Part 11 (1/2)

”Why, nothing,” said Miss Polly; ”there was nothing _to_ do. I thought I should faint away; but I called Cousin Statiry's 'tention, and she looked dreadful put to it for a minute; and then says she, 'Open the door for him; I guess he won't make no trouble,' and, poor soul, he didn't. But to see him come up the aisle! He'd fixed himself nice as he could, poor creatur; he'd raked out Miss Patience's old Navarino bonnet with green ribbons and a willow feather, and set it on right over his cap, and he had her bead bag on his arm, and her turkey-tail fan that he'd got out of the best room; and he come with little short steps up to the pew: and I s'posed he'd set by the door; but no, he made to go by us, up into the corner where she used to set, and took her place, and spread his dress out nice, and got his handkerchief out o' his bag, just's he'd seen her do. He took off his bonnet all of a sudden, as if he'd forgot it, and put it under the seat, like he did his hat--that was the only thing he did that any woman wouldn't have done--and the crown of his cap was bent some. I thought die I should. The pew was one of them up aside the pulpit, a square one, you know, right at the end of the right-hand aisle, so I could see the length of it and out of the door, and there stood that poor boy we'd left to keep the cap'n company, looking as pale as ashes. We found he'd tried every way to keep the old gentleman at home, but he said he got f'erce as could be, so he didn't dare to say no more, and Cap'n Gunn drove him back twice to the house, and that's why he got in so late. I didn't know but it was the boy that had set him on to go to meeting when I see him walk in, and I could 'a wrung his neck; but I guess I misjudged him; he was called a stiddy boy.

He married a daughter of Ichabod Pinkham's over to Oak Plains, and I saw a son of his when I was taking care of Miss West last spring through that lung fever--looked like his father. I wish I'd thought to tell him about that Sunday. I heard he was waiting on that pretty Becket girl, the orphan one that lives with Nathan Becket. Her father and mother was both lost at sea, but she's got property.”

”What did they say in church when the captain came in, Aunt Polly?” said I.

”Well, a good many of them laughed--they couldn't help it, to save them; but the cap'n he was some hard o' hearin', so he never noticed it, and he set there in the corner and fanned him, as pleased and satisfied as could be. The singers they had the worst time, but they had just come to the end of a verse, and they played on the instruments a good while in between, but I could see 'em shake, and I s'pose the tune did stray a little, though they went through it well. And after the first fun of it was over, most of the folks felt bad. You see, the cap'n had been very much looked up to, and it was his misfortune, and he set there quiet, listening to the preaching. I see some tears in some o' the old folks'

eyes: they hated to see him so broke in his mind, you know. There was more than usual of 'em out that day; they knew how bad he'd feel if he realized it. A good Christian man he was, and dreadful precise, I've heard 'em say.”

”Did he ever go again?” said I.

”I seem to forget,” said Aunt Polly. ”I dare say. I wasn't there but from the last of June into November, and when I went over again it wasn't for three years, and the cap'n had been dead some time. His mind failed him more and more along at the last. But I'll tell you what he did do, and it was the week after that very Sunday, too. He heard it given out from the pulpit that the Female Missionary Society would meet with Mis' William Sands the Thursday night o' that week--the sewing society, you know; and he looked round to us real knowing; and Cousin Statiry, says she to me, under her bonnet, 'You don't s'pose he'll want to go?' and I like to have laughed right out. But sure enough he did, and what do you suppose but he made us fix over a handsome black watered silk for him to wear, that had been his sister's best dress. He said he'd outgrown it dreadful quick. Cousin Statiry she wished to heaven she'd thought to put it away, for Jacob had given it to her, and she was meaning to make it over for herself; but it didn't do to cross the cap'n and Jacob Gunn gave Statiry another one--the best he could get, but it wasn't near so good a piece, she thought. He set everything by Statiry, and so did the cap'n, and well they might.

”We hoped he'd forget all about it the next day; but he didn't; and I always thought well of those ladies, they treated him so handsome, and tried to make him enjoy himself. He did eat a great supper; they kep'

a-piling up his plate with everything. I couldn't help wondering if some of 'em would have put themselves out much if it had been some poor flighty old woman. The cap'n he was as polite as could be, and when Jacob come to walk home with him he kissed 'em all round and asked 'em to meet at his house. But the greatest was--land! I don't know when I've thought so much about those times--one afternoon he was setting at home in the keeping-room, and Statiry was there, and Deacon Abel Pinkham stopped in to see Jacob Gunn about building some fence, and he found he'd gone to mill, so he waited a while, talking friendly, as they expected Jacob might be home; and the cap'n was as pleased as could be, and he urged the deacon to stop to tea. And when he went away, says he to Statiry, in a dreadful knowing way, 'Which of us do you consider the deacon come to see?' You see, the deacon was a widower. Bless you! when I first come home I used to set everybody laughing, but I forget most of the things now. There was one day, though”--

”Here comes your father,” said Mrs. Snow. ”Now we mustn't let him go by or you'll have to walk 'way home.” And Aunt Polly hurried out to speak to him, while I took my great bunch of golden-rod, which already drooped a little, and followed her, with Mrs. Snow, who confided to me that the captain's nephew Jacob had offered to Polly that summer she was over there, and she never could see why she didn't have him: only love goes where it is sent, and Polly wasn't one to marry for what she could get if she didn't like the man. There was plenty that would have said yes, and thank you too, sir, to Jacob Gunn.

That was a pleasant afternoon. I reached home when it was growing dark and chilly, and the early autumn sunset had almost faded in the west. It was a much longer way home around by the road than by the way I had come across the fields.

_From a Mournful Villager_

Lately I have been thinking, with much sorrow, of the approaching extinction of front yards, and of the type of New England village character and civilization with which they are a.s.sociated. Formerly, because I lived in an old-fas.h.i.+oned New England village, it would have been hard for me to imagine that there were parts of the country where the Front yard, as I knew it, was not in fas.h.i.+on, and that Grounds (however small) had taken its place. No matter how large a piece of land lay in front of a house in old times, it was still a front yard, in spite of n.o.ble dimension and the skill of practiced gardeners.

There are still a good many examples of the old manner of out-of-door life and customs, as well as a good deal of the old-fas.h.i.+oned provincial society, left in the eastern parts of the New England States; but put side by side with the society that is American rather than provincial, one discovers it to be in a small minority. The representative United States citizen will be, or already is, a Westerner, and his instincts and ways of looking at things have certain characteristics of their own which are steadily growing more noticeable.

For many years New England was simply a bit of Old England transplanted.

We all can remember elderly people whose ideas were wholly under the influence of their English ancestry. It is hardly more than a hundred years since we were English colonies, and not independent United States, and the customs and ideas of the mother country were followed from force of habit. Now one begins to see a difference; the old traditions have had time to almost die out even in the most conservative and least changed towns, and a new element has come in. The true characteristics of American society, as I have said, are showing themselves more and more distinctly to the westward of New England, and come back to it in a tide that steadily sweeps away the old traditions. It rises over the heads of the prim and stately idols before which our grandfathers and grandmothers bowed down and wors.h.i.+ped, and which we ourselves were at least taught to walk softly by as they toppled on their thrones.

One cannot help wondering what a lady of the old school will be like a hundred years from now! But at any rate she will not be in heart and thought and fas.h.i.+on of good breeding as truly an Englishwoman as if she had never stepped out of Great Britain. If one of our own elderly ladies were suddenly dropped into the midst of provincial English society, she would be quite at home; but west of her own Hudson River she is lucky if she does not find herself behind the times, and almost a stranger and a foreigner.

And yet from the first there was a little difference, and the colonies were New England and not Old. In some ways more radical, yet in some ways more conservative, than the people across the water, they showed a new sort of flower when they came into bloom in this new climate and soil. In the old days there had not been time for the family ties to be broken and forgotten. Instead of the unknown English men and women who are our sixth and seventh cousins now, they had first and second cousins then; but there was little communication between one country and the other, and the mutual interest in every-day affairs had to fade out quickly. A traveler was a curiosity, and here, even between the villages themselves, there was far less intercourse than we can believe possible.

People stayed on their own ground; their horizons were of small circ.u.mference, and their whole interest and thought were spent upon their own land, their own neighbors, their own affairs, while they not only were contented with this state of things but encouraged it. One has only to look at the high-walled pews of the old churches, at the high fences of the town gardens, and at even the strong fortifications around some family lots in the burying-grounds, to be sure of this. The interviewer was not besought and encouraged in those days,--he was defied. In that quarter, at least, they had the advantage of us. Their interest was as real and heartfelt in each other's affairs as ours, let us hope; but they never allowed idle curiosity to show itself in the world's market-place, shameless and unblus.h.i.+ng.

There is so much to be said in favor of our own day, and the men and women of our own time, that a plea for a recognition of the quaintness and pleasantness of village life in the old days cannot seem unwelcome, or without deference to all that has come with the later years of ease and comfort, or of discovery in the realms of mind or matter. We are beginning to cling to the elderly people who are so different from ourselves, and for this reason: we are paying them instinctively the honor that is due from us to our elders and betters; they have that grand prestige and dignity that only comes with age; they are like old wines, perhaps no better than many others when they were young, but now after many years they have come to be worth n.o.body knows how many dollars a dozen, and the connoisseurs make treasures of the few bottles of that vintage which are left.

It was a restricted and narrowly limited life in the old days. Religion, or rather sectarianism, was apt to be simply a matter of inheritance, and there was far more bigotry in every cause and question,--a fiercer partisans.h.i.+p; and because there were fewer channels of activity, and those undivided into specialties, there was a whole-souled concentration of energy that was as efficient as it was sometimes narrow and short-sighted. People were more contented in the sphere of life to which it had pleased G.o.d to call them, and they do not seem to have been so often sorely tempted by the devil with a sight of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. We are more likely to busy ourselves with finding things to do than in doing with our might the work that is in our hands already. The disappearance of many of the village front yards may come to be typical of the altered position of woman, and mark a stronghold on her way from the much talked-of slavery and subjection to a coveted equality. She used to be shut off from the wide acres of the farm, and had no voice in the world's politics; she must stay in the house, or only hold sway out of doors in this prim corner of land where she was queen. No wonder that women clung to their rights in their flower-gardens then, and no wonder that they have grown a little careless of them now, and that lawn mowers find so ready a sale. The whole world is their front yard nowadays!

There might be written a history of front yards in New England which would be very interesting to read. It would end in a treatise upon landscape gardening and its possibilities, and wild flights of imagination about the culture of plants under gla.s.s, the application of artificial heat in forcing, and the curious mingling and development of plant life, but it would begin in the simple time of the early colonists. It must have been hard when, after being familiar with the gardens and parks of England and Holland, they found themselves restricted to front yards by way of pleasure grounds. Perhaps they thought such things were wrong, and that having a pleasant place to walk about in out of doors would encourage idle and lawless ways in the young; at any rate, for several years it was more necessary to raise corn and potatoes to keep themselves from starving than to lay out alleys and plant flowers and box borders among the rocks and stumps.

There is a great pathos in the fact that in so stern and hard a life there was time or place for any gardens at all. I can picture to myself the little slips and cuttings that had been brought over in the s.h.i.+p, and more carefully guarded than any of the household goods; I can see the women look at them tearfully when they came into bloom, because nothing else could be a better reminder of their old home. What fears there must have been lest the first winter's cold might kill them, and with what love and care they must have been tended! I know a rose-bush, and a little while ago I knew an apple-tree, that were brought over by the first settlers; the rose still blooms, and until it was cut down the old tree bore apples. It is strange to think that civilized New England is no older than the little red roses that bloom in June on that slope above the river in Kittery. Those earliest gardens were very pathetic in the contrast of their extent and their power of suggestion and a.s.sociation. Every seed that came up was thanked for its kindness, and every flower that bloomed was the child of a beloved ancestry.

It would be interesting to watch the growth of the gardens as life became easier and more comfortable in the colonies. As the settlements grew into villages and towns, and the Indians were less dreadful, and the houses were better and more home-like, the busy people began to find a little time now and then when they could enjoy themselves soberly.

Beside the fruits of the earth they could have some flowers and a sprig of sage and southernwood and tansy, or lavender that had come from Surrey and could be dried to be put among the linen as it used to be strewn through the chests and cupboards in the old country.

I like to think of the changes as they came slowly; that after a while tender plants could be kept through the winter, because the houses were better built and warmer, and were no longer rough shelters which were only meant to serve until there could be something better. Perhaps the parlor, or best room, and a special separate garden for the flowers were two luxuries of the same date, and they made a noticeable change in the manner of living,--the best room being a formal recognition of the claims of society, and the front yard an appeal for the existence of something that gave pleasure,--beside the merely useful and wholly necessary things of life. When it was thought worth while to put a fence around the flower-garden the respectability of art itself was established and made secure. Whether the house was a fine one, and its inclosure s.p.a.cious, or whether it was a small house with only a narrow bit of ground in front, this yard was kept with care, and it was different from the rest of the land altogether. The children were not often allowed to play there, and the family did not use the front door except upon occasions of more or less ceremony. I think that many of the old front yards could tell stories of the lovers who found it hard to part under the stars, and lingered over the gate; and who does not remember the solemn group of men who gather there at funerals, and stand with their heads uncovered as the mourners go out and come in, two by two. I have always felt rich in the possession of an ancient York tradition of an old fellow who demanded, as he lay dying, that the gra.s.s in his front yard should be cut at once; it was no use to have it trodden down and spoilt by the folks at the funeral. I always hoped it was good hay weather; but he must have been certain of that when he spoke. Let us hope he did not confuse this world with the next, being so close upon the borders of it! It was not man-like to think of the front yard, since it was the special domain of the women,--the men of the family respected but ignored it,--they had to be teased in the spring to dig the flower beds, but it was the busiest time of the year; one should remember that.

I think many people are sorry, without knowing why, to see the fences pulled down; and the disappearance of plain white palings causes almost as deep regret as that of the handsome ornamental fences and their high posts with urns or great white b.a.l.l.s on top. A stone coping does not make up for the loss of them; it always looks a good deal like a lot in a cemetery, for one thing; and then in a small town the gra.s.s is not smooth, and looks uneven where the flower-beds were not properly smoothed down. The stray cows trample about where they never went before; the bushes and little trees that were once protected grow ragged and scraggly and out at elbows, and a few forlorn flowers come up of themselves, and try hard to grow and to bloom. The ungainly red tubs that are perched on little posts have plants in them, but the poor posies look as if they would rather be in the ground, and as if they are held too near the fire of the sun. If everything must be neglected and forlorn so much the more reason there should be a fence, if but to hide it. Americans are too fond of being stared at; they apparently feel as if it were one's duty to one's neighbor. Even if there is nothing really worth looking at about a house, it is still exposed to the gaze of the pa.s.sers-by. Foreigners are far more sensible than we, and the out-of-door home life among them is something we might well try to copy.