A Gathering of Days Page 3

The quilt we left for the phantom is gone; likewise the trail of foot prints, and every other sign. So said Asa yesterday, after he went to the woods. He thinks the prints to have been erased—mayhap with a log or stone—but certain it is that care was taken, and that the stranger is gone.

  With Asa’s words I felt released, even as if my feet would fly which have been heavily freighted during these past weeks.

  Then I thought of he who must travel, slowly over frozen ground, and in unknown land.

  “May he enjoy safe transport,” I pray’d, “a safe end to his journey.”

  Saturday, January 1, 1831

  A fair day, sparkling and bright—the first of this New Year. The snow has drifted in the yard out front, and sun and cold conspire together to make a glistening crust. In other years we have had more snow. But seldom is it so cold.

  “Turn about and each in turn! Now you shall watch and I shall cook and here’s to the evening meal.” Thus Father announced a holiday in the New Year’s honour!

  How it regaled us, Matty and I, to watch his hands, so used to the plow, curve to women’s implements and awkwardly employ them.

  After we ate I took up my writing, and tho’ I encouraged M. to knit she now lies curled on the settle, neither at work nor sleeping. She does not like to go up alone, especially when ’tis dark. So she avoids it, waiting in this way until I close my book. Then, together, we’ll climb the stairs, first bidding Father a soft good night; and well I know, as we kneel to our prayers—saying them fast for the floor is cold!—we shall hear him here below, covering the fire against the back log, and always the last to bed.

  Monday, January 3, 1831

  Teacher Holt, in school today, read from the newspaper!

  Wednesday, January 5, 1831

  A spoon broke in my hand this morning. There are six, now, to be remolded, and scarcely as many whole. The tinker will have much work when he comes. Winter is hardly halfway through; already I long for its close.

  Thursday, January 6, 1831

  Snowed last night. It is fully up to the sills in front and well over that at the back of the house where the wind blows up from the hill. To keep the path to the bam door clear is the greatest struggle! Father says he some times wishes they’d set the buildings closer.

  “I would have, too, were it up to me. But your mother was all against it. It wouldn’t have been so pretty, she thought, nor taken advantage of the granite ledge before the centre door.”

  Once he said, “She had a way with her! A small, little thing to look at her. But she mostly got her way.”

  That is so hard to imagine—the days before I ever was born; Mother and Father were young then, so happy, & laughing in their pleasure.

  VI

  Friday, January 7, 1831

  Cassie, Asa, Matty, and I walked home from school together. He loudly lamented the great injustice that he must struggle with Arithmetic while Cassie and I, indeed all we girls, are excused by reason of our Sex from all but the simplest cyphering, and the first four rules.

  We hoped to go sledding after. But Mr. Shipman had need of Asa, and too soon it was dark.

  Monday, January 10, 1831

  Last week the teacher read from the paper; today he set no text! Instead, to improve our penmanship, he bade us each to practice upon lines of our own choosing.

  “The idle Fool, Is whipt at School,” was Asa’s, occasioning laughter. Cassie undertook as hers: “Sudden and violent passions are seldom durable.” I chose: “Better is a neighbour that is near, than a brother far off” (Proverbs XXVI, 10). Although I chose it to honour Cassie, all the while I worked at it, my mind was with the phantom. Indeed, it seemed a part of me travelled with him, across white fields, and toward what destination? “No, I must stay!” I imagined I cried; but was answered only by the soughing wind.

  Thursday, January 13, 1831

  Heavy snow these past three days; we are much confined to the house. Today there is so much wind and drifting we scarce can see the barn! Only the tops of the fence-posts show, each one domed with caps of snow, funny and misshapen. Until the road is broken out, for which we must wait till the storm is spent, school will not re-open. Although there is always work to do, yet is it of a different sort. ’Tis half a holiday.

  Today I turned a shirt for Father & instructed Matty in how to turn a heel. I have shown her this before but she did not remember. Father, for his part, brought in some wood, nicely seasoned and matched as to grain, with some pieces partially carved. When I inquired what he would make he said he had gotten to thinking about a chair he started years ago. “ ’Twas for your Mother, before she took sick”—and never had completed.

  Friday, January 14

  At mid-day today the storm let up; by dusk a few pale shadows appeared on the hillock’d snow. Father expects that tomorrow will be the day of the breaking out. This time we may go with him if the weather’s not too severe!

  Monday, January 17, 1831

  This morning we dressed as warm as we might, turning ourselves into fat, funny bundles Aunt Lucy would not approve. I had on two dresses and a woolen underskirt, topped this with two shirts of Father’s, and finally my shawl. Matty complained she could not bend her arms so thickly layered were her clothes and—”Cath-er-ine, it itches!”

  “Better itch than freeze,” I said. And scratched the frost from a window pane that we might observe the road. The house itself was nearly as cold as it was outdoors. We’d hardly wakened the fire this morning—only enough to prepare our meal—and now it was already banked to stay till our return.

  Father had made his way to the barn, re-digging the path as he must each day against the swelling drifts. There he’d readied the oxen up and brought them out to wait in the yard—the yard itself reduced by snow with only as much of it cleared each day as we might need to use.

  This morning the team breathed out great clouds. Father, to benefit by their warmth, placed himself between their bodies, but even so kept moving—it was that cold.

  Because it hovered over them we saw the breath of approaching teams before the teams or drivers. Then, at last, they hove in sight. The men, deployed on either side, cast up shovelsful as they walked—tossing up snow to cap the drifts, whereby the spray and drift of snow was nearly continual. Behind them sparkled the marble-white road, no one’s smirch upon it yet; the bed and banks were the same pure white. A dazzlement to the eye!

  We saw six teams already in place, Mr. Shipman’s being the last. Four more teams were yet to come. With us behind Mr. Shipman there’d be eleven teams. Twenty-two oxen! More than that in men!

  We thought we might be to Holderness first, but were chagrinned on reaching the bridge that others were there before us.

  Good-naturedly they teazed and joked: “Been sleeping, sugaring, or shovelling?” And what the answer may have been was lost amidst the laughter, and quick new round of jests.

  Each of the taverns soon over-flowed. For if we were not the first to arrive, neither were we the last! From every hill by every road came lines of teams and men. The farthest to come was from College Road; the nearest from Shepard’s Hill. Our own line of Coxboro men was neither near nor far. Matty first spotted our Uncle Jack—our frequent guest in Summer months but whom we see less often in Winter, the travel being harder and the days so early dark.

  Uncle Jack calls the breaking out the closest a New-Hampshire Winter gets to the Fourth of July!

  Once this day I feared Matty was lost. But there she came, soon enough, led by a cheerful if tipsy stranger saying cheerfully (to me!), “Here’s your little one, ma’am.”

  We stayed till it was long after noon. The way home lying mostly uphill we had a leisurely journey of it—taking our pleasure in the newly cleared road and telling each other the news we’d gleaned during our hours in town.

  It was nearly dusk when we reached the house and very cold within. Father brought the fire to life, then went out and with his ax hacked off some of our frozen soup that we might start it heating whil
e he attended to chores.

  A knock at the door told of guests unexpected! It was no other than Teacher Holt who’d stayed behind with this and that and now was caught in the on-coming dark and still far from his lodgings.

  Back went Father, with his ax, and soon returned to fill the pot which was quickly bubbling. As pleasant vapors filled the room I deemed myself amply rewarded for the slow preparation all those weeks ago! To the soup we joined bread and cyder, also nuts and apples. To offset the plainness of the food when we had a visitor I set out the pewterware and not the wooden bowls.

  Teacher Holt talks with Father now and will stay the night. We have no proper chamber for guests, but he assures us he’ll sleep well downstairs by the fire.

  VII

  Monday, January 24, 1831

  You would never think how many people live in our State of New-Hampshire! Two hundred and sixty-nine thousand, five hundred and thirty-three!

  Teacher Holt this morning showed us the Columbian Centinel for January the 8th. His friend, a Mr. Garrison, had sent it on from Boston.

  Other true facts concerning our State:

  . . . increase in the last ten years, 25,372. The number of white males is 131,899, females 137,511; and of free coloured persons 623. The number of white persons deaf and dumb is 136 . . . and of blind 117.

  How would it be, being blind? Cassie & I talked of this, closing our eyes to effect the condition as we walked homeward today. For all that we stumbled & clung to each other each of us knew, and knew full well, that we could open our eyes and see should we but choose to do so.

  Thus we determined ’tis not solely the condition, but whether or not one has a choice that determines its oppression.

  Then how would it be to be coloured? a slave? I proposed it might compare with perfect obedience. But no, says Cassie, obedience is free for the more freely one submits the better one obeys.

  More than six hundred free coloured in New-Hampshire? I had not thought so many! With my phantom, should he be here still, there would be one more in number.

  In all of these United States there are now 13 million people, some in each of the twenty-four states, but most in the Eastern Cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and New-York

  Thursday, February 10, 1831

  Have not written in some days being chilled & feverish by turns, the latter now abating. Neither have I attended school but Cassie comes by daily and I have well employed the time with penmanship & spelling.

  Matty is eight years old today, a sweet and trusting child. I can not but wish that Mother might see her—M. was so little when our mother died; nor does she remember the infant boy whom we called Nathaniel whose life was counted in days.

  Father rejoiced so at his birth; every farmer needs a son and girls he already had. ’Twas funny to hear him talk to the infant who lay all swaddled and with no knowing of who it was that spoke to him nor the words’ intention. I remember he talked to the child as if he were fully sensible. Once he promised he’d give to him—had indeed been saving for him—the Barlow knife that he, our father, had had when but a boy. I must have looked quite startled at this for Mother quickly interposed, “But not till he is nearly a youth—now, Charlie, don’t be impatient for things that have to come with time.” I think I remember this so well because soon after both sickened and died. And then there was no time.

  Thursday, February 17, 1831

  Teacher Holt brought in to school a copy of a newspaper started this month in Boston by his Boston friend. Mr. Garrison intends that his paper which he calls The Liberator will quite largely concern itself with the slavery question.

  “Our country is the world,” is its motto; “our countrymen all mankind.”

  Teacher Holt read the motto very plain, and later set it out in chalk, we to copy it in to our books and preserve it in our minds. Also he bade us consider a poem (It was printed in the newspaper.) whose author stated he’d rather be enslaved than knowingly allow cruel chains to deprive another. I thought of Asa, whipped for the pies. I could not see him where he sat, nor did he speak.

  Friday, February 18, 1831

  Cassie was not at school today, nor was Sophy Perkins. I and Asa and Matty walked home, and all the while it was on my mind to speak my admiration for what A. had done. Soon—too soon—we reached his gate and I had not spoken. Me to be shy with Asa Shipman! He whom I’ve played with like a brother, and who in deed is to me a brother, and closer to me in some ways than he is to Cassie . . .

  Father has laid by much good cloth which he’s woven these Winter months from yarn I spun last Summer. Because of this, and rebuilding the harrow which suffers with our rocky soil, he has had to neglect the chair with its delicate spindles. Despite this he plans a candle-stand: “We’ve been too long with no new things! A man, if he’s not careful, finds that he has gotten stuck in his ways who never meant to be so. Yes, a chair and a candle-stand to stand by the North window there, with a cheery rug beside it. How would you like that, Catherine, my girl? But who will make the rug?”

  Then off he went with some olden song with hums and words and whistles.

  Had he (I think not.) expected reply? What would he have had me to say?

  Sunday, February 20, 1831

  Some of the district are sorely distressed that Teacher Holt has brought Boston’s news into the school house hours. “Reading, writing, and cyphering,” they say, “is all he’s paid to know about; and all he ought to teach.”

  Behind this runs a darker rumour—one which strikes me with a dread I may not confess. Others had, it now appears, noted the foot prints in Piper’s wood and harboured their suspicions. Now they believe, putting all together, that Teacher Holt had been the one to help the run-away! How easily we could clear his name but all of us fear to do so. O! there is no end to it; and tho’ the phantom is long since gone, still does something of him remain. As alien it is, and unalterable, as the writing in my book and its plea, now answered.

  Tuesday, February 22, 1831

  Uncle Jack to visit. This is the first we have seen him since the breaking out. He too has heard the buzzing rumours about our Teacher Holt. Both he & Father oppose slaveholding, but have different ends in view. Father favours re-settlement, which would be in Africa and a new-formed nation. Uncle Jack says that freeman means free; as free as any man.

  “But would you want, then,” Father persists, “to have a black man as your neighbour, or thinking he might expect a share in the town decisions?”

  Please miss.

  Take pity.

  I am cold.

  Wednesday, February 23, 1831

  As if he would do it in the town’s despite, Teacher Holt has brought Boston’s news into the school house to consider an advertizement which had appeared in a Southern newspaper. Mr. Garrison re-published it to call smug Yankee attention to the nature of the offenses which the South condones.

  FOR SALE

  A black girl, 17 years of age of excellent character, and of good disposition; a very useful and handy person in a house for a turn of years. Apply at the office of . . .

  Seventeen years is scarcely older than the oldest at school. Suppose that we had been made to be slaves rather than being born free. Would not a black girl know love and fear—love and honour her father and mother, and fear lest anything change? I had not considered the matter in this way before.

  The paper is dated the 5th of February. I wonder what befell her, where she may be now.

  Dialogue Between Youth, Christ, And the Devil

  Awake, arise, behold thou hast

  Thy life, a leaf, thy breath, a blast;

  At night lie down prepared to have

  Thy sleep, thy death, thy bed, thy grave.

  (From our speller, page 36)

  Copy of letter submitted to the District Meeting by our Teacher. Shown to me by Cassie Shipman, who had it from her father, a Town Selectman this year.

  Neighbours, Friends, Employers:

  Two issues are before us as I am doubly accused
. First it is said that I have assisted an escaped Negro slave presumed to have been refuged in these, our nearby, woods. Second it is said that I have infringed upon my pupils’ education by introducing, in school hours, texts other than school books, including newspapers.

  Concerning the first my sole, only confession is that I have not done the thing of which I am accused. In this instance I would proudly accept that action’s consequences. However, whatever his manner may suggest, or his dreams encourage, your school teacher is no conspirator, of that you may be certain.

  Of the second complaint, I am guilty as charged, and pledge that I will desist. Whatsoever I did I did in good faith, believing my offices as a Teacher to include duties of Moral Education; that in a nation founded in Freedom, the Liberty of every man ought to be tested, assessed, & debated in every age, and decade, of that nation’s life.

  To so engage your children is not, however, your choice. As I am here by your let and permission, I truly regret the dissatisfaction that has been incurred. Mindful of my obligations, I beg you allow me remain in good faith,

  Yr. Obdt. Servant,

  E. Edw. Holt

  VIII

  Saturday, February 26, 1831

  Saying it takes one’s mind from the cold Cassie’s mother says every Winter would be improved by such a dispute—and nearly each Winter has one. “A heated argument?” asks Cassie’s father, and winks at that, ’midst merriment, which rather concludes the discussion.

  Now must the teacher look for new lodging, the M.’s being loudest and first to condemn him, and where he is living besides! The Shipmans have offered to take him in. However, they (Shipmans) demand to be payed. The M.’s point out they’ve defaulted not and thus deserve the full fee for the unexpired term.

  Father says this poor nation of ours can scarce expect its affairs in order so long as New-Englanders, being what they are, care more for cash than scruples.