USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 8
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"While breaking in a colt Casper Berger had the mis- fortune to break his leg, and he made a phenomenally bad patient, being so self-willed and excitable that nobody could do anything with him. The doctor said that he should keep to his bed for a length of time, but Mr. Ber- ger treated such advice with scorn. He insisted on being out and about and hobbled around with two canes before the bone was properly set. In doing that he fell and
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broke his leg again. This brought him to his senses and he lay quietly on his bed until the bone was properly united and became as gentle and tractable as any man need be."
Subsequently inquiry among old Readington people confirms the statement as to Mr. Berger's benefactions, and points him out as having been to all intents and pur- poses the founder of that village. He seems to have owned nearly all the land which the village now covers and was unquestionably the most generous friend that the church there ever had, not only in the granting of land, but by liberal contributions toward church expenses. I have frequently heard remarks of astonishment that these facts seem to have been generally overlooked in most an- nals of that rural retreat.
The next call was upon Mr. A., who gave his age as seventy-six. He was, however, a long way from looking it. He said that one thing he could recall was about the way a minister many years ago got a call to old Neshanic Church. In his father's time, Mr. A. said, the pulpit of the Reformed church at Neshanic became vacant through the death of their much beloved pastor. The congregation invited a young clergyman to preach on proba- tion and they liked him. But having had a pastor for many years so exactly to their liking, they were inclined to be jealously exacting about choosing another. Some of them argued that it was hardly a sufficient test, to bring a man there and judge him on the delivery of a few sermons from texts of his own choosing, doubtless all cut and dried and well rehearsed for the occasion. They said they would like to see a text chosen for the candidate, then let
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him preach an extemporaneous sermon therefrom. To this the minister signified his ready agreement.
"If you will allow me a suggestion," the young man said, "I propose that I now withdraw from this meeting. You are all here; suppose, then, that you agree upon a text among yourselves; then just mark chapter and verse on this piece of paper and have it laid on the pulpit on Sunday morning. Whatever is there set down I shall do my best to preach from."
This being acceptable, the minister left them to their deliberations. But they were unable to agree on a text. So when Sunday came one of the deacons folded the blank paper and laid it on the pulpit. When it came to sermon time the minister unfolded the paper and found it per- fectly blank. Taking the paper up and examining one side of it,
"Here is nothing," he said. Then turning it over: "And there is nothing," he added. Then after a mo- ment's pause, he said :
"Brethren, out of nothing the Lord created every- thing;" and using that as his text, the young man went on and preached an eloquent sermon. The result was, Mr. A. said, that the young man was unanimously given the call; and in a long succeeding pastorate fully justified the people's choice.
Others told tales of the past and then Miss V., who was quite elderly, knowing the next and last turn to be hers, did not wait for her call, but without preliminary, started off with this:
"Seven brave maids sat on seven broad beds, braiding seven broad braids. I said to the seven brave maids braid-
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ing seven broad braids: 'Braid broad braids, brave maids !' "
This was rattled off rapidly without a single slip. If any reader tries it, as some in the room did, it will not be found as easy as it might appear at first sight.
The same lady said her father used to point to the icicles hanging from the eaves of their house and say :
"As long as the icicles down from the eaves,
So deep will be snow yet before there are leaves."
A ROMANCE OF OLD BERGEN.
THE SEVEN JENKINS SISTERS, OF JERSEY CITY, AND THE PRANK CUPID PLAYED ON ONE OF THEM.
At the old homestead gathering already mentioned Mr. T., a middle-aged man, occupying about the centre of the large circle surrounding the blazing log fire, in answer to the host's call for something about old times, said he did not know exactly whether a story would be acceptable if it began in that vicinity and ended, say, in Timbuctoo. I don't suppose it would, he said. But there's a tale of rather unusual happenings, which com- menced in Somerville and continued in Jersey City, that might not be considered quite so remote; so, if it is not too long I'll give it for what it may be worth.
I am somewhat at sea as to the exact date of the oc- currence, Mr. T. said, but as near as one can come at it by a sort of dead reckoning, it must have been some twen- ty-five years after the Revolutionary War, or roundly, say, about a hundred years ago, when Somerville began to assert its claims as a trade centre, that one Abraham Van Clief had a flourishing general store there.
Besides many other kinds of merchandise, he dealt large- ly in hats, which he bought of Jeremiah Jenkins, a Welsh hat manufacturer of Jersey City. The manufacturer and his good Somerville customer were both prosperous and fine-looking young men; and in their frequent meetings at the latter's store, where Jenkins came on his rounds
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for orders, they used to joke one another about getting married.
One day the two men when about to part stood just inside the store door. At that moment a young woman passing in the street stopped to look at some article in the window.
"By Jove!" Jenkins exclaimed, "that's a fine looking girl;" moving up close to the door the better to see her. "Now, if I were really in the market," said he, coming back, "that's about the kind of dainty goods I'd be apt to consider," He did not seem to notice that Van Clief colored a little and rather dryly changed the subject. The truth was that the young woman happened to be the very person of whom, after a long acquaintance with her, Van Clief not only held a precisely similar opinion, but he had latterly been telling himself that as some convenient season he might ask her to be his wife.
Although the details are unknown, a romance undoubt- edly followed; for in the course of a year or so from that time the affable Mr. Jenkins came to Somerville, courted and carried off as his wife the pretty girl with whom Mr. Van Clief in his over-confidence had been too long dally- ing, and made her the proud mistress of his fine suburban homestead in what was then the village of Bergen, now known as Jersey City Heights.
Thirty years after these events, Mrs. Jenkins died, leaving her husband and seven daughters. The widower and his motherless girls, with two faithful colored ser- vants in the kitchen, lived together a long time; in fact, until the youngest girl Frankie was twenty-five years old, and the eldest thirty-five. Most people remarked how
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fortunate Mr. Jenkins was to have his house so well looked after when he lost his wife; but there were others who said that sooner than live in the same house with seven "old maids" they would live with seventy-seven cats. For that opprobrious title was already freely ap- plied to the whole seven sisters. Frankie was rather un- der the usual height, small boned and had what many would call a pretty face and figure, as well as a youthful and engaging manner. The rest were just well bred and well educated, pleasant young women. But, though each and every one of them was eminently suited to make some man a thoroughly good wife, strange to say, not one man, so far as known up to that time, ever seemed brave enough to face that battery of seven marriageable spin- sters all in one house, and risk proposing to one of them. Nor should it be forgotten that the father was well known to be what was then considered a very wealthy man and well able to portion them all off in a highly cred- itable maner for his enviable station in life.
For five years after Mrs. Jenkins's death the family lived mostly to themselves in quiet, refined happiness, with no disturbing thoughts about matrimony or any other subject. But a surprise was in store for the seven beautiful daughters. If they had exchanged ideas and bits of gossip with the people at the one grocery of Bergen, who called the girls proud because they did not do so, they would have heard shrewd guesses that would have intensely surprised them as to the reason why their father had lately been so frequently out of an evening. They shared the usual fate of many an exclu- sive and home-centred family. That is, something which
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was quite rife for a long time among the gossips of the place came upon the seven sisters very much like a clap of thunder from a blue sky.
To explain, one day Mr. Jenkins, in sitting down to dinner, laid a packet of legal-looking papers by his plate and appeared a little more thoughtful and taciturn than usual. After the meal was over, laying his hand on the packet, he invited his daughters to come with him into the drawing-room, for he had something important to tell them.
"My dear daughters," he said, "you are all now of full discretion and quite competent to judge as reasonable and right what I have decided to do. Mary Eliza, my dear," said he, addressing his first-born, "to you first, but to you all, my dear, good girls, equally, I wish to say with the proudest love of a father's heart, that no daughters that ever lived could surpass, none could equal the perfection with which you have acquitted yourselves, every one of you, since the cares of this household devolved upon you ; nor can your most affectionate and untiring devotion to myself ever be sufficiently praised. It has been perfect, and quite beyond the power of praise to do it even partial justice."
Then he told them that he had built seven detached houses in a row, each of seven rooms, and each having a pretty lawn and flower garden. It was the first row of houses ever built in Bergen. They stood on the brow of the hill, commanding a wide and pleasant view of the far-reaching meadows, Jersey City, the noble North Ri- ver, with its moving panorama of white sailed clipper ships,
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A ROMANCE OF OLD BERGEN
forests of masts and what was even then the imposing sky line of the great metropolis.
The seven houses and gardens, situate near what was then the junction of Washington, Palisade and Hudson avenues, later called Jewett, Summit and Storm avenues, were exactly alike and they are to this day called the "Seven Sisters," though now probably few if any there know the origin of the name. Mr. Jenkins told his daugh- ters that he had caused the houses to be furnished com- pletely and precisely the same. Here, he explained, he wanted to establish each one of them in a home of her own.
"But why, dear father, do you wish us to leave you?" several of his daughters pleaded with astonished and tear-filled eyes.
Then he told them that he was going to marry a young widow whom they all knew and who was younger by several summers than some of themselves. At first there were bitter tears and anger, but the daughters soon thought better of it; for never, never could one of them be made to live with a stepmother, especially with Mrs. in that odious position.
After the first little storm subsided, the father put into the hands of each the title deeds for their several houses, as well as government bond certificates or other gilt- edged scrip, to each $10,000 worth. And soon the seven sisters packed up their belongings and took possession of their seven pretty houses. The father married and set- tled down with his young wife in the old homestead, and after the proverbial nine days' talk everything went on
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as naturally and quietly as if they had never lived any other way.
The sisters even sooner than might have been expected became wonderfully reconciled to the pleasant novelty of each being absolute mistress of her own house. They seemed to play at housekeeping, having pleasant after- noon teas and evening parties among themselves, as well as occasionally entertaining a few select friends.
Death is said to have a way of sparing some families a visit; but once he makes a call he is apt to come soon again. Much the same is said to be true of that far more agreeable visitor, the little rosy-cheeked, chubby chap with wings, who wounds people so painfully but pleasantly with his arrows.
Now, one winter evening, Frankie, with one of her sisters, went to the store to make some purchases. Any of them could go alone anywhere except Frankie. She was still the baby; and even now, with a house of her own, for her to have gone alone to the store would have shocked the sisters from one end of the row to the other.
This night the eldest, Mary Eliza, accompanied the "baby" to what was still the only grocery store. It was on Bergen square. After their separate small purchases were made, the elder sister politely declined having the orders "sent," and each took up her own parcel. When leaving the store, Frankie, who was in front, stopped short to look at some fruit on the stand outside.
"'Ave a happle, Miss," a tall, lanky ruddy-cheeked, rather long-nosed young man in charge of the stand said, offering her a very fine one. Frankie, instead of taking the offering, tittered a little and affected not to see the
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movement; but the stately sister condescendingly took the apple and thanked the youth, who blushed very much at the "baby" sister's rebuff.
"Oh! Isn't he the funniest greenhorn!" Frankie gig- gled, loud enough to be heard by the young man.
"Hush, Frankie, instantly! I'm ashamed of you!" said the severe sister, hurrying her charge off homeward.
The fresh-complexioned young man who bit his lip and looked after the retreating customers, was indeed a green- horn in America, for he only a few days before landed at Castle Garden, in New York, from England, and this had been his first day in his present position as grocery clerk. Knowing not a soul in all this new world to him, he felt strange and awkward, for whenever he spoke peo- ple couldn't help laughing in his face just as Frankie had done. Yet this positively gawky-looking stranger in a strange land muttered, as the prettiest of the sisters after snubbing him hurried away:
"My word ! how pretty she is! I'll marry that girl as sure as my name is Lilly." George Lilly was his name. But when one of her sisters told Frankie the young man's name she screamed with laughter.
"Mr. Lilly!" cried she. "Nobody could ever call that man lily. Mr. Poppy you mean!" And Poppy she in- sisted on calling him, too, for a long time.
It was only a short time-a month or so-when the scattered residents of Bergen were astonished to see a brand-new sign over the grocery store bearing the name of George Lilly as proprietor. Evidently the young man had brought a little money over the water with him and had bought out Mr. Meyer, the late proprietor. For in
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time the latter left for parts unknown and in his place behold the florid Englishman, assisted by a tow-headed German boy apprentice.
In his bashful way Lilly, at once after seeing Frankie, had tried to gratify his burning curiosity to learn her name and where she dwelt. But what with his .difficulty of making himself understood to the German Meyer and the big, round grocer's massive stupidity, the result of the inquiry was very disappointing. Making the best of such information as he got, Lilly's nearest approach to a defin- ite conclusion was that the girl he had hastily vowed he would marry must be Selina Schmock, the daughter of a junk man living near where the old glasshouse then stood.
"Not a very pretty name," he thought, "and I may have to break my shins over a yardful of scrap iron and old junk to find Selina in a dog kennel, keeping accounts for a fright of a father. But Selina, if that's her name, I'll find, and Selina I'm going to have, wherever I find her."
The worst of it was that, with all his vigilance, for a long time the ardent youth did not lay eyes on the two customers he so feverishly longed to see. The fact was that the eldest sister had felt so scandalized by the apple incident that she was ashamed to go again to the store, or to allow Frankie, to do so, until their most unseemly encounter with the strange clerk there should have time to be forgotten. So the alpha and omega of the sisters stayed at home and had their groceries bought for them by the others. And poor Lilly, as yet, knowing nothing of the family, was left to the forlorn conclusion that he
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would probably never again see the face that continued to haunt his thoughts.
His new sign had been up some time, and his predeces- sor's customers came to him in gratifying numbers, but George Lilly was an unhappy young man, for Frankie came not. One evening, with a miserable, drizzling rain, feeling tired and dejected, he determined to close rather earlier than usual, and delighted the heart of young tow- head by saying :
"Louis, you may put up the shutters and then go home." The boy, with a glad look of astonishment at the clock, bounced open the door, and, "Ach himmel !" he ejaculated, running into some one, while a lady ex- claimed :
"Dear me, boy! Why are you so violent?"
Lilly came forward instanly. Berating Louis for floundering against people, he held the door open, and was politely closing it behind the lady, with many apolo- gies for his boy's awkwardness, when he felt a gentle push at the door, as he thought, of the unlucky towhead to get in again.
"Can't you let the door alone, blockhead ?" he hissed in a wrathful undertone. But before crashing the door shut on the supposed towhead, the irate master, happen- ing to look down, saw by the store light a dainty bracelet on the wrist that pushed against him.
"I humbly beg your-oh!" the poor fellow exclaimed. His first words were to ask another lady's pardon for ob- structing her entrance; the "oh!" was his exclamation when he was confronted by the very young person he had been so fervently longing to see.
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Around the blazing fire in the old Hillsborough home- stead Mr. T. and his auditors sat in sudden silence. It was just after he had finished his story of the seven old- maid sisters of Bergen-now Jersey City Heights-the narrator having stopped at the point in the tale where my last article left it, saying that his throat felt dry.
Doubtless he had his own suspicions about the danger- ous combination of so good a fire and prolixity. At all events, the moment he ceased speaking he slyly glanced along the line of his audience and, I feel sure, saw as I did, plainly, that several drooping heads suddenly bridled up, very much as if their owners were coming out of a cat- nap. So suddenly did he stop that the silence seemed to command attention, and after moistening his lips with a sip of cider he continued his story, evidently enjoying his little ruse to have his listeners all safely awake again.
"When I stopped," Mr. T. said, "I was telling you how George Lilly, the fresh-complexioned young English- man, who had bought the grocery store in Bergen and had fallen in love with a young woman customer the first time he had seen her, was at last assisted in his dili- gent inquiry as to who she was, and so forth, by finding her in his store again. In fact, through an accident he found himself unintentionally almost swearing at her for pushing open his door when he was closing it, he think- ing it was his erring apprentice, Louis, that so opposed him. When he discovered his mistake he uttered a loud 'oh!' of genuine surprise and actually staggered back a pace or two.
To any one but himself, there seemed no call for such a shock as he appeared to receive; but only he himself
CASH GROCER
-
AUGUST MEYER
""'Ave a happle, Miss,"
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knew how absorbing had been his thoughts about the girl, and, of course, he couldn't very well explain that he had hardly thought of any other person, place or thing but herself since she so coldly snubbed him by ignoring his offer of an apple from the stand some weeks before. Al- though Frankie could not help coloring a little at her theatrical reception, she evinced no other sign of noticing it, but walked demurely up to her eldest sister who stood at the counter. The latter thought it necessary under the circumstances to be even more starchy and frigid than was her wont, and gave her orders for both herself and sister as if she spoke from an iceberg a hundred miles out in the Arctic Ocean. In vain Mr. Lilly begged to be allowed to deliver the ladies' purchases.
" 'No, indeed! Thank you!' the elder and taller and much the primmer of the two answered at last, and the two customers departed without another unnecessary word.
"'I really wonder if that girl is Selina Schmock, an old junkman's daughter, as I've been told?" Lilly thought, after closing the door behind them. I'd give a whole lot-Louis! come here!"
" 'Louis,' said he, hastily getting into his coat, 'I must go down Bergen Wood avenue. Look after the store. I'll be gone only a few minutes.' And out he strode with steps about two yards long. Once outside the drizzling rain reminded him that he had no hat on.
" 'Why didn't you tell me I had forgotten my hat, Louis?' he said, coming back and seizing his headgear. 'You're an absent-minded rascal, Louis!' and out he darted again on no other errand than to follow the two 10
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customers he had just served and see where they, or, at all events the smaller and prettier one lived. They car- ried a lantern and were still in sight as he turned out of the square and soon he discovered that whoever they were the taller one entered and probably lived at the first, and the other in the fourth house of the row of seven houses on Palisade avenue.
"'Well,' thought he, as he returned to his store, 'I didn't see any sign of a scrap-iron yard near where she evidently lives. That's one consolation. And I don't suppose her name is Selina, after all. I hope not, for really I don't fancy the name.'
"He was not much longer left in the dark as to the whole history of the rather remarkable family that he had become so deeply interested in. For a smart young Irish- man, James McConnell, who was farmer for a New York merchant in the vicinity, and who was a customer of his, told him their name and all about them. McCon- nell, like almost every one else, thought and spoke of the seven old maid sisters as the best joke of the neigh- borhood. Among other things he told Lilly that in their really clever management and peculiar arrangements about their houses, the seven sisters had shown them- selves so original as to produce a kind of uncanny feeling in people's minds.
"For instance, he explained that the seven houses were all connected by a system of strings and bells, arranged in such a way that any one sister could secretly call up any other or all the others, at any time, by a regular code, entirely of their own invention. By this contrivance, if any stranger, especially a man, called at No. I, in less
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than no time sisters from Nos. 2 and 3 would walk into the room, exactly as if they lived in the house. It was really, however, by a quiet little jerk of a certain string that they were summoned from their own houses and came through the gardens and in by the back door. Every- body admitted that this was a wise and prudent plan ; but the neighbors thought it was almost superhumanly clever for ordinary, natural women to concoct.
"Then, again, there was a finished dovetailing about the way they managed their help that almost took one's breath away. Their ideas of economy did not admit of employing more than one woman servant for the seven houses, and their selection of their several domiciles was made with a strategic eye, particularly, so Lilly was told, for offensive and defensive tactics against male humanity. The two wings of the maidenly camp, the end houses, No. I and No. 7, were tenanted by Mary Eliza, the eldest in No. I and the next eldest in No. 7; in Nos. 2 and 6 the two next eldest lived; in Nos. 3 and 5 the two next, and Frankie, the 'baby' sister, lived in the fourth. By this formation the tender fledgling of twenty-five and upward was flanked on both sides by three sisters, whose ages in- creased as they approached the outer or skirmishing points of the north and south wings.
"Now, the able-bodied woman who served them all as a servant always slept at No. 4, in Frankie's house. On Monday she worked at Mary Eliza's, at No. 1; on Tuesday in No. 2, Wednesday in No. 3, Thursday in No. 4, Friday in No. 5, Saturday in No. 6, resting on Sunday in No. 7. Then she would work in No. 7. on Monday, No. 6 on Tuesday, No. 5 on Wednesday, No.
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