Part 1 (1/2)

Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy.

by Unknown Author.

To the Boys and Girls in America,

Who took the ”Little Nailer” of the father-land from his smithy, and sent him to School for two years I dedicate this little Book, as an offering of my affection, and as a souvenir of that loving act of benevolent sympathy.

ELIHU BURRITT.

Worcester, Ma.s.s., March 20, 1850.

JEMMY STUBBINS, OR THE NAILER BOY.

Before I left America in 1846, in order to gratify the wish that had long occupied my heart, of visiting the motherland, I formed for myself a plan of procedure to which I hoped to be able rigidly to adhere. I determined that my visit to England should bring me face to face with the people; that I should converse with the artizan in his workshop, and lifting the lowly door-latches of the poor, should become intimately acquainted with their life--with their manners, and it might be, with their hopes and sorrows.

TUESDAY, JULY 21st, 1846.--After a quiet cosy breakfast, served up on a little round table for myself alone, I sat down to test the practicability of the plan I had formed at home for my peregrinations in England:--_viz._, to write until one, P.M., then to take my staff and travel on, eight or ten miles, to another convenient stopping-place for the night. As much depended upon the success of the experiment, I was determined to carry the point against the predictions of my friends. So at it I went, _con amore_. The house was as quiet as if a profound Sabbath was resting upon it, and the windows of my airy chamber looked through the foliage of grave elms down upon a green valley. I got on swimmingly; and after a frugal dinner at the little round table, I buckled on my knapsack with a feeling of self-gratulation in view of the literary part of my day's work. Having paid my bill, and given the lady a copy of my corn-meal receipts, I resumed my walk toward W----.

I was suddenly diverted from my contemplation of this magnificent scenery, by a fall of heavy rain drops, as the prelude of an impending shower. Seeing a gate open, and hearing a familiar clicking behind the hedge, I stepped through into a little blacksmith's shop, about as large an American smoke-house for curing bacon. The first object that my eyes rested on, was a full-grown man nine years of age, and nearly three feet high, perched upon a stone of half that height, to raise his breast to the level of his father's anvil, at which he was at work, with all the vigor of his little short arms, making nails. I say, a _full-grown_ man; for I fear he can never grow any larger, physically or mentally. As I put my hand on his shoulders in a familiar way, to make myself at home with him, and to remove the timidity with which my sudden appearance seemed to inspire him, by a pleasant word or two of greeting, his flesh felt case-hardened into all the induration of toiling manhood, and as unsusceptible of growth as the anvil block. Fixed manhood had set in upon him in the greenness of his youth; and there he was, by his father's side, a stinted, premature _man_ with his childhood cut off; with no s.p.a.ce to grow in between the cradle and the anvil-block; chased, as soon as he could stand on his little legs, from the hearth-stone to the forge-stone, by iron necessity, that would not let him stop long enough to pick up a letter of the English alphabet on the way. O, Lord John Russell! think of this. Of this Englishman's son, placed by his mother, scarcely weaned, on a high, cold stone, barefooted, before the anvil; there to harden, sear, and blister his young hands by heating and hammering ragged nailrods, for the sustenance those b.r.e.a.s.t.s can no longer supply! Lord John! look at those nails, as they lie hissing on the block. Know you their meaning, use and language? Please your lords.h.i.+p, let me tell you--I have made nails many a day and many a night--_they are iron exclamation points_, which this unlettered, dwarfed boy is unconsciously arraying against you, against the British government, and the government of British literature, for cutting him off without a letter of the English alphabet, when printing is done by steam; for incarcerating him for no sin on his parents' side, but poverty, in a dark, six-by-eight prison of hard labor, a _youthless_ being--think of it!--an infant hardened, almost in its mother's arms, into a man, by toil that bows the st.u.r.diest of the world's laborers who come to manhood through the intervening years of childhood!

The boy's father was at work with his back toward me, when I entered. At my first word of salutation to the lad, he turned around and accosted me a little bashfully, as if unaccustomed to the sight of strangers in that place, or reluctant to let them into the scene and secret of his poverty. I sat down upon one end of his nail-bench, and told him I was an American blacksmith by trade, and that I had come in to see how he got on in the world; whether he was earning pretty good wages at his business, so that he could live comfortably, and send his children to school. As I said this, I glanced inquiringly toward the boy, who was looking steadily at me from his stone stool by the anvil. Two or three little crock-faced girls, from two to five years of age, had stolen in timidly, and a couple of young, frightened eyes were peering over the door-sill at me. The poor Englishman--he was as much an Englishman as the Duke of Wellington--looked at his bushy-headed, barefooted children, and said softly, with a melancholy shake of the head, that the times were rather hard with him. It troubled his heart, and many hours of the night he had been kept awake by the thought of it, that he could not send his children to school, nor teach them himself to read. They were good children, he said, with a moist yearning in his eyes; they were all the wealth he had, and he loved them the more, the harder he had to work for them. The poorest part of the poverty that was on him, was that he could not give his children the letters. They were good children, for all the crock of the shop was on their faces, and their fingers were bent like eagle's claws with handling nails. He had been a poor man all his days, and he knew his children would be poor all their days, and poorer than he, if the nail business should continue to grow worse. If he could only give them the letters, it would make them the like of rich; for then they could read the Testament. He could read the Testament a little, for he had learned the letters by the forge-light.

It was a good book, was the Testament; and he was sure it was made for nailers and such like. It helped him wonderfully when the loaf was small on his table, He had but little time to read it when the sun was up, and it took him loner to read a little, for he learned the letters when he was old. But he laid it beside his dish at dinner time, and fed his heart with it, while his children were eating the bread that fell to his share. And when he had spelt out a line of the shortest words, he read them aloud, and his eldest boy--the one on the block there--could say several whole verses he had learned in this way. It was a great comfort to him, to think that James could take into his heart so many verses of the Testament which he could not read. He intended to teach all his children in this way. It was all he could do for them; and this he had to do at meal-times; for all the other hours he had to be at the anvil.

The nailing business was growing harder, he was growing old, and his family large. _He had to work from four o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night, to earn eighteen-pence._ His wages averaged only about _seven s.h.i.+llings a week_; and there were five of them in the family to live on what they could earn. It was hard to make up the loss of an hour. Not one of their hands, however little, could be spared. Jemmy was going on nine years of age, and a helpful lad he was; and the poor man looked at him doatingly. Jemmy could work off a thousand nails a day, of the smallest size. The rent of their little shop, tenement and garden, was five pounds a year; and a few pennies earned by the youngest of them were of great account.

But, continued the blacksmith, speaking cheerily, I am not the one that ought to complain. Many is the man that has a harder lot of it than I, among the nailers along this hill and in the valley. My neighbor in the next door could tell you something about labor you never have heard the like of in your country. He is an older man than I, and there are seven of them in his family; and, for all that, he has no boy like Jemmy here to help him. Some of his little girls are sickly, and their mother is not over strong, and it all comes on him. He is an oldish man, as I was saying, yet he not only works eighteen hours every day at his forge, but _every Friday in the year he works all night long_, and never lays off his clothes till late of Sat.u.r.day night. A good neighbor is John Stubbins, and the only man just in our neighborhood who can read the newspaper. It is not often he gets a newspaper; for it is not the like of us that can have newspapers and bread too at the same time in our houses. But now and then he begs an old one, partly torn, at the baker's, and reads it to us of a Sunday night. So once in two or three weeks, we hear something of what is going on in the world--something about Corn Laws, and the Duke of Wellington, and Oregon, and India, and Ireland, and other parts of England. We heard tell a while ago that the poor people would not have to make so many nails for a loaf of bread much longer, because Sir Robert Peel and some other men were going to take off the port-locks and other taxes, and let us buy bread of them that could sell it the cheapest. When we heard this talked of, without knowing the truth of it, John Stubbins took a penny and went to the White Hart and bought a drink of beer, and then the landlady let him look into the newspaper which she keeps for her customers. When he came back, he told us a good deal of what was going on, and said he was sure the times would be better one of these days.

Here he was interrupted by John Stubbins himself, who, hearing some strange voices mingling in earnest conversation in the other end of the building, came round to see who was there. With the entrance of this John Stubbins, I must turn over another leaf of my journal.

SECOND VISIT TO THE LITTLE NAILER.

The interest created in the United States by the above account of my first meeting with Josiah, encouraged me to propose that the children of America should, by a subscription of a half dime each, contribute as much money as would clothe and educate him for a year. The proposition met with a cordial response, and one hundred dollars were soon collected for this purpose.

At the time I first threw out the proposition in regard to the education of the little Nailer, I hardly believed that they could so abolish s.p.a.ce and dry up the ocean intervening between them and such a young sufferer, as they have done. Bless your hearts, children, I reckoned you would have a merry time of it about Christmas, and have your pockets filled with all sorts of nice things, that would come by way of affectionate remembrance from grand-papa down to the fourth cousin; and you would bring to mind lots of boys and girls that had no one to give them a picture-book as large as a cent, and who couldn't read it if they had one. I thought this would be a good time to put in a word for ”The Little Nailer;” and so I threw out the thought, very hopefully, that you should all contribute something from your Christmas presents and make the little fellow a Christmas gift of a year's schooling. I suggested this idea between doubt and hope. I did not know how it would strike you. I did not know but some of you might think that the great ocean was too wide to be crossed by your little charities; that others might say, ”He is only an _English_ boy--he doesn't belong to our family circle--let him alone,” And so I waited anxiously to hear from you; for I was sure you would talk it over among yourselves in the ”School-room,”

and on the way home, and by the fireside. Well, after waiting a few weeks, the English steamer came in from Boston, and brought me a letter from Ezekiel; and the happiest thing in it was, that the boys and girls of ”Our School Room” had made no more of the Atlantic Ocean than if it had been a mud-puddle, which they could step across to give a helping hand to a lad who was down and couldn't get up alone. It made my heart get up in my mouth and try to talk instead of my tongue, when I read to some of my friends here what you had done for the little Nailer; when I told them to read for themselves and see that your sympathies knew nothing about any geography, any more than if the science of natural divisions had never been discovered, or if oceans, seas, rivers or mountains, or any such terms as _American, English_ or _African,_ were not to be found in the Dictionary. The letter stated that ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY half-dimes had already come in, from children all over the country, to pay the schoolmaster for teaching the little English nailer to read in the Testament, and to write a legible hand. Nor was this all.--Ezekiel said that there was no telling how many more half-dimes would come in; for not only had the children of our own ”School-Room”

taken up the matter, but those of other school-rooms, especially away down in Maine, were determined to have some share in fitting out the nailer-boy with an education sufficient to make a man of him, if he will use it aright. I saw it clear that the little fellow was to be put to school; that his hammer was to lie silent on the anvil for the s.p.a.ce of one cold winter; and that the young folks in America would foot the bill. And I was determined that this should be a Christmas gift to him, that he and his young American benefactors might enjoy it together. So two days before Christmas, I started from Birmingham on foot to carry the present to him.

It was a bright, frosty morning, and, after a walk of twelve miles, I came in sight of the little brick cottage of the nailer by the wayside.

I approached it with mingled emotions of solicitude. Perhaps it had been vacated by the poor man and his family, and some other nailer had taken his place. Perhaps the hand that spares neither rich nor poor had been there, and I should miss the boy at the anvil. I stopped once or twice to listen. The windows were open, but all was still. There was no clicking of hammers, nor blowing of bellows, to indicate that the nailer family were still its occupants. I began to fear that they were gone, and my imagination ran rapidly over a hundred casualties and changes which might have come upon them. The same gate was open that invited me to enter last summer; and as I pa.s.sed through it, I met a woman who said the nailer was at dinner in the family apartment of the building. She went in before me, and the next moment I was in the midst of the circle of my old acquaintance, who had just risen from the table and were sitting around the fire. My sudden appearance in their midst seemed to cause as much pleasure as surprise. The father arose and welcomed me with the heartfelt expressions of good-will. Little Josiah, the hero of my story, came forward timidly with a sunny token of recognition brightening up his black, sharp eyes. The mother, a tidy, interesting looking woman in a clean, white cap, added her welcome; and I sat down with them, with Josiah standing between my knees, and told them my story--how some children in America had interested themselves in their boy--how they had thought of him on their way to school, and talked of him on their way home, and in the parlor, and the kitchen and the cottage;--how they had contributed their pennies, which they had saved or earned, to send Josiah to school to learn to read the Testament; and how I had come to bring them, and to ask if the boy could be spared from the anvil. I glanced around upon the group of children, whose eager eyes indicated that they partially comprehended my errand, and then at a couple of sides of bacon suspended over my head. The nailer's eyes followed my own, and as they reciprocally rested on the bacon, he commenced his reply from that end of the subject. He said it was true that many were worse off than he, and many were the comforts he had, that thousands of the poor knew nothing of. Here he glanced affectionately at his children; but my eyes brought him back to the bacon, and so he went on, apparently under a new impression of his resources of comfort. He said he had to sell some of his goods to buy the pig when very small, and had ”_luggled_” along with some difficulty to feed and fatten him into a respectable size. Yes, he was a pretty clever pig; nor was that all--the nailing business had become better, by a half-penny a thousand, than when I was with them in the summer; and Josiah could now earn ninepence a day. He wanted to send all his children to school; if they could not read, they would be poor, even if they should come to own parks and carriages, he could not bear to see them growing up with no books in their hands. He worked long at the anvil as it was; and he was willing to work longer and harder to pay the schoolmaster for teaching his children to read. Josiah was now ten years old; he had been a faithful boy; he had made nails ever since he could hold a hammer; and it was for this that he desired the more to send him to school. It had troubled him much all along that the boy was working so long and so well at the anvil, without having any of his wages to pay the schoolmaster for teaching him something that would make him rich in his poverty when he came to be a man; and he had tried to make up this to him in a little way, by reading to him easy verses from the Testament, many of which he had learned by heart. Besides this, he had bought a little picture-reading-book, since I was with them last, and Josiah could master many easy words in it; for he had learned almost all the letters. But he knew this was a slow way of getting on, although he feared it was the best he could do for him. He knew not how he could manage to spare him for the winter. He had no other boy; there was a baby in the cradle only a fortnight old, which made him five children under ten years of age, to be fed, warmed and clothed through the winter months. Here he fell into a calculation of this kind--he could now earn nine s.h.i.+llings, or about two dollars and twenty cents, a week.

His coal cost him three s.h.i.+llings a week, and his house-rent two; leaving him but _four_ s.h.i.+llings a week for a family of seven persons to live upon. Josiah's clothes were well nigh gone; they were indeed ragged; there was nothing left to sew patches to; and all he had in the world was on him, except a smock frock which he put on over them on the Sabbath.

These considerations gave a thoughtful tone to the nailer's voice as they came upon his mind, and a thoughtful air came over the family group when he had finished, and they all looked straitly into the fire as much as to say, ”It cannot be done.” So I began at the bacon to soften down these obstacles--there were nearly 150 pounds of it, besides a spare-rib hanging from another joist--and suggested how much better off they were than ten thousands of poor people in the world. Could they ever spare Josiah better than during this winter? He would learn faster now than when he was older, and when they could not spare him so well. Nor was this all; if they could get on without him for a few months, he might not only learn to read without spelling, but he could teach his three little sisters to read during the winter nights, and the baby, too, as soon as it could talk; so that sending him to school now, would be like sending all his children to the same school. Yes, it might be more than this. Let him go for a few months, and when he came back to the anvil, he might work all day, and in the evening he might get together all the nailer children that lived within a mile, and teach them how to read and write. There was the little Wesleyan chapel within a rod of their own door, lying useless except on Sundays. It would be just the place for an evening school for fifty or even a hundred little children, whose parents were too poor to send them to the day-schools of the town. And wouldn't they like to look in and see Josiah with his primer in hand teaching their neighbors' children to read in this way; with his clean smock-frock on, setting copies in the writing-books of the little nailers? Josiah, who was standing between my knees, looking sharply into the fire with his picture book in his hand, turned suddenly around at this idea and fixed his eyes inquiringly upon my own. The thought vibrated through all the fine-strung sympathies of parental affection.