Homestead highways

Preface

Nature is the mother of sentiment, and to multitudes of people nothing is more charming in its reminiscent quality than the old New England country life. Away from its quiet homesteads and tree-shadowed highways, into the noisy, crowded ruts of the city, the awakened memories of its old-fashioned and simple habits, its plain fare, its open-handed hospitality, are like beautiful pictures swept clear of years of dust and cobwebs. A boyhood or a girlhood laid among such pastoral scenes is the halcyon period of a life-time. Of such, among the fields, the woods, the meadows and streams, my book is in part a suggestion.

Quincy, Mass., May i, 1888.

Contents

L' ENVOI.

" As the spinners to the end Downward go and re-ascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs, brighter and more fine, By the busy wheel are spun."

II

The Thanksgiving dinner in New England is an occasion of rare and long anticipated pleasure, occurring, as it does, during that interregnum of almost enforced idleness among the distinctively farming people. Of all lasting pleasures, I have found those of a rural character are to be counted first and chiefest. It may be because they appeal to me more strongly, or arouse larger sympathies ; but I find great charm in their simplicity as well. They do not ask any return ; they require no outlay in advance, nor do their fullest enjoyments impose any penalty of weariness or debilitation, but they are rather an antidote to such. The true farmer is one of Nature's children, and, broadchested and brawny as he is, overbrimming with the richest sort of vitality, as his independent way of living and out-of-door pursuits must needs make him, he is none the less keen in every manly sensibility, none the less clear in his reasoning or the less quick in his instincts. The coarser the covering to the nut, the sweeter the meat, and a homespun garb more often hides a big heart and a clear intellect than not.

Reasoning from natural phenomena is the road over which common-sense rides from a lower plane to a higher. The greater the fund of common-sense, the more happiness there is in life, however simple it may be, for its possessor. Nature is the great tonic, full of sparkling, exhilarating quality from ruddy sunrise to ruddier sunset. Farm-life is of great variety, and not at all the humdrum sort of an existence it is thought, by some, to be. Who ever heard of a farmer to the manor born, or his thrifty housewife being troubled with the fashionably termed ennui, the disease of idleness ? There is neither time nor disposition to indulge in splenetic complaints, in this mixture of out-door and in-door life, every moment of which is pulsating with robust exhilaration, whether it is in the searching after and the plucking of the sweet-smelling arbutus-blossom among the low evergreens in the pastures, with the maples showering clown upon you their bloodstained flowers with every vibration of the atmosphere, the driving of the team afield with plough or harrow, or the scattering of the grain across the mellow last-year's corn-lands ; the spring days are overflowing with a freshness and promise and bursting beauty that ever lie within the rarer enjoyments of anticipation, — anticipation that is richest in its fulfilment.

June blossoms into the wanton luxuriance of the riper summer days, to fade away, almost imperceptibly, into the nut-brown days of October, the season of falling leaves and garish woodlands, when Nature has come to one of her resting-places, and when, to the dwellers in the old farm-house, the summer work and harvesting is completed. These days are the breathing-spaces for the farm-folks, young and old, with their short allowance of sunshine and long, fire-lighted evenings, interspersed with many a neighborly visit ; with their gatherings at the cross-roads post-office for the mail, which always comes with the thickening shadows, that follow the sundown so swiftly, and where, with the innocent but Yankee-like diversion of whittling at box or bench, with neighborly gossip amid clouds of pipe-smoke, and with the reading aloud, by some prodigy of the "deestrick school," of the single copy of the daily paper, which the village squire or some local politician feels it his duty to provide for his constituency, the evening is fairly well spent.

Thanksgiving day is a long anticipated occasion of festivity. The poultry are sedulously watched and fed, those of rufous plumage being especially devoted to the executioner and market-man, with some of the older " fry " among the Cochins, Brajimas, and Plymouth Rocks ; the largest, fairest fruits from the orchards are selected for its desserts ; the sage and mint for the stuffing of the big turkey are picked in blossoming time, and carefully laid away beyond the touch of profane hand ; there are mysterious errands to the " corner grocery," and many a brown-paper parcel was smuggled into the house-pantry ; nothing was forgotten, not even the powder and shot for the old Queen's-arm musket was overlooked, with which to shoot the partridges and squirrels for the pot-pie, which was always set upon the table in the big ten-quart tin pan in which it was baked, its topcrust rising like a dome from its flaring rim, delicately browned, and flaky as only mother knew how to make it. The hard, puckery fruit from the native pear-tree, that grew in the gap in the pasture-fence, already of uncertain age, has been preserved in the best Cienfuegos, and the new cider has been boiled to the proper consistency and flavor for sauce of quartered sugar-sweetings, that hung all summer long over the wood-pile behind the shed, to drop one by one, through the mellow haze of the short October afternoons, into the debris of dead thistles and beechen chips below, with many a cut and bruise upon their golden rinds. It was a rare relish, and took the place of the cranberry, for there was not a cranberry-bog within fifteen miles of the home-farm.

The ground under the butternut-trees has been scoured for the twentieth time, in search of the stray, late fallen nuts, with their green-hued, sticky rinds. The long, oval-shaped butternut-leaves have fallen long since, but some of the nuts are obstinate enough, and mind neither wind nor rain, and only a sturdy climb and persistent clubbing of the farthermost branches will dislodge them from their lofty perch, but all the more tempting to our boyish effort ; but the nuts are beaten off or shaken to the ground, and down I slide to. the foot of the tree, to find, how provoking ! that, with all my agility and lynx-eyed peering about the leafless branches, I had missed a half-score of them. What a taunting air those few odd butternuts on the topmost twigs had, as if they were saying, " Come and get me if you dare ! " I let them remain, well satisfied that Jack Frost would knock them off if I did not. There were no shagbarks on the home-lot, though I knew of some on a neighboring farm, but which were preempted by their owners, for home-consumption ; but mother and I have raked the beechen carpetings of the woods by the square rod, with our nimble fingers, in company with the squirrels, red and gray, and as well the half-crazy chipmonk, who always blew a shrill whistle whenever he was excited or alarmed, dodging for the nearest hole as if his life depended upon the rapidity of his exertion.

The chipmonk is an easily domesticated fellow, running about the house with the utmost freedom, upstairs and down ; making cosey nests out of the window-draperies, rustling with a busy sort of noise about the paper-basket, now upon the top of the easy-chair, and now in the corner, munching at a nut he has been fortunate enough to discover about the pantry. How many snares the little fellow escaped before he fell into my own I do not know, but one bright, sunny day in the early fall some one about the house left the outer door ajar, and Mr. Chipmonk left most unceremoniously, and from that day to this I have not seen him to recognize him, but I rather liked his independence and spirit. To be under the slightest obligation to some people is certainly very uncomfortable, not to say downright disagreeable ; and yet as I recall the chipmonk's sharp whistle he was constantly saying, " Let me go ! let me go ! I say, siree, let me go ! " between his chattering teeth. We were not a little entertained by the acrobatic exhibitions, given from time to time, through the bright days we frequented the woods, by the big gray squirrels, that made their highways among the interlacing hemlock-tops, with many a sharp bark and daring leap. But they were more shy than the smaller species, and less numerous. We would meet them in the late afternoon, racing down over the pasture into the woods, with a load of corn stolen from the uncut harvest on the hill-side. They came even into the corn-crib in the deep of winter, and, for all I know, slept there ; but these forest-children did not interfere much with our beech-nutting, as the ample salt-bag hanging from the drying-pole in the kitchen abundantly proved. What magnificent days came with every frosty morning ! Each day was a huge topaz set with bright, starlit nights flooded with all the glory of the harvest-moon. But the husbandman has not been idle. There has been no lagging about the farm since the boys began to pull and stack the beans in the corn, binding the stakes at the bottom with the slender withes of witch-hazel, with green-stained, roughened hands, but the tops were always finished by father.

The potato-vines have grown rusty lying so long in the summer sun, and at last, dead and dry, are pulled from the long, parallel ridges of mellowed soil, and with bright-bladed hoe the white and purple tubers are thrown out to dry before being carted to the cellar and piled away beneath the stone arches that hold up the big, wide hearth, with its heavy chimney-stack. The corn-crop has been gathered into the husking-pile and deftly stripped of its yellow sheaths and brown silks, and has been carried in baskets to the corn-loft in the long attic of the woodshed, for the vagrant mice to feed upon the winter through. The silver-skins in the onion-patch have been pulled and carted with the other field-produce into the cellar, to keep company with the potatoes, and where there are also ample bins of rutabagas and Dutch cabbages dressed in royal purple, with blood-red beets in quantities for the housewife, and where there are bushels of carrots, long and tapering, each one an ingot of ruddy gold, for the calves, and an occasional boiled dinner of countrypork or well salted beef. In the apple-room, in the southerly corner, are bushels upon bushels of apples, piled high against its four walls, and which bespeak ample store for winter days. The threshers have made their annual pilgrimage, and the sun-blackened beans, dumped from the old ox-cart into the barn-floors, have been beaten into sheer chaff by the farm-hands, with their old-fashioned, hollow-sounding flails, and afterward winnowed in the wind, or blown clean in the ancient, yellow winnowing-machine, — and a queer bit of farmmechanism it was, with its immense hopper and wooden wheel with white-oak pin driven squarely into its outer side, and a clumsy crank-pin it was, with channelled rim for the leather band that drove the blower ! As wheezy and full of clatter as any old-fashioned thing could be, we children thought it a wonderful plaything, catching in our hands the snowy white treasure as it came pouring down the little spout on the side where the wheels, with their attachment of slender wooden bar, were jerking the sieves rapidly to one side and the other.

Rare dreams of childish romance filled our thought as we caught an imaginary glimpse of Jack the Giant-killer, hovering in the thick dust of pod and stalk, gathering in an ever-increasing pile, to be scattered by father's thick leathern boots over the floor, when its accumulation interfered with the sieves. Many a song was evolved from the whir of the blower, and written upon an imaginary staff in the heart, to be sung in the silence of after years ; and what sweet pastorals they were ! The cattle thought these broken pods delicious, as I imagined from their eager snuffing and hungry looks whenever a bunch of beanstalks came in their way, and the sheep munched away at them as busily as if it were the last "foddering" from the scaffold. I delighted in the " foddering " of these barn-people whenever I went among them, and if I did not give them something good from the mows, the " mild reproach " that looked from their wide-open, ruminant eyes kept even pace with me up the hill to the house.

The hollowed pathways of the mower across the wheat-field have been marked with many a parallel track, left by the broadly tired wheels of the ox-cart, and gleaned bare of stones, which have been built into substantial cobble-wall about the farm, preparatory to the mowing of the rank clover which will spring up next year. A good solid wall is the pride of the thrifty farmer, and a most excellent barrier against invasion from the cattle of a not over-solicitous neighbor : but cattle are half-human in their inclinations to indulge in mischief, and no more innocent-looking culprit can be conceived than one of these adepts at jumping stone walls and tearing-down of fences. The cornfield or clover-patch on the other side of the fence are covered with tempting sweetness, and I doubt if ever human heart swelled with more passionate desire to revel in forbidden pleasures than that of a certain steer once appurtenant to the farm domain, and to whom the jumping of a five-rail fence was mere pastime. For a bovine vaulter he was unexcelled in daring and agility ; for, blind him as you would, with the wooden placard of his thieving disposition, the broad strip of pine board across his forehead, and lash it with stoutly knotted thongs to his ample horns, the result was much the same. A toss of the head, and up would go the " blind " for a few seconds. The swift survey is followed by a leap as graceful as that of a deer ; down he alights in the rank corn or blossoming clover, to feed at his leisure, to return to the pasture later, by the way of his coming, if, perchance, he be not discovered, the envy and admiration of the herd.

The expiation of his agrarian crime is something of which he is utterly unmindful ; so, after a too frequent indulgence in this seductive and adventurous sport, he is caught in the act, and, without the formality of a hearing, condemned to a solitary confinement in the deserted tie-up until the time of his execution, with only the musty memories of its winter-crowded stanchions to keep him company, and without the possibility of a merciful reprieve from the hungry maw of the family beefbarrel, now hidden within the damp mould and sinister shadows of the cellar-stairs ; but with how much or how little justice, no one stops to question — there is no mercy for a thieving animal, in the otherwise generous heart of the farmer. A cattle jury would, no doubt, acquit the prisoner without leaving the panel, in disregard of all human precedent, — I am inclined to think such a verdict would be a righteous one, — heavily taxed as they are by one sort of an impost after another, by farm-hand and dairy-maid, especially were all culprits as noble-looking and handsome as this Duke of Hereford, whose death was so ignominious.

The few acres of pasture-sward, fragrant with the low shrubbery of the sweet-fern, and odorous with scents of the humble pennyroyal, have been turned over for the spring sowing of oats. The huge breaking-up plough and its four oxen plodding with slow, steady movement along the crest of the pasture-knoll, sturdily yet sharply outlined against the low horizon of the sky, which makes the soft gray background, is a picture from the life, crisp and sketchy enough to attract the brush of a Landseer or a Bonheur, and overbrimming with values that have no approximate in art. It is a rare pleasure to follow with loitering footsteps after the ploughman. What a lazy pace it is ! but here is Strength. There is a picturesque touch to everything, even to the flapping of the loose sleeves of the farmer's cottonade shirt, as the breeze livens up a bit ; and the old, sun-browned felt hat, with its broad, flexible brim, blown stiffly up with every windy gust that sweeps over the slope, adds but another to the quaint characteristics of this pastoral episode of the late fall days. How evenly the sward is cut, and folded over against the edge of its neighbor ; and what a gloss this ironing of the glittering ploughshare lends to the richly colored loam that has lain idle so long, for no one on the farm remembers when these acres, once the mowinglands of the plantations, were seeded down, and the old wall that marked their eastern boundaryis, for the larger part, underground.

These brown, sleek-haired oxen, with their rustic driver and stout ploughmen, their plodding on from furrow to furrow, well afield, in the mid-days of russet-cheeked October, make one of the rarest pictures in the book of seasons, and, in its rich suggestions of things that are yet to come, it has no equivalent in country life. The breaking-up plough is the platform of an incoming reform administration. Its promises are of rotations. Fern, and brake, and weeds of all sorts must vacate office at once. Hereafter crops of oats, potatoes, Indian corn, wheat and clover-blossoms, are to make the substance of the annual reports ; and the signs are that the administration is to be an active one. But these new lands must be fenced, and the slender maple-poles and hemlockstakes have been " twitched " out of the woods and up the open slopes of the pasture, and alongside of the ploughed ground, for the new fence to be built in the spring, when the sowing is over, leaving a deeply furrowed trail of rufous color through the briars and mullein-stalks which thrive so luxuriantly there. Sometimes this upturning of the new planting-lands is done in June, so the land may lie fallow through the rest of the year, but the lolling, panting oxen move the more slowly through the hot days of opening summer.

AN OLD-FASHIONED FESTIVAL. 6l

After a nipping cold night what dainty, miniaturelike mosques, with glistening dome and minaret, and strange shapes of crystallized beauty, the frost has built in the crevices of the furrows ! Here are mimic Fingal caves and castle-crags among their white forests, as wonderful as any that Nature ever built, though her handiwork knows no end, nor is there any diminution of the charms with which the earlier seasons are invested, for out of change and decay come new birth and new beauty.

After the fall ploughing comes a day or two at the cider-mill. The scattered piles of apples in the orchard have been gathered up from their grassy floors into the big cart and carted over the hilly highway to the barn-like structure just off the road that leads through a mile or more of tangled alder-bushes and swamp-elms to the head of the pond, along the farther shore of which is the home-farm. The black gables and sides of the old cider-mill are full of great cracks and badly worn by the storms of many winters. It is a slovenly-kept place in its surroundings of cold, boggy lands, as if the poorest and most worthless of the lands hereabouts were none too poor a setting for this otherwise dilapidated building, with its leaky roof and malodorous atmosphere.

The presiding genius of this haunt of the rustic Gambrinus, barren of romance, and so utterly prosaic in its surroundings of low, flat lands and rambling red farm-house with its single towering elm, and at its back the meagre orchard, is a man stoutly built, with low, broad shoulders, whose half-closed eyes, keenly aglitter, and ruddy hirsuteness, betrayed a somewhat selfish and calculating disposition ; a common enough quality, in these days of heartless competition, and always more to be avoided than cherished ; but the heart of this Autocrat of the Cider-press was a warm one, for all that, as many a barefooted urchin would have testified, who with long rye straw drank to his fill of the liquid amber which was ever dripping when the big screws were down. As far away as those days are, I can even now see a group of youthful rustics leaning over the edge of the half-hogshead that sat close under the big press, their cheeks puffed out and ruddy with their exertion as they reach after the coveted drink of new cider. I hear the timbers creak as the men push the stout levers slowly around above the press, and the flow of this nectar of the orchard comes clearer and more musical as the " cheese " is pressed more compactly together ! How the big, unwieldy screws — there were three of them — groaned and trembled as they were driven to their work! And when the " cheese " had been pressed dry, how deftly the men would " cut down " the solid cube of crushed apple and straw, with axe and spade, — "pumice,"

they called it, — to throw it one side, to make room for the new layers of apple, freshly ground, from the long trough under the grinding-mill, mixed with the clean yellow straw, from the barnscaffold, and that is to yield new treasures for the homestead cellar.

The brown pumice, thrown out the little door in the gable, was like a land of plenty to the wasps, never more harmless — fuddled, as I believe them to have been, at this Bacchanalian feast. The wandering bees did not refuse the sipping of this dainty ; and if any of them were unfortunate enough to go home in an intoxicated condition, and thereby bring scandal upon the heads of their respective families, they were to be excused, for the temptation was a grievous one. What mid-day orgies the flies held about the brown heap of refuse straw and apple, with the accompaniment of a most hilarious buzzing ! After a frosty night, they no doubt thought it equal to iced champagne. Wasps, bees, or what not, they were a gloriously drunken company, and a disgrace to anything with wings. What a romance, another romance, this making of the cider was, among the bursting bins of scented fruit, with the dusty cobweb rafters overhead, their thick shadows lighted with here and there a bar of creviced gold, slanting down against the inner walls, with the slow-paced horse pulling the long, clumsy arm of the grinder round and round its narrow circuit, groaning under a constantly added burden from the bins ! But what a dirty, narrow yard was outside, with its deeps of black mud, full of ruts, and hieroglyphic of wheel-track and hoof-print, and strewn with dead leaves from the orchard close by. A romance indeed that cannot be told upon a single page, the last act of which closes with the chill November nightfall, when the stoutly hooped oaken casks, filled to overbrimming, are tightly sealed, each bung being made more tight with many a carefully laid strip of yellow cornhusk, so that not a drop of this rustic-made champagne shall escape on the journey homeward. The stars are out in the sky, never more, brilliant than on these fall nights, and never seeming so near to earth ; but another star comes in sight, low down among the orchard-trees, as the team climbs the slow rise of the highway, above the dim, gray line of which is the old square homestead, with its windows aglow with the cheery brightness of the blazing hearth-fire within.

" Back-sh !

"Put in thar ! put-in-tha — r!" and, with much vociferous exertion on the part of the teamster, the oxen have backed the cart, with its heavy load, against the mouth of the granite-walled alley that leads to the cellar, where, by the glimmeringlight of a whale-oil lantern, the clumsy cart-body is tipped up a bit from its like clumsy tongue ; the skids are put in place, and one after another the barrels are rolled into the warm cellar, to be "horsed up" a day or two later into their winter resting-places. The last cask is not unloaded before a bung is started, and the long, clean straws, saved from the wheat scaffold before the threshers came, are forthcoming ; and, in a moment more, a trio of mouths are drawing deep pleasure from the nearest barrel. These straws pointed at something other than the quarter toward which the wind was setting.

A few days later the wide cellar-doors are closed and barred on their inner side, not to be opened until the warm south winds of spring blow the dandelions into blossom. It was with much of interest and curiosity that my boyish eyes watched the battening of these doors with many a thick strip of old woollen material, until every crack and cranny through which the frost-sprites might enter were securely barricaded; and, as if this were not enough, the "pointing" all around with a coarse mortar of lime and sand, or with bright, yellow clay from the meadcw brock, with which many a chimney was built or bonded together when lime was scarce or too expensive. The old settler was not less of a genius than an economist, and Nature was appealed to more often in those days than now for alternatives. Not only were the cellar-walls battened and plastered within, but they were sheltered without with thick layers of fragrant fir-boughs, which were extended entirely about the granite underpinning of the old house. Five months of winter, with as many feet of snow on a level for days, with the mercury at zero, and even below, for a whole fortnight or more, initiated a " spell" of cold, against the silent, unheralded approach of which the farmer could not be too vigilant ; but, after all precaution, the frost would creep in between the huge split stones in the cellar-wall, only to find the pipkins and potatoes well blanketed and beyond its reach. A frost-nipped potato at dinner was a delicacy to me in those days, tasting, as it did, something like the sweet tuber of the South ; it possessed an especial relish to my uneducated palate, though it was detested by the adult portion of the family.

So, day by day, the steps are taken with slow certainty toward this goal of rest, when the harvest-work is at last over, and everything made snug and .tight for the drifting snows and sleetladen winds ; nor is it to be wondered at that the thrifty husbandman and his faithful helpmeet in the farm-house appreciate their well earned interregnum of resting days, and look forward to the celebration of this Autumn festival with all its devoutness, its attendant jollity and good eating, with a joyous anticipation.

It is a glorious ride homeward from the old church, with the sun just past its meridian, while always before, and often below the line of vision, lies spread out the white, silent picture of the dazzling winter landscape. There is a magic in the snow ; for the familiar roadway, hemmed in with bramble of scrub-apple and blackberry-briar, with alder, and birch, and elderberry-bush, has grown strangely unfamiliar over-night. Nothing retains its former individuality, for the fences are hidden under a heap of snowy covering, and even the trees have lost shape and outline. Everything seems to have undergone a subtle change, as of diminution. The pine-woods do not seem so lofty as on yester-afternoon, but look discouraged and cast down under their damp, clinging burden. The trees in the orchard are shrunken and dwarfedlooking, making but a beggarly appearance, with their misshapen trunks and ragged, out-at-theelbow-like limbs ; the farm-buildings have a look as if they were slowly settling into the ground ; the woodlands have stolen upon us unawares in a single night, and seem but a step away across the narrowed pastures. The sleigh-tracks, scarce a yard apart, along the broad highway, lend a reality to the illusion, while the horizon seems nearer and the blue skies lower down than ever. There is a sense of compactness, as if Nature had packed her belongings in one huge trunk, and was about to take a long journey ; a feeling that is much intensified as one looks from the cosey hearth-fire out upon the embargo of Winter.

There is a rare sense of shelter in the all-enveloping snow, and, no matter how hard the sleet beats against the window-pane, with a glowing wood fire on the ample hearth, and the cheery company of home-folk, and a few chosen companions from the book-shelf, one can be a philosopher with small effort : and what would seem a dismal howling of the storm is transposed into the tuneful music of the elements. But the farm-house is in sight, and, with an extra shake of the string of deep-sounding bells by the horse, as if to add emphasis to his satisfaction, the house-door is reached, wide-open, and within which is standing a goodly-looking woman, her mild eyes of softest brown just a bit disturbed, as if tired with over-waiting ; her long apron of checked or blue mixed homespun stuff thrown carelessly about her head, down upon which noiselessly drift troops of glittering snow-crystals through the sunlit air, blown from the low roof above, as she urges the travellers to "be quick with the horse," as dinner has been "waiting too long already." Premising that my reader is aware of the womanly capacity for asking questions when information is desired, the string of questions that greeted the advent of two hungry church-goers into the big kitchen, as, stamping the snow from their boots, and pulling themselves out of their overcoats, they made ready for dinner, was of the most entertaining character — to the inquirer, at least. But what a dinner ! for there was nothing lacking from the menu which made up this old-fashioned repast that the farm produced, all done to a turn, and steaming hot, and fit to set before a king!