USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 12
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
We were sorry for the poor Belchertown people, but how re- lieved for ourselves! The wind still doubled the trees over, but the next crash certainly was in the east; God had spared us from the effect of His wrath after all; He must have heard our prayers for help. And now came a joyful cry from below, "Look out of the west window; it's all bright over the hills!"
I cast away my pillow and ran to see the clearing-a strip of sky flooded with suffused and brilliant light; the last drops still falling, the hills visible in golden mist and the blackness massed over be- hind Mount Tom and the Holyoke range. Somewhere there would be a burned tree, but our buildings had come through safely and we knew that the bright strip was going to widen and lengthen till the forces of darkness were routed altogether. Soon a rainbow
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would span with its arch the woods and fields between us and Am- herst.
As long as I live I never expect to know-I never have known- anything like the rapture of that clearing-off after a storm. There was the blessed silence after it had died away and the liquid notes of a song-sparrow, as thankful and blissful as we, no doubt. There was the sense of having been spared disaster and the little sounds about the house of return to normal life-safe life without fear or haste. There was that widening strip of clear blue in the northwest out of which fair weather was coming for a morrow full of delight. We went out into the garden and found the flowers less beaten down than we had feared, although much corn was lying prone. A great golden butterfly with black-edged wings floated over the lark- spur, lighted on the hollyhocks. The cows came from pasture in leisurely fashion as if nothing had happened, nosing gratefully into the wet clover. Birds soared high above the elms. Father came to the window and held up his hand.
"Hark," he said. "Do you hear the mill-stream?" We did hear it, a mile distant. There was the roar of falling water, the buzz of wheels, the grinding of the great stones, and the rumble of wagon wheels over a bridge with loose planks. "The wind is in the north- west." It was called out all over the house. "Hear it? Hear it?" one cried to another. "It's going to be a splendid day tomorrow."
We knew exactly what that meant. Nobody said so but one had only to wait, on tiptoe, for news. At supper everyone was light- hearted, uproarious, expectant. And before it was over Father would say quite casually-he loved to give his invitations so-that he had been wanting for a long time to explore a certain hill-road on the other side of the river, and would we give him our company tomorrow ?- finishing with a look at Mother and saying, "What would you think of that, Hannah?" Very often when a choice was put before the household in the same impromptu fashion, it called forth a tremendous discussion, for there was an endless variety of picnic places. We might drive to Pelham or Shutesbury, on the east side of the valley, or Montague, round on the further side of Mount Toby, or to Roaring Brook or Sunderland cave, Whately Glen,
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High Ridge, Chestnut Hill, Ashfield, Colrain-or just take a long rambling ride through forgotten roads uphill and down, coming out on unexpected views of Monadnock or Graylock or Wachusett, and finally dropping into our own valley again toward supper-time. But I really think we liked best to have the excursion one of Father's own inspirations, because he planned it so nicely.
After supper we hastened to the stoop, to see the sunset, final prognosticator of tomorrow's perfection. Gold and crimson in the west, the east deep violet with a few last thunderheads just visible as the remains of the storm drifted out to sea. Upper currents were twisting the clouds into fantastic shapes which changed from mo- ment to moment. A doubled-up clown with a peaked cap became a maiden with flowing hair; a mammoth bird floated southward in the changed guise of a friar with cassock and cowl. After sundown came pale, cold greens among the glowing tints; these gave place to a primrose sky and the long, purple cloud-masses, slowly thinning, which foretold our northwest day; a great planet blazed out in soli- tary grandeur. It was bliss to fall asleep in that cool, crisp stillness, hearing the particular little rattle of the blinds outside our windows which was an assurance of storms past and fair weather on the way. For days there had been a southerly breeze moaning restlessly in the elm-branches by day and dying down at night, leaving sultry, fore- boding silence; now breaths of coolness came through those gently clattering slats and lulled us to sleep under our re-appropriated blankets.
On excursion days we made an early start in the morning. The preparations took an hour or so, simple as they were. Mother rose early and superintended lunch-baskets. Harnesses were inspected: traces must be strong and springs reliable for a mountain-climb. Big shawls to sit on, staffs, binoculars, tin botanical cases, drinking- cups, were packed under the seats of the wagons. It was a Hunting- ton custom to take books along on excursions. I remember a certain drive when one of our guests-a young man-took Hamerton's In- tellectual Life; another had the first volume of Ebers' Uarda; a younger girl Kingsley's Westward Ho, our older sister Sordello; still another John Halifax, Gentleman. Shakespeare was occasionally
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produced out of somebody's pocket as a favorite book of poetry for two friends to enjoy together on a rock after lunch.
The heads of the house led in the little phaeton, while the other two vehicles were loaded with a more youthful freight. If we were travelling westward we turned left down a sandy lane after crossing the little bridge into North Hadley and came to a wire ferry which carried passengers across the Connecticut. That ferry, long since abandoned, was one of the most picturesque things in the valley. The ferryman seemed by some perversity of fate to be always on the opposite bank of the river when wanted, but there was the fun of blowing a long tin horn, tied to a post, to attract his attention, and we could see him, a small figure in perspective, come down the steep little approach and climb into the boat, pushing it off with a large flat oar and taking up a curious affair like a currycomb with which he gripped the wire and pulled long strokes which sent his craft along toward our side, out of the deep channel and over into the shallower river-bed. Often there would be a team standing on the flat, long flooring with low sides and hinged ends that were held in the horizontal by chains and let down for vehicles to drive on and off. The ferryman always had a greeting for us as he pulled in; for many years it was an old Canadian Frenchman, who knew each child and its history somehow and kept track of family changes. Careful driving was necessary to get the wagons all on to the boat properly. Some of our horses never became entirely reconciled to ferrying and tried to back us off into the water; big blocks of wood were put behind the wheels and Father stood by their heads, pat- ting them and saying slowly, "Whe-e-y Major, whe-e-ey, Maggie- gently, gently, now Jamie, George, hold them in when the boat stops!"-for at that moment they were ready to make a spring which would have interlocked wheels hopelessly. Father would drive off first, then the next restive horse was curbed firmly by his driver-the ferryman officiously assisting now and then-and at the signal, "All right, let go!" would bound forward, up the bank, the third wagon following.
Now came the gradual, uphill drive for many miles. We missed none of the exquisite details; the intense blue overhead and the
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fleecey little clouds-Schäfchen-as the Germans call them-floating so low and close and casting shadows which changed from moment to moment the tints of brown pasturelands; a gray farmhouse on a rocky ledge under a pair of huge maples, with a row of crimson hollyhocks set off by its weather-beaten clapboards; a shaggy colt peering over a stone wall, or a half-dozen wild steers tossing their horns inimically out of a clump of sweet-fern and laurel among the rocks. Sometimes we drove for miles with the branches meeting over our heads and great brakes and maidenhair by the roadsides, brightened by clumps of jewel-weed; now and again when we came to a stony climb the boys walked to save the horses, who were, how- ever, sturdy little beasts and used to scrambling up steep pitches. When we came to a clearing, a superb view of the mountains was disclosed, and we would hear the cry, "Monadnock." No view could ever be quite supreme to us children without this mountain in it.
The choice of a noonday resting-place was our great con- cern on a mountain-trip. We must satisfy a mighty hunger, give the horses rest, and ourselves a chance to read or nap. Sometimes we camped by one of the streams which accompanies almost every New England hill-road, with its cold pools for chilling watermelons or making pats of butter hard and firm while the coffee boils. Or again it would be on a clean brown hillside with flannelly mulleins, pale yellow and gray-green, among the boulders, and miles on miles of hill-country spread before us. Royal mountains towered on the horizon. The horses would be taken to a near-by farmhouse, or fed with provender brought from home in the wagons. Then some- times our father invited us to dine at a country hotel, an invi- tation which we found extremely jolly, taking possession of a rural hostelry for the time being and admiring the curious old prints on the wall of its little parlor. Usually we enjoyed a dinner of savory chicken, pies of many varieties which the waitresses enumerated glibly for our choice, five kinds at a time, and fresh brown bread which everybody thought would be nice to make at home but for which the recipe could never be obtained. Now and then we sur- prised a landlord, who then gave us just what his immediate re- sources could offer, a grand platter of "ham'n eggs."
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Once we had a horrible disappointment, when, having counted on dining at a particular inn and regaling ourselves on its far-famed blueberry pie, we found the inn had been burned down during the winter. I well remember our gloom as we investigated the vil- lage store, finding only moist crackers and stale cookies, with root beer to wash them down. What were they to a starving multitude after a thirty mile drive? But a scouting party discovered two old ladies in a charming house who agreed to have a hearty meal ready in forty minutes and invited us to make ourselves at home in their large living-room. We sank into comfortable seats and got out our book-companions. Such a long silence ensued that one of our host- esses left her preparations in the kitchen and came to see what had become of us. When she saw us, she pattered back to her sister, and said, "Well, if they ain't the queerest people! They've all set down and gone to readin'!" She discovered later that we were quite normal when it came to disposing of her delectable cold beef and fresh rolls, huge roast potatoes and pickled apples with cloves stuck into them like pincushions, not to mention a generous triangle of custard pie. We forgot about the blueberries.
After dinner and rest came the descent into the valley, always by a different road from the ascending one. That was fully as in- teresting as our morning's climb. Down, down through the can- opied wood-roads, over steep pitches where the horses must be held firmly and reined in a bit at every "thank-you ma'am"; smooth, shady plateaux where we found rows of tall maples and passed pros- perous farm-acres, the farmers' wives gossiping on their broad ve- randas, the children waving to us as we passed. The mountain stream led the way through winding wood-roads again, coming out on clearings with saw-mill or cider-mill to give us a chance to check the horses, wild in their descent, and pick flowers. We gathered great bunches of fern, cardinal-flowers, later in the season rare fringed gentians which grew in places remembered from former summers.
And then the return at dusk; dropping farther down into the valley and re-crossing our own broad river, with Sugarloaf and Toby and Mount Warner welcoming us back to the level again.
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Never was the ferry more lovely than in sunset light, the boat slip- ping through water with reflections of the hills deep, deep below- pledges of peacefulness and safety. The northerly breeze that was companion to us all day was hushed. Frosty airs freshened us as we drove in under the familiar elms and found doors thrown wide, supper spread and fires of big logs in the chimney-places. The mountain air which we had stored in our bodies once more invaded the house, identifying it with the hills which surrounded it, and its occupants with the secret of happiness.
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AN ALTAR IN THE HAYMOW
In spite of all the formal expression of religion around me, I felt the need of a personal religion. So I set up an altar of my own- on the topmost haymow of the barn; a refuge to which I fled when it seemed impossible to resist crying. I would run out, hot and hurt after some sharp correction or outburst of temper, and scale the old beam-ladder, digging hands and feet under the haystalks to get a grip on its pegs. I made the ascent as hastily as if there were blood- hounds on my trail, instead of indignant relatives whose anger was undoubtedly justified. I crept across the haystacks which crackled under my feet, until I found a deep hollow of dry, sweet-smelling clover, where I lay back with the relaxed abandon of a young animal. The pent-up sobs would burst forth, shaking me from head to foot, bringing immense relief to an overwrought spirit. After- wards came the bliss of seclusion, there with the cobwebby rafters overhead and the little square window under the ridgepole, letting in a slant of dust-blurred sunshine.
It was so deliciously still; just the odd, thin snappings of the hay- stalks bent by an occasional grasshopper or beetle, or again the cosy chirp of a big, black cricket who had climbed laboriously out of the depths of the big mow, after having been buried since haying-time. And if I raised myself on my elbow and listened intently to the rustling in a farther corner, I might spy a scarlet scrap among the fuzzy ends of timothy or redtop, and see a yellow bill and two beady eyes below the touch of color. An old hen who had come off into solitude also! Perhaps she would get up by and by, cackling if urged, and disclose a whole nestful of dilapidated, unfertile eggs- or nothing at all. "Just settin', the old fool," the farmer would have
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said. But she never disturbed my sense of possession and privacy. Somehow I got the feeling of being near to a God of my very own, Who understood me and to Whom I was not in the least afraid to talk. I felt Him there on the haymow. Moses' burning bush itself could not more surely have brought the Almighty to a place of wor- ship, the worship which, when all the creeds and theologies and phi- losophies and sacerdotal systems have had their sway, is offered di- rectly, without intervention, from the soul to its Maker.
The queer petitions that I made were nct preceded by any orderly confession, for I had confidence that my requests would be heard and graciously considered. They came spontaneously; that there mightn't be a thunderstorm; or if there had to be, that it wouldn't be near enough to strike anything; that it hadn't been any harm to eat a green apple, even if the seeds weren't wholly black; that the boys shouldn't get drowned going in bathing; that George wouldn't shoot any more squirrels; that I might find my lost hair-ribbon; that I should have a chance to ride horseback tomor- row morning; that I should beat at croquet. This was a frequent prayer, often ejaculated on the ground. "Oh Lord, please let me hit the stake!" would be fervently breathed at the last moment, and as I was not such a bad shot it usually seemed to be answered. I began to feel that perhaps I was taking an unfair advantage of my fellow- players. One day an admiring masculine partner had said to sister Arria as she shot her ball triumphantly across the lawn and hit that of a distant enemy,
"You have an unerring eye, Mademoiselle."
This gave me an idea. How much more dignified and legitimate it would be to pray for skill than for immediate victory, and then leave the outcome to chance! So after that I carried to my orisons in the haymow the fervent request, "Oh God, give me an unerring eye."
Gradually the process of refining my manner of address made these devotions more reverent. I got the idea that to add "if it be Thy will" was to make one's case more deserving of consideration. I even added the improved, "Thy holy, heavenly will." Now and then if they were ill or in need, I made intercessions for family or
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friends. Like church-members, armies and governments, I prayed first and foremost for my own particular wants.
I sometimes planned to stay on in the haymow till the family was moved to search for me and I relished it when someone called out my name from the barn floor or the yard. I held myself tense and still, and never moved till I heard the footsteps die away. No one should suspect that safe place of refuge. But toward supper- time it began to seem advisable to return to civilization. And I must make my exit before the milkers came into the barn. That meant waiting for a propitious moment, then sliding down into a heap of soft hay and slipping out through the back door behind the horses. I always returned to the family circle with a rein- forcement of good resolutions and with that sense of superiority to the rest of mankind which follows an experience of special re- ligious privilege. If a person carried out his good impulses he was bound to be better than the people who had not had any. So I moved about for the evening with my soul on a high plane, keeping aloof from the crowd and cuddling up to Mother, to whom I felt nearer when consciously good.
It was not possible, however, for a Bishop's child to live a soli- tary religious life in the haymow, for there were constant visitors to remind her of the existence of the church. I remember a visita- tion from seven bishops, who came to us because father was chair- man of a committee appointed to construct a hymnal for use in the Episcopal church, and the summer season had been selected for their work. In order to facilitate the undertaking, he conceived the idea of inviting them all to spend a fortnight at Forty Acres, and accomplish the task under its elins. Our mother and sister were kept busy with preparations and the necessity of supplementing the services of the small staff of domestics, represented by Harriet and the cook. So we children were left more or less to our own devices each forenoon while the right reverend gentlemen discussed and weighed the merits of the poems under selection, having already decided that only those containing a direct address to the Deity should be classed as hymns and considered suitable as a form of worship.
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It was very pleasant to listen to these discussions from under- neath the syringa bush outside the long room, and hear fine verse read aloud by sonorous voices; I enjoyed that kind of eaves-drop- ping. One morning while we were swinging listlessly on the gate we evolved a plan of driving to North Hadley with old Max to pur- chase some candy as the basis of a store at which the bishops might be persuaded to be purchasers. It was accomplished, by an expendi- ture of thirty cents and the arrangement of two barrels and a board in the yard, just before the committee emerged from the meeting for their noon recess. Much amused by the children's venture, the bishops bought at usurious prices, and doubled our original invest- ment in a few moments, to the guilty delight of the principals in the transaction. The portly bishop of Rhode Island, grinning broadly, paced the farmyard with a red-striped peppermint stick held cigar-wise between his lips, while the bishop of Ohio, a lean little person, nibbled a chocolate mouse. They were all in high humor when our parents arrived on the scene in a state of visible mortification. Apologies were received with laughter by the de- lighted prelates, who interceded in our behalf. The offense had never found its way into any code of behavior, so we could not be logically punished. Father had the discernment not to propose giving the profits to missions, so the matter stood as a humorous interlude of the compilation-committee's meeting. . . Not long ago I met a charming gentleman from Rhode Island, who asked, on hearing my name, if I was "the little girl who kept the candy- store for the bishops."
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VICTORIAN SUNDAY
When the old Hatfield bell tolled for Sunday morning service it took no prodding to get the horses to start the procession of three Huntington carriages toward the gray stone church in Amherst common. Attendance was never urged on anyone, but it was the thing to do, and none of us considered it an imposition. We sang hymns and listened to chapters about the lilies of the field and husbandmen and fruitful vines; sometimes we children watched a spray of woodbine swing across the outside of a stain-glassed window, and thought that it must be lovely outdoors. We read pas- ages in our Prayerbook and made too much noise turning the leaves perhaps, but when Father preached the sermon we listened quite intently until church was over, when there were handshak- ings and introductions on the steps.
We drove back to Forty Acres for a bountiful cold dinner, after which all of us took long naps, the boys under the trees in the farm- yard, where the horses had been turned in to nibble grass as a Sunday treat. At five o'clock there was evensong in the long room, where all of the many guests who stayed with us, joined us and sometimes witnessed a baptism of some country baby whose par- ents wanted the Bishop to baptise it at Forty Acres. We children helped make a wreath of flowers for the christening bowl, and watched the performance narrowly to see how individual babies took it. Afterwards we all took a walk along the brook, where we found cardinal-flower and the delicate Indian pipe or picked the partridge berries which carpeted the path. From a clearing in the pine woods we could see the northwestern hills outlined against che sunset, and we felt that even the hills and the valley shared our
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observance of Sunday at Hadley. Through the years we never lost our sense of thankfulness for those days of withdrawal from the pressure of everyday life.
Now and then I had a Sunday of quite a different sort, when Father was asked to go to some distant hill-village and preach to old friends in "orthodox" meetinghouses. He took me with him, a sun- burned child in a clean white frock, my short legs dangling from the seat of an old-fashioned wagon, my white-cotton-gloved fingers ec- statically interlaced, beside a middle-aged clergyman alive to every bit of light or shadow, every birdsong every mountaintop or hillside along that twenty or thirty mile drive. The start was usually made in one of those morning fogs which are a feature of Connecticut Valley weather through August and early September, a season chosen for our drives together. We got up at six and breakfast was solemn, partly because of the enormous delight which was held in suspension, and partly because of the dark and the need to keep quiet in order not to wake the household. There were several miles made in the gray mist, so thick that we could scarcely see the fence- posts. Up to North Hadley, over the plains to Sunderland, talking a good deal because there was nothing to divert our attention. Then maybe, when we crossed Sunderland bridge close to Sugarloaf, about the time when the family would be getting up at home, we could see a little patch of sandstone with a crimson tinge. It was a deep, smouldering red in that light, coming from a sun-ray in the east which had penetrated the fog and disclosed the mountaintop. Day; that was the signal. And then the cloud lifted, parted, floated away down the straight line of the river and when we turned into the np-hill road leading westward we began to see farmhouses and barns, and cows going out to pasture, then the tops of the encircling hills against a clear sky.
"The mountains shall bring peace," Father would say, "and the little hills righteousness to the people." Somehow his rhythmic way of repeating Bible texts never jarred upon his companions; it fitted in quite perfectly with the state of mind to which the glories of nature brought one. He was so entirely human a being himself and so at one with the processes of life that it seemed quite fitting
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