Homespun; or, Five and twenty years ago

Front matter

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Contents

BOOK L — Penates.

THRESHOLDS 11

FIRE 0:S THE HEARTH .15

Preface

XT has always fallen to the lot of Royal Families to have their historians and chroniclers, but to Farmers and plain Country People never. We have graceful descriptions of the Alhambra, as well as the history of Hampton Court, Pitti Palace, the Kremlin, c id the famous Halls of the Montezumas; but few or no pens are put to service on behalf of the Farm-house, the Homestead, and the Rustic Cottage.

Much has been written and read, too, of the Boulevards and Rotten Row, of the Strand and the Corso ; but little enough of quiet country roads, sequestered green lanes, carttracks through the woods, and winding footpaths across the pasture-lands.

On the historic page, th6 Field of the Cloth of Gold makes a brilliant episode indeed ; but while Homespun performs the actual service, little or nothing is said about that. The ancient Golden Fleece has been liberally talked about in mythologic history ; our Golden Fleece is genuine Homespun, and that only. And we find, too, in the Greek story a great deal said in praise of the wife of Ulysses, because she pursued her spinning with such ceaseless industry ; but an exceedingly small measure of panegyric is heaped on the good dames in our farm-houses of thirty years ago, because they stood at their wheels and spun the thread at home with such patience and faith.

It gives us a special delight to reflect that some of our greatest men were men of genuine homespun, — altogether domestic and simple in their character. Bred in the heart and centre of strong domestic influences, they held on by them affectionately to the last. Webster wrote home from "Washington, while carrying on his broad shoulders the burdens

PREFA CE. vii

of the State Department, for some of those beans to bake which he thought could be got nowhere out of New England. Jefferson's '" Garden Book " lets us fully into the secret of his devotion to home, as his familiar letters to his daughters disclose his longings for an early return to its sincere pleasures. John Taylor of Caroline dressed in the native homespun throughout his public career, his character remaining to the last the very touchstone of simplicity and truthfulness.

The history of a household is as well worth writing as that of a kingdom, any day. Household economy is the hint and germ of the science of political economy itself. We do not see why it is not as distinctive a mark of character to be born in homespun as " in the purple " ; and it is certain that more valuable men have emerged from the former than from the latter.

A dusty realm indeed must be the human heart that loves the World better than Home — politeness rather than truth — others more than its own. The man in whom the dovm PREFACE.

mestic feeling awaits development, is yet to discover the other hemisphere of his being. Home-life and home-love are English, — exclusive and nowise cosmopolitan ; they take hold of the soil itself, and, like ivy and roses, climb to the very roof-tree. Until a man is fairly domesticated, he has not got a footing ; he has not yet become his own, but is still another's ; he is locked out from the enjoyment of wealth of which he is the rightful owner, unaware all the while that he carries the key in his own hand.

Book First, Penates

THRESHOLDS.

WHEN I meet a person from the country in the Bedlam of the streets, I am straightway carried back to the orchards and. clover-fields, to meadows and running brooks. At once I hear calves bleat in their pens, and cattle low on the hill-side pastures. I roam in big barns, thread path-streaked timber strips, and catch the cheery sound of cock-crow in the morning.

All objects are so suggestive. My friend carries about him the scents of hay and huckleberry pastures, as well as hints of fresh butter and cheese. In him seem to be mysteriously bound up the most delightfully homelike associations, as in the thumbed leaves of some dear old book. The low and broad roof, milk-pans set against the wall in the sun, a row of hives in the sheltered corner of the little garden, apple-trees blushing with blossoms and musical with bees, doves cooing and hens cackling about the yard, winter fires of good oak and hickory on the hearth, — pictures like these all hang, in my thought, about ray country friend, like the very clothes he has on, and I feel as

if I must stoD him short and ask him how he

i.

left the folks at home.

When the country dweller goes about building his house, the first thing he looks for, after digging his cellar, is a door-stone. Well do his far-sighted instincts tell him how smoothly the feet of gladness and grief will wear it ; what light spirits are to trip across it as they enter, and what heavy burdens may be carried forth in the coming days of sorrow and separation.

The entrance to a man's house gives to the outside world much of the expression of his domestic life. He comes out on his doorstep in the moist April sunsets to listen to the chirrup of the first robin in the apple-tree, or catch the pipings of the early frogs in the marshy corner of the home lot. He gives open-handed welcomes at this point, and here he bids farewell. The eldest daughter — just married — - steps over it on the blithe June morning, — and the dead child is lifted across in the sad afternoon of October. They all cluster upon it, at the return of the annual Thanksgiving; and in the Sunday mornings of summer they gather there, snapping off the spikes of lilac

THRESHOLDS. 13

blossoms while they wait for the two-horse wagon to drive up and carry them to meeting.

I have, before now, unexpectedly come upon cellars of old country houses that have long ago disappeared from the landscape ; the walls fallen in and mantled with weeds; no relic of a chimney standing; the smooth door-stone gone ; nettles and chokeweeds growing luxuriantly in the pit ; dead and drear silence brooding over the spot: — and I think that neither Marius at Carthage nor Gibbon at ruined Rome could have felt, in their way, the grief of a sadder desolation. It must be a heart unused to its own self that can confront such sights unstirred.

The streak of a path through the grass

to the well now choked and dry ; the apple-trees stinted, decayed, and blotched with cankering mosses ; here and there a stone from the ruined cellar wall lying as it was thrown out ; clumps of white birches and alders crowding down to the brink ; no smoke curling above a bright hearth-stone ; no faces eagerly pressed against window panes; no feet of children to make little prints about the door; nothing but a silence utterly voiceless all around ; — a Coliseum in ruins cannot move the heart like this wreck of what was once a Home. None of the fallen arches, fragmentary columns, crumbling viaducts, or deserted London bridges could possibly suggest the outlines of a sadder story. The single cat-bird, mewing in the alders then, is more eloquent than the best inspired pens of History. Nature herself laments the end of the little drama, and with leaves and vines and greenest grasses hastens to throw over decay itself an expression of pathetic beauty.

If a Home in ruins excites feelings of such sort as this, — how easy to call back to life again the soul of a happiness now buried under the snows of many a winter's absence, which dwelt within walls that are still standing, and hallowed a spot to which the heart will remain loyal so long as it beats in the breast.

But thresholds are not broad, nor are

people wont to tarry long upon them : — they are but for passing over. What is to be seen within, — what simple sort of life grows and ripens through the summers and winters from attic to cellar and from the front gate to the pasture bars, we will straightway go in and behold for ourselves : and on this threshold of the whole matter let me take you by the hand, gentle reader, and conduct you along.

FIBE ON THE HEARTH,

HOW little seems the gate, and how low the wall, to the one who went out but yesterday a Boy from home, and comes back again to-day a Man ! There are few illusions with which the years delight to make such cruel havoc as with these of our youth.

Yet the fireplace is just as wide, and the wooden mantel as high, as when the tea-kettle used to sing on the hob in the still winter afternoons, and the old folks sat with the hickory blaze shining straight into their faces. There may have been a revolution in the house, — lifting up the ceiling, pushing back the partitions, and letting in larger windows, — but it is very pleasant to know that by the old hearth the old memories are kept sound and whole ; that if they are driven down from the twilight of the garret, from the stillness of the chambers, and even out of the favorite keeping-room, they retreat as by instinct to the hearthstone, where they swarm once more in the cheery fire-blaze before flitting on clouds of smoke up the chimney, skyward.

The choicest woods to lay across the andirons are hickory and ash ; they split clean and clear, the blaze they give forth is a transparent blaze, and the bed of coals they make is hard and heaping. We can sit and look into a mass of these ruddy coals for a w^hole evening, and feel comforted. It is Tennyson who calls for a bed of such when he says —

" Bring in great, logs and let them lie, To make a solid core of heat."

We are all of us natural fire-worshippers, — as much so as the Parsees themselves. These devotees never proffered more genuine adoration to the flames in which they saw the Soul of Light, nor did Incas below the tropics ever pay faithfuUer homage to the great Sun-source of existence on solstitial mornings, than does the bleak man of bleak New England, in his inmost heart, to the honest blaze that glows and flickers over his hearth. There may be no feeling of idolatry in his love for the open fire, — but his spirit does daily and nightly offer secret sacrifice at its shrine, and in the dancing flames repeats its homebred litany.

They used to say in the old Virginia mansions that a good bright fire was the handsomest piece of furniture in the room ; but, alas for it ! the open door opposite was allowed to let the whole expression of comfort through. What can a house be without a fire on the hearth ; and, above all, a house in the country ? It is difficult to think of Home without kindling up a pleasant hearth-blaze with the thought. We search for the harmless shadows wandering up and down the walls; for the auroral flashes pulsing across the little panes in the windows, and making the home - sentiment legible. Without these, every room beneath the roof is populous with swarthy and repulsive images.

Fire is so social. It has such playful and tender sympathies, though its tongue be hot and fierce, and its maw ravenous. In the evenings, we sit down in silence before the inviting hearth, and look into its face inquiringly for revelations. We enjoy frolics with the wildest fancies, too, as they trip hither and thither across the restless waves of flame, until we give up trying to keep them company. The imagination plunges into the boiling flood of red and white heats, wallowing in its surging and retreating tides, and dragging forth drowned images, dripping from the bath of a brighter beauty. So we all love to gather around the hearth, conscious that even its dreamiest silence is intensely social.

But the Age we live in is an everlasting

busybody. It invades every nook and corner, let it be ever so quiet and drowsy; like the tax-gatherer, it passes by no man's door. And with its many other vaunted improvements, this same Age has pushed forward an army of sappers and miners, masons and stove-fitters by name, with clinking trowels and clattering pipes, who have come and camped down in the very pleasantest rooms of all the households in the land. What with their rattling and hammering, and thumping and pounding, they have done their best to beat down and trample under foot all the tender associations that belong to the open hearth. They have drawn their curtains of sightless brick-andmortar across the dear old fireplaces, and closed the chimney corner against spirit-visitors altogether. They have condemned all the delightful memories to a dark imprisonment, where their blackened skeletons will be found some day for the digging, overgrown with the nettleweeds and long grasses that ever make haste to beautify these homestead desolations. They have mounted a grim cylindrical invention, with the fierce, red eye of

Polyphemus, and bidden the shivering household gather around it to drive the numbness out of their fingers and the chill from their hearts : and this instrument goes by the modern name of the Stove.

Henceforth, Penates, away with yourselves to attic or cellar as fast as you can! You are wanted here no longer. Grandmother, in her high-crowned cap, will need to sit no more in the corner now, but must post herself in the middle of the floor rather. The smooth cedar tray, with rag-balls for the new home-made carpet, will now be kicked about under everybody's feet. There are to be no more household gatherings as of old in the evening, for the vestal fires are all gone. out. A stove, you know, is not a hearth ; heat is not fire ; warmth is not blaze. All those brilliant crowds which came and went for us in chariots of fire, their eyes sparkling and burning from the midst of the living coals, have taken their leave forever. The cities of silver and gold that used to lie under the forestick — bristling with steeples and roofs, substantial with towers and walls, with castles and cathedrals, and washed on either side by rivers with such tides as never shone in the suns of our heaven — are faded, and darkened, and dead.

No Herculaneum was ever more oppressed with the silence which rests on its long-buried streets. The cities of the plain are not more entirely extinct and forgotten.

Near a blackened stove the human

heart builds no altars. It sends its aspirations to heaven through no soot- begrimed pipes. It waits upon the turn of no tinman's clumsy "flues" and "dampers." Unless its sentiments be warmed in the blaze of a genial heat, they will refuse to soar on the wings of white and blue smokes skyward. Down the chimney is direct and open ; but through a doublekneed stove-pipe the way is crooked and forbidding indeed. Looking up a wide-throated aperture, one may possibly catch a sky-glimpse as big as his hand; but through the narrow neck of a stove-pipe — never.

A Homestead without a pair of Old

Folks — " Time's doting chroniclers " — seated contentedly in the chimney corner, would hardly be a homestead at all. If they are in the picture it is complete.

There you may find them, day in and day out, in all sorts of weather, steadfast to their places and to one another. When the eaves drip, in the middle of the winter forenoons, the old man with the head of silver abandons his post and the last Saturday's newspaper, to make the accustomed tour of the kitchen offices, the sheds, or the barn, lingering by the way to throw down a handful of grain for the pinched poultry. With what minuteness he is cautioned by Grandmother not to go out insufficiently clad ; and with what a singlehearted joy she welcomes him when he comes back to her again ! He would hardly get a warmer reception if he was just come home from a genuine polar expedition. And as soon as he has nestled down snugly in his cushioned chair once more, and dealt out on the glowing forestick a few vigorous raps with the tongs, he will launch forth into such voluble details of the keen air out doors, — suggesting Arctic reminiscences which no listener could very well call in question, — as will find the whitehaired old couple topic of earnest talk till dinner is brought on the table.

The children invariably come home from school, in the wintry afternoons, to find the placid pair seated in that same accustomed spot : — the strip of sunshine lying pale and sleepily across the floor, the gray cat curled before the fire in the nest of her endless dreams, and the little sprites that are " pegged in the knotty entrails " of the oak logs singing the drowsy hours away. Wilkie would have made the picture immortal. Down along the snowy roads the winds are wrestling with travellers, pulling and tearing at hats, and cloaks, and meagre robes ; — but no winds are to be felt ia this room's tranquil haven ; here all days are halcyon days, and no atmosphere is breathed but that of peace and heaven. In the old man's cheeks the rich mottle is as fresh, to appearance, as it ever was ; the features betray no look of being pinched with the cold ; no snows can get in to benumb his attenuated fingers.

They two constitute a sort of family tribunal ; and a highly useful arrangement it is, in a crowded domestic congress. They are always to be found on the judicial bench, ready to give audience. Many are the tough little problems that are brought to them for their wise solution. They pass upon cases in which the interests of the turbulent younglings are involved, with a promptness which challenges the disputants' wonder ; and if Grandma only said thus and so, there is no use in hunting for higher authority, — she is conceded to be the "end of the law." Or Grandpa promises to mend the broken sled ; and never was sled of boy repaired with greater dexterousness and ingenuity. From early morning until nightfall he rambles about the house on short excursions, filled full and thoroughly warmed with the dear home feeling.

And when one pair of dimmed eyes becomes yet dimmer, and at last fades entirely from the hearth, — and one stooping form is carried forth from its cherished corner to be seen there no more forever, — what vacancy in the heart of the household then ! Looking up from her forenoon occupation, Grandmother throws her eyes, from sheer force of habit, into the opposite corner ; but the chair stands empty over there, and a great tear trembles on her cheek as she adjusts her needle in the knittingsheath she wears. The fire is not so hot that it can warm her chiUed heart any longer. She listens to the wintry winds that are blowing without, — and thinks of that single grave, freshly rounded under the pines.

It is at night that the hearth shows in its

true glory. The fire-spirits seem to love best to assemble then. In those late days of Autumn, when the evenings are grown perceptibly longer, and the cricket sings in the corner as if he were hoarse, and the sodden leaves lie thickly trampled in the walks and yard, — the first blaze of a fire on the hearth is very welcome, for it is a summons to all the accustomed worshippers to gather again at the family shrine ; and it distinctly holds out pleasant promises that cluster, like ripe ivy berries, about the long months of the winter. There is just enough chill in the air to drive one to the fire ; and on the hearth is just enough fire to make the chill enjoyable. Through the round of the whole year, I know no other fires like this first hearth-blaze in the Autumn. The group of Winter delights shines out then, as upon a canvas.

The chief treasure of our winters is buried in the depth of the long evenings. Father and Mother are early in their places, and the children range themselves conveniently around. No matter what the peculiar employments of the time, the associations that clothe all are of a really sacred character. The masks which each may have worn through the day, unlace then and fall off. Face answers to face, as heart silently speaks to heart. The round world has no enticements to offer, so simple and true as those of the wintry fire-light. Men afterwards throw back longing glances from the advanced paths of their feverish life-career to an innocent picture like this, and in their hearts confess it is the very realization of which they are striving to be possessed. Yet they drift further and further froni it instead, till nothing remains of the picture but the picture, its outlines fading into faintness, and with little life in its body save what a jaded memory has it in its power to supply.

The smoky stories that go with these evening delights at the hearth are not to be set down as the days are in the calendar : — they are gypsy children of the peaceful hours themselves, and troop forth only at such times as they are wanted. The ancient Dutch tiles are not half so crowded with their Scripture illustrations as are our commonest old fireplaces with scenes that illustrate these homely winterevening stories. The youngest boy of all is not more under the spell than his eldest brother. They climb the stairs to bed, at last, in strange enough company. The girls feed the coals with wisps of paper, and watch, while the sparkles, travel up and down the burnt heap, to " see the folks go home from meeting." A genuine ghost story instantly makes the logs populous ; the shadowy faces of spirits peer from mysterious caverns among the sticks ; their impalpable forms flit across weltering seas of flame, climb nimbly into towers and steepies, and beckon at windows through which pour the floods of yellow sunsets.

All this, and many, many times more, can a story of some sleepless ghost evoke from the logs that were so lately chopped on the old wood ]ot.

At the hearth, the heart seems to bind

up all its sheaves for harvest. There all its joys — domestic and foreign — are gathered in. There the sombre woof is gaily shot with bright figures and patterns. The self-communion at this altar is searching and thorough. A man sits down face to face with himself, and would love to think no more of the world or its guile.

K there might be a hearth in every heart ! And the precious memories which one brings away with him, too, seasoned well with time, rich with ripened colors, and mellow with flavors that cannot be described!

The fireplace has been the district school-house for the discipline of the present generation in the virtues they possess, whether few or many. What is tender in popular sentiment — what is simple and direct in popular preaching .and speaking — what is strong and homely and well-grounded in popular phrase, has its healthy and enduring root here. Tear up all

FIRE ON THE HEARTH.

the broad hearth-stones in the land to-day, and these very memories would start at once, like tender grasses, around them, to beautify the spot whence they sprung and keep them green forever.

BAINY DATS.

WHEN I go off into the country to stayawhile, I like, of all things, on pulling the bedclothes about me and settling my head in the pillows for the night, to hear the rain drip from the eaves on the roof of the porch. The sound makes the sense of comfort and cosiness full and complete. If I were sure the world was to be drowned out before morning, it would scarcely ruffle the serenity of my spirit one whit. I lie and let flow through my mind unformed fancies of tall, feathery brakes, pearly with rows of rain-drops, emptying their leafy buckets into my boot-tops ; of drenched boughs in the woods, slapping their showers in my neck and face ; of mill-dams carried off by rising floods ; of bridges gone, and deluges working down between the singing shingles into the room : — but the effort, somehow, is after a time too great, and I sink to slumber among the murmurs of the rain as tranquilly as a child goes off, with its last plaything held tight in its little hand.

They have no real rainy days in the city. What are so styled are only dark days — dirty days — days of mud, and slosh, and soured tempers — days of soggy boots, saturated clothes, and spoiled hats. In the country, Nature makes nothing of showing you her face ; and it is not lowery and scowling, either, — it is tearful, more or less " blubbered," as Spencer would say, yet altogether placid and calm underneath. The rain is no more than a changing mood there, which she comes out of all the happier for having submitted to its brief obscuration.

It is not an easy matter to say if any two individuals, harbored by chance in the same shelter, get just the same sort of experience out of a rainy day. I have been a patient listener to many a personal narrative on this theme, but every one, I found, was the property of its owner alone. The heavens, therefore, do not rain down the same influences upon us all.

Then, too, rain affects us differently in different places. It is one thing if you are sheltered snugly and warm at home, at the opening of a gray November storm, such as hoods the New England hills with its weird-looking mists, — and quite another if you happen to be weather-bound in some far back little coun-

30 HOMESPWSr.

try tavern, with a dismally long day ahead, and only a checker-board, a foul stove, and a handful of water-soaked idlers for social consolation. One could make himself very happy at home, with dog and cat and books and family close about him ; but in these by-places, the sentiment seems to get rubbed off by the dirty clothes, and trampled to death under the muddy boots.

But ah I it is so delicious to the spirit that is at all sensitive, to hear the big drops pattering on the roof ; the garret is the place to get true inspiration from the rain. What hidden realms of pleasure the boys and girls explore up there, rummaging the old place from end to end ! Side-saddles and antique bonnets are dragged forth from their twilight domains, to do service once more for a generation undreamt of in the day of their original glory. Faded out pamphlets, and books with half covers, — perhaps a fragment of old Flavins Josephus, or the remnant of an odd volume of Colonial History, or, more likely, a pile of preserved almanacs, inlaid and overlaid with dust and diligently eaten of rats, — fan the embers of the childish thought into a living flame, and the afternoon hours glide away as silently as the twilight owl sails off into the mystery of a deeper darkness. The Saturday afternoons in old garrets are well-nigh sacred, for the memories that are stored within them ; and the mere mention of them along with the rain is enough to bring back a lost man entirely to himself again.

Rainy days at home ar-e apt, likewise, to put in the head a vagabondish wish for a thoughtful ramble over the domestic premises. It is a fatuity with me then to go poking into every odd and curious corner there is ; in my mind, an indefinable association links out-of-the-way house-nooks and rainy days together. To stand idly at the back door and listen to the water rilling into the hogshead at the corner, is a good deal better than Casta Diva ; and the melodies stick faster in the heart. Around the back buildings and under the sheds huddle the poultry, with drooping tails and drowned feet, watching the sprinkle of the rain and listening to its sounds, till they fall asleep on foot, at last, from the sheer narcotism of its monotony. The house dog walks from the barn to the shed, and from the shed to the kitchen, occasionally throwing up a weather-wise eye at the clouds, as if he were wondering when it would clear off again. The cows are gone under the barn for a while, and there they quietly ruminate and grow steamy. The horse looks cautiously out of his stall window, becomes disheartened with the prospect, and draws his long face in again.

As soon as the Spring buds are ready to burst in millions of little green parachutes, and the brooks are rising and rinsing out the gullies, and the trout leap eagerly for the stray tributes of fortune that come swimming down, — none of the common pleasures known are matched by that of being out in the rain. The drizzle is truly delightful. Aquarius himself ought then to confess himself satisfied. The fine rain seems to work its way into the very pores, and refreshes as well as equalizes the animal spirits.