Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year Part 8

The furniture of the cabins was, like the clothing of the pioneers, homemade. A bedstead was contrived by stretching poles from forked sticks driven into the ground and laying clapboards across them; the bedclothes were 30 bearskins. Stools, benches, and tables were roughed out with auger and broadax; the puncheon floor was left bare, and if the earth formed the floor, no rug ever replaced the gra.s.s which was its first carpet. The cabin had but one room, where the whole of life went on by day; the father and mother slept there at night, and the children mounted to their chamber in the loft by means of a ladder. 5

The food was what has been already named. The meat was venison, bear, racc.o.o.n, wild turkey, wild duck, and pheasant; the drink was water, or rye coffee, or whisky, which the little stills everywhere supplied only too abundantly.

Wheat bread was long unknown, and corn cakes 10 of various makings and bakings supplied its place. The most delicious morsel of all was corn grated while still in the milk and fas.h.i.+oned into round cakes eaten hot from the clapboard before the fire, or from the mysterious depths of the Dutch oven buried in coals and ashes on the hearth. 15 There was soon a great flow of milk from the kine that multiplied in the pastures in the woods, and there was sweetening enough from the maple tree and the bee tree, but salt was very scarce and very dear, and long journeys were made through the perilous woods to and from the 20 licks, or salt springs, which the deer had discovered before the white man or the red man knew them.

The bees which hived their honey in the hollow trees were tame bees gone wild, and with the coming of the settlers some of the wild things increased so much that 25 they became a pest. Such were the crows which literally blackened the fields after the settlers plowed, and which the whole family had to fight from the corn when it was planted. Such were the rabbits, and such, above all, were the squirrels, which overran the farms and devoured every 30 green thing till the people combined in great squirrel hunts and destroyed them by tens of thousands. The larger game had meanwhile disappeared. The buffalo and the elk went first; the deer followed, and the bear, and even the useless wolf. But long after these the poisonous reptiles lingered, the rattlesnake, the moccasin, and the yet-deadlier copperhead; and it was only when the whole 5 country was cleared that they ceased to be a very common danger.

--_Stories of Ohio._

1. Make a pen or pencil sketch of the log house Howells describes; of the bedstead. Help the cla.s.s make a display board of printed pictures that ill.u.s.trate the objects mentioned.

2. What were the hards.h.i.+ps of pioneering? The pleasures? Make a list of modern household conveniences the American pioneer did not have.

WITCHCRAFT

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is one of the best-known figures in American literature. He was a New Englander, and most of his writings deal with events or situations located in New England. He was especially happy in retelling old stories or in constructing tales from historical events.

Sir William Phips became Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1692. Almost as soon as he a.s.sumed the government he became engaged in a frightful business which might have perplexed a wiser and better-cultivated head than his. This was the witchcraft delusion, which originated 5 in the wicked arts of a few children. They belonged to the Rev. Mr. Parris, minister of Salem. These children complained of being pinched, and p.r.i.c.ked with pins, and otherwise tormented, by the shapes of men and women, who were supposed to have power to haunt them invisibly both in darkness and daylight.

Often in the midst of their family and friends the children would pretend to be seized with strange convulsions and 5 would cry out that the witches were afflicting them. These stories spread abroad and caused great tumult and alarm.

From the foundation of New England it had been the custom of the inhabitants, in matters of doubt and difficulty, to look to their ministers for counsel. So they did now; 10 but unfortunately the ministers and wise men were more deluded than the illiterate people. Cotton Mather, a very learned and eminent clergyman, believed that the whole country was full of witches and wizards who had given up their hopes of heaven and signed a covenant with 15 the Evil One.

n.o.body could be certain that his nearest neighbor or most intimate friend was not guilty of this imaginary crime.

The number of those who pretended to be afflicted by witchcraft grew daily more numerous; and they bore 20 testimony against many of the best and worthiest people.

A minister named George Burroughs was among the accused. In the months of August and September, 1692, he and nineteen other innocent men and women were put to death. The place of execution was a high hill on the 25 outskirts of Salem; so that many of the sufferers, as they stood beneath the gallows, could discern their habitations in the town.

The killing of these guiltless persons served only to increase the madness. The afflicted now grew bolder in 30 their accusations. Many people of rank and wealth were either thrown into prison or compelled to flee for their lives. Among these were two sons of old Simon Bradstreet, the last of the Puritan governors. Mr. Willard, a pious minister of Boston, was cried out upon as a wizard in open court. Mrs. Hale, the wife of the minister of Beverly, was likewise accused. Philip English, a rich merchant of 5 Salem, found it necessary to take flight, leaving his property and business in confusion. But a short time afterward the Salem people were glad to invite him back.

The boldest thing the accusers did was to cry out against the Governor's own beloved wife. Yes, the lady of Sir 10 William Phips was accused of being a witch and of flying through the air to attend witch meetings. When the Governor heard this, he probably trembled.

Our forefathers soon became convinced that they had been led into a terrible delusion. All the prisoners on 15 account of witchcraft were set free. But the innocent dead could not be restored to life, and the hill where they were executed will always remind people of the saddest and most humiliating pa.s.sage in our history.

--_Grandfather's Chair._

1. Find a biography of Hawthorne and report to the cla.s.s on one of the following topics: his youth and education; his early manhood; his writings. In place of either of these subjects you may subst.i.tute the retelling of another story of Hawthorne's you have read.

2. Briefly, what is the history of witchcraft in New England?

3. How do you account for people as level-headed as the New England settlers believing in witches?

TEA PARTIES IN OLD NEW YORK

BY WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING

This extract portrays social life among the early Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan. It is written in Irving's deliciously humorous style.

In those happy days, a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers showed incontestable symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness on being surprised by a 5 visit from a neighbor on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bonds of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea parties.

As this is the first introduction of those delectable orgies 10 which have since become so fas.h.i.+onable in this city, I am conscious my fair readers will be very curious to receive information on the subject. Sorry am I that there will be but little in my description calculated to excite their admiration.

I can neither delight them with accounts of suffocating 15 crowds, nor brilliant drawing rooms, nor towering feathers, nor sparkling diamonds, nor immeasurable trains.

I can detail no choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those primitive times the simple folk were either too stupid or too good-natured to pull each other's characters to pieces; 20 nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag--how one lady cheated or another bounced into a pa.s.sion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers who met to win each other's money and lose their own tempers at a card table.

These fas.h.i.+onable parties were generally confined to the higher cla.s.ses, or _n.o.blesse_; that is to say, such as kept their own cows and drove their own wagons. The company 5 commonly a.s.sembled at three o'clock and went away about six, unless it was winter time, when the fas.h.i.+onable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to ice creams, jellies, or sillabubs, or regaled them with 10 musty almonds, moldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more st.u.r.dy, substantial fare. The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming 15 in gravy.

The company, being seated around the genial board and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces of this mighty dish in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea or 20 our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of b.a.l.l.s of sweetened dough fried in hog's fat and called doughnuts; a delicious kind 25 of cake, at present scarce known in this city except in genuine Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air 30 and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenis.h.i.+ng this pot from a huge copper teakettle which would have made the pigmy macaronis of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with 5 great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth--an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some 10 families in Albany, but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting; 15 no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets nor amusing conceits and monkey divertis.e.m.e.nts of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. 20

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion.

They were carried home by their own carriages; that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon.

--_Knickerbocker's History of New York._

1. Read some pa.s.sages in which Irving pokes fun at the Dutch customs; at the customs of his own times.

2. How was a tea party conducted in New Amsterdam?

3. Explain these words: incontestable, disapprobation, averse, delectable, orgies, whimsical, junto, dulcet, dowagers, macaronis, pigmy, hoyden, divertis.e.m.e.nts. Read your definition into the sentence where the word occurs.

A SCHOOL OF LONG AGO

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON

The following description of a pioneer school in Pennsylvania affords a fine opportunity to study the methods of teaching then in vogue. Many of them may appeal to us as being ludicrous; but undoubtedly Dock's teaching was in many ways far in advance of the times, when the usual and most-approved method of "imparting knowledge"

consisted in beating ideas into pupils' heads with hickory switches.

A hundred and fifty years ago there was a famous teacher among the German settlers in Pennsylvania, who was known as "The Good Schoolmaster." His name was Christopher Dock, and he had two little country schools.

For three days he would teach at a little place called Skippack, 5 and then for the next three days he would teach at Salford.

People said that the good schoolmaster never lost his temper. There was a man who thought he would try to make him angry. He said many harsh and abusive words 10 to the teacher, and even cursed him; but the only reply the teacher made was, "Friend, may the Lord have mercy on you."

Other schoolmasters used to beat their scholars severely with whips and long switches; but Schoolmaster Dock 15 had found a better way. When a child came to school for the first time, the other scholars were made to give the new scholar a welcome by shaking hands with him one after another. Then the new boy or girl was told that this was not a harsh school but a place for those who would behave. And if a scholar were lazy, disobedient, or stubborn, the master would in the presence of the whole school p.r.o.nounce him not fit for this school but only for a school where children were flogged. The new scholar was asked 5 to promise to obey and to be diligent. When he had made this promise, he was shown to a seat.