USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > More chronicles of a pioneer school, from 1792 to 1833, being added history on the Litchfield Female Academy kept by Miss Sarah Pierce and her nephew, John Pierce Brace > Part 24
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We have said that Martha's common expression was that of serious- ness, nay even of sadness; but when anything occurred to please her or to make her happy, her whole countenance was suddenly lighted up with a smile that spoke of the cheerfulness within, and then two little dimples, the nest of a host of young fluttering Cupids, burst out in her cheeks, so unexpected in their loveliness, that you looked on them with perfect longing to put your lips beside them. We hope therefore my dear madam that you will excuse us when we say that Martha Welles was as beautiful as we wish her to be, and that we could not spare a single item of the catalogue we have enumerated, for they were the exponents or external indices of the modesty, purity, perse- verance, and self-denial which reigned within. But we will not give her character, we prefer it should be discovered from what she herself shall say or do.
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It was true she was not learned or deep read. Women, a hundred and thirty years ago in this state, had no education in "ologies." Books were scarce. Time was valuable. The country was poor. The duty of woman lay more in the externals of life than it now does. The bible served to guide her reason; Bunyan, to excite her imagination. She could not elaborate any of the necromantic stitches of crochet work, but she could spin and weave the garments for the family. She had no expensive laces and pocket handkerchiefs laid up in her drawer; but she had a chest full of linen sheets, which were her own, as her "setting out" in life - the whole process of manufacturing which from the flax seed to their present snowy whiteness was her own. She had sowed the seed herself, her father having prepared the grain - had pulled the flax - had spread it for rotting - had gathered and hatcheled and carded and spun and woven and whitened the whole; and all too at periods of her leisure.
It is true that she could not play the piano, or daub caricatures of nature on paper, or lecture on female rights, but she could show a household of young children brought up to industry - a feeble mother cared for in her sickness - a house kept in neatness and order. She was not distinguished for elegance of repartee or brilliancy of wit, or fascination of entertainment; but for a loving, faithful, trusting, truth- ful heart, open to all that demanded charity or assistance, beloved by the circle of which she was the centre, and holding over them an in- fluence that was felt through their lives, long after her worn-out body was moulding in the grave - felt, even now, in the influence which every member of the family of Thomas Welles has transmitted through a long line of upright descendants.
CHAPTER V
As Martha came near the fire in the discharge of her present duty, her grandmother saw traces of tears on her cheek.
"Martha," said she, "what ails you? Are you not doing too much and overtasking yourself?"
"No, Grandmother, work is no toil. It rather keeps my mind busy and withdraws my thoughts from that which may be sinful to think of."
"How so, my dear child? Have you any new trials? Can you not communicate them to me and enable me to share them with you?"
"I know your sympathy is with me and that you have always been my best adviser. But a young girl like myself hates to speak of that which has occurred to me, this night, and which now agitates me."
"James Hinsdale has been here, has he not?"
"He has, grandmother, and has asked me to be his. He says father has consented if James will settle down on the farm which his father
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can give him on the Hubbard brook; that, and his trade as a weaver, he thinks, will abundantly support him."
" And what did you say?"
Martha turned her face away from her grandmother as she asked the question and seemed very busy with her turkey. After a pause, she replied without turning or allowing her grandmother to see her blushing cheek. "I need not be ashamed to say that I told him I loved him, and was perfectly willing to spend my life in making him happy, but -"
"But what, my dear?"
"Grandmother," and she burst into tears as she said it, "My duty lies here. My mother is too feeble to manage this great family and make father and brothers and all comfortable. You are growing old and are past all active labor. The household depends upon me. Every- thing would go wrong with hired help. Moses and Aaron would have no pleasant home to make them what all Christian young men should be. NO, no: I cannot leave home, and I told James so and he was angry or at least impatient for I will not accuse him of the sin of anger, and he urged, but I was firm. I told him that not until Prudence was old enough to take my place, I would not leave home. He said I did not love him, and some harsh, rough things about going off out of town himself. But God knows dear Grandmother, that I do love him, but He has plainly marked out to me the path of my duty and I must walk in it; and I trust by His grace to do it cheerfully."
"You have had your trials young, my child, but God chastens those he loves, and those evils which now appear so formidable to you will work out your salvation the more effectually. You have decided right - at least, for the present. You both are young and it will do no harm to either of you to wait some years yet. James Hinsdale has his faults, and this delay will prove a trial for his character. He may not be worthy of you but time must determine that point. He is impetuous and headstrong and of a roving disposition, but has a warm heart and many good qualities."
"Thank you, Grandmother, for these last words. I cannot bear to think James is not perfect, and yet I know that he has the faults you mention. I do not repine at this trial. I am only grieved that he should feel it so strongly. For my own part, I know what my duty is and shall perform it cheerfully, for God will bless me in it. But do not say or feel that I am working too hard. I am young and strong. The method which I have established makes labor easy. Father and the boys and you, all, help me and never thwart me, and Prudence, with all her primness, is growing up very useful. She is active, and is methodical to a fault. I only wish she had more heart."
"It may be she will be happier through life for the want of what
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you call, heart. Sensitiveness is no blessing, unless under the strictest control of divine grace. To the uncoverted, it is the parent of un- easiness, discontent and murmuring against the good Providence of God and the exciter of unholy wishes and desires, I have often thought that you, Martha, have suffered more through life from a sensitive heart, than from any other cause. It has been a hard contest to con- trol it, but the victory has been worth the combat, and the fire which might have burnt the house to ashes is now controlled and holds only its legitimate place on the hearth."
Martha again averted her face, lest her grandmother should per- ceive the tell-tale blush which manifested that the praise was un- deserved. She knew what emotions lived in her heart, under her sober and sad external and how many tears and how much effort it required to subdue them. After a pause she asked rather timidly.
"Do you not think that James and myself are alike in this particu- lar, and that he has the same sensitiveness with myself?"
"No, child, love has blinded you. Your characters are really much unlike, and whether too much so for mutual happiness remains yet to be seen. You have mistaken James Hinsdale much. It is impulse in him which you call sensitiveness. The one relates to the will; the other to the feelings. True sensibility of heart may be possessed in its perfection and yet be under the entire guidance of reason. In its perfection and when under control, it leads to tenderness, to love, to true benevolence. But it is so much more frequently under improper guidance that in this thorny, and wicked world, it more frequently renders its possessor wretched. But impulse is never governed by reason, and whether its acts are beneficial or otherwise, is a matter of mere chance. James Hinsdale acts from impulse. You, from reason and a sense of duty. Hence, the doubt there is about the constant wisdom of his deeds. They are right, more because he is surrounded by good influences; but impulsive young men like him may be led into temptation by companions or circumstances, and they will have no strength of principle to resist. You are having, I hope, a good influence over him."
As her grandmother said this, Martha remembered how often she had been called upon to exert that influence to check the adventurous and bold spirit of the young man, and how often she had seen that even that influence would fail unless she soon became his wife. But she made no reply to the observation.
"Grandmother," said she, "how happens it that you are able to talk so much like our good minister and define and distinguish just as he does in his sermons?"
"You must remember, Martha, that I was born and educated in Hartford and enjoyed advantages beyond those which girls enjoy
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brought up in the country. My father, Judge Dudley, was one of the first men of the colony as well as one of the richest and I had every opportunity for mental improvement. I listened when young to the conversations of such men as Haynes, Hooker, Stone and Culick, and listened to them not, I trust, in vain. But do not repine at the differ- ence, my dear, God has given you a station with its duties, and he will require of you according to what you have, and not according to what you have not."
"I do not repine. It is one of the lessons I endeavor fully to learn to be contented with the situation in which I am placed, and rightly and submissively to perform its duties. I have occasion however, very frequently to check the rising desire to have books and to obtain information, but I know that cannot be, for want both of time and money. I have often wished that James when he visits Hartford would bring me a small book instead of the ribbon or the ring he does bring, but you know it would not be delicate for me to say so, and he reads but little himself."
Martha however, did not say how choice she was even of the ribbon or the ring, and how carefully they were preserved in her chest, and worn whenever the strict rules of the community allowed of any orna- ments in dress. But she did not value them any more than the rose bud he gave her, on her birthday in June, which was now lying neatly pressed in her bible. It was the giver, not the gift, she thought of.
"Grandmother, you have often said you would tell me of your early history. Can you not do it now while I work ?"
"No, my dear; I am fatigued and it's time I was at rest. Besides I have promised that the other children shall hear it. If circumstances are such to-morrow, that we cannot go to meeting, as, from the falling of the snow, appears now will be the case, it will then be a good op- portunity. I can do it here while you are preparing your Thanks- giving dinner and it may keep the little ones quiet and out of the way, as there is no school."
After her grandmother had retired Martha finished her labors and put everything in its place. She then swept up the kitchen, neatly, and even went so far at that late hour of the night as to mop up the few spots of blood that had fallen on the floor. She opened the East door and stepped to the well for a pail of water, that it might be in readiness for her morning's work. The snow was falling rapidly and the North East wind whistled down the long valley of Roaring Brook, driving the snow before it and drifting it around the house. The air was thick and dark. She listened if she could hear anything of the hunters who had followed the wolf, but she heard nothing save the wind sighing through the trees and the lulling sound of the rapid brook not yet clogged up by the ice.
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"They have been gone a long while," she said as she closed the door, and proceeded to fasten the shutters to the windows which were put up on the inside with bars, originally designed as a greater security against the attacks of the savages. She did the same in the West room and raked up the remains of its fire.
Having fastened the house with the exception of the East kitchen door, she opened the door into her mother's room and found Prudence fast asleep in the chair. She aroused her and sent her up to bed and took her place in the sick room. Her mother and the infant were both asleep and Martha sat down by the fire in quietness to reflect. Her interview with her lover had not been as happy as she could have wished, and she began a little to upbraid herself for persisting in her refusal to marry him immediately.
"He need not say I am cold hearted and do not love him. The only danger is lest I make him an idol. But I cannot tell him so. I some- times think I certainly will, and then when I see him I shrink from it, as if it were indelicate. Am I wrong? Do I carry this idea of delicacy too far, when I know it would make him happy? But I cannot relent from the step I have taken. On that I must be firm. I am firm. My duty lies here in assisting my parents to bring up this large family. He threatens to leave me and go off to some war, somewhere. It may kill me if he does but it will not change my determination to do my duty."
She sat for some time watching the bright embers, and thinking over and over again the harsh words which James had spoken, until the unbidden tears rolled over her cheeks.
"Grandmother thinks I have conquered my sensitiveness. She little knows how it rises up in my heart in spite of me, to govern my actions. May God pardon me, if it is a sin to feel."
She then, without taking off her garments, laid down on the bed by the side of her mother, but could gain no quiet sleep. She would be aroused by every noise she heard without, and everytime the well- sweep creaked in the wind, she would be certain the men were returning.
Many hours passed away before her father and two brothers entered the kitchen, cold and tired and unsuccessful. Her father came into the room an instant to look at the sleeping sick ones, and then the family all were lost in repose.
CHAPTER VI
When the men from the house had crossed the road and let their dog out from the barn, they were joined by their near neighbor, Simeon Hale, or Uncle Sim, as he was called, who was the most noted hunter of those parts. He was accompanied by his dogs. They at once pro-
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ceeded to the Brook where the wolf was making his supper. He sprang from the half consumed carcass as the dogs approached and leaped the brook, followed by them. The men were hindered by being obliged to take the regular crossing spot, and they followed the chase with much difficulty on account of the rapidly falling snow. Each secured the lock of his gun from the wet by wrapping it in his stout woolen frock which was worn as a regular hunter's coat, as well as a working winter garment, and each proceeded as rapidly as the bushes and the snow would permit. The wolf and the dogs took them a long and rather useless chase, and, before they could come up, the animal was lodged in some of the bushy recesses on the Backledge Brook where Hale de- cided it would be impossible to find it in the snow and the night. The dogs were called off and the men returned.
As they approached Roaring Brook, the hunter and young Hins- dale separated from the Welleses and took a shorter route to reach their own residences.
"Jimmy," says Hale, "You are a pesky good lad to foller the hounds, but a leetle too eager to make the fun hold on, until the cussed varmin is killed. You need a leetle more breechin' to hold you back."
"The excitement of the chase, Uncle Sim is all the enjoyment, and that is so great that I wish I could follow it through life."
"You talk like a silly boy, Jim Hinsdale, that goes off at half-cock. Trust one that has grown gray as a hunter, and has had more 'citement, as you call it, than would fill up a dozen barn-yard lives and who tells you it is a plaguey sight better to stick to your trade, and your farm, and never think of hunting to - your support for life. I have lived here, boy and man, ever since the town was set off, when there was n't a sign of a house between my hut and the Hartford Ferry, and I know what a hunter's life is. It has its 'citements and fun at first, but it becomes soon a mere bisness, the fun wears off like the varnish on a new gun, and then I tell you, there's labor enough and hard work enough and starvation enough sometimes, to take all the honey out of the fun. Ther's no sartainty in it. You may have plenty of nice pickin's one day, and have to eat the skins, next day; and when you want any of the notions which the marchants have piled up on their shelves at Hartford you can't, half the time get 'em with the skins you carry in. No, no, Jim, a farmer is better off by a - sight. Besides, Jim Hinsdale the country's changed sin' I was a boy, and stiddy labor and the sober stay at home life of the farmer is becoming more and more the bounden duty of every colonist who's young like you, and not sot in his ways as I am. You oughter look and see how you'll make a good citizen and a good Christian man, among your fellow men, and not be talkin' of 'citement and fun. Marry, I say, and plow your farm, and tend to your trade, and raise a family of boys and gals that
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shall be some comfort to you when old age comes on, and not leave your self without kith or kin as I've done."
"But haven't you told us, Uncle Sim, that we must obtain a knowl- edge of hunting and the use of fire-arms?"
"Sartin, sartin; every man of our colony should know how to hunt and manage a gun. Game is plenty and it is often necessary, when the pork barrel gets low, or the appetite gets a leetle peekin' to kill for food. Then there's the pesky vermin, and the wolves and the cata- mounts and the painters to keep from the sheep, and the foxes and skunks from the chickens, so that it's right and a Christian duty to know how to hunt and use a musket. Then, there's them 'tarnal savages - the skulking brutes they may be sneaking round. I know that the rascally Redskins live a good way off, but we may have them to fight and the French into the bargain, so we must larn how to fight. I hearn the last time I was to Hartford that there was some trouble with the Injins off to the North East, and the Lord knows only how soon there may be danger here, and young men like you must larn how to meet it and be cool too. But don't think Jim Hinsdale, of takin' up huntin' or war as a trade. "Taint right for you with a good trade and a good farm to think on't. Stick to them, I say, and you'll allers be able to keep the pot boilin'. Don't take copy from me. I'm an old man. Maybe I chose wrong when a young man. However, let that be as 'tis, times have changed in thirty years, the trail of livin' is very differently follered from what it was once. The land is fillin' up with good, God-fearing men, that will make a handy and indus- trious people all around us. Settle down with them, Jim Hinsdale, and live in the fear of the Lord. There's no boy that handles the axe as you do, or can bring the old oak's top twigs so soon to the 'arth."
"Yes, Uncle Sim, and none that can follow the deer or the wolf longer, or meet the bear's hug more cheerfully. But here our roads part. Good-night, Uncle Sim, Roaring Brook sounds dismal enough to-night as it rushes through the woods yonder."
"It has lulled me to sleep for many years, and sung a sweet song to me when I laid down tired on my bear-skins, after a hard day's hunt- ing. Its voice and roar is that of a friend for it never deceived me. The wind must be changing or we could not hear its roar so plain. Good-night."
The young man now took the rough path through the forest towards his own home. The snow had ceased falling and a fresher wind sprang up from the North. The woods were quiet as he passed through them in his mountain path, save here and there an owl hootin' from his hole in the high trees. The smaller animals that frequented that hillside were all in their burrows preparing for their winter torpidity and the summer birds that caroled through the leafy branches of the forest had
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all fled to some distant southern clime without waiting for the de- struction of the covert which had sheltered them. The young man stepped carelessly on. He knew his security and would even have been gratified if there had been danger in his path. Why should he fear? His faithful dog was by his side. His gun was in his hand, and an ardent mind invigorated and impelled a strong frame. His thoughts were not on danger, they were running back to the words of Hale and to his last conversation with Martha.
"Have they been consulting together?" was his exclamation. "They think alike; and sometimes I think with them that my trade and my farm will be enough for happiness, and could Martha marry me now, it might be so. NO, no, I cannot settle down and stagnate. What! shall all this adventurous spirit of mine be tied down to flinging the weaver's shuttle or using the woodman's axe? There will be some fighting, somewhere as Uncle Sim says, and Martha cannot marry me now. No, I cannot give up my fondness for a life of adventure, yet."
CHAPTER VII
The breakfast table of our ancestors one hundred and thirty years ago, was a very different repast from that we now enjoy. Coffee and tea were then unknown. The elders drank cider, and the women and children milk or water. In summer, a mug of small beer always decked the table, drawn fresh from the barrel which every housekeeper brewed from the hops she raised and the roots she gathered. The meat was consumed on bright pewter platters, which were carefully pre- served for this purpose alone, while wooden dishes served for other and ordinary uses. Few persons had anything of silver. Spoons were of pewter. Our farmer Welles's family had one silver tankard, an heir- loom of value, which contained on this Thanksgiving morning the toast and cider of the father of the family. The grandmother had a small heavy, silver cup in which her morning meal was always prepared, which had descended to her from some English ancestor. The rest of the family had pewter mugs or bowls of earthen ware. Hasty Pudding and milk was all the breakfast of the children, and, indeed, all their supper likewise, corn being much more easily raised than grain. Thanks to Thomas Welles' providence and prosperity, milk was always plenty, so that the food of the children was wholesome and plentiful, coarse as it might now seem to their descendants. Once in a great while, as a species of luxury, molasses was allowed on their pudding. It was the case this morning. Thanksgiving required an additional luxury for the children and by the side of the red-baked earthen bowl, full of its pudding and milk, a small pewter platter with a quantity of pudding, over whose quivering sides the brown molasses was trickling was placed
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at each child's seat, to tempt their appetite. Butter was very sparingly used and confined mostly to the elders. It was one of the few articles which commanded a good market price, and met with a ready exchange for West Indian products.
The table this Thanksgiving morning had the addition of a savory stew of squirrels and other game which the boys had provided on the day before, but the young children had a little to do with it, for the Puritans of that period taught their little ones the self-denial of sitting where food was used by the elders, of which they could not partake.
Their meal was primitive enough. There was no table cloth, but the large oaken table shone with the polish which the strong arms and tidy character of Martha Welles had given it; the pewter platters were as bright as her eyes in her hours of gladness. The food was skillfully, neatly, though plainly prepared. If it possessed not the condiments of luxury, it had been arranged by love and contentment, and was relished by health and appetite.
Breakfast being over, the morning prayer and instruction succeeded. Thomas Welles was a good man, and a religious man, and aimed at bringing up his children in the fear of the Lord, after the good old Puritanic model. But the Church had altered in its characteristics since the days of Hooker and Stone. The belief of certain doctrines was considered of the highest importance, and, unknown to the good men of that period themselves, had usurped the place of vital religion. The piety of the Puritans was never a religion of mere forms, but when true goodness declined among them, the declension assumed the shape of an undue importance attached to mere doctrinal belief. There was everything that was orthodox in such piety, but the fervor. The un- derstanding was more employed in prying into the nature of Christ's atonement, its extent, and its mode of application, than the heart was engaged in an affectionate surrendry of itself to him as the Saviour from sin. The reasoning powers were much more occupied in discussing the origin of depravity than the conscience was in feeling the demerit of guilt. The declension of religion in some sects is manifested by an undue weight given to the efficacy of forms. The same declension among the Puritans exhibited itself in giving an undue weight to points of doctrinal belief.
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