USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The history of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 > Part 8
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Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world is called society, 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 paring 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 com- monly 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- taneously gathered for the most part, in terms of elective affinity :
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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 moon light, 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.
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 min- ister'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 conse- quences. 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.
Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age. It was not that society that puts one in connection with the great world of letters, or fashion, or power, raising as much the level of his consciousness and the scale and style of his action; but it was society back of the world, in the sacred retreats of natural feeling, truth and piety.
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Descending from the topic of society in general to one more deli- cate, that of marriage and the tender passion and the domestic felici- ties of the homespun age, the main distinction here to be noted is, that marriages were commonly contracted at a much earlier period in life than now. Not because the habit or the time was more romantic or less prudential, but because a principal more primi- tive and closer to the beautiful simplicity of nature is yet in vogue, namely, that women are given by the Almighty, not so much to help their husbands spend a living, as to help them get one. Accord- ingly, the ministers were always very emphatic, as I remember, in their marriage cermonies, on the ancient idea, that the woman was given to the man to be a help, meet for him. ... What more beauti- ful embodiment is there, on this earth, of true sentiment, than the young wife who has given herself to a man in his weakness, to make him strong; to enter into the hard battle of his life and bear the brunt of it with him; to go down with him in disaster, if he fails, and cling to him for what he is; to rise with him, if he rises; and share a, two-fold joy with him in the competence achieved; remem- bering, both of them, how it grew, by little and little, and by what methods of frugal industry it was nourished; having it also, not as his, but theirs, the reward of their common perseverance, and the token of their consolidated love. ....
The close necessities of these more primitive days connected many homely incidents with marriage, which, however, rather heighten the picturesque simplicity than disparage the beauty of its attractions. The question of the outfit, the question of ways and means, the homely prudence pulling back the heroics of faith and passion only to make them more heroic at last; all these you will readily imagine.
I suppose many of my audience may have heard of the dis- tinguished Christian minister, still living in the embers of extreme old age, who came to the point, not of a flight in the winter, but of marriage, and partly by reason of the Revolution then in pro- gress, could find no way to obtain the necessary wedding suit. Whereupon, the young woman's benevolent mother had some of her sheep sheared and sewed up in blankets to keep them from perish- ing with cold, that the much required felicity might be consummated.
But the schools,-we must not pass by these, if we are to form a. truthful and sufficient picture of the homespun days. The school- master did not exactly go round the district to fit out the children's minds with learning, as the shoe-maker often did to fit their feet with shoes, or the tailors to measure and cut for their bodies; but, to come as near it as possible, he boarded round (a custom not yet gone by), and the wood for the common fire was supplied in a way equally primitive, by contribution of loads from the several families, according to their several quantities of childhood. The children were all clothed alike in homespun; and the only signs of aristocracy were, that some were clean and some a degree less so, some in fine white and striped linen, some in brown tow crash; and, in particular,
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as I remember, with a certain feeling of quality I do not like to express, the good fathers of some testified the opinion they had of their children by bringing fine round loads of hickory wood to warm them, while some others, I regret to say, brought only scanty, scraggy, ill-looking heaps of green oak, white birch, and hemlock. Indeed, about all the bickerings of quality among the children, centered in the quality of the wood pile. There was no complaint in those days of the want of ventilation; for the large open fire- place held a considerable fraction of a cord of wood, and the win- dows took in just enough air to supply the combustion. Besides,
the bigger lads were occasionally ventilated, by being sent out to cut wood enough to keep the fire in action. The seats were made of the outer slabs from the saw-mill, supported by slant legs driven into and a proper distance through augur holes, and plained smooth on the top by the rather tardy process of friction. But the spelling went on bravely, and we ciphered away again and again, always till we got through Loss and Gain. The more advanced of us too made light work of Lindley Murray, and went on to the parsing, finally, of the extracts from Shakespeare and Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered their tough sentences in a more consequential sense of the term than was exactly true. ...
Passing from the school to the church, or rather I should say to the meeting house, (good translation, whether meant or not, of what is older and more venerable than church, namely synagogue), here again you meet the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Probably it stands on some hill, midway between three or four valleys, whither the tribes go up to worship, and when the snow- drifts are deepest go literally from strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove, save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires of the neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, and sometimes because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality in the wor- shippers. They are seated according to age, the old king Lemuels and their queens in the front near the pulpit, and the younger Lem- uels farther back, enclosed in pews, sitting back to back, impounded, all, for deep thought and spiritual digestion; only the deacons, sit- ting close under the pulpit, by themselves, to receive, as their dis- tinctive honor, the more perpendicular droppings of the word. Clean round the front of the gallery is drawn a single row of choir, headed by the key-pipe, in the center. The pulpit is overhung by an august wooden canopy, called a sounding board: study general of course and first lesson of mystery to the eyes of the children, until what time their ears are opened to understand the spoken mysteries.
There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no manner- ism of worship; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think of nothing in fact save what meets their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They appear like men who have
From a Drawing by Chas. T. Payne THE FIRST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1749
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a digestion for strong meat, and have no conception that trifles more delicate can be of any account to feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter in it, nothing long that has not exhausted the matter. If the minister speaks in his great coat and thick gloves or mittens, if the howling blasts of winter blow in across the assem- bly fresh streams of ventilation that move the hair upon their heads, they are none the less content, if only he gives them good strong exercise. Under their hard and, as some would say, stolid faces, great thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. Free will, fixed fate, fore-knowledge absolute, trinity, redemption, special grace, eternity: give them anything high enough, and the tough muscles of their inward man will be climbing sturdily into it; and if they go away having something to think of, they have had a good day. A perceptible glow will kindle in their hard faces, only when some one of the chief apostles, a Day, a Smith, or a Bellamy, has come to lead them up some higher pinnacle of thought, or pile upon their sturdy mind some heavier weight of argument: fainting never under any weight, even that which, to the foreign critics of the dis- courses preached by them and others of their day, it seems impossi- ble for any, the most cultivated audience in the world, to have sup- ported. Oh, these royal men of homespun, how great a thing to them was religion! The district school was there, the great Bellamy is here, among the highest peaks and solitudes of divine govern- ment, and between is close living and hard work, and they are kings alike in all!
True there was a rigor in their piety, a want of gentle feeling; their Christian graces were cast-iron shapes, answering with a hard metallic ring, but they stood the rough wear of life none the less durably for the excessive hardness of their temperament, kept their families and communities none the less truly, though it may be less benignly, under the sense of God and religion. If we find something to modify, or soften, in their over-rigid notions of Chris- tian living, it is yet something to know that what we are they have made us, and that, when we have done better for the ages that come after us, we shall have a more certain right to blame their austerities.
View them as we may, there is yet, and always will be, some- thing magnificent, in their stern, practical fidelity to their prin- ciples. ...
Regarding now, the homespun age as represented in these pic- tures of the social and religious life, we need, in order to a full understanding, or conception of the powers and the possibilities of success embodied in it, to go a step farther; to descend into the practical struggle of common life, and see how the muscle of energy and victory is developed, under its close necessities.
The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will perceive, in the closest habits of industry. The keen jockey way of whittling out a living by small bargains sharply turned, which many suppose to be an essential characteristic of the Yankee race is yet no proper
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inbred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident, that per- tains to the transition period between the small, stringent way of life in the previous times of home-production, and the new age of trade. In these olden times, these genuine days of homespun, they supposed, in their simplicity, that thrift represented work, and looked about seldom for any more delicate or sharper way of getting on. They did not call a man's property his fortune, but they spoke of one or another as being worth so much; conceiving that he had it laid up as the reward or fruit of his deservings. The house was a factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer for the house. The exchanges went on briskly enough but required neither money nor trade. No affectation of polite living, no languish- ing airs of delicacy and softness in doors, had begun to make the fathers and sons impatient of hard work out of doors, and set them at contriving some easier and more plausible way of living. Their very dress represented work, and they went out as men whom the wives and daughters had dressed for work; facing all weather, cold and hot, wet and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good many very prac- tical experiments in mechanics, dressing the flax, threshing the rye, dragging home in the deep snows the great wood pile of the year's consumption; and then, when the day is ended, having no loose money to spend in taverns, taking their recreation, all together, in reading, or singing, or happy talk, or silent looking in the fire, and finally in sleep, to rise again, with the sun, and pray over the family Bible for just such another good day as the last. And so they lived, working out, each year, a little advance of thrift, just within the line of comfort.
The picture still holds, in part, though greatly modified by the softened manner of indoor life, and the multiplied agencies of emi- gration, travel, trade and machinery. It is, on the whole, a hard and over-severe picture, and yet a picture that embodies the highest points of merit, connects the noblest results of character. Out of it, in one view, come all the successes we commemorate on this fes- tive occasion.
No mode of life was ever more expensive; it was life, at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest culture and the most proper enjoyment. Even the dress of it was more expensive than we shall ever see again. Still it was a life of honesty, and simple content, and sturdy victory. Immoralities, that rot down the vigor and humble the consciousness of families, were as much less frequent, as they had less thought of adventure, less to do with travel, and trade, and money, and were closer to nature and the simple life of home.
If they were sometime drudged by their over-intense labor, still they were kept by it in a generally rugged state, both of body and mind. They kept a good digestion, which is itself no small part of a character. The mothers spent their nervous impulse on their muscles, and had so much less need of keeping down the excess, or
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calming the unspent lightning, by doses of anodyne. In the play of the wheel they spent fibre too, within, and in the weaving, wove it close and firm. Be it true as it may, that the mothers of the homespun age had a severe limit on their culture and accomplish ments. Be it true that we demand a delicacy and elegance of man- ners impossible to them, under the rugged necessities they bore. Still there is, after all, something very respectable in good health, and a great many graces play in its look that we love to study, even if there be a little of "perdurable toughness" in their charms. How much is there, too, in the sublime motherhood of health! Hence come, not always, I know, but oftenest, the heroes and the great minds gifted with volume and power, and balanced for the manly virtues of truth, courage, persistency, and all sorts of victory. It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed, all together, into the producing pro- cess, young and old, male and female, from the boy that rode the plough-horse to the grandmother, knitting under her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering lightly what they had all been at work, thread by thread, and grain by grain, to produce. They knew too exactly what everything cost, even small things, not to husband them carefully. Men of patrimony in the great world, therefore, noticing their small way in trade, or expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to charge them with meanness, simply be- cause they knew things only in a small way; or, what is not far different, because they were too simple and rustic, to have any con- ception of the big operations, by which other men are wont to get their money without earning it, and lavish the more freely because it was not earned. Still this knowing life only in the small, it will be found, is really anything but meanness.
Probably enough the man who is heard threshing in his barn of a winter evening by the light of a lantern, (I knew such an example), will be seen driving his team next day, the coldest day of the year, through the deep snow to a distant wood lot, to draw a load for a present to his minister. So the housewife that higgles for a half hour with the merchant over some small trade, is yet one that will keep watch, not unlikely, when the school master, board- ing round the district, comes to some hard quarter, and commence asking him to dinner, then to tea, then to stay over night, and literally boarding him, till the hard quarter is passed. Who now, in the great world of money, will do, not to say the same, as much, proportionally as much, in any of the pure hospitalities of life?
Besides, what sufficiently disproves any real meanness, it will be found that children brought up in this way to know things in the small, what they cost, and what is their value, have in just that fact one of the best securities of character and most certain elements of power and success in life; because they expect to get on by small advances followed up and saved by others, not by sudden leaps of fortune that despise the slow but surer methods of industry and
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merit. When the hard, wiry-looking patriarch of homespun, for example, sets out for Hartford, or Bridgeport, to exchange the little surplus of his year's production, carrying his provision with him and the fodder of his team, and taking his boy along to show him the great world, you may laugh at the simplicity, or pity, if you will, the sordid look of the picture; but, five or ten years hence, this boy will like enough be found in College, digging out the cent's worth of his father's money in hard study; and some twenty years later he will be returning in his honors, as the celebrated Judge, or Governor, or Senator and public orator, from some one of the great States of the Republic, to bless the sight once more of that vener- ated pair who shaped his beginnings and planted the small seeds of his future success. Small seeds, you may have thought, of mean- ness; but now they have grown up and blossomed into a large minded life, a generous public devotion, and a free benevolence to mankind.
And just here, I am persuaded, is the secret, in no small degree, of the very peculiar success that has distinguished the sons of Connecticut and, not least, those of Litchfield County, in their migra- tion to other States. It is because they have gone out in the wise economy of a simple, homespun training, expecting to get on in the world by merit and patience, and by a careful husbanding of small advances; secured in their virtue by just that which makes their perseverance successful. For the men who see the great in the small and go on to build the great by small increments, will commonly have an exact conscience too that beholds great princi- ples in small things, and so will form a character of integrity, before both God and man, as solid and massive as the outward successes they conquer.
I have wished, in particular, to bring out an impression of the unrecorded history of the times gone by. We must not think that the great men have made the history. Rather it is the history that has made the men. It is the homespun many, the simple Christian men and women of the century gone by, who bore their life struggle faithfully, in these valleys and among these hills, and who now are sleeping in the untitled graves of Christian worth and piety. These are they whom we are most especially to honor, and it is good for us all to see and know, in their example, how nobly fruitful and beneficent that virtue may be, which is too common to be distin- guished, and is thought of only as the worth of unhistoric men. Worth indeed it is, that worth which, being common, is the sub- structure and the prime condition of a happy, social state, and of all the honors that dignify its history: worth, not of men only, but quite as much of women; for you have seen, at every turn of my subject, how the age gone by receives a distinctive character from the queens of the distaff and the loom, and their princely mother- hood. Let no woman imagine that she is without consequence, or motive to excellence, because she is not conspicuous, Oh, it is the greatness of woman that she is so much like the great powers
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of nature, back of the noise and clatter of the world's affairs, tem- pering all things with her benign influence only the more certainly because of her silence, greatest in her beneficence because most remote from ambition, most forgetful of herself and fame; a better nature in the world that only waits to bless it, and refuses to be known save in the successes of others, whom she makes conspicuous; satis- fied most, in the honors that come not to her, that "Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land!" ...
Men and women of Litchfield County, such has been the past; a good and honorable past! We give it over to you: the future is with you. It must, we know be different, and it will be what you make it. Be faithful to the sacred trust God is this day placing in your hands. One thing, at least, I hope; that, in these illustrations I have made some just impression on you all of the dignity of work. How magnificent an honor it is, for the times gone by, that when so many schemes are on foot, as now, to raise the weak; when the friends of the dejected classes of the world are proposing even to reorganize society itself for their benefit, trying to humanize punish- ments, to kindle hope in disability, and nurse depravity into a condition of comfort, (a distinction how magnificent!), that our fathers and mothers of the century passed had, in truth, no dejected classes, no disability, only here and there a drone of idleness, or a sporadic case of vice and poverty; excelling, in the picture of social comfort and well-being actually realized, the most romantic visions of our new seers. They want a reorganization of society !- some- thing better than the Christian gospel and the Christian family state !- some community in hollow-square, to protect them and coax them up into a life of respect, and help them to be men! No, they did not even so much as want the patronage of a bank of savings to encourage them and take the wardship of their cause. They knew how to make their money, and how to invest it, and take care of it, and make it productive; how to build, and plant, and make sterility fruitful, and conquer all the hard weather of life. Their producing process took everything at a disadvantage; for they had no capital, no machinery, no distribution of labor, nothing but wild forest and rock; but they had metal enough in their character to conquer their defects of outfit and advantage. They sucked honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Nay, they even seemed to want something a little harder than nature in her softer moods could yield them. Their ideal of a Goshen they sought out, not in the rich alluvion of some fertile Nile, but upon the crest of the world, somewhere between the second and third heaven where Provi- dence itself grows cold, and there, making warmth by their exercise and their prayers, they prepared a happier state of competence and wealth, than the Goshen of the sunny Nile ever saw. Your con- dition will hereafter be softened, and your comforts multiplied. Let your culture be as much advanced. But let no delicate spirit that despises work, grow up in your sons and daughters. Make these rocky hills smoothe their faces and smile under your industry. Let
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