Creameries with ice-chests were as yet unheard of in the rural counties of Maine in 1866. At the old farm, all of the dairy milk was set in pans on the clean, cool cellar bottom. As the warm mornings of midsummer drew on, Gram was usually up by five o'clock, attending to her cream and butter; and about this time, as we issued drowsily forth, in response to the Old Squire's early rap, we were repeatedly startled at hearing a sudden eldritch exclamation which was half scream, at the foot of the bulkhead stairs.
"What's the matter down there, Ruth?" the Old Squire would exclaim.
"Dear me, I've stepped on that hateful toad again!" Gram would reply. "It's always under foot there! Do, Ellen, you get the tongs and carry that toad off again. Carry him away out to the foot of the garden, below the currant bushes. I don't see how he is forever getting back to the foot of those stairs! It gives me such a start, to put my foot on him!"
And Gram would have to sit down for a time, to fan herself and to recover her composure.
"Well, Ruth, I should think it would give the toad a start, too," the Old Squire would comment, dryly.
Meantime Ellen or Addison would proceed to capture the toad—a fine, big brown chunk of atoad—and exile him to the garden. Once Ellen carried him, wriggling in the tongs, around to the back side of the west barn. Ad, too, carried him out into the orchard one night. But by the next day, or the day following, toady would be back at the foot of the bulkhead stairs again. There is no doubt that it was the same toad, and he certainly must have possessed a good sense of locality. We could not for some time imagine how he obtained entrance to the cellar, for he returned to his favorite cool spot on days when the outer bulkhead door was closed. Addison at length decided that he must have got in by way of the cellar drain, on the back side of the house.
It was contrary to all the homely traditions at the farm to kill or maltreat a toad. Not less than seven times was that toad carefully carried away into the garden, or down the lane.
At last Gram's patience was exhausted. Her ire rose. "I'll see if you come back into my cellar again, old fellow," she exclaimed, before breakfast one morning after the recusant batrachian had been transported the night before. This time the old lady seized the tongs herself, and marched out into the yard, holding toady with no gentle pinch on his rotund body.
"Ellen, you bring me a quart of that brine out of the beef barrel," she called back to the kitchen.
Then having put the toad down in the cart road leading out into the fields, she dashed him with brine, and as he hopped away pursued him with further douches.
It is not likely that the brine injured the reptile very much, but for some reason it never came back.
For a long time thereafter the Old Squire was accustomed to touch up Gram's conscience now and then, by making sly allusion to her hard-heartedness and cruelty in "pickling toads."The Old Squire, too, had his bucolic enemies as well as Gram.
Wheet-wh-wh-wh-wh-wheedle! was a note we now began to hear daily about the stone walls and in the fields of new clover.
"Oh, those wood-chucks!" the old gentleman would exclaim. "They are making shocking work over in that new piece. Boys, I'll give you five cents a head for every wood-chuck you will kill off."
Amidst the now rapidly blossoming red clover we could see the fresh earth of numbers of their burrows, and almost every day a new one would be espied beside a rock or stone heap. June is the happy month for wood-chucks, in New England; they riot in the farmer's clover, and tunnel the soft hillsides with their holes. June is the month, too, when mother wood-chuck is leading out her four or five chubby little chucks, teaching them the fear of dogs and man, which constitutes the wisdom of a wood-chuck's life, and giving them their first lesson in that shrill, yet guttural note peculiar to wood-chuckdom, which country boys call "whistling."
It is remarkable how many wood-chucks will not only get a living, but wax fat on an old farm where the farmer himself has difficulty in making year's ends meet. Addison estimated that at one time there were seventy wood-chucks on the Old Squire's homestead, all prosperous and laying by something, metaphorically speaking, for a rainy day.
Despite all the evil that is said of the wood-chuck, too, he does in reality a much smaller amount of damage to man than one would imagine from the outcry against him. Occasionally, it is true, a chuck will begin nibbling at early pease, or beans, and do real, measurable harm, but the injury which he inflicts on the farmer in the hay-fields is generally much exaggerated. In the "south field" that year, there were two acres of red clover, where not less than sevenor eight wood-chucks dug new holes and threw out mounds of yellow earth, which in some places crushed down the crop. Then, too, in feeding and running about, they trampled on plats of the thick clover, particularly where it had "lodged" from its own rank growth. There were, in all, five or six square rods of the grass which it was not deemed worth while to attempt to mow at all, and the loss of which was due in part, but not wholly, to the wood-chucks. The hired men scolded about it, and Gramp himself, who had a farmer's natural aversion to wood-chucks, fretted over it. We boys, too, magnified the damage and discussed ingenious plans for exterminating them. But after all, I do not believe that we really got two hundred weight of hay less in the field, in consequence of wood-chucks; and certainly the clover as it stood was not worth sixty cents a hundred. A dollar and twenty cents would probably have made good the entire loss; and I suspect that one-half of the damage from trampling on the clover was done by us boys, in pursuit of the chucks, rather than by the chucks themselves. At least, I still remember running through the grass in a very reckless manner on several occasions.
I am keenly aware that to write anything in defense of the wood-chuck will prove unpopular with farmers and farmers' boys. Still, I venture to ask whether we are not, perhaps, a little too much inclined to deem the earth and everything that grows out of it our own particular property. The wood-chuck is undoubtedly an older resident on this continent than men, certainly a far older resident than white men, who came here less than three hundred years ago. Moreover, he is a quiet, inoffensive resident, never becomes a pauper, never gets intoxicated, nor creates any disturbance, minds his own business, and only "whistles" when astonished or suddenly attacked by man and his dogs. May it not be possiblethat he is honestly entitled to a few stalks of clover which grow in the country which he and his ancestors had inhabited for centuries before white men knew there was any such place as America?
The writer now owns a farm in Maine, or at least holds a deed of it, given him, for a consideration, by another man who in turn had bought it of a previous incumbent who had seized it from the Indians, wood-chucks, hares, foxes and other original proprietors, without, as I hear, making them any return whatever; who, in fact, ejected them without ceremony. For some years whenever the wood-chucks ate anything that grew on the land, particularly if it were anything which I had sown or planted, I attacked them with guns, traps and dogs and killed them when I could.
But one day it occurred to me that perhaps my deed did not fairly authorize me to behave in just that way towards them, and that I was playing the rôle of a small, but very cruel, self-conceited tyrant over a conquered species whose blood cried out against me from the ground. I ceased my persecutions and massacres. Twenty or thirty wood-chucks now live on the premises with me, unmolested, for the most part. They take about what they want and dig a hole whenever they want a new one. They are really very peaceable neighbors, and it is rarely that we have a difference of opinion in the matter of garden truck,—for I still draw the line at early pease and beans in the garden.
It is, indeed, quite surprising how little they take, or destroy. I do not believe that in all that time they have done me damages which any two fair-minded referees would allow me five dollars for. I am sure I spent more than that for ammunition, to say nothing of time, traps, dog-food, etc., during the year or two that I was playing the despot and trying to exterminate them. Now that I have rid my mind of the barbarous propensity to kill them, I really enjoyseeing them sitting up by their holes, or peeping at me over the heads of clover.
But a boy naturally likes to use his trap and his gun, especially on any animal, or bird, which his seniors represent to him as an outlaw. When the Old Squire set a bounty of five cents upon wood-chuck scalps, the desire to go on the war-path against the proscribed rodents at once took possession of us. A number of rusty fox-traps and mink-traps were brought forth from the wagon-house chamber, to be set at the entrances of the wood-chucks' holes. We covered the trenchers of the traps carefully over with loose dirt and attached the chain to stakes, driven into the ground a little to one side of the hole. In this way five chucks were trapped in the south field during the week.
Halstead and I were in partnership trapping them, but Addison preferred to rely on the gun. It is next to impossible to kill a wood-chuck with shot so quickly that he will not, after being hit, succeed in running into his hole, and thus defeat the evidence that he is a dead wood-chuck. Addison, however, hit upon a stratagem for shooting them at short range. He could imitate their peculiar "whistle" quite cleverly, and having observed that when one wood-chuck whistles, all the others within hearing are apt to exhibit some little curiosity as to what is going on, he turned the circumstance to account. Going cautiously to a burrow, he would crouch down, and placing the muzzle of the gun so as to shoot into the hole, "whistle," as if some neighboring chuck had come along to prospect the premises. In almost every instance, when there was a chuck in the hole, it would immediately come up in sight, probably to greet, or repel its visitor. The instant it appeared, Addison would fire and nearly always kill the animal; for although often he could not secure it, he would carefully close up the hole with stones and earth, and if,after three days, the chuck did not dig out past the obstruction, he laid claim to the bounty. A roster, which he kept in notches on the garden gate, showed that he had shot fourteen wood-chucks.
I remember that Theodora had something to say several times about our cruelty to the poor creatures; but we justified it on account of the damage which the wood-chucks were alleged to do to the grain, grass and beans.
"Oh, Doad would let the wood-chucks eat up everything we plant!" Halse would say, sarcastically. "'Let them have it,' she would say. 'Don't hurt the poor little things!' That's just like girls. They don't have to plant and hoe, so they are very merciful and tender-hearted. But if they had to plough and work and plant and sow and hoe in the hot sun all day, to raise a crop, they'd sing a different tune when the plaguey wood-chucks came around and ate it up!"
We thought Addison's stratagem a very bright one. That he could "whistle" the chuck out of his hole, and fetch him up to the very muzzle of the gun, was considered remarkably clever. But an incident which occurred a few days later rendered it forever unpopular.
Catherine Edwards had come over to go raspberrying, and Theodora, Ellen and Wealthy set off with her after school for the south field. They had to go around the clover piece, and as they passed it, Kate espied a wood-chuck, which, when it heard them, instead of disappearing in its burrow hard by, ran around in so peculiar a manner that they all stopped to watch it.
"It's crazy," cried Catherine; and at first they were afraid the animal would attack them; it ran to and fro in what seemed an aimless sort of manner. At length, they concluded that it had lost its hole and was trying to find it. They saw that its head was bare of hair in front, and presently decided that thepoor creature was blind, for its eyes appeared to be gone, or covered over with an incrustation.
The explanation of its singular appearance and behavior then suddenly occurred to Ellen. "I know!" she cried. "It's one of those wood-chucks that Ad has shot in the face and eyes, as they peep out of their holes when he 'whistles' to them!"
"Oh, the poor, abused thing!" exclaimed Catherine. "I never heard of anything so hatefully cruel!"
The wood-chuck, although so dreadfully wounded and with its eyes destroyed by the powder, had yet, after several days, mustered sufficient strength to come out and feed. But it was totally blind, and once having lost its course, could not find the way back to its burrow, but dashed about in terror amidst the clover. Finally it took refuge beneath some of the lodged grass beside a stone; and meantime those sympathetic girls held an indignation meeting. Their pity for the poor creature knew no bounds, and Ellen was despatched to call us boys to the spot, that the full enormity of our act might be exhibited before our eyes.
We were just finishing hoeing the corn, the second time, that afternoon, and had only a few rows more. With an air of one who has a mission and a duty to perform, Ellen approached where we were at work and said, "We want you to come down to the south field this minute!"
"What for?" asked Addison.
"A good reason," replied Ellen, with an accent of suppressed scorn. "Kate and Doad sent me."
"What is it?" persisted Addison.
"Some of your fine works," said Ellen. "And you just come straight along and see it."
"We won't go unless you tell," replied Halse.
"Oh, you won't!" exclaimed Ellen severely. "Great wood-chuck hunters you are!"At the wordwood-chuckwe began to feel interested, and at length so far obeyed Ellen's iterated summons as to follow after her to the south field.
"Well, what's wanted?" demanded Addison, addressing himself to Theodora, as we drew near.
"I want you to see just what a cruel boy you are!" she replied. "There's one of the wood-chucks that you pretend to shoot so cutely. Go look at him, right under the clover there by that stone. Look at his poor little eyes all burned out, you cruel fellow!"
Not a little dumbfounded by this blast of indignation, thus suddenly let loose upon us, we drew near and examined the crouching chuck. It was really a rueful spectacle,—the disabled and trembling creature trying in vain to see where its enemies were gathered about it.
"I didn't think you were such a cruel boy!" exclaimed Catherine, sarcastically. "Alf Batchelder might do such a thing. He is hateful enough always. But I didn't think it of you."
"Well, I shot at him," exclaimed Addison. "I thought I had killed him, you know."
"Oh yes, you did think, did you!" cried Catherine. "How would you like to have some one come along to your door or your chamber window, and speak to you to come out; and then when you stepped to the door to see what was wanted, to have them fire powder in your face and burn your eyes out! How would you like that?"
"I don't think I would like it," replied Addison, laughing.
"Now I wouldn't laugh," said Theodora, whose feelings, indeed, had been wrought upon to the point of tears as she watched the blinded creature. "You ought not to have such a hard heart. I didn't think you had, once," she added reproachfully.
"Oh, he is just like all the rest of the boys," exclaimed Kate."No, he isn't," said Theodora, wiping her eyes.
"They are all alike," persisted Kate. "Always killing and torturing something."
"And all the girls are little saints," mimicked Halse.
"Oh, I'm not speaking to you!" cried Kate. "You're the Alf Batchelder sort. But I'm ashamed of Addison, to treat any creature in that way!"
In short, those girls read us a dreadful lecture; they berated us hot and heavy. If we attempted to reply and defend ourselves, they only lashed us the harder.
"Well, well," said Addison at length, picking up a club. "I'll put the creature out of its misery, so that at least it will not be caught and worried by dogs."
"You sha'n't! You sha'n't kill the poor thing!" cried Ellen; and then finding that Addison was about to do so, they all turned and ran away, without looking back.
Halstead was inclined to make light of the matter, and ridiculed the girls, but Addison did not say much about it. I think he felt conscience-smitten, and I never knew him to attempt to shoot a wood-chuck in that way afterwards.
It was the custom at the Old Squire's to begin "haying" on Monday after the Fourth of July. What hot and sweaty memories are linked with that word,haying!
But haying in and of itself is a clean and pleasant kind of farm work, if only the farmers would not rush it so relentlessly. As soon as haying begins, a demon of haste to finish in a given number of days seems, or once seemed, to take possession of the American farmer. Thunder showers goad him on; the fact that he has to pay two or even three dollars per day for his hired help stimulates him to even greater exertions; and the net result is, that haying time every year is a fiery ordeal from which the husbandman and his boys emerge sunburnt, brown as bacon scraps and lean as the camels of Sahara, often with blood perniciously altered from excessive perspiration and too copious water drinking. An erroneous idea has prevailed that "sweating" is good for a man. Sometimes it is good, in case of colds or fevers. While unduly exerting himself beneath a scorching sun, the farmer would no doubt perish if he did not perspire. None the less, such copious sudation is an evil that wastefully saps vitality. Few farmers go through twenty haying seasons without practically breaking down.
The hired man, too, has come to know that haying is the hardest work of the year and demands nearly double the wages that he expected to receive forhoeing potatoes—far more disagreeable work—the week before.
As a result of many inquiries, I learn that farmers' boys dread haying most of all farm work, chiefly on account of the long hours, the hurry beneath the fervid July sun, and the heat of the close lofts and mows where they have to stow away the hay. How many a lad, half-suffocated by hay in these same hot mows and lofts, has made the resolve then and there never to be a farmer—and kept it!
Is it not a serious mistake to harvest the hay crop on the hurry-and-rush principle? Why not take a little more time for it? It is better to let a load of hay get wet than drive one's self and one's helpers to the brink of sunstroke. It is better to begin a week earlier than try to do two weeks' work in one. A day's work in haying should and can be so planned as to give two hours' nooning in the hottest part of the day.
Gramp was an old-fashioned farmer, but he had seen the folly of undue haste exemplified too many times not to have changed his earlier methods of work considerably; so much so, that he now enjoyed the reputation of being an "easy man to work for." For several years he had employed the same help.
On this bright Monday morning of July, the hay-fields smiled, luxuriant, blooming with clover, herdsgrass, buttercup, daisy and timothy. There was the house field, the west field, the south field, the middle field and the east field, besides the young orchard, the old orchard, the Aunt Hannah lot and the Aunt Hannah meadow, which was left till the last, sixty-five acres or more, altogether. What an expanse it looked to me! It was my first experience, but Addison and Halse had forewarned me that we would have it hot in haying. I had already grown a little inured to the sun during June, however; and in point of fact, I never afterwards suffered so much from the sun raysas during those first attempts to hoe corn at the old farm in June.
One of the hired men was no less a personage than Elder Witham, who preached at the Chapel every second week, and who, like the great apostle of the Gentiles, was not above working with his hands, to piece out his small salary. He came Sunday evening, and I did not suppose that he had come to work with us till the next morning, when, after prayers, he quietly fetched his scythe and snath down from the wagon-house chamber, and called on Halstead to turn the grindstone for him. I then learned that he had worked at haying for us three summers. The Elder was fifty years old or more, and, though well-tanned, had yet a semi-clerical appearance. He was austere in religious matters, and the hired men were very careful what they said before him.
The other two men, who came after breakfast, were brothers, named James and Asa Doane, or Jim and Ase, as they were familiarly addressed.
I was reckoned too young to mow with a scythe, though Halse and Addison mowed for an hour or two in the forenoon. I had plenty to do, however, raking, spreading, and stowing the hay in the barn.
In haying time we boys were called at half-past four o'clock every morning, with the hired men. It was our business to milk and do the barn chores before breakfast. Often, too, there would be a load of hay, drawn in the previous evening, to stow away, in addition to the chores.
Mowing machines and horse-rakes had not then come into general use. All the mowing was done with scythes, and the raking with hand rakes and "loafer" rakes. Generally, all hands would be busy for three hours every bright afternoon, raking the grass which had been cut down in the forenoon. The Old Squire and the Elder commonly raked side by side, and often fell into argument on the subject of man'sfree moral agency, on which they held somewhat diverse views. Upon the second afternoon, Asa Doane maneuvered to get them both into a yellow-backed bumble-bees' nest, which was under an old stump in the hay.
The Elder was just saying, "I tell you, Squire, man was designed for—" when a yellow-back stung him on his neck, and he finished his sentence with a rather funny exclamation! Another insect punched Gramp at almost the same moment, and they had a lively time of it, brandishing their rakes, and throwing the hay about. The others raked on, laughing inwardly without seeming to notice their trouble.
But that night after supper, while we were grinding scythes, the Elder called Gramp out behind the barn, and I overheard him very gravely ask, in an undertone, "Squire, when we were amongst those bumble-bees, this afternoon, I hope I didn't say anything unbecoming a minister. I was a reckless young man once, Squire; and even now, when anything comes acrost me sudden, like those bumble-bees, the old words are a-dancing at my tongue's end before I know they are there.
"Because, if I did make a mistake," he continued, "I want to make public confession of it before these young men."
But the Squire had been too busy with his own bumble-bees to remember. So the matter passed, by default of evidence; but the Elder felt uneasy about it, and watched our faces pretty sharply for a day or two.
The heat troubled me not a little, and I then knew no better than to drink inordinately of cold water. I would drink every five minutes when I could get where there was water, even after the Old Squire had pointed out to me the ill effects that follow such indulgence. But it seemed to me that I must drink, and the more I drank the more I wanted, till byFriday of that first week I was taken ill. Sharp pain is a severe yet often useful teacher. I was obliged to desist from frequent potations, and Gram gave me some bits of snake-root to hold in my mouth and chew.
Both the Doanes were great jokers. There was something in the way of fun going on, nearly all the time; either there was racing, while mowing, or raking the heels of the boys ahead of them. They were brimming over with hay-makers' tricks, and I well remember what a prank they played on me during the second week.
It befell while we were getting the south field, which was mostly in clover that summer. We drew in the hay with both oxen and horses. When the former were employed, they were yoked to a "rack," set midway on the axle of two large wheels. The rack would carry a ton or more of hay. During the first week, they had several times set me to tread down the hay in the rack, but I made a very bad job of loading it; for I did not know how to "lay the corners" of the load.
At length one afternoon, the Old Squire, observing my faults, climbed on the cart, and taking the fork, showed me patiently how to begin at first, and how to lay the hay out at the sides and ends of the rack, keeping the ends higher than the middle all the way up. He made it so plain to me that I took a liking to that part of the work. I could not of course handle the hay as well as a man, but I contrived to stow it quite well, for I had grasped the principle of loading and managed to lay a fairly presentable load. As a result I grew a little over-confident, and was inclined to boast of my skill and make somewhat rash statements as to the size of loads which I could lay. The others probably saw that I needed discipline. I must have been dull, or I should have been on my guard for set-backs from Halse, Addison, or themischievous Doanes. When a boy's head begins to grow large and his self-conceit to sprout, he is sometimes singularly blind to consequences.
But to proceed, we had thirty-one "tumbles" of dry clover to get in after supper that day, from the south field. The Elder and the Old Squire did not go out with us.
"You will have to make two loads of it," the latter remarked as we set off. "Put it in the 'west barn.' You need not hurry. The Elder and I will grind the scythes to-night."
I climbed into the rack and rode out to the field, Asa driving and Addison coming on behind, to rake after the cart. Jim and Halstead had gone on ahead, to rick up the hay.
"Two loads, wal, they won't be very large ones," Asa remarked.
"What's the use to go twice?" I said. "I can load that hay all on at once."
Asa looked round at me, as I afterwards remembered, in a somewhat peculiar manner, and I now imagine that both he and Addison at once began plotting my abasement, and passed the "wink" to the others.
"You couldn't do it," said Asa.
I studied the amount of hay on the ground carefully for a moment or two, reflected on the number of "tumbles" I had previously loaded, and then foolishly offered to bet that, if they would pitch it slowly, I could stow every straw of it on the rack at one load and ride the load into the barn. I had forgotten that our orders were to put the hay in the west barn, and that the great doors of that barn were not as large as those of the south barn, the top-piece over them being but twelve feet high. I did not once think of that!
The others saw the trap which I was setting for myself, but kept quiet and laid wagers against me.The more they wagered, the more eager I became to try it, if they would not hurry me.
Asa began slowly pitching on the hay to me. I laid the load broad and long, and without any very great difficulty stowed the thirty-one "tumbles." It was a large load but a shapely one. I was not a little elated, and chaffed the Doanes considerably. They kept ominously quiet.
We started for the barn, I riding in triumph on the load, and I did not see the danger before me till we were close to the great doors. Asa did not stop.
"Haw, Buck! Huh, Line, up there!" he shouted, and drove fast. The top-piece over the doors struck the load fully three feet down from the top, scraping off about half a ton of hay and myself along with it. I landed on the ground behind the cart outside of the doors, with all that hay over me! The rest of the load went in, amidst shouts of laughter from the others.
I lay still under the hay, to hear what they would say. Then they all came around and began to call to me. I kept quiet. Finding that I did not move nor answer, they grew alarmed. The Old Squire and Elder were seen coming. "Boys," says Asa, "I dunno but it's broke his neck!" With that he and Jim seized their forks and began to dig for me so vigorously that I was glad to shout, to keep from being impaled on the fork-tines.
I crept out and rose to my feet a good deal rumpled, bareheaded and shamefaced.
The Doanes, Addison and Halse had been so frightened that they did not now laugh much. The Elder looked at me with a curious expression; and the Old Squire, who had begun to say something pretty sharp to Asa and James (who certainly deserved a reprimand), regarded me at first with some anxiety, which, however, rapidly gave place to a grim smile."Well, well, my son," said he, "you must live and learn."
One afternoon later in the month, while we were getting the hay in the Aunt Hannah meadow, a somewhat exciting incident occurred. Asa was pitching on a load of the meadow hay and I loading, for I still kept my liking for that part of the work and was allowed to do it, although it was in reality too hard for me. The Old Squire was raking after the cart, and the others were raking hay into windrows a little way off. As we were putting on the last "tumble," or the last but one, a peculiar kind of large fly, or bee, of which cattle are strangely afraid, came buzzing about old Line, the off ox. The instant the ox heard that bee, he snorted, uttered a bellow and started to run. The very sound of the bee's hum seemed to render the oxen quite frantic. Almost at the outset they ran the offwheel over a rick of logs, nearly throwing me headlong from the load. I thrust my fork down deep and held to that, and away went the load down the meadow, both oxen going at full speed, with Asa vainly endeavoring to outrun them, and Gramp shouting, "Whoa-hish!" at the top of his voice. We went on over stumps and through water-holes, while the rest ran across lots, to head off the runaways. At one time I was tumbling in the hay, then jounced high above it; and such a whooping and shouting as rose on all sides had never before disturbed that peaceful meadow, at least within historic times.
Coming to a place where the brook made a broad bend partly across the meadow, the oxen rushed blindly off the turfy bank, and landed, load and all, in two or three feet of water and mud. When the load struck in the brook, I went off, heels over head, and fell on the nigh ox's back. The oxen were mired, and so was the load. We were obliged to get the horses to haul the cattle out, and both the oxen andhorses were required to haul out the cart. Altogether, it was a very muddy episode; and though rather startling while it lasted, we yet laughed a great deal over it afterwards.
We heard a great deal concerning "Reconstruction" of the Union that summer. The Old Squire was painfully concerned about it; he feared that Congress had made mistakes which would nullify the results gained by the Civil War. The low character of the men, sent to the South to administer the government, revolted him. He used to bring his newspaper to the table nearly every meal and would sometimes fling it down indignantly, crying, "Wrong! wrong! all wrong!" Then he and Addison would discuss current politics, while the rest of us listened, Theodora gravely, Halstead scoffing, and I often very absently, for as a boy I had other more trivial interests chiefly in mind. I recall that the old gentleman used frequently to exclaim, "You boys must begin to read the Constitution. Next after the Bible, the Constitution ought to be read in every family in our land."
I have to confess that at this particular time I was much less interested in the Constitution than in the luscious fall apples out in the orchard, and the rivalry to secure them.
"Have you got a hoard?" was the question which, at about this time, began to be whispered among us.
At first the query was a novelty to me; my thoughts went back to a story which I had once read concerning a horde of robbers on the steppes of Central Asia. In this case, however, the thing referred to was a hoard of early apples. I had gone to the Edwardses on some domestic errand; it was directly afterbreakfast, and Thomas, who was putting a new tooth in the "loafer rake," had set a fine, mellow "wine-sap," from which he had taken a bite, on the shed sill beside him. "Got a pile of those fellows in my hoard," he remarked, with a boastful wink. "Have you got a hoard down at your house?"
"Tom is always bragging about his hoard," said Catherine, who had come to the kitchen door, to hear any news which I might have to impart. "He thinks nobody can have a hoard but himself."
"She's got one," Tom whispered to me, as Catherine turned away. "She's awful sly about it, for fear I'll find it, and I think I know where it is. I'll bet she has gone to it now," he added, taking another bite; and jumping up, he peeped into the kitchen. "Shehas" he whispered to me. "Come on,still; don't say a word and we will catch her."
I remember feeling a certain faint sense of repugnance to engaging in a hunt for Catherine's apple preserve; but I followed Tom around the wood-shed, past a corn-crib, and then around to the north side of the barn.
"Now sneak along beside the stone wall here," said Tom. "Keep down. Don't get in sight."
We crawled along in cover of the stone wall and came down opposite the garden and orchard. Tom then peeped stealthily over.
"There she is!" he whispered, "right out there by the Isabella grape trellis; keep still now, she's going back to the house. We'll find her hoard."
We searched about the grape trellis and over the entire garden for ten minutes or more, but found no secret preserve of apples.
As we returned to the wood-shed, Kate came out, smiling disdainfully.
"Found it?" she asked us,—a question which I felt to be an embarrassing one. With an air of triumph, she then displayed a fine yellow Sweet Harvey."Oh, don't you think you are cunning?" muttered Tom. "But I'll find your hoard all the same."
"Let me know when you do," replied Kate, with a provoking laugh.
"Oh, you'll know when I find it," said Tom. "I'll take what there is in it. That was all a blind—her going out to the grape-vine," he remarked to me, as Kate turned away about her work. "She went down there on purpose to fool us, and get us to hunt there for nothing."
I went home quite fully informed in regard to the ethics of apple-hoards. The code was simple; it consisted in keeping one's own hoard undiscovered, and in finding and robbing those of others.
"Have you got an apple-hoard?" I asked Addison, as soon as I reached home.
For all reply, he winked his left eye to me.
"Doad's got one, too," he said, after I had had time to comprehend his stealth.
"You didn't tell me," I remarked.
Addison laughed. "That would be great strategy!" he observed, derisively, "to tell of it! But I only made mine day before yesterday. I thought the early apples were beginning to get good enough to have a hoard. I want to get a big stock on hand for September town-meeting," he added. "I mean to carry a bushel or two, and peddle them out for a cent apiece. The Old Squire put me up to that last year, and I made two dollars and ninety cents. That's better than nothing."
"Are you really contented here? Are you homesick, ever?" I asked him.
"Well," replied Ad, judicially, after weighing my question a little, "it isn't, of course, as it would have been with me if it had not been for the War, and father had lived. I should be at school now and getting ahead fast. But it is of no use to think of that; father and mother are both in their graves,and here I am, same as you and Doad are. We have got to make our way along somehow and get what education we can. It is of no use to be discontented. We are lucky to have so good a place to go to. I like here pretty well, for I like to be in the country better, on the whole, than in the city. Things are sort of good and solid here. The only drawback is that there isn't much chance to go to school; but after this year, I hope to go to the Academy, down at the village, ten or twelve weeks every season."
"Then you mean to try to get an education?" I asked, for it looked to me to be a vast undertaking.
"I do," replied Addison, hopefully. "Father meant for me to go to college, and I mean to go, even if I get to be twenty before I am fitted to enter. I will not grow up an ignoramus. A man without education is a nobody nowadays. But with a good education, a man can do almost anything."
"Halse doesn't talk that way," said I.
"I presume to say he doesn't," replied Addison. "He and I do not think alike."
"But Theodora says that she means to go to school and study a great deal, so as to do something which she has in mind, one of these days," I went on to say. "Do you know what it is?"
"Cannot say that I do," Addison replied, rather indifferently, as I thought.
"Oh, I suppose it is a good thing for girls to study and get educated," Addison continued. "But I do not think it amounts to so much for them as it does for boys."
This, indeed, was an opinion far more common in 1866 than at the present time.
"Perhaps it is to be a teacher?" I conjectured.
"Maybe," said Addison.
But I was thinking of apple-hoards. There was a delightful proprietary sense in the idea of owningone. It stimulated some latent propensity to secretiveness, as also the inclination to play the freebooter in a small way.
This was the first time that I had ever had access to an orchard of ripening fruit, and those "early trees" are well fixed in my youthful recollections. Several of them stood immediately below the garden, along the upper side of the orchard. First there was the "August Pippin" tree, a great crotched tree, with a trunk as large round as a barrel. Somehow such trees do not grow nowadays.
The August Pippins began to ripen early in August. These apples were as large as a teacup, bright canary yellow in color, mellow, a trifle tart, and wonderfully fragrant. When the wind was right, I could smell those pippins over in the corn-field, fifty rods distant from the orchard. I even used to think that I could tell by the smell when an apple had dropped off from the tree!
Then there were the "August Sweets," which grew on four grafts, set into an old "drying apple" tree. They were pale yellow apples, larger even than the August Pippins, sweet, juicy and mellow. The old people called them "Pear Sweets."
Next were the "Sour Harvey," the "Sweet Harvey," and the "Mealy Sweet" trees. The "Mealy Sweet" was not of much account; it was too dry, but the Harveys were excellent. Some of the Sweet Harveys were almost as sweet as honey; at least, I thought so then.
Then there were the "Noyes Apple" and the "Hobbs Apple." The Noyes was a deep-red, pleasant-sour apple, which ripened in the latter part of August; the Hobbs was striped red and green, flattened in shape, but of a fine, spicy flavor.
The "sops-in-wines," as, I believe, the fruit men term them, but which we called "wine-saps," were a pleasant-flavored apple, scarcely sweet, yet hardlysour. A little later came the "Porters" and "Sweet Greenings," also the "Nodheads" and the "Minute Apples," the "Georgianas" and the "Gravensteins," and so on until the winter apples, the principal product of the orchard, were reached.
We began eating those early apples by the first of August, in spite of all the terrible stories of colic which Gram told, in order to dissuade us from making ourselves ill. As the Pippins and August Sweets began to get mellow and palatable, we rivalled each other in the haste with which we tumbled out of doors early in the morning, so as to capture, each for himself or herself, the apples which had dropped from the trees overnight. Every one of us soon had a private hoard in which to secrete those apples which we did not eat at the time. There were numerous contests in rapid dressing and in reckless racing down-stairs and out into the orchard.
Little Wealthy, on account of her youth, was, to some degree, exempted from this ruthless looting. We all knew where her hoard was, but spared it for a long time. She believed that she had placed it in a wonderfully secret place, and because none of us seemed to discover it, she boasted so much that Ellen and I plundered it one morning, before she was awake, to give her a wholesome lesson in humility.
A little later, just before the breakfast hour, Wealthy stole out to her preserve—to find it empty. I never saw a child more mortified. She felt so badly that she could scarcely eat breakfast, and her lip kept quivering. The others laughed at her, and soon she left the table, and no doubt shed tears in secret over her loss.
After breakfast Ellen and I sought her out, and offered to give back the apples that we had taken. The child was too proud, however, to obtain them in such a way, and refused to touch one of them.
No such clemency as had been shown to Wealthy was practised by any one toward the others; no quarter was given or taken in the matter of robbing hoards. For a month this looting went on, and was a great contest of wits.