USA > New Hampshire > Cheshire County > Dublin > Dublin days, old and new ; New Hampshire fact and fancy. > Part 3
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John Mason made splendid sap-tubs of various sizes for storage purposes in sugar houses, having fifty to seventy-five pails capacity. The sections were so perfectly fitted that it was difficult to find the joints after they had been painted.
Good sap weather requires about forty degree temperature in daytime and freezing weather at night. Sap will run well with the wind in the west or northwest, and sometimes it has run surprisingly during an east wind, but a south wind will practically stop it altogether. It was necessary, at times, to boil all night long in order to keep up with a good run. Eggs cooked in the boiling sap always tasted a little better than usual. Maple syrup sold for a dollar a gallon, soft pail sugar for ten cents per pound, and fancy two-ounce cakes for twelve and fifteen cents per pound.
Thick hot syrup, spread on a pan of smooth cold snow, made a delicious waxy delicacy; and a generous supply of syrup, bot-
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tled and stored in the cellar for summer, eaten with hot rolls thickly buttered afforded a dish fit for kings.
The Boston Herald offered its own suggestion as to the proper way of enjoying maple syrup and hot biscuits:
If the countryman were forced to choose the one des- sert above all others-a dessert that fits well after all three meals of the day-he would place the blue ribbon on freshly made, hot, home-made biscuits plus a generous amount of maple syrup. Naturally a major matter is the type and condition of the biscuits. They must be piping hot from the oven. They must have a crisp, crunchy, chewy brown crust. During the last few minutes of baking a small piece of sharp cheese must be placed on each biscuit top to melt into the crust.
Two biscuits should be opened and placed in the bot- tom of a soup plate. Plenty of butter should be spread on the hot, fluffy, steamy fragrant whiteness. Let the butter melt in and amalgamate for a few moments. Then pour half a cupful of golden sweet syrup over the biscuits. Eat with a soup spoon. In a mouthful of the delicious combina- tion you can taste the sunshine and the blue sky of the spring season, the tang of wood smoke circling above the old saphouse, the melody of a bluebird throwing its heart to the sky. Life is good when a man comes in from chores these spring evenings and knows that hot biscuits and ma- ple syrup are waiting.
After a few weeks the days grow longer, the warm sun melts most of the snow, and red buds begin to show on maple trees, causing a bitter taste in the sap. Occasionally small butterflies are found in the buckets, and most of the sap spouts are dry. The sugar season is over!
Buckets must be taken up and the spouts must be removed from the trees; then all of them must be washed and stored away until another year.
Before the Keene and Manchester railroad was built in the early "70's, the greater part of the merchandise sold at the local stores was hauled over the road from Keene. George E. Hol-
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brook & Co. and C. Bridgman & Son were the wholesale gro- cery supply houses.
In early spring, Dublin, with its high elevation, had sledding when there was but little snow on lower levels. For two or three weeks each year, George Gowing kept a wagon at Pottersville Corner. That place seemed to be a definite dividing line be- tween snow and bare ground. Mr. Gowing shifted to his wagon there, went to Keene, brought back his load, transferred it to his sled, and delivered it to the stores.
Later on, when the frost was coming out, it was a difficult undertaking to get over some of the soft stretches where wheels would sink nearly to the hubs in mud. The worst spot along the entire route was the No. 6 Schoolhouse hill, a half mile west of the lake.
His return trip was timed in advance, so that an extra horse could meet him at the hill and help take the load over the soft, treacherous road. Mr. Gowing said the then young Charles H. Bridgman, represented in the firm name of C. Bridgman & Son, didn't approve of his father's sign on the store and suggested that it could be improved by changing it to read Charles H. Bridgman & Father.
A greater part of the material used in constructing the town's summer homes was hauled over the old Harrisville road, with its long, steep hills to climb and descend.
Daniel Dwight was an early advocate of a new road and pointed out the enormous lost effort expended in transporting building material and much heavy freight up and down the difficult route. The new road, so called although built more than thirty years ago, cuts off a mile in distance between the villages of Dublin and Harrisville, is far easier to keep in re- pair, is more readily plowed out during the winter, and elim- inates several hundred feet of unnecessary rise and fall.
SUMMER
The lowliest bush that by the waste is seen
Hath changed its dusky for a golden green,
In honor of this lovely summer morn.
- THOMAS MILLER
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The old farm afforded much hard work and a small return in money. There were a great many duties which could be per- formed to advantage by the boys. Work days were long. In early morning the cows must be milked and driven to pasture before breakfast. It was a hard task to turn the grindstone by hand, and when the scythe was held very firmly against the stone it was increasingly difficult.
A small boy could spread the swath of hay, hand mowed, but when he was required to spread a double swath of tall, heavy meadow grass it required all his strength. He learned to hand-rake the hay into windrows, to tumble it up, or, if rain was probable, to cock it up in order to protect much of it from getting wet. When dry enough for the barn the scatterings could be raked with the large wooden drag, or bull-rake. It was always a boy's job to tread the hay when it was loaded. If the load was a large one, he was instructed to lay out the corners and keep them square. If this was done, he was told that the remainder of the load would take care of itself.
Once in the barn, it was a man's job to pitch off the load, but a boy could help mow it away in the hot, stuffy bay, or scaffold. With the unloading complete, what a relief it was for all hands, covered with chaff and dust, and reeking with sweat, to breathe the fresh, outside air again and partake of a refresh- ing drink of ginger and water, sweetened with molasses!
On Saturdays, cattle in the mountain pastures must be called together, counted, and salted. Each boy was instructed to avoid an ash tree, or an isolated one, in case of a thunder shower, but to seek shelter under a beech tree. This advice regarding the beech tree's safety was the result of practical observation and experience. Science has since verified it and advised that the beech tree is almost wholly immune to lightning attack.
It was an established rule in our home that the boys should not go barefoot till all the snow was off the mountain in the spring. Neither should they play games on Sunday, or whittle with a jackknife, lest they cut their finger. It was sometimes quite true that when instructions regarding the use of a knife on Sunday were disobeyed, the user paid the penalty of which he had been warned.
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There were restful moments, too, when the day's work was done and twilight had settled down. In the still air, nighthawks circled high above, emitting their familiar "p-e-a-n" note in their flight, then suddenly swooped to the ground with a hoarse growl.
In the deep woods toward the mountain, a thrush is pour- ing forth his beautiful bell-like notes; from far away, with lovely cadence, his companion replies softly, his notes but faintly heard-a fox barks sharply, his thin voice carried across the meadow. The moon, rounded and full, rises over distant hills to send its golden rays upon an old white farmhouse-which now no longer exists, but which is hallowed by the memory of the saintly people who lived there in the long ago, whose chil- dren, now departed, went forth from it to take their places as useful citizens, living their lives cleanly and well, according to the ideals taught them by their God-fearing elders.
AUTUMN
O suns and skies and clouds of June And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour, October's bright blue weather.
- HELEN HUNT JACKSON
The first warm days of spring are always welcome and help to compensate for the long, cold, New England winter; but the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, afford variety and interest unmatched by any other climate.
The lovely month of June has its appeal as the season for romance; it is an eventful time, too, for school and college stu- dents, but on the farm October offers certain qualities unequaled by any other month in the entire year.
It is the time of the harvest moon; the days of frosty morn- ings which stimulate zest and energy; of deep blue skies and fleecy clouds overhead; of bright sunshine to warm the crisp autumnal air, bringing bees to the yellow goldenrod and ever-
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lasting blossoms. Thornapple berries have ripened and turned a deep red color on their prickly bushes growing beside the stoneheap where wasps circle menacingly about.
Crows are noisily congregating in the tall maples, excitedly fluttering around as though planning their winter exodus to the southland. In the field, where the corn has been cut, stacked in shooks, and bound together with a withe of cornstalk near the top, saucy, crested bluejays have discovered the ripened ears, separated the dry husks, and nibbled the yellow kernels from the cob near its tip. They scold angrily at our approach and fly to a place of security close by, awaiting an opportunity to return when safety permits.
A squirrel chases in and out of sight along the. old stone wall; he suddenly sits upright upon a top stone, holding to his mouth with front paws a beechnut from which he cleverly strips off the husks and casts them aside, while his cheeks bulge with the sweet meat of the nut he is eating.
Cutting and removing the cornstalks from the field has re- vealed, for the first time, the pumpkin vines which grow from seed planted among the hills of corn, and the surprising yield of yellow pumpkins, big and little, hitherto hidden from view.
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke
Sounds from the threshing floor, the busy flail.
Beans grew nicely in the sandy soil west of the house-pea beans and yellow eyes were favorites, with some red horticul- tures and a few limas. The ripened crop was pulled, piled in stacks, and dried sufficiently so it could be carried to the barn, spread on the cleanly swept floor, then threshed by hand with a flail, made for the purpose.
It is something of a knack to swing this now almost unused tool. The straight handle, perhaps three quarters of an inch in diameter, was about four feet long, its end fastened by a raw- hide tie to a larger but shorter round stick-about three feet in length and an inch and a half in diameter.
The flail was swung toward the left, over the shoulder and
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head, and brought to the floor vigorously, the shorter part only striking the pods horizontally and shelling the well-dried beans. They were gathered up and run through the blue-painted win- nowing mill, turned by hand. From a spout on the side they were delivered from the machine quite free from pods, dirt, and dust. A quart of beans, dry measure, weighs one pound and fifteen ounces; a bushel, sixty pounds, brought us three dollars.
Many varieties of excellent apples, common in former years, seem now to have almost disappeared. No other early apple can equal the tartness and flavor of the Red Astrachan. They are among the first to ripen, make applesauce and pies of a dis- tinctly individual flavor-and are equally good eating when taken from the tree.
There were no cold storage plants seventy years ago. Apples, in fact all other vegetables, kept best in barrels or containers resting on the earth bottom of the cellar, the temperature kept as low as possible, to a point just above freezing. Roxbury Rus- sets continued sound and hard into late July.
In recent years the McIntosh Red has gained great popular favor and it continues to be the best-selling apple in the com- mercial market. But for all-around, all-purpose excellence, we bow to the supremacy of the good old Baldwin! It cooks well, eats and keeps with the best-the finest all-purpose apple ever grown!
In a section of Massachusetts not far from Woburn, it is re- ported that there has been a granite shaft erected, with a giant apple carved on the top, on the spot where the forefather of the Baldwin apple grew.
Mrs. Anne Burdett Friend expresses her admiration in a let- ter to the Boston Herald as follows: "Give me a cold, hard, deep red Baldwin apple, with its sweet juice welling up into the mouth as one bites into it, and the savor of its crisp, firm tex- ture, and even the best McIntosh Red comes off second best."
Four substantial brick arches in the cellar formed the base of the big chimney, built in the center of our house. There was a fireplace in each of the four rooms on the ground floor, and
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a brick oven with an oval-shape ceiling had been constructed beside the kitchen fireplaces.
In previous days the oven had been used for baking pur- poses while kettle and crane hung in the fireplace beside it.
On the south side, a space was provided in the chimney for smoking hams and bacon over a smouldering fire of corncobs.
In anticipation of the long winter ahead, an empty molasses hogshead, of mammoth size, had been prepared for storing a supply of beef, packed among straw and cakes of ice. The house was provided with flour, salt pork, beans, and eggs; half a cod- fish hung from a nail in the cellarway and downstairs in the cellar were kept potatoes, vegetables, bottles of maple syrup, and a barrel of cider.
A mixture of crisply parched dry peas and barley, steeped as coffee, with milk and sugar added, made a very good hot drink for breakfast. Brown bread was baked-not steamed-in a two-quart earthen crock, cooked with a very hard crusty top. While M. D. Mason was conducting his grocery store and had access to the finest of coffees, he said the best coffee he ever tasted was made from the crumbs of hard-baked brown-bread crust. However, this may have been the recollection of youth- ful days when a hungry boy's appetite made everything taste good.
March 13th was the date of Father's birthday. I do not re- call that he was ever given a present on the occasion, or that the event was especially recognized except as he was respon- sible for it himself. When Town Meeting fell upon the 13th, or quite near it, he celebrated by bringing home from the village a quart of peanuts. There were no surplus funds in our family for unnecessary items.
It was an impressive occasion when the entire family sat down to Thanksgiving dinner. After we had gathered around and taken our seats at the table, a serious moment followed. A brief pause, and Father bowed his head, offered thanks for the blessings the year had brought, and asked that our transgres- sions be forgiven. Only on Thanksgiving day did he use the word "transgressions"; it deeply impressed me.
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WINTER
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven.
- EMERSON
Winter was a season for cutting and getting up the year's supply of firewood. Boys disliked the job and tired of the mo- notonous task of cutting it up with a bucksaw. A youngster said there were three things he didn't like to do; he didn't like to saw wood; didn't like to dig potatoes; and didn't like to work. Who can blame him!
When Frank Burpee was unemployed during the dull mid- winter season, he offered to cut M. D. Mason's ten cords of wood twice in two with bucksaw, for fifty cents per cord. He got the job!
A dollar a cord was the accustomed price paid for cutting cordwood. The best beech and rock maple wood, delivered, brought four dollars per cord.
At eighty years, Grandmother could read without glasses; she was active and spry and gracefully demonstrated the "ten- step balance" to her grandchildren. She wore a gauzy lace cap becomingly, and was still a pretty old lady when dressed for church in her black Sunday-best. In youthful days she was said to have been one of the handsomest girls in Cheshire County.
She annually made enough candles to supply the household throughout the year. Strings of candle-wicking were doubled and a dozen of them were hung on short, round sticks which had been made ready. The wicking was repeatedly dipped in a kettle of warm tallow in a cold room until the candles grew to a correct size; then they were removed and packed away.
In the west room, made warm and comfortable by the mel- low heat of the soapstone stove, Grandmother operated her spinning-wheel. She carded the cleanly washed wool into long white rolls, attached it to the spindle, and stretched its tension
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back and forth while she whirled the big wheel with her hand. Part of the yarn was dyed blue; with it she knitted warm stock- ings for the boys, and double-knitted blue-and-white mittens which fitted our hands perfectly.
Grandmother believed the children needed spring treatment each year in order to remove the accumulated impurities of the long winter. She prescribed sulphur and molasses-a spoonful every morning for three successive days, then skip three more, and continue in that order until we had taken the value of nine spoonfuls. I'm sure this yearly custom never did us any harm and perhaps there may have been needed medicinal value in sulphur.
Older people sometimes used Hood's Sarsaparilla. Its virtue was apparently not confined to the treatment of any particular disorder-advertisements said, "It Cures." There were lavish dis- plays in the newspapers of Dr. Munyon's Remedies, Lydia Pink- ham's Compound, Ayers Cherry Pectoral, Sanford's Jamaica Ginger, Pink Pills for Pale People, Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, and Perry Davis' Pain Killer.
None of the children liked bitter tasting Epsom Salts, but sometimes they were recommended. A large bottle of Balm of Gilead was kept in the cupboard, especially for sprains and lameness. Three balm of Gilead trees stood beside the road to the village near the Phillips place during my youthful days but these trees have gone now and I do not know of any others.
Gold-thread was a remedy for sore mouths and a rose-leaf solution was recommended for eye trouble. Thoroughwort tea was bitter and distasteful but was an efficient remedy for some disorders.
Grandmother mended our clothes, took care of us when we were sick, warmed our beds with heated freestones or bricks in the cold winter nights, fanned the hot bedrooms by swinging the door back and forth in the sweltering heat of summer, sewed on missing buttons, and found the boys' caps when they seemed hopelessly lost.
How little thoughtless children appreciate all that is done for them! It was not until we grew older and Grandmother had
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gone that we had sense enough to realize all the love and devo- tion the dear old lady had bestowed upon us.
Mother died when I was nine. She was Sarah Jane Darracott, born on her father's farm at Stone Pond, near the Marlboro line. My oldest sister Annie assumed her duties in caring for the household and bringing up the children. "A Saint, if ever there was one," a schoolmate friend said of her in after life, for she sacrificed her own future in order to take care of her younger brothers and sisters.
Each weekday morning, with breakfast over, Grandfather Darracott sat in his chair by the fireplace and read a chapter from the Bible, then a selection from his Daily Helps, after which he began his accustomed day's work.
Gentlemen from the village sometimes brought their ladies to the home in the afternoon during winter months, drove back to town again, then returned to enjoy supper with friends and neighbors in an atmosphere of congenial good fellowship.
The table was daintily spread, the home-cooked food tempt- ingly arrayed; no liquor was served; no one smoked, and there were no cigarette butts and ashes in sight to detract from the enjoyment of the meal. When the party broke up in the late evening, gentlemen escorted their ladies home, everyone went happily away, and no morning hangovers existed afterward. Those good old days!
Romance was more modestly concealed in olden times and, while affection may have burned within just as intensely then as now, it was seldom so openly displayed. There were no crooners; no bobby-soxers to rave about them, had they ex- isted; invariably the young man made the advances.
Endearing expressions to the opposite sex were quite re- strained in the exchange of written missives. In a letter sent by Dexter Mason, in 1855, from Concord, where he was serv- ing as Representative to the General Court, to his young wife, Harriet, to whom he had been married some half dozen years, he suggested advice concerning the care of "little Milton," and described, in matter-of-fact terms, his room, boarding-place, as well as Legislative proceedings. The letter began, "Beloved Wife," and ended, "Yours truly, Dexter."
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HORSE-TRADES AND YANKEE PLUCK
The old-time horse jockey was a clever trader. He knew all the tricks and, if there was any method of concealing the faults of a balky horse, an animal who would pull back and break his hitch-rope when tied, who crowded the person entering his stall, was afflicted with the heaves, a cribber, had stringhalt, was windbroken, blind, "heady," suffered a spavin, thrush, ringbone, or quarter-crack, this fellow had the answers.
A Peterborough horse-trader, whom Mr. Gowing referred to as "Old Brooks," had earned the reputation of being a very dif- ficult man to deal with. It was seldom that anyone got the best of him in a trade, but on one occasion a prospective customer had him decidedly worried.
His caller was in the market for a horse and described his requirements. Brooks brought out an animal which, he said, would fill the bill to a T. His price was $200. But the cost was prohibitive, his customer couldn't pay that much; besides, he considered, the horse very much overpriced. Brooks wanted to make a sale but after considerable haggling his wary client's interest seemed to be waning. Fearful of losing him, Brooks finally said, "If you won't pay $200, what will you give?" "Just
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twenty-five dollars, Mr. Brooks," was the reply. After a mo- ment's deliberation Brooks answered, "It's a hell of a drop, but I'll take it." .
During the summer season the Gowings operated a livery stable equipped with excellent vehicles of various types and carried passengers over their favorite trips. Mr. Gowing, already past seventy, still insisted upon driving. On the narrow Jaffrey road, his pair of horses, hitched to a two-seated carriage, be- came frightened when they suddenly met an automobile. They reared, turned around abruptly, overturned the carriage, threw Mr. Gowing out, and ran away.
Bruised, and dazed, covered with dirt, his face marked with blood, he was carried home and laid upon an easy couch. The doctor said his condition was critical-he might not recover.
At five in the afternoon, three hours after the accident, he got up, took his accustomed pail to the barn, and did the milk- ing as usual.
THE TIN PEDDLER
The tin peddler's annual summer visit was an event of in- terest in the household, especially to the children of the family. They watched the hard-working horse, much too small for his heavy load, pull the creaking red wagon up the hill and into the dooryard.
At the rear of the long vehicle were huge bags stuffed full of rags he had taken in exchange for merchandise; a row of brooms, turned upside down, stood in the rack especially pre- pared for them. Clothes baskets, mops, brushes, wooden water pails, shovels, hoes, and rakes were piled into his cart. Swing- ing open a compartment door, he revealed a great assortment of shiny new tin dishes of different sizes and shapes: measuring cups, long-handled dippers, milk pans, and quart measures.
There were nutmeg graters, spoons, and corn poppers to select from, and in a carefully prepared compartment was an assortment of earthenware-sugar bowls, berry dishes, spoon- holders, goblets, and a variety of useful articles which could be regarded as luxuries in an average farmhouse.
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The collection of rags, saved during a year's time in antici- pation of the peddler's visit, were carefully weighed with his shining steelyards, their value reckoned, the items most needed selected to correspond with the worth of the rags provided; then, after he had returned the various articles to their proper places, he closed the little compartment door in his cart, mounted his seat, high up, and drove on, not to reappear until another year.
OTHER PEDDLERS
Henry Kendall canvassed for a monthly story publication, printed on pink paper-he said they were "good moral stories"; he "had read them through twice." He replied in the affirma- tive when Father facetiously inquired if he found them the same at each reading.
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