, two were sons, eighteen months apart, and one a daughter, Susan, born seven years later. The elder son, Edward, when eighteen years old, went to the war with his young uncle in 1861, and died of sickness early in 1864, after many battles, with never a scratch except in the first one, Shiloh, where he had a slight wound that invalided him home for a few weeks. Neither his mother, nor any of us, ever saw him again in life. When we heard that he was sick, my father started to go to him. After many obstacles he reached the camp of his regiment, the 55th 111. Vols., at Larkinsville, Alabama, to find that the boy had been dead over a week. His comrades exhumed the body and encased it in a proper casket. Then they, in rank violation of military orders, smuggled my father with the casket into an empty freight car, bound north. There the living and the dead rode, the sole occupants of the car, for some two hundred miles, in the unmitigated cold of January, to Nashville. Thence home the way was easy — and the boy was buried among his own. His comrades afterward told us that, as the end approached and he knew he was about to die, he asked passionately — maybe on the borderland of delirium — if his body would be left there to be kicked about by the "Rebs." He was calmed by their assurances that he should be buried at home. It was a promise they made in love and pity, without any serious expectation that it could ever be fulfilled — and*now it was made good.

My several grandparents had very dissimilar traits. The paternal grandfather was a gentle soul, rather lacking in force, quite a reader of the few books we had, a good letterwriter, and a capital story-teller for boys. His education was the best of the four, and was acquired in the country district school, which was the sole resource of his generation. Years later there was an "Academy" in South Woodstock, a near-by town, that gave further instruction and even embellishments to a few young people, mostly women. For a girl or boy to have attended this school was quite a distinction, and led to envy and jealousy in the neighborhood. One or two of my distant cousins had been pupils there, but none of our immediate family. Across the Green Mountains to the west of us was Middlebury College. Not only did none of our community ever attend it, but at my twelfth year I had never heard of its existence, so little did these people, amid their struggles for a living, think or know about higher education.

Grandfather Bridge was full of historical anecdotes and reminiscences, especially of the Revolutionary War, in which his father, Colonel Ebenezer, had been a soldier. He was always a half invalid, and almost daily took medicine of some sort, mostly herb teas — which were probably harmless. He would lie on a lounge after supper and let us boys lie beside him while he told us stories of wars and adventures with wild animals — but never of his own exploits. His stock of such stories was limited, but that made no difference to us; we enjoyed the fortieth telling of a story almost as much as the first. His phraseology was always the same, and we learned it so well by iteration that we could have repeated the stories, but we preferred to have him tell them, and never tired of hearing them. We knew when the climax was coming, and were ready to laugh or exclaim at it, but always restrained ourselves until it came.

His outlook was narrowed by his poor health, and when my father proposed to move from the infertile hills to the prairies of the Middle West and better prospects, it was a shock to him; it seemed as terrible as going to China, and he deeply lamented it.

My paternal grandmother was a very good, but not a very forceful woman. Her life had been overshadowed by her husband and his invalidism. She was always kind to her grandchildren, but in dealing with them she was evidently obsessed with her duty not to interfere with the family government of her daughter-in-law, and this she never did. There are thousands of good and dutiful women who fit into their narrow grooves so perfectly that they go through life noiselessly, avoiding all controversies, even in conversation, and so the world rarely discovers their true worth. Such a woman was this grandmother. One of the surprising things about them is that when some accident of life shoves them out of their groove and upon their own resources, they surprise both their neighbors and themselves by their efficiency.

My maternal grandfather was a character. He was erect, had dark stiff hair, small dark eyes and positive features. He spoke deliberately, with few, and no useless, words, unless he was joking his friends or his grandchildren. He was a stranger to gossip, especially disparaging gossip about his neighbors. He rarely hurried about anything, and usually accomplished his purposes. He was a most peaceful man, yet had more kinds of real courage than most men who are reputed courageous. He was a great reader of newspapers, and read the best of them, but I do not remember ever to have seen him read a book. He wrote few letters, and they were brief, but crowded with his message. He had a warm affection for us all, and was shy about showing it — rarely did show it save in some act of kindness wholly devoid of ostentation ;

and if anyone thanked him profusely he was surprised and embarrassed.

He enjoyed joking certain people, especially some of his grandsons. He knew that we boys were rather proud of our great-grandfather, Colonel Bridge, for his soldierly exploits; and that we resented any reflection upon his fame. So, in order to see me sputter, he would tell in my presence how the Colonel had once in battle sent for the surgeon, reporting himself as severely wounded, with blood flowing down into his boots ; and that the surgeon found the blood to be nothing but perspiration, due to fright. The story was pure fiction, but it had its effect, which he enjoyed.

My Grandmother Bagley was a smallish woman with light hair and eyes. She was one of the finest characters I ever knew. She had all the best sentiments and ideals. Unusually fond of children, and always glad to have them about her (even if they were not her own grandchildren, of whom she had a swarm), she understood girls and drew them to her for sympathy and strength. And for many of the boys she had the rarest powers of attraction and influence. She could make a small boy ashamed of any mean conduct or sentiment, and give him a sense of moral principle as a guide, keeping all the time her complete hold on him. It was a rare power, and she seemed wholly unconscious of having it. I was allowed in my tenth year to live a full twelvemonth with these grandparents. It was an advantage for me; my grandmother seemed to enjoy it; and my parents evidently were glad to reduce, by at least half, the boy mischief in their house. It was a great year for me, for I had the distinction of being the only child in the house, and all the attention which that meant. I worked little and played much. My grandmother had almost my entire confidence, but I had for a long time one secret from her. After the stock of butternuts was gone I often appeared with my pockets full of them. They were from the store of the squirrels — my discovery among a random pile of old shingles in the attic of the woodshed. I went to school in the summer as well as winter, and was the bearer of love letters between my Uncle Parker and the teacher, Miss Furber, whom he afterwards married.

I was always a timid boy, and was easily startled by sudden sounds and sights — and was afraid of the dark. On going to live at Grandfather Bagley's it was necessary for me to sleep in a room alone. Always previously having slept with my older brother, this change taxed my courage. It would not do to tell Grandma of my fear, for that would be babyish. I went to bed alone and comforted myself by promptly covering my head with the bedclothes — would go to sleep in this way, but always wakened with my head uncovered. It was long years before that fear wholly wore away. One of the greatest tests of courage of that time was to walk a quarter of a mile alone through a wood after dark from my uncle's to my grandfather's house. Few tough situations that I have had to face since that time have been severer tests of true courage than that act. The memory of it, and of a few others similar to it, have given me a feeling of sympathy for the soldier going into battle, who would like to run away except for the awful grip of personal pride and fear of ignominy.

My mother was a woman of great character, utterly dependable, and of untiring industry. She was for her neighborhood in times of trouble and sickness the one woman everybody seemed to turn to and lean upon. Her children instinctively turned to her as the strongest personality in their world. She always believed in her children, although her sons (not her daughter) were amazingly roguish, and often needed restraint, which they did not fail to get. Her faith in us probably kept us from being as bad as we might have been.

There was always as much comradeship between her and her children as the austere amenities of that time and country allowed, for the mothers of that day and place had rarely any caresses or words of endearment for children nearing the school-going age, or for anybody else except infants. They kissed their babies, but seldom their children. The fathers virtually never had any words of endearment for anybody or thing. Such words meant softness and effeminacy in boys and men. The parents were Father and Mother. The words Pa and Papa sounded silly to me the first time I heard them, and for a long time afterward.

It is a rather curious fact that, although we two boys got into various sorts of scrapes together, and out of our selfishness and jealousy often quarreled with each other before our thirteenth year, after that time this tendency wholly disappeared, and we became the most constant and unselfish friends and comrades. And I cannot recall that either of us ever got into a serious fight with another boy. This may seem to indicate a lack of self-assertiveness ; certainly there was no such lack in the case of my brother.

My father was more distant with his children, without either knowing that he was, or wishing to be. He was truthful but not frank with us, although he doubtless tried to be, and would have been glad to be. It was hard for us to go to him with our troubles, and easy to go to our mother, and we did not then know why. He was honest, upright and just, but he was the more moderate and less active of the two. This I am sure at times rather irritated my mother. She could scold a fellow soundly and easily — he never could. He had much more education than she had, but was less actively intellectual. He lacked the aptitude or power to play; to my knowledge he was never known to hunt, fish or otherwise play with us or anyone else — except an occasional game of checkers that he would have with us boys or some friend. Our mother never played. She never sat down at home without some work in her hands — knitting, sewing or what-not — unless she was reading; and she did a great deal of reading aloud, and read very well. She read short stories and some books to us — and this was the most vital part of our early education. One notable book that she read to us was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

My early memories of my mother are vivid and precious. Over the long years I can still see her at her many tasks. Now she is mending or darning the family apparel — and we boys are almost as proud of a freshly patched garment as of a new one. Our garments for every-day wear are nearly always patched. Next, she is spinning woolen yarn from rolls fresh from the carding mill. It was a previous generation of Vermont housewives who made shorter rolls by the manipulation of two hand-cards. Now the carding mill in the near-by village made rolls twice as long and more even and beautiful — little fluffy rods of snowy wool, so light that a puff of wind would blow them away.

She stood up to the tall spinning wheel, and moved rapidly forward and back as each roll lengthened and narrowed into a long stretch of yarn as she drove the great wheel forward. To spin a roll and wind it on the base of the spindle required her to stop and start the wheel four times — twice forward and twice back, and each roll had to be caught by a deft twist of the fingers to the vanishing end of the previous one. She worked with amazing energy, and seemed never to be tired. We saw her dye the yarn, and then from it knit socks and mittens, and weave cloth for our homespun clothes, which she later made for us. There was a loom in the attic that served for this purpose, as well as, with some changes, to weave rag-carpets — and she was expert at both.

I enjoyed seeing my mother at work, and sometimes helped her. But washing dishes was always distasteful; and churning, like turning the grindstone, was too monotonous and tiring — mentally as well as physically tiring. Children dislike monotony in most things, even play; and I was extreme in this particular. To see her make cheese was always fun; and we were glad to help her, especially in the manipulation of the cheese press. We chopped the curd in a chopping bowl for her, and helped her put it into the press, surrounded by a cloth that had been washed to immaculateness. Every step in her work, especially when it touched any food stuff, was marked by such ardor of cleanliness as to be a continuing lesson in aseptic good housekeeping. In that same bowl with the chopping-knife I used to chop apples, as well as other fruits and vegetables; and in the family mortar pounded to powder such things as cloves, cinnamon, allspice and black pepper — which were used to give an appetizing piquancy to our food.

She made soap and dipped candles with equal facility and skill — the making of candles with tin molds she never liked as well — and we early dispensed with the old-fashioned candles that required the constant use of snuffers, with poor results at best, for lamps and the stearine candles of commerce.

There were two of mother's tasks that we specially enjoyed with her, the sugaring-off of the maple syrup in the early spring and the semi-weekly cooking of doughnuts. The boys had a distinct part in both processes — chiefly in causing the products to disappear.

These Yankee people used sweet milk moderately for cooking and to eat in the famous "bread and milk." They ought to have eaten, but rarely did, save in some of their cookery, the sour milk or clabber. It took the people of our Southern States to learn the food value and succulent tang of clabber. Perhaps their lack of natural ice led them to it — or was it the habits of their negro servants? But in early New England the odor of clabber at the dinner table was offensive. It was only proper for the swill-pail, where all the other refuse from the table and pantry went for the pigs — and the mixture took and held chiefly the odor of sour milk. The pigs found it a delightful aroma (as the humans ought to have found it) * and, when they sniffed it, they rushed with squealing joy to their feeding trough and sucked up the luscious mixture, actually fighting for the best places for

*If one doubts this let him take a saucer full of cold clabber, with its own cream untouched, sprinkle over it some sugar with a dash of nutmeg or powdered cinnamon, and see what a refreshing dessert he has.

their noses, with the most outlandish table manners. Pigs have more sense and more cleanly (not to say decorous) manners than they are usually credited with.

My mother once on the farm had a pet pig. It was born in the winter — a little runt of a fellow, likely to die of hunger and cold. She kept it for weeks in a padded box (an extemporized incubator) by the kitchen stove by day, and at night by the sitting room stove, whose fire never went out. It was fed from a make-believe nursing bottle. The white, scrupulously clean little fellow grew to be a pet, much like a puppy, quite as intelligent and more commendable in his instinctively correct habits. When hungry he would pull at the skirt of his benefactress with a gentle grunt to remind her of his wants. If this tender hint was not effective his grunt soon became a high tenor squeal. After he was fed he would run away and go to sleep, perhaps beside the friendly collie dog.

Both of my grandmothers wore the white cloth caps tied under the chin, that were so common with old ladies of that day — but not my mother, even in her advanced age. Late in life she wore a little affair of black lace on the very top of her head, and this with her wavy white hair added to her dignity and mature beauty.

Chapter II. Vermont

THE house in West Windsor, in which we three children were born,* had originally been painted red, with white door and window trimmings. But the paint was faded and the house looked old ; and we never knew of its having been repainted. It was a longish, rambling, one-story building with a high attic; its east end was toward the road, and it faced to the south upon a wide and open front yard, bounded on the farther side by a stone wall, just beyond a large, beautiful hard-maple tree. (That tree still retained much of its symmetry and beauty nearly sixty years afterward.) Toward the west and in plain view of the house was the barnyard — bounded on the north and west by two ample barns. An extension of the house to the west was a woodshed and storage place, under a part of which was a space for vehicles, farm utensils and tools.

On the farther side of the wall in front of the house, and at a slightly lower level, was a kitchen garden. Near the wall by the side of the garden were a few bee hives for the family honey. These were brought into the attic and kept there during the winter. There we boys sometimes amused ourselves by listening at the hives to the gentle, low-toned hum of the bees, that could be heard almost any time all winter; and the place was pervaded by the faint waxy odor of the hives.

The wall continued along the road for some distance; and we boys in summer time — often barefooted — would walk on the top of it toward the east, to an enormous mass of rose bushes that once a year were covered with the most beautiful and fragrant red roses — I can recall vividly their odor after many decades. Farther along the wall were

*Edward June 30, 1843, Norman December 30, 1844, Susan some seven years later.

raspberry and blackberry bushes that grew wild on both sides of it. They were each year heavily laden with sweet and fragrant berries, although they never had any cultivation; their annual thick dropping of leaves fertilized their roots and repressed the weeds. Back of the house grew artichokes — not those of the modern hotel table (brothers of the thistle), the base of whose bracts we nibble after dipping them in mayonnaise— but a tuber that grew in the ground — the real Jerusalem variety, that we used to eat raw as we would a carrot or a toothsome turnip. There also was a bunch of lovage which annually grew a great mass of leaves with large hollow stems that were fragrant with a pleasing odor all their own. We used to cut little rings from them to cook with candy and certain condiments and foods, to which they imparted a pleasing flavor. But the plant was never thought of as a remedy for sickness.

Grandfather Bagley's house was over the hill and out of sight, a third of a mile to the east. There, almost equally with our own home, was our play place through those few early years. The house was old then, and had evidently not seen a paint pot for decades. There was a good barn across the road. By 1906 that house and barn had disappeared, only a few bricks and stones of the foundations remaining. In the house there had been an old fashioned brick oven, which fixed the origin of the house as of an earlier date than our own. This oven was never used as such in my time; the modern stove had succeeded it some years before; it was a storage place for certain things that needed to be hidden.

When I was a very little chap the family lived for about two years in Windsor village. My father was in poor health, and on advice took up during this time a lighter occupation than farming. He drove a wagon for a distributing company. He was advised also to take a daily morning plunge into a pond of water, which he foolishly did until far into the autumn.