“THE INDIAN, HELPING HIMSELF TO A HUGE HANDFUL OF THE SOAP, WASHED HIS HANDS SOLEMNLY”“THE INDIAN, HELPING HIMSELF TO A HUGE HANDFUL OF THE SOAP, WASHED HIS HANDS SOLEMNLY”
“THE INDIAN, HELPING HIMSELF TO A HUGE HANDFUL OF THE SOAP, WASHED HIS HANDS SOLEMNLY”
As Remember watched him, her heart beat fast indeed. “As soon as he finishes he will take me away,” she thought.
Slowly the Indian dried his hands on the towel she gave him. Then he picked up the crock of soft soap. He set it on his shoulder. Pointing to the pair of turkeys that he had laid on the table to show that he was giving them to Remember in exchange for the soap, he strode out of the door and was soon lost to sight in the wood’s path.
Remember dropped down in a chair and could scarcely believe she was really safe. A quick clatter of hoofs roused her. She darted to the door.
“Father, mother!” she cried.
Yes, it was indeed they; her father riding in front with her mother in the saddle behind.
“Just in time for Thanksgiving!” they cried as they jumped down and embraced Remember.
“And I’m here, too, and we have a pair of turkeys for dinner,” Remember said, half smiles and half tears, as she told them her strange adventure.
“If you will but help me, Hannah, as a little girl of ten should, with the candle dipping you will forget to fret all the day long about the home coming of father and Nathaniel,” Mistress Wadsworth said, laying a kind hand on the bent head of the little daughter.
All through the long, gray afternoon Hannah had looked out of the diamond-shaped panes of the window, past the fields of dried cornstalks that looked as if they were peopled with ghosts in their garments of snow, and toward the forest of pointed, green firs beyond. She turned from the window now, as her mother spoke to her, and looked up bravely, trying to smile.
“You are quite as anxious about dear brother Nathaniel and father as I am,” she said. “It is now two weeks since they started away with the sledge to bring us back the wood for the winter. Father said that it would take him no longer than ten days at the utmost. Brother Nathaniel is only twelve, and young for so hard a journey. There have been storms, and there are Indians—” a sob caught the little girl’s voice.
It was Mistress Wadsworth’s turn to look out now with saddened eyes through the window and into the falling twilight of the New England winter.
“Your father said that he would be home for Christmas Day,” she said, “and he will keep his word unless some ill befalls them. In the meantime, we will make the candles. Then the house will be brighter to welcome them than when we burn only pine knots. To-night, Hannah, we will measure the candle wicking for we shall be busy the greater part of to-morrow with the dipping.”
As the two, both mother and little daughter dressed in the long, straight frocks of dark homespun and the white caps that were worn in those long-ago days, bent over the pine table after supper, they looked very much alike. The fire in the great brick fireplace had a sticky, pitchy lump of fire wood upon the top. It was a pine knot, and the only light in the room. It flickered upon the bright rag rugs of the floor and the painted chairs with their scoured rush seats and on the green settle, making a pleasant, cheerful glow. They tried not to hear the wind that howled down the chimney, or think of the beloved father and little brother who were so far away in a bleak lumber clearing.
Measuring the wicks for the tallow candles was so painstaking a task that Mistress Wadsworth did it herself; Hannah, standing beside her, only watched. She stuck an old iron fork straight up in the soft wood of the table some eight inches from the edge. Around it she threw half a dozen loops of the soft candle wicking. She cut these loops off evenly at the edge of the table. Then she measured and cut more until she had made several dozen, all exactly the same length. As she worked, they talked together of what Hannah most loved to hear about, Christmas in her dear mother’s girlhood home, merry England.
“They had polished brass sconces fastened everywhere to the walls,” Mistress Wadsworth said. She could almost see the bright scene in the dim shadows cast by the pine knots. “In every sconce there would be tall white candles. We burned more candles in a night then than we can afford to burn in a month now,” she sighed.
“And there was a fir tree from the forest brought into the hall for the children,” Hannah continued, for she knew the story well. “There were candles on the tree, lighted and shining. Oh, it must have been a pretty sight to see the children dance about the Christmas tree and sing their carols! We never have Christmas trees with candles in this new land, do we mother? Why?” she asked.
“The Governor decrees that we shall not continue the customs of the land that we have left so far behind,” Mistress Wadsworth replied, but with another sigh. “And now to bed, little daughter, for we shall be busy indeed on the morrow.”
When morning came, Hannah found that her mother had worked after she had gone to bed, twisting and doubling each candle wick and slipping through the loop a candle rod. This rod was a stick like a lead pencil but over three times as long. Six wicks hung from each rod. They looked, Hannah thought, as if they were so many little clothes lines. Then the big iron kettle filled with clean white tallow was swung on a heavy iron hook in the fireplace. As the tallow melted, Mistress Wadsworth directed Hannah as she tipped down two straight backed chairs and placed two long poles across them like the sides of a ladder with no rungs. Across these were laid the candle rods with their hanging wicks. Then the kettle was taken from the fire and set on the wide hearth, and the pleasant task of the candle dipping was begun.
One at a time, Hannah took the candle rods carefully by their ends and dipped the wicks for a second in the melted tallow. Then she put it back between the chairs to dry and took up another rod, dipping the wicks in the same way. When the last wicks had been dipped, the first ones were dry enough to dip again. With each dipping, the candles grew plump and straight and white. One candle rod, though, Hannah dipped only once in every three times. When her mother noticed this she said, “Little daughter, you are neglecting six of the candles. See how small they are!”
“HANNAH DIPPED THE WICKS FOR A SECOND IN THE MELTED TALLOW”“HANNAH DIPPED THE WICKS FOR A SECOND IN THE MELTED TALLOW”
“HANNAH DIPPED THE WICKS FOR A SECOND IN THE MELTED TALLOW”
Hannah ran over, threw her arms about her mother’s neck and whispered something in her ear. Mistress Wadsworth shook her head at first; then she smiled.
“It can do no harm that I see,” she said. “It will be only a child’s play before Christmas and no cause for the Governor’s displeasure. Yes, little daughter, if you wish. If it brings joy to your sorrowful heart, I shall be glad.”
When the candle dipping was over and the precious candles were laid away to be burned only if the father and little Nathaniel came home, Hannah slipped six, as small as Christmas tree candles, from one rod and wrapped them carefully in a bit of fair white linen. They were her little candles, to be used as she wished.
The days, white with snow and very cold, wore on until it was only a week before the blessed Christmas day. There were slight preparations for it in the little New England settlement where Hannah lived for it was not thought fitting to be merry and gay at Christmas time these centuries ago. But at the small white meeting-house Hannah and the other little colonist children practised a carol to be sung on Christmas Day.
“Shout to Jehovah, all the earth,Serve ye Jehovah, with gladness;Before him bow, singing with mirth.”
The children sang it as it was pitched by the elder’s tuning fork, and the tune was slow and dirge like. The tears came again to Hannah’s eyes as she tried to sing, for no word had come as yet of father and Nathaniel. A runner to the village brought word a few days before of attacks by the Indians on near-by parties of wood cutters. Could they have encountered the party with whom were father and Nathaniel, she thought?
THE TOWN CRIERTHE TOWN CRIER
THE TOWN CRIER
But Hannah’s secret kept her happy! A few days before Christmas she went to a near-by bit of woodland. She carried the old hatchet that Nathaniel had left at home, and she looked over the young fir trees until she found one that was well shaped, tiny, and as green as green could be. She chopped and hacked at the roots until she cut down the little tree. Then she tugged it home. As she held its prickly needles close to her warm cloak she whispered, “You are not to bear gifts, little Christmas tree, because that would not be right; only candles to light the way home for dear father and brother Nathaniel.”
At last it was three days before Christmas and evening in the little New England village. The town crier had taken his way through the narrow main street early in the afternoon,—a dismal enough looking figure in his long, black cloak and tall, black hat, and ringing his bell.
“Lost, in all probability, lost,” he called. “This Christmas time,” and then he gave the toll of names of the men and boys who had started out so many weeks before on the ill-fated lumber trip and from whom no word had come. As he reached the names, “Goodman Wadsworth, little Nathaniel Wadsworth,” Mistress Wadsworth cowered in front of the fire, her bowed head in her hands. But Hannah kissed her gently for comfort, and took out the little tallow candles that she had dipped. Then she set up the tiny fir tree, with the lighted Christmas candles, in front of the window that looked out upon the main street.
Now the village was black with the night. The fires were low, and the barred doors and windows shut in Hannah’s and her mother’s sadness. The long street was white with snow. A few glimmering stars shed a fitful path of light down it, but the houses were like so many tightly-closed eyes. They could hardly be seen at all.
“THE LITTLE WHITE BOY ... HAD PRINTED STRANGE CHARACTERS”“THE LITTLE WHITE BOY ... HAD PRINTED STRANGE CHARACTERS”
“THE LITTLE WHITE BOY ... HAD PRINTED STRANGE CHARACTERS”
It was almost ten o’clock when an Indian boy, little Fleet-as-an-Arrow, like a flash of color in the dark of the night, darted down the street. He was wrapped from head to foot in his scarlet blanket. He was panting. His bare limbs were cold. He had come a long, long way without food since morning, but he did not stop running now that he was nearing his goal. The dim little town frightened him, though. He had never been in so strange a place before. The home that little Fleet-as-an-Arrow knew was a wide plain with a background of forests; his house was a painted wigwam; and his light was a camp fire. But he pressed against his heart a bit of white birch bark upon which a little white boy of his own age, brought to the camp a captive with a band of prisoners, had printed strange characters. It was not like the picture writing of the tribe, but it must be important for all that, Fleet-as-an-Arrow knew. The little white boy, whom this little Indian boy had grown to love like his own brother, had begged him to carry the writing to his mother.
“Go to the North,” he had said. So Fleet-as-an-Arrow had watched the moss on the trees and followed the north star. Here he was, but how could he tell in which of all these strange wigwams the mother of his little white friend lived?
Suddenly Fleet-as-an-Arrow’s dark eyes flashed into a smile. At the end of the street a bright light attracted him. He ran on, bravely following it. Of all the windows in the whole village this was the only one that was unbarred, and where the curtains were parted. As he came nearer the light, Fleet-as-an-Arrow’s heart almost stopped beating for admiration and wonder. Never in all his twelve years had the little Indian boy seen a sight like this. It was an evergreen tree such as he knew and loved in his own home forest, but it was covered with glimmering, sparkling, starry lights. There it stood, Hannah’s Christmas tree, the little tallow candles drawing Fleet-as-an-Arrow with Nathaniel’s message like a magnet.
“HE BEAT THE HEAVY OAK PANELS WITH HIS HALF-FROZEN, BROWN LITTLE HANDS”“HE BEAT THE HEAVY OAK PANELS WITH HIS HALF-FROZEN, BROWN LITTLE HANDS”
“HE BEAT THE HEAVY OAK PANELS WITH HIS HALF-FROZEN, BROWN LITTLE HANDS”
He stopped at the door and beat the heavy oak panels with his half-frozen, brown little hands. When Mistress Wadsworth, followed closely by Hannah, opened it, frightened and dazed at the strange visit in the night, Fleet-as-an-Arrow looked at them a minute on the threshold. In the light of the little Christmas tree he could see Hannah’s pink cheeks and wide-open, blue eyes and the pale gold braids of her hair. Why, she looked like the boy that he had left in the Indian’s camp, Fleet-as-an-Arrow saw. He knew now that he had found the right place. He went inside and pulled the message, written with a bit of charcoal in scrawling letters on the square of birch bark, from beneath his blanket. Then he thrust it into Mistress Wadsworth’s hands. She read it in the glow of the fire.
“We are safe, but the Indians will not let us go without gifts of beads and corn. Send some men to fetch us.Your son,Nathaniel.”
“We are safe, but the Indians will not let us go without gifts of beads and corn. Send some men to fetch us.
Your son,Nathaniel.”
With a glad cry, Mistress Wadsworth put her arms about the little Indian boy. Then, while she put on her bonnet and cloak and lighted the big, brass lantern, Hannah drew Fleet-as-an-Arrow up to the fire and brought him food. Running with her lantern from one sleeping house to another, Mistress Wadsworth soon roused the men of the village who organized themselves into a rescuing party.
When the first pale pink of the morning sun tinged the sky, the party, with the gifts which the Indians demanded as a ransom for their captives, was on its way. They carried Little Fleet-as-an-Arrow in front as their guide.
Such a Christmas Eve as it was. Father and Nathaniel, ragged and hungry, but safe, were home in time! Two of the large tallow candles in the polished brass candlesticks shone on the mantelpiece over the fireplace, and Hannah lighted the little Christmas tree again. She and brother Nathaniel, hands clasped happily together, sat in its light, so glad to be together again that they needed neither gifts nor sweets to make their Christmas joy.
The grim iron doors of the prison clanged shut and the turnkey fastened them. Hearing the sound, Desire touched the homespun sleeve of the little boy with whom she was walking home from market down the narrow street of the musty old town of Salem.
“Did you hear that sound of the locking of the doors, Jonathan? It means that they’ve caught and imprisoned another witch.”
The boy, a quaint little figure in his long trousers, short jacket, and ruffled shirt looked, wide-eyed, at the little girl. Quite as strangely dressed a child as Jonathan was small Desire, the only daughter of Elder Baxter who was high in authority in old Salem in those far-away days. Although not quite twelve summers and winters of the New England of a stern long-ago had painted Desire’s plump cheeks the pink of a rose and burned the shining gold of her hair, her gray frock with its short waist and long skirt nearly trailed the gray cobble stones of the street. Her soft brown hair was braided close to her head and pulled back tightly in front from her white brow and tucked out of sight beneath her stiff cap. A white kerchief was folded closely about her primly held shoulders and over her frock she wore a long, dark cape for the fall day was chill.
“'DO YOU KNOW WHO THE WITCH IS, DESIRE?’ HE ASKED”“‘DO YOU KNOW WHO THE WITCH IS, DESIRE?’ HE ASKED”
“‘DO YOU KNOW WHO THE WITCH IS, DESIRE?’ HE ASKED”
Jonathan set down the rush basket of food supplies that he was carrying for Desire, and he touched the iron paling that shut in the prison.
“Do you know who the witch is, Desire?” he asked, his voice low with awe.
“Not I,” the little maid answered, “but they do say that she has been brewing her spells for six months’ time before the elders caught her. I heard my father and mother talking about it only this morning. They said that before the day was over the witch that was the cause of all our recent troubles in Salem would be caught and safely imprisoned.”
“What troubles?” Jonathan asked.
“Have you not heard, Jonathan?” Desire lowered her voice and looked up and down the street to see that no one was listening to her.
“Abigail Williams was ill of the whooping cough and she had three fits which, as every one knows, is a sign that a witch had cast a spell over her. And Mercy Talcott’s teakettle boiled over and nearly scalded Mercy’s mother. On the way for some ointment at the doctor’s to put on her mother’s hand, Mercy saw the witch herself flying over the tops of the trees on Gallows Hill and,” Desire’s voice was a whisper now, “she was riding on a broomstick.”
“How did Mercy know that it was a witch, and how could she be riding on a broomstick?” asked the practical Jonathan.
Desire tossed her head. “I can’t explain that to you, Jonathan. It was toward evening and Mercy says that she saw a long, dark form in the trees and she heard the dry leaves rustle.”
“Crows!” said Jonathan.
“For shame, Jonathan,” said Desire. “Do you not know that the eyes of Mercy Talcott are keen for seeing witches. She is to be at the trial to-morrow, and identify the evil creature.” Desire repeated the words of her elders in those far-away Colonial days of ignorance and superstition. “When shall we rid ourselves of this pest of witchcraft in Salem?” she said.
“Well,” Jonathan said, swinging the basket upon his shoulder and leading the way along the street again, “There’ll probably be one less witch to-morrow for she won’t have a chance to escape if that tale-bearing Mercy Talcott is at the trial. Let us go on by the side street and see if Jack is safe at Granny Hewitt’s, Desire.”
The two children hastened their steps and passed the scattering little brown houses of old Salem. Their quaintly gabled roofs made them look like dolls’ cottages. The windows with their tiny diamond-shaped panes were neatly curtained with white. At one house, a little larger than the others and having no garden, they drew their breath.
“The Witches’ House,” said Desire.
It was here that so many of these unfortunate creatures of the dark days of Salem had been kept in confinement before they met their punishment in prison, on the ducking stool, or on Gallows Hill. A little farther along they passed a great white meetinghouse where a gilded weathercock pointed bravely to the sky and high, white pillars stood at either side of the doorway.
“The witch will be tried here in the morning,” Jonathan said, and the two children walked a little faster toward a pleasanter stopping place, Governor Endicott’s big white house, set in the midst of his fair English garden.
Even now, when the wind blew cold from the water front and rustled the cornstalks and rattled the red pods of the rose hips, the Governor’s garden was a pleasant place for a child to see. Bright little marigolds, defying the frost, lifted their orange blossoms along the path. Great beds of scarlet dahlias and purple asters made a mass of color. The late sun marked for itself a long, golden shaft across the sundial, and at the back of the house could be seen a patch of winter squashes and pumpkins mellowing in a sunny spot.
“Was not the Governor kind to give us the pumpkin?” said Jonathan.
“And wasn’t Granny kind to show us how to make it into so strange a hobgoblin of a creature as is our Jack?” added Desire. “She said that almost no other granny in old Salem was old enough to remember about carving a pumpkin into a face as they did long ago in England. She told me that we must keep it a secret until All Hallow E’en, and then take the pumpkin with a tallow drip shining inside him, lighting his funny face, down through the street to show the other children.”
“I lighted it last night,” Jonathan confessed. “I went to Granny’s house with a cheese ball that was a gift from my mother to Granny.”
“How did the pumpkin look?” asked Desire eagerly.
“Fearsome!” said Jonathan. “We put it in the window and I went outside in the dark to look at it. It had the appearance of a grinning monster,” the boy laughed at his memory of the Jack-o’-Lantern.
“Here we are at Granny’s. Let us go in a moment,” Desire said as the two stopped before a tumble-down cottage at the end of a tiny lane. Granny Hewitt lived alone there, a little wrinkled crone with a face like a brown walnut and eyes that shone like two stars. But her mouth, oh, that was the best part of Granny; all the children said that it made them think of their own dear mother’s when she smiled. How could a smile be lovelier than that?
Having no kin of her own, Granny Hewitt loved the boys and girls who passed her cottage every day on their way to and from school. She made molasses cookies and vinegar taffy for them. She put balm on their scratches, and covered their primers and spellers with pieces of bright calico. No wonder Desire and Jonathan wanted to stop a moment at Granny Hewitt’s house. They went up the white gravel path with its neat border of clam shells. Desire lifted the big brass knocker on the door, letting it drop with a clang.
“GRANNY HEWITT LOVED THE BOYS AND GIRLS”“GRANNY HEWITT LOVED THE BOYS AND GIRLS”
“GRANNY HEWITT LOVED THE BOYS AND GIRLS”
There was no sound inside.
“She has gone to market,” Jonathan said.
“Well, good-bye, Jonathan,” Desire said, taking her basket from the boy’s hands. “I probably shall not see you to-morrow. It may be that my father will let me sit in our pew in the meeting-house during the witch’s trial.”
Jonathan’s eyes almost popped out of his head in surprise. “Could I go, too?” he asked.
“I’ll see if I can get you in,” Desire promised as the two friends parted.
The morning of the witch’s trial was as bright and peaceful as the fall sun lighting field and dingy streets and roofs could make it. By half-after seven, although the trial was not to begin until ten, the green common that surrounded the Second Meeting-house was a moving black and gray mass of stern men in their dark capes, buckled shoes, and tall hats, and gray-gowned women.
Inside the meeting-house every pew was filled. The platform was lined with the black-gowned elders, and the Governor himself, a dignified figure in his flowing cloak and powdered wig, occupied the pulpit. Desire sat, prim and quiet beside her mother, her little round head not much above the high back of the pew. On the other side sat Jonathan whose urgent request to come had been granted.
It was rumored that the witch who was about to be tried was of some repute in the practice of magic, and that she was to be made an example for any followers whom she might have.
Jonathan nudged Desire’s elbow. “Where is she?” he asked.
“Ssh,” the little girl put a warning finger to her lips. “They’ll bring her out in a minute.” As she finished her whispered warning, her father, Elder Baxter, rose and began to speak.
“We are met together to pass judgment upon a woman of Salem town who has wrought her magic arts to the undoing of its citizens. She has cast her spell over a child and thrown it into dire sickness. She has bewitched the kitchen of our neighbor, Elder Talcott. A child of twelve years and well versed in the art of discovering witchcraft saw this same witch after she had practised her arts. Mercy Talcott will please come to the platform. Bring in the witch.”
Desire and Jonathan craned their necks to see better as the black row of the elders parted to let in a bent, trembling little old lady. Two jailers guarded her, one on each side. She still wore her tidy white apron with its knitting pocket, and her white cap was tied neatly under her chin. She was shaking from head to foot with her fright. Her head was bent low so that no one could see her face. She held her Bible clasped closely to her heart.
At the same time Mercy Talcott, a little girl dressed like Desire but with a less winning face, stepped up, also, to the platform. It was the custom of those strange days to believe that certain children could identify witches, and Mercy was one of these children.
The elder spoke again, “I have not made one most important charge of all as I wish to make it in the presence of the prisoner, herself. She has a creature of some other kind than human with whom she consults on matters of witchery. It has been seen at night looking out of her window with glaring eyes and wide-open mouth set in its huge head.
“Look up, witch. Mercy Talcott, is this the witch that you saw leaving your house the day that your mother was burned?”
Slowly, and in terror the little old lady lifted her head. At the same time and in the same sobbing breaths Jonathan and Desire said, “It is Granny Hewitt!”
Mercy saw, too, who it was. She remembered the little rag doll that Granny had made her when she was a very little girl. It wore a gay pink calico dress, and its cheeks were stained red with pokeberry juice. Mercy caught her breath and hesitated. She knew that it was only in fancy that she had seen the broomstick and its wild rider. As she waited, Desire pulled Jonathan from his seat. Before her mother could question or stop them, the two children were at the front of the pulpit, facing the Governor.
Desire clasped her hands and raised them in pleading toward the great man who bent down toward her in surprise. The whole meeting-house was still as Desire spoke in her sweet, high voice.
“Your Excellency, I beg your mercy for our dear Granny. She is not a witch but a kind friend to all the children of Salem. It is I who should be punished in her place. If your Excellency will but think back to the last tithing day, you will remember that you gave two children, Jonathan and me, a pumpkin for our play. We took it to Granny Hewitt’s house and she helped us to make it into a Jack whose tallow drip, lighted, in Granny’s window some one saw and spoke of to you. My father did not know that it was my fault, else he would not have accused Granny. Oh, speak, Jonathan, and attest to the truth of what I am saying!”
She turned to the little boy but Jonathan, made courageous by Desire’s bravery, had gone to Mercy’s side.
“It was crows you saw on Gallows Hill,” he said in her ear. “You never, never saw Granny Hewitt riding on a broomstick. Say so.”
Mercy looked into Granny’s tear-stained face. Then, with a rush of love she threw herself into her arms. “I never saw Granny riding on a broomstick. She isn’t a witch,” Mercy declared.
The white doors of the meeting-house opened wide and the people waited with heads bowed, half in shame and half in joy, as Granny, surrounded by the children, passed into the sunshine and the freedom outside. Then they followed, making a kind of triumphal procession to the cottage at the end of the street. Kind hands led Granny all the way and kind hearts made her forget all about her experiences. In her window there still stood the grinning Jack-o’-lantern, and at sight of it bursts of laughter took away all thought of tears. One of the elders set it upon one of Granny’s fence posts and then held Desire up beside it.
“Hurrah for the Jack-o’-lantern witch,” some one said, and the crowd shouted their happiness and relief.
“THE JACK-O’-LANTERN WITCH”“THE JACK-O’-LANTERN WITCH”
“THE JACK-O’-LANTERN WITCH”
“Did you see him to-day?” asked a little girl in gray, all excitement, as she opened the door to admit her brother.
The boy, shaking with the cold—for it was winter and his jacket was none too thick—set down his basket on the rough deal table, and leaned over the tiny fire that burned on the hearth. His eyes shone, though, as he turned to answer his sister.
“Yes, Beth, I saw him down at the wharf and he gave me this.” As he spoke, William drew from underneath his coat, where he had tucked it to surprise Beth, a crude little brush made of rushes bound together with narrow strips of willow.
“What is it?” Beth took the brush in her hands and held it up to the light, looking at it curiously. She made a quaint picture in the shifting light of the fire, a little Quaker girl of old Philadelphia, her yellow curls tucked inside a close-fitting gray cap, and her straight gray frock reaching almost to the heels of her heavy shoes.
“It is something new for cleaning,” William explained. He took the brush and began sweeping up the ashes on the hearth, as Beth watched him curiously. “Mr. Franklin brought a whole bunch of them down to the wharf to show to people, and he gave me one.”
“How did he make it?” Beth asked curiously.
“It took him a whole year, for it had to grow first,” William explained. “He saw some brush baskets last year that the sea captains had brought fruit in, lying in the wet on the wharf. They had sprouted and sent out shoots, so what did Mr. Franklin do but plant the shoots in his garden. They grew and this year he had a fine crop of broom corn, as he called it. He dried it, and bound it into these brushes. He has some with long handles, and he calls them brooms.”
The children’s mother had come in now from the next room and she grasped the hearth brush with eagerness.
“It is just what Philadelphia, the city of cleanliness, needs,” she said, as she went to work brushing the corners of the window sills and the mantle piece. “If we were to take more thought of our houses and less of these street brawls as to who is for, and who is against the king, it would be better.”
“That is what Mr. Franklin does,” William said. “Do you remember how the streets were full of quarreling folk last summer, and a hard thunder storm came up that every one thought was sent directly from the skies as a punishment for our wickedness? The women and children were crying, and the men praying when Mr. Franklin came in their midst. I can see him now, looking like a prophet with his long hair flowing over his shoulders and his long cloak streaming out behind him. As the skies flashed with lightning and the thunder crashed he told them not to be afraid. He said that he would give them lightning rods to put on their houses that would keep them from burning down.”
“Yes,” their mother said. “He helps us all very much. Mr. Franklin is truly our good neighbor in Philadelphia.”
As her mother finished speaking, Beth emptied the basket that William had brought in. There was not a great deal in it—a little flour, some tea, a very tiny package of sugar, and some potatoes. She arranged them on the shelves in the kitchen, shivering a little as she moved about the cold room.
Chill comfort it would seem to a child to-day. Philadelphia was a new city, and these settlers from across the sea had brought little with them to make their lives cheerful. Outside, huge piles of snow drifted the narrow streets and were banked on the low stone doorsteps of the small red brick houses. A chill wind blew up from the wharves and such of the Friends as were out hurried along with bent heads, against which the cold beat, and they wrapped their long cloaks closely around them.
It was almost as cold in the Arnold’s house as it was outside. The children’s father had not been able to stand the hardships of the new country, and there were only Beth, and William, and their mother left to face this winter. Mrs. Arnold did fine sewing, and William ran errands for the sailors and merchantmen down at the wharves, having his basket filled with provisions in return for his work. It was a hard winter for them, though; no one could deny that.
Mrs. Arnold drew her chair up to the fireplace now and opened her bag of sewing. Beth leaned over her shoulder as she watched the thin, white fingers trying to fly in and out of white cloth.
“Your fingers are stiff with the cold,” Beth exclaimed as she blew the coals with the bellows and then rubbed her mother’s hands.
“Not very,” she tried to smile.
“Yes, very,” William said as he swung his arms and blew on his finger tips. “We’re all of us cold. It would be easier to work if we could only keep warm.”
Just then they heard a rap at the brass knocker of their door. Beth ran to open it, and both children shouted with delight as a strange, slightly stooping figure entered. His long white hair made him look like some old patriarch. His forehead was high, and his eyes deep set in his long, thin face. His long cloak folded him like a mantle. He reached out two toil-hardened hands to greet the family.
“Mr. Franklin!” their mother exclaimed. “We are most glad to see you. You are our very welcome guest always, but it is poor hospitality we are able to offer you. Our fire is very small and the house cold.”
“A small fire is better than none,” their guest said, “and the welcome in Friend Arnold’s house is always so warm that it makes a fire unnecessary. Still,” he looked at the children’s blue lips and pinched cheeks, “I wish that your hearth were wider.”
He crossed to the fireplace, feeling of the bricks and measuring with his eye the breadth and depth of the opening in the chimney. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then his face suddenly shone with a smile like the one it had worn when he had seen the first green shoots of the broom corn pushing their way up through the ground of his garden.
“What is it, Mr. Franklin?” Beth asked. “What do you see up in our chimney?”
“A surprise,” the good neighbor of Philadelphia replied. “If I make no mistake in my plans, you will see that surprise before long. In the meantime, be of good cheer.”
He was gone as quickly as he had come, but he had left a glow of cheer and neighborliness behind him. All Philadelphia was warmed in this way by Benjamin Franklin. Whenever he crossed a threshold, he brought the spirit of comfort and helpfulness to the house.
“What do you suppose he meant?” Beth asked as the door closed behind the quaint figure of the man.
“I wonder,” William said. Then he took out his speller and copy book and the words of their visitor were soon forgotten.
But all Philadelphia began to wonder soon at the doings at the big white house where Benjamin Franklin lived. The neighbors were used to hearing busy sounds of hammering and tinkering coming from the back where Mr. Franklin had built himself a workshop. Now, however, he sent away for a small forge and its flying sparks could be seen and the sound of its bellows heard in the stillness of the long, cold winter nights. Great slabs of iron were unloaded for him at the wharf, and for days no one saw him. He was shut up in his workshop and from morning until night passers-by heard ringing blows on iron coming from it as if it were the shop of some country blacksmith.
“Benjamin Franklin wastes his time,” said some of the Philadelphians. “He should be in the town hall, helping us to settle some of our land disputes.”
But others spoke more kindly of the man of helpful hands.
“Mr. Franklin is making Philadelphia truly a City of Friends by being the best Friend of us all,” they said.
None could explain Benjamin Franklin’s present occupation, though.
In the middle of the winter Beth and William and their mother went to a friend’s house to stay for a week. Mrs. Arnold was not well, and the house was very cold. The week for which they were invited lengthened into two, then three.
“We must go home,” Mrs. Arnold said at last. “Mr. Franklin said that he would stop this afternoon and help William carry the carpet bag. It is time that we began our work again.”
“THEY TOOK THEIR HOMEWARD WAY THROUGH THE SNOW”“THEY TOOK THEIR HOMEWARD WAY THROUGH THE SNOW”
“THEY TOOK THEIR HOMEWARD WAY THROUGH THE SNOW”
As they took their homeward way through the snow, they noticed, again, the happy smile on Mr. Franklin’s kind face. He held the handle of the bag with one hand and Beth’s chilly little fingers with the other. He was the spryest of them all as they hurried on. They understood why, as they opened the door of their home.
They started, at first, wondering if, by any chance they had come to the wrong house. No, there were the familiar things just as they had left them; the row of shining copper pans on the wall, the polished candlesticks on the mantel piece, the warming pan in the corner and the braided rag rugs on the floor. But the house was as warm as summer. They had never felt such comforting heat in the winter time before. The fireplace, that had been all too tiny, was gone. In its place, against the chimney, was a crude iron stove, partly like a fireplace in shape, but with a top and sides that held and spread the heat of the glowing fire inside until the whole room glowed with it.
THE FIRST STOVETHE FIRST STOVE
THE FIRST STOVE
“That is my surprise,” Mr. Franklin explained, rubbing his hands with pleasure as he saw the wonder and delight in the faces of the others, “an iron genie to drive out the cold and frighten away the frosts. You can cook on it, or hang the kettle over the coals. It will keep the coals alive all night and not eat up as much fuel as your draughty fireplace did. This is my winter gift to my dear Friend Arnolds.”
“Oh, how wonderful! How can we thank you for it? We, who were so poor, are the richest family in all Philadelphia now. Now I shall be able to work!” the children’s mother said.
Beth and William put out their hands to catch the friendly warmth of the fire in this, the first stove, in the City of Friends. It warmed them through and through. Then William examined its rough mechanism so that he would be able to tend it, and Beth bustled about the room, filling the shining brass teakettle and putting a spoonful of tea in the pot to draw a cup for their mother and Mr. Franklin. At last she turned to him, her blue eyes looking deep in his.
“You are so good to us,” Beth said. “Why did you work so hard to invent and make this iron stove for us?”
The kindest Friend that old Philadelphia ever had stopped a second to think. He never knew the reason for his good deeds. They were as natural as the flowering of the broom corn in his garden. At last he spoke:
“Because of your warm hearts, little Friend,” he said. “Not that they needed any more heat, but that you may see their glow reflected in the fires you kindle in my stove.”
And so may we feel the kindly warmth of Benjamin Franklin’s heart in our stoves, which are so much better, but all modelled after the one he made for his neighbors in the Quaker City of long ago.
“Is it, think you, because her father is the President of the Continental Congress that Susan Boudinot behaves so?” Abigail whispered the question across the aisle of the Dame’s school in old Boston to one of the other little old-time lassies.
“Perhaps that is it. Look at her now. She minds it not in the least that she must sit in the dunce’s corner. She is smiling with those red lips and big blue eyes of hers as though she were not in disgrace,” the other little girl whispered back.
From other corners of the schoolroom came whispered comments about the wilful little Susan.
“What did Susan do that she was put in the dunce’s corner?”
“Indeed she did a great deal to try the good Dame’s patience. She tied the braids of Mercy Wentworth and Prudence Talbot together so tightly that when the Dame called upon Mercy to bring her copy book to her to show its pothooks, Prudence was well nigh dragged too. As if this were not enough, Susan put sand in the ink and made it so thick as to spoil the good Dame’s copperplate writing.”
The school was hushed, though, as the Dame who taught it entered and took her seat behind the desk, a quaint figure in her black gown, white apron, great spectacles and smoothly-parted back hair. All the children of these old Colony days, seated in front of her on the hard benches, bent their heads low again over their spellers or slates. Their hair was smoothly cropped or tightly braided. Only the wayward little girl, perched high upon the dunce’s stool, wore her hair in a mass of tangled curls. They gleamed like gold in the sunshine that filtered in through the window. Susan’s hair was like her own wilful little self, impatient of bounds and training.
As the Dame had returned to the room Susan’s lips had drooped a little and lost their smile. She cast her eyes toward the toes of her buckled shoes just above which ruffled the dainty white frills of her pantalettes. She crossed her hands demurely in the lap of her short-waisted, rose-sprigged gown. Presently, though, Susan looked up and glanced out of the school window. There was the green Boston Common, and the white meeting-house, and the brick mansions with their wide white doorways and brass knockers. Susan could see in fancy as far as the sea front, where she knew there were British ships at anchor with the fishing smacks and the merchant vessels of the Colonies.
“THE WAYWARD LITTLE GIRL, PERCHED HIGH UPON THE DUNCE’S STOOL”“THE WAYWARD LITTLE GIRL, PERCHED HIGH UPON THE DUNCE’S STOOL”
“THE WAYWARD LITTLE GIRL, PERCHED HIGH UPON THE DUNCE’S STOOL”
These were troubled times, as Susan well knew, for the settlers in the new land. She heard her father speak of the growing discontent of the Colonies against the stern rule of the English King, and their disinclination to pay taxes on goods when they were allowed no representation in Parliament.
Only that morning, as Susan had pouted and frowned when her mother tried to comb out her twisting, tangling curls, there had been the sound of loud voices in the next room where her father received his business callers. Susan’s sweet-faced mother had sighed.
“Ah, Susan dear, why do you add to our troubles by being such a wilful little lass. Hear you not the voices in the other room? It is the King’s collector, and your father is trying to explain to him that the Congress feels it especially unjust to be obliged to pay a tax on tea—that pleasant beverage that is so much drunk at the Boston parties. I know not how it will all come out, and my heart is aching for the trouble that I feel will come. Be good, dear child. This will help us as you can in no other way.”
Susan had thrown her arms about her mother’s neck in a burst of love.
“I will be good, dear mother. I will be good,” she had exclaimed, for at heart there was no kinder child in all Boston than little Mistress Susan Boudinot. The scene came back to her now and she turned toward her teacher, the Dame, reaching out her slim little arms imploringly. What right had she, a little girl, to be naughty when her country was in such dire peril, she thought?
“I will be good,” she said in a burst of penitent tears as the Dame motioned kindly to her to leave the dunce’s corner. “I do not know why I was moved to tie Mercy and Prudence together by their hair except it was what the elder speaks of in meeting as the old Adam coming out of one. And I am sorry indeed about the ink.”
“That will do,” the Dame said, trying not to smile. “Take your seat, Susan, and write at least ten times, ‘Be ye kind to one another,’ in your copy book, and remember to keep it treasured in your mind as well as on the white pages.”
Susan slipped gladly into her place beside Abigail and was soon scratching away with her quill pen as industriously as any of the others.
School was not out until late in the afternoon, and Susan, surrounded by Abigail and Mercy and Prudence and many of the other little Colonial maidens, took their merry way through the narrow, brick-paved streets of old Boston. In their flowered poke bonnets, round silk capes, and full skirts they looked like a host of blossoms of as many different colors—lavender, green, pink, and blue. At the gate of one of the old mansions not far from the Common, Susan, her curls flying and her cheeks rosy from the warm sea air, waved her hand in good-bye.
“I would invite you all to come in for a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the garden, but my mother was not feeling well when I left her this morning and I see her beckoning to me from her window.” She darted through the door and up the wide staircase. She found her mother almost in tears.
“There is to be a party at the Royal Governor’s house,” Madam Boudinot exclaimed, “this very afternoon, and there will be no one to represent your father’s family, for I feel far too ill to put on my best dress and go. Many prominent people will be there representing the Colonists and the King. Oh, what shall I do!”
Susan considered a moment, at the same time capably fetching the lavender salts for her mother, and putting cloths wet with toilet water on her aching head. Then she had an idea, for there was much wisdom packed away in the curl-crowned head of nine-year-old Mistress Susan.
“Do you set your mind and heart at rest, dearest mother,” she said. “I will do my hair up so.” Standing in front of an oval, gilt-framed mirror, Susan caught a few of her curls at the back. She pulled them up to the top of her head, and fastened them there with a band of velvet, while the rest hung in a golden shower over her shell pink ears.
“There,” Susan exclaimed. “I look as old as a miss of fourteen and I can be quite as dignified. I will put on my best silk dress, and my silk hose, and my Sunday shoes with the silver buckles.” As she spoke, Susan pulled out boxes and opened a chest and drawers. Then she stood in front of her mother, her arms loaded with finery. She made a quaint little curtsey.
“The family of the President of the Continental Congress will be represented at the Royal Governor’s party,” she said. “Mistress Susan Boudinot will take the place of Madam Boudinot.”
A space of a half-hour later a dignified little lady stepped out of the door of the Boudinot mansion and into a waiting chaise. Susan held her head very high. Was not her hair done up for the first time, and its mass of ringlets pinned with one of her mother’s tortoise-shell combs? Her buff brocade dress was made with a lace underbody. A polonaise and deep frills of lace edged the elbow-length, close-fitting sleeves and fell as far as the small white hands. A blue locket on a strip of narrow black velvet ribbon was hung about the little girl’s throat, and over it all was thrown a ruffled cape of her mother’s lined with fur. As the chaise rattled away toward the Governor’s mansion her mother’s parting words to her repeated themselves over and over again in Susan’s mind.
“Be a good child, Susan, and do not forget for a moment that you are representing your father and, through him, the Congress.”