USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield County centennial celebration > Part 8
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We thank Thee that the religion of Jesus Christ imbued the mind and heart of those parents, making them what they were to us and the world. Oli, let not their favored children cast away that entire dependence on Almighty God, that humble, grateful recognition of his gracious Providence, which character- ized those who have gone before. Oh, let us remember that it will fare ill with us, if we cast aside a dutiful regard of the God
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of our fathers ; if we seek from any other source, blessings that can come from Him only.
We rejoice that among the appropriate exercises of this occa- sion, we are met here to-day, as our fathers were wont to mcet before their Heavenly Father, to give heed to the instructions of Thy most holy word. May Thy rich blessing rest on the speaker and hearers, that we may be instructed, as well as delighted, on this occasion ; and that our hearts may be drawn forth in grate- ful adoration for Thy guardian providence, which has so watched over and prospered and blessed us, and by whose favor we are gathered at this time, and from whom we have been permitted to receive so many gracious tokens of parental care and love, while we trust Thee for thy future care and love.
May the like blessings which have so richly distinguished us, be extended throughout our State, and throughout our States, that each community, on appropriate and fitting occasions, may have an opportunity to meet as we are met, rejoicing in peace and universal prosperity. May we rejoice always in truc hu- mility before God ; and while praising and blessing Thec for Thy favors, may we humble ourselves because of the ill-requital which has been made for the bestowment of such mercies. In deep humility, it becomes us to confess this day, that we have erred and strayed from Thy ways. Oh, Lord, be merciful and heal all our backslidings, turn us from our perverse ways, and estab- lish us in Thy truth. May the Holy Scriptures be still our blessed guide, and may they instruct us in the duties of industry, frugality, integrity, and benevolence : may they prompt us to extend a helping hand to the needy throughout the length and breadth of the land. Wherever the sons and daughters of this County have gone forth, there may streams of salvation, as from the purest fountain, extend to every parched and desolate place, so that one song may break forth throughout the land : and to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we will ascribe praises ever- lasting. Amen !
THE Rev. HORACE BUSIINELL, of Hartford, a native of Litch- field County, then delivered the following Discourse.
Che Age of Domesuun.
A DISCOURSE,
DELIVERED AT LITCHFIELD, CONN.,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, 1851.
BY
HORACE BUSHNELL.
-
DISCOURSE.
IT has often occurred to others, I presume, as to me, to wish that, for once, it were possible, in some of our historic celebra- tions, to gather up the unwritten part, also, of the history cele- brated ; thus to make some fit account of the private virtues and unrecorded struggles, in whose silent commonalty, we doubt not, are included all the deepest possibilities of social advancement and historic distinction. On this account, since the Historical Address of yesterday presented us, in a manner so complete and so impressive to the feeling of us all, the principal events and names of honor by which our County has been distinguished, I am the more willing to come after as a gleaner, in the stubble- ground that is left; nor any the less so, if, in gathering up the fallen straws of grain, I may chance to catch, in my rake, some of those native violets that love so well to hide their blue in the grass, and shed their fragrance undiscovered. I think you will agree with me, also, that nothing is more appropriate to a Sermon, (which is the form of my appointment,) than to offer some fit remembrance of that which heaven only keeps in charge, the un-historic deeds of common life, and the silent, undistinguished good whose names are written only in heaven. In this view, I propose a discourse on the words of King Lemuel's mother :-
PROV. 31 : 28. " Her children arise up and call her blessed."
This Lemuel, who is called a king, is supposed by some to have been a Chaldec chief, or head of a clan; a kind of Arca- dian prince, like Job and Jethro. And this last chapter of the Proverbs is an eastern poem, called a "prophecy," that versifics,
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in form, the advice which his honored and wise mother gave to her son. She dwells, in particular, on the ideal picture of a fine woman, such as he may fitly seek for his wife, or queen ; drawing the picture, doubtless, in great part, from herself and her own practical character. "She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household are covered with scarlet. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." Omitting other points of the picture, she is a frugal, faithful, pious house- wife ; clothing her family in garments prepared by her industry, and the more beautiful honors of a well-kept, well-mannered house. She, therefore, it is, who makes the center of a happy domestic life, and becomes a mark of reverence to her children :- "Her children arise up and call her blessed."
A very homely and rather common picture, some of you may fancy, for a queen, or chief woman ; but, as you view the subject more historically, it will become a picture even of dignity and polite culture. The rudest and most primitive stage of society has its most remarkable distinction in the dress of skins; as in ancient Scythia, and in many other parts of the world, even at the present day. The preparing of fabrics, by spinning and weaving, marks a great social transition, or advance ; one that was slowly made and is not even yet absolutely perfected. Ac- cordingly, the art of spinning and weaving was, for long ages, looked upon as a kind of polite distinction ; much as needle work is now. Thus, when Moses directed in the preparation of curtains for the tabernacle, we are told that "all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands." That is, that the accomplished ladies who understood this fine art, (as few of the women did) executed his order. Accordingly, it is represented that the most distinguished queens of the ancient time excelled in the art of spinning ; and the poets sing of distaffs and looms, as the choicest symbols of princely women. Thus, Homer describes the present of Alcandra to Helen :
" Alcandra, consort of his high command,
A golden distaff gave to Helen's hand ;
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And that rich vase, with living sculpture wrought,
Which, heaped with wool, the beauteous Philo brought, The silken fleece, impurpled for the loom, Recalled the hyacinth in vernal bloom."
So, also, Theocritus, when he is going to give a present to his friend's bride, couples it with verse :-
" O distaff! friend to warp and woof, Minerva's gift in man's belioof, Whom careful housewifes still retain, And gather to their household gain, Thee, ivory distaff! I provide, A present for his blooming bride. With her thou wilt sweet toil partake, And aid her various vestes to make."
If I rightly remember, it is even said of Augustus, himself, at the height of the Roman splendor, that he wore a robe which was made for him by Livia, his wife.
You perceive, in this manner, that Lemuel's mother has any but rustic ideas of what a wife should be. She describes, in fact, a lady of the highest accomplishments ; whose harpsichord is the distaff, whose piano is the loom, and who is able thus, by the fine art she is mistress of, to make her husband conspicuous among the elders of the land. Still, you will understand that what we call the old spinning-wheel, a great factory improvement, was not invented till long ages after this; being, in fact, a comparatively modern, I believe a German or Saxon, improvement. The dis- taff, in the times of my text, was held in one hand or under one arm, and the spindle, hanging by the thread, was occasionally hit and twirled by the other. The weaving process was equally rude and simple.
These references to the domestic economy of the more ancient times, have started recollections, doubtless, in many of you, that are characteristic, in a similar way, of our own primitive history. You have remembered the wheel and the loom. You have recalled the fact, that our Litchfield County people, down to a
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period comparatively recent, have been a people clothed in home- spun fabrics-not wholly, or in all cases, but so generally that the exceptions may be fairly disregarded. In this fact I find my subject. As it is sometimes said that the history of iron is the history of the world, or the history of roads a true record, always, of commercial and social progress, so it has occurred to me that I may give the most effective and truest impression of Litchfield County, and especially of the unhistoric causes included in a true estimate of the century now past, under this article of homespun ; describing this first century as the Homespun Age of our people.
The subject is homely, as it should be; but I think we shall find enough of dignity in it, as we proceed, even to content our highest ambition-the more, that I do not propose to confine my- self rigidly to the single matter of spinning and weaving, but to gather round this feature of domestic life, taken as a symbol, or central type of expression, whatever is most characteristic in the living picture of the times we commemorate, and the simple, godly virtues, we delight to honor.
What we call History, considered as giving a record of notable events, or transactions, under names and dates, and so a really just and true exhibition of the causes that construct a social state, I conceive to be commonly very much of a fiction. True worth is, for the most part, unhistoric, and so of all the beneficent causes and powers included in the lives of simply worthy men ; causes most fundamental and efficient, as regards the well being and public name of communities. They are such as flow in silence, like the great powers of nature. Indeed, we say of his- tory, and say rightly, that it is a record of e-vents-that is, of turnings out, points where the silence is broken by something ap- parently not in the regular flow of common life ; just as electri- city, piercing the world in its silent equilibrium, holding all atoms to their places, and quickening even the life of our bodies, be- comes historic only when it thunders ; though it does nothing more, in its thunder, than simply to notify us, by so great a noise, of the breach of its connections and the disturbance of its silent work. Besides, in our historic pictures, we are obliged to sink particulars in generals, and so to gather, under the name of a prominent few, what is really done by nameless multitudes. These, we say, led out the colonies, these raised up the states and
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communities, these fought the battles. And so we make a vicious inversion, not seldom, of the truth ; representing as causes, those who, after all, are not so much causes as effects, not so much powers as instruments, in the occasions signalized by their names-caps only of foam, that roll conspicuous in the sun, lifted, still, by the deep under-swell of waters hid from the eye.
Therefore, if you ask, who made this Litchfield County of ours, it will be no sufficient answer that you get, however instructive and useful, when you have gathered up the names that appear in our public records, and recited the events that have found an hon- orable place in the history of the County, or the republic. You must not go into the burial places, and look about only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, the Generals, the Judges, the Honorables, the Governors, or even of the village notables called Esquires, that mark the springs of our successes and the sources of our distinction. These are rather effects than causes ; the spinning wheels have done a great deal more than these. Around the honored few, here a Bellamy, or a Day, sleeping in the midst of his flock ; here a Wolcott, or a Smith ; an Allen, or a Tracy ; a Reeve, or a Gould ; all names of honor-round about these few, and others like them, are lying multitudes of worthy men and women, under their humbler monuments, or in graves that are hidden by the monumental green that loves to freshen over their for- gotten resting place ; and in these, the humble but good many, we are to say are the deepest, truest causes of our happy history. Here lie the sturdy kings of Homespun, who climbed among these hills, with their axes, to cut away room for their cabins and for family prayers, and so for the good future to come. IIere lie their sons, who foddered their cattle on the snows, and built stone fence while the corn was sprouting in the hills, getting ready, in that way, to send a boy or two to college. Here lie the good housewives that made coats, every year, like Hannah, for their chil- drens' bodies, and lined their memory with catechism. Here the millers, that took honest toll of the rye ; the smiths and coopers, that superintended two hands and got a little revenue of honest bread and schooling from their small joint stock of two-handed investment. Here the district committees and school mis- tresses ; the religious society founders and church deacons ; and,
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withal, a great many sensible, wise-headed men, who read a weekly newspaper, loved George Washington and their country, and had never a thought of going to the General Assembly ! These are the men and women that made Litchfield County. Who they are, by name, we can not tell-no matter who they are-we should be none the wiser if we could name them ; they themselves none the more honorable. Enough that they are the king Lemuels and their queens, of the good old time gone by- kings and queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal lineage.
I have spoken of the great advance in human society, indicated by a transition from the dress of skins to that of cloth-an ad- vance of so great dignity, that spinning and weaving were looked upon as a kind of fine art, or polite accomplishment. Another advance, and one that is equally remarkable, is indicated by the transition from a dress of homespun to a dress of factory cloths, produced by machinery and obtained by the exchanges of com- merce, at home or abroad. This transition we are now making, or rather, I should say, it is already so far made that the very terms, " domestic manufacture," have quite lost their meaning ; being applied to that which is neither domestic, as being made in the house, nor manu-facture, as being made by the hands.
This transition from mother and daughter power, to water and steam power, is a great one, greater by far than many have as yet begun to conceive-one that is to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life and social manners. If, in this transi- tion, there is something to regret, there is more, I trust, to de- sire. If it carries away the old simplicity, it must also open higher possibilities of culture and social ornament. The princi- pal danger is, that, in removing the rough necessities of the home- spun age, it may take away, also, the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true piety by which, in their blessed fruits, as we are all here testifying, that age is so honorably distin- guished. Be the issue what it may, good or bad, hopeful or un- hopeful, it has come; it is already a fact, and the consequences must follow.
If our sons and daughters should assemble, a hundred years hence, to hold another celebration like this, they will scarcely be able to imagine the Arcadian pictures now so fresh in the memory
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of many of us, though to the younger part already matters of hearsay more than of personal knowledge or remembrance. Every thing that was most distinctive of the old homespun mode of life will then have passed away. The spinning wheels of wool and flax, that used to buzz so familiarly in the childish cars of some of us, will be heard no more forever -- seen no more, in fact, save in the halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the delicate daughters will be asking, what these strange machines are, and how they were made to go ? The huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by themselves, in the farm houses, will be gone, cut up for cord wood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the woof, will be heard no more by the passer by-not even the Antiquarian Halls will find room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkling them, each hour, from her water-can, under a broiling sun-thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and her own wedding outfit, will have disappeared, save as they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of the old time. The tables will be spread with some cunning, water-power Silesia not yet invented, or perchance with some meaner fabric from the cotton mills. The heavy Sunday coats, that grew on sheep individually remembered, more comfortably carried, in warm weather, on the arm, and the specially fine-striped, blue and white pantaloons, of linen just from the loom, will no longer be conspicu- ous in processions of footmen going to meeting, but will have given place to showy carriages, filled with gentlemen in broadcloth, fes- tooned with chains of California gold, and delicate ladies holding perfumed sun shades. The churches, too, that used to be simple brown meeting houses, covered with rived clapboards of oak, will have come down, mostly, from the bleak hill tops into the close villages and populous towns, that crowd the waterfalls and the rail roads ; and the old burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be left to their lonely altitude-token, shall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less under the world. The change will be complete. Would that we might raise some worthy monument to a state which is then to be so far passed by, so worthy, in all future time, to be held in the dearest reverence.
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DISCOURSE.
It may have seemed extravagant, or fantastic, to some of you, that I should think to give a character of the century now past, under the one article of homespun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief article of distinction ; and yet we shall find it to be a distinction that runs through all others, and gives a color to the whole economy of life and character, in the times of which we speak.
Thus, if the clothing is to be manufactured in the house, then flax will be grown in the plowed land, and sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of the flax ground, and the num- ber of the flock, will correspond with the measure of the home market, the number of the sons and daughters to be clothed, so that the agriculture out of doors will map the family in doors. Then as there is no thought of obtaining the articles of clothing, or dress, by exchange ; as there is little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is feebly developed, the family will be fed on home grown products, buckwheat, Indian, rye, or whatever the soil will yield. And as carriages are a luxury introduced only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and forth to the mill on horseback, astride the fresh grists, to keep the mouths in supply. The meat market will be equally domestic, a kind of quarter-master slaughter and supply, laid up in the cellar, at fit times in the year. The daughters that, in factory days, would go abroad to join the female conscription of the cotton mill, will be kept in the home factory, or in that of some other family, and so in the retreats of domestic life. And so it will be seen, that a form of life which includes almost every point of economy, centers round the article of homespun dress, and is by that determined. Given the fact that a people spin their own dress, and you have in that fact a whole volume of character- istics. They may be shepherds dwelling in tents, or they may build them fixed habitations, but the distinction given will show them to be a people who are not in trade, whose life centers in the family, home-bred in their manners, primitive and simple in their character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without show, intelligent without refinement. And so it will be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a Puritan Arcadia among these hills, answering to the picture which Polybius, himself an Arcadian, gave of his countrymen, when he said that they had,
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" throughout Greece, a high and honorable reputation ; not only on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their benevo- lence towards all men, but especially on account of their piety towards the Divine Being."
Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world, is called so- ciety, our homespun age had just none of it-and perhaps the more of society for that reason ; because what they had was separate from all the polite fictions and empty conventionalities of the world. I speak not here of the rude and promiscuous gatherings connected so often with low and vulgar excesses ; the military trainings, the huskings, the raisings, commonly ended with a wrestling match. These were their dissipations, and perhaps they were about as good as any. The apple-pearing and quilting frolics, you may set down, if you will, as the polka- dances and masquerades of homespun. If they undertook a formal entertainment of any kind, it was commonly stiff and quite unsuccessful. But when some two queens of the spindle, specially fond of each other, instead of calling back and forth with a card case in their hand, agreed to "join works," as it was called, for a week or two, in spinning, enlivening their talk by the rival buzz of their wheels and, when the two skeins were done, spending the rest of the day in such kind of recreation as pleased them, this to them was real society, and, so far, a good type of all the society they had. It was the society not of the Nominalists, but of the Realists ; society in or after work ; spon- tancously gathered, for the most part, in terms of elective affinity-foot excursions of young people, or excursions on horse- back, after the haying, to the tops of the neighboring mountains ; boatings, on the river or the lake, by moonlight, filling the wooded shores and the recesses of the hills with lively echoes ; evening schools of sacred music, in which the music is not so much sacred as preparing to be ; evening circles of young persons, falling together, as they imagine, by accident, round some village queen of song, and chasing away the time in ballads and glees so much faster than they wish, that just such another accident is like to happen soon ; neighbors called in to meet the minister and talk of both worlds together, and, if he is limber enough to suffer it, in such happy mixtures, that both are melted into one.
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But most of all to be remembered, are those friendly circles, gathered so often round the winter's fire-not the stove, but the fire, the brightly blazing, hospitable fire. In the early dusk, the home circle is drawn more closely and quietly round it; but a good neighbor and his wife drop in shortly, from over the way, and the circle begins to spread. Next, a few young folk from the other end of the village, entering in brisker mood, find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive them also. And then a friendly sleigh full of old and young, that have come down from the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle again, moving it still farther back from the fire ; and the fire blazes just as much higher and more brightly, having a new stick added for every guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on with some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing some hard point of theology in the minis- ter's last sermon ; or perhaps the great danger coming to sound morals from the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers ! Meantime, the good housewife brings out her choice stock of home grown exotics, gathered from three realms, doughnuts from the pantry, hickory nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar ; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of consequences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically towards nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a little more serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy evening may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blessed in human fellowship.
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