They Were In Opulent
Circumstances For The Neighborhood In Which They Lived, Possessing A Farm
Of About Two Hundred Acres; They Were Industrious, Frugal, And Extremely
Charitable; But They Never Relieved A Poor Family Without Visiting It, And
Inquiring Carefully Into Its Circumstances.
Sarah was the housekeeper, and
Phebe the farmer.
Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew at
what time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted,
and potatoes dug. She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with her
own hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visited
and relieved the poor.
"I remember that they had various ways of employing the young people who
called upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-board
and chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which the
oily parts had been extracted by boiling. 'You do not want to be idle,'
they would say, 'chop this meat, and you shall have your share of the
mince-pies that we are going to make.' At other times a supply of old
woollen stockings were ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care to
be idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would oblige
us by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of
woollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it as
the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had
negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of
theirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet.
"They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory you
know, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had their
hickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire they
laid on the andirons, a little in front of the blaze, so as to subject it
to a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood to drop from
each end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way a
gallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this they
flavored their finest cakes.
"They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, and
the other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it was
recorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Their
father was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich man in his time, and
kept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, for the purpose
of supplying his table with venison. He prided himself on the strict and
literal fulfillment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit with
one of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was cast
and ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shilling as the fees of
court. He paid the ten shillings, and asked the justice whether he would
allow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door. The
magistrate readily consented, but from that time old Comstock never went
by his house. Whenever he had occasion to go to church, or to any other
place, the direct road to which led by the justice's door, he was careful
to take a lane which passed behind the dwelling, and at some distance from
it. The shilling remained unpaid up to the day of his death, and it was
found that in his last will he had directed that his corpse should be
carried by that lane to the place of interment."
When we left the quarantine ground on Thursday morning, after lying moored
all night with a heavy rain beating on the deck, the sky was beginning to
clear with a strong northwest wind and the decks were slippery with ice.
When the sun rose it threw a cold white light upon the waters, and the
passengers who appeared on deck were muffled to the eyes. As we proceeded
southwardly, the temperature grew milder, and the day closed with a calm
and pleasant sunset. The next day the weather was still milder, until
about noon, when we arrived off Cape Hatteras a strong wind set in from
the northeast, clouds gathered with a showery aspect, and every thing
seemed to betoken an impending storm. At this moment the captain shifted
the direction of the voyage, from south to southwest; we ran before the
wind leaving the storm, if there was any, behind us, and the day closed
with another quiet and brilliant sunset.
The next day, the third of our voyage, broke upon us like a day in summer,
with amber-colored sunshine and the blandest breezes that ever blew. An
awning was stretched over the deck to protect us from the beams of the
sun, and all the passengers gathered under it; the two dark-complexioned
gentlemen left the task of filling the spittoons below, and came up to
chew their tobacco on deck; the atrabilious passenger was seen to interest
himself in the direction of the compass, and once was thought to smile,
and the hale old gentleman repeated the history of his Norwalk relatives.
On the fourth morning we landed at Savannah. It was delightful to eyes
which had seen only russet fields and leafless trees for months, to gaze
on the new and delicate green of the trees and the herbage. The weeping
willows drooped in full leaf, the later oaks were putting forth their new
foliage, the locust-trees had hung out their tender sprays and their
clusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese wistaria covered the
sides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were nodding
at us in the wind, from the tops of the brick walls which surround the
gardens.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 80 of 105
Words from 80634 to 81645
of 107287
