A New England Sampler Eleanor Early

917- 1 * E12& 1 1018566

Early

A Hew England sandier

DATE DUE

JUN i9 1981

By Eleanor Early

AND THIS IS BOSTON!

AND THIS is WASHINGTON!

AND THIS IS CAPE COD!
BEHOLD THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
PORTS OF THE SUN
ADIRONDACK TALES
LANDS OF DELIGHT

JL r^vv^HVo* ' ;i " ''* * "t *^ v ^.

i_''" it ' ' """"

Bundling was a emy custom*

BY
ELEANOR EARLY

Illustrations by Samuel Bryant

WAVEKLY HOUSE -BOSTON, MASS.
1940

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY
WAVERLY HOUSE, BOSTON

Second Printing

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES Of AMBWCA

by the C. B. m.***? A. Qy j^ Norwood,

40

CONTENTS

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER ix

I LIFE AND LOVE AMONG THE

PURITANS 3

II THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN

FROM BOSTON 22

III MERCHANTS AND MASTERS MAG

NIFICENT

IV DRUMS ALONG THE CONNECTICUT
V AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

VI GHOSTS Go WAILING DOWN THE
WIND

VII MADMEN AND LOVERS 141

VIII LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 179

IX SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 2 1 1

X DID LIZZIE Do IT? 230

55
78
95

vi CONTENTS

XI THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 254

XII A PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 274

XIII SNUFF AND HERBS 297

XIV NEWPORT AND THE FOUR HUN

DRED 320

XV GOOD FOOD, GOOD MEAT GOOD

GOD, LET'S EAT! 344

ILLUSTRATIONS

Bundling was a cozy custom. . , li

"I think her to be a dear saint and a ser
vant of God. . ." 2

They distrusted her young beauty and
the faraway look in her eyes. . . 23

In scarlet hoods come little maids . . .
and captains home from the sea 57

"The Town Drummer was up for Drunk
enness. . ." 79
And I would have a Tory beau to tea 97
Jonathan became avaricious 125

Lord Timothy took a flier in warming
pans. . * H3

Deborah was a Soldier. . Jemima died
twice. * . Maria was a Tramp. . .
and Mrs. Jack, a Glamour Girl 181

Only a woman can understand 213

Lizzie Borden took an axe. . . 231

I remain your warm and personal friend 255

His face had New England written all
over it 275

vii

viii ILLUSTRATIONS

Snuff was an astounding rage 299

God smiled on the Evil Livers 321

"In Holland, Prussia, Russia, France and
England. . ." 345

8ZKfjen I am toato anti lafo fn grafce
Slnfc all tng bones ate rotten,

Bg tfjfjs 31 tnag remembered fee, fctfjen
I ssijautu be forgotten.

HPHOSE are the woeful lines an anonymous
*" New England child embroidered on a
sampler a long time ago and I'd like them for
my epitaph.

Samplers were my grandmother's youthful
passion. And Mother did a pious little number
that hung in the parlor. And now I am going
to do one too. Only I can't sew so I'll type it.
O tempora O mores!

My Sampler is also going to be a Patchwork
a sample of this, and a patch of that. In New
England, our grandmothers made patchworks,
and called them comforters sometimes they
called them blessings. And they were pretty
cozy for New England.

In the West Indies, there are things called
Dutch Wives (like bolsters) that they put in
the middle of a double bed, to keep people
apart. A blessing works the other way. When
young people used to bundle, they did it under
a blessing, and sometimes they had a blessed
event. Bundling was a Puritan pastime, and

x A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

an economic measure. It saved light and fuel
This book is a collection of odds and ends,
including Puritans, grandrnama, and bundling.
It begins with Anne Hutchinson whose statue
is in front of the State House in Boston and
ends with Calvin Coolidge. Puritans called
Anne Jezebel, but Coolidge said she only talked
too much.

Besides people in my Sampler, there will be
old towns and houses, clipper ships and captains,
mountains and the sea, widows' walks and an
cient doorways, and the wild roses that bloom
by the shore.

There will be eating and drinking, and how
to make a proper chowder, and mix an old
Ward Eight. There will be Puritans; and
witches and their demon lovers; ghosts and mad
men; and ladies plain and fancy; John L Sul
livan, the Boston Strong Boy; Lydia E. Pinkham,
the Patent Medicine Queen; and Lizzie Borden,
the Hatchet Girl:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one,

Miss Borden lived in Fall River, and I used
to try to interview her. Being a reporter in
New England helped to make this Sampler*

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER xi

And being a New Englander also helped, be
cause the characters in the book are mostly
Puritans, and Puritans are rather better dis
sected by someone who knows a little about
them.

Calvin Coolidge was a latter-day Puritan.
And when he became President and went to
Washington, I went too, because my editor had
a mistaken idea that I knew Mrs. Coolidge, and
I did not think it necessary to set him right
and lose a nice assignment.

Before Coolidge became president when he
was Governor of Massachusetts, and I was a cub
I had an assignment that took me to the
State House. There was talk in the Governor's
office of old ways in New England, and Coolidge
said, "It would be wholesome to think more of
these things. It would reduce complaint, and
increase contentment." I copied this in my
little notebook (being a cub I carried a note
book) and after a long while, I found it again.

There is an old Yankee motto that Coolidge
used to quote ''Clean your plate Wear it out
Make it do Go without/' Which reminds me
of many of our best known New Englanders, and
a number of my readers.

Every little while I get a letter from some
New England lady who wants me to speak to
her Friendly Aid, or the Tuesday Club.

xii A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

She thinks, "I'll just write and tell her how
low the treasury is, and I don't think she ought
to charge anything, the charity we do/'

In this way I have met a number of my read
ers, many of whom are Very Nice Persons, and
seem to be descended, mostly, from the May
flower. I would not hurt a Colonial Dame for
apples, nor even a D.A.R. But I am rather tired
of being polite, and now I am going to tell some
of the things I know about some of the ancestors
of our Best People.

I am going to make a patchwork of purple
scandals, and gray sea-towns, with a ghost all
white in the light of the moon, of blue bloods,
and scarlet sisters, and lilacs that once in the
door-yards bloomed. And when I am gone, by
these I may remembered bewhen all my bones
are rotten (ugh!) and I should be forgotten
(oh!) .

A

NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

think her to be a dear saint and a servant
of God. . :*

LIFE AND LOVE AMONG
THE PURITANS

T IFE in New England was tough on the
*-* ladies. And love among the Puritans was
a bed of nettles.

Boston magistrates fined "bould Virgins/'
hanged a threesome, and sent Anne Hutchin-
son to hell.

They said old lady Hawkins had the Devil for
a lover, and swung Mistress Hibbens because
she was a scold. They stript Margaret Brews ter
"to the middle/' and paraded her through the
town like a strip tease girl. And they lashed
fancy ladies on their beautiful backs, and Quak
ers on general principles.

What the Puritans gave the world was not
thought, but action. They whipped Provident
Southwick for Presumptuous Sabbath Break
ing, fined her ten pounds, and to collect the
fine (for Provident was poor as a church mouse)
ordered her sold for a slave.

4 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Sunday Blue Laws were hardest on lovers,
John Lewis and Sarah Chapman were arrested
for sitting together on the Lord's Day, under an
apple tree. Men who "saluted" their wives on
Sunday were pilloried. And Captain Kemble,
who "publicquely, lewdly Lord's Day noon"
kissed his wife at his own front door, spent the
rest of the day in the stocks.

Children born on the Sabbath were thought
to have been conceived on the same day, and
pious parents were accused by the ministers of
making sinful, Lord's Day love. The wife of a
Connecticut Magistrate had twins on a Sunday,
and she and her husband were as surprised as
anyone. After this there was less talk, for the
Magistrate made the ministers back down and
only God kept tabs.

Love and toil were stolen sweets on Sunday,
and Elizabeth Eddy was fined ten shillings for
hanging out clothes, and her mother ten more
for catching eels.

Less fortunate ladies xvere made to sit on the
Meeting-house "stool of repentance," with their
sin written in Capitall Letters on a paper above
their foreheads. Scarlet Letter girls wore their
shame on their breasts, and stood on a sheet
beside the pulpit.

THE PURITANS 5

Bachelors in New England were not per
mitted a house of their own, but were assigned
to some family by the magistrates.

Neither could a spinster live alone and like
it. Spinsters were called thornbacks. And girls
of twenty-five were antcient maides. Any woman
without a hump could marry whom she chose
in Colonial New England. But pious Puritans
were dull husbands, the ranks of respectable
women contained few who were not tired of
their profession, and the thornbacks were the
lucky ones.

Ambition in a woman was a sin in early New
England. And when a Fair field female lost her
mind, the ministers said it was Reading and
Writing that caused it. They tried to silence
Anne Hutchinson whose intellect disturbed
their peace. And when they couldn't, the Gov
ernor and the clergy put her on the spot. (Ill
tell you about that in a minute.)

Aristocracy is always cruel, and Governor
Winthrop, who was entitled to armorial bear
ings, was a staunch, fine snob. He reproached
women of "meane condition and calling" for
taking upon themselves the "garbe of ladyes,"
and forbade the %vearing of silk hoods and lace.
"Common men" were forbidden to wear "im
moderate britches" and long hair.

6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Fifteen crimes were punishable by death in
Boston. And almost everything that was fun
was wrong-especially for the lower classes. The
aristocrats were hard on themselves, but quite
a little harder on their servants. And they all
had slaves, and beat the hell out of them.

Thirty indentured white servants reached the
Bay Colony as early as 1625, and there were
more on nearly every ship. Among them were
voluntary emigrants, convicts, and kids. "Wild
Irish girls" were indentured to Puritan families
for four years and given the equivalent of twelve
dollars, when their time was up. Convicts and
kids were sold into virtual slavery. The kids
had been kidnapped from Scotland, Ireland or
England, and were considered fortunate (by
the Puritans) to have reached so regenerate a
land. . . Kidnapping was in fair repute in the
good old days.

Negro children were sold by weight in New
England-sixpence a pound. Black adults were
cheaper.

For "rebellus cariedge" toward Puritan "mi,.
tris" or master, white servants were sent to ban
labor. And "pernicious jades" were lashed at
the whipping post. When they could, they ran
away and Boston's first newspapers carried
offers of rewards for the return of the runaways
red, black and white.

THE PURITANS 7

New Englanders were hard workers, and
wore the foreigners down I guess, because mem
bers of the families of the rich Judge Sewall
lived out as help. Native-born children were
bound *out at eight. And old gentlewomen
worked for their keep. Love of labor was in the
blood stream of the founders, and bred in their
children. And descendants of early New Eng
landers get sick to their stomachs to see the
WPA leaning on their shovels.

Little girls of four knit stockings. Small boys
knit their own suspenders- And eight-year-olds
stitched boastful samplers.

When I was young and in my Prime,
You see how well I spent my Time,
And by my Sampler you may see
What care my Mother took of me.

"Unsivill" (problem) children were taken
in hand by the tithingman. Boys who "larfed"
in Meeting were whipped, and sometimes
fined. And Susan Smith, who "did smile/' be-
way led her little sin before the pulpit.

The three Puritan virtues were Sabbath-keep
ing, Chastity and Thrift, and we Ye still pretty
thrifty.

Chastity was a matter for official investiga
tion, and public confessions were indoor sport.
It was editing to conjecture what might hap-

8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

pen of a Sabbath when Meeting-house was Ama
teur Night, and the pastor kept the score.

A group of mechanics who formed the North
Church in Boston agreed that any member who
fell from grace was to stand before the congrega
tion in a white robe and confess. But it was
the girls who told oftenest, for then as now-
few women could hold their tongues. Mary
Magdalene could repent and become a saint in
heaven, and sit at her Maker's feet. But she
couldn't have sat at a Puritan pastor's and the
girls should have known better.

Elizabeth Morse confessed to sin with her
husband before marriage, and a committee was
appointed to examine further into her life a
committee headed by Benjamin Webb, who
testified that he knew Elizabeth before her hus
band did. When the committee reported, Eliza
beth was excommunicated.

Excommunication meant ostracism during
life and hell after it, and was the worst thing
that could befall a girl. Temperance S. made
similar confession, "spreading forth in Divers
Particulars her Sin and Wickedness/' But Tem
perance, weeping bitterly, bewayled her love
and was forgiven.

If there was one sin the Puritans hated more
than another, it was breaking the Seventh Com
mandment, which they called "living after the
Italian method.' 1

THE PURITANS 9

Governor Winthrop's Diary tells of Sir Chris
topher Gardiner, who arrived in Boston with a
girl he called his cousin. The Governor got a
Puritan hunch, and felt that Sir Christopher
and his "Cousin" were living after the Italian
method. Confirming his suspicions with a little
official snooping, he charged the pair with their
sin and forthwith deported the jade.

In the early days of the Colony the all-power
ful minister could not perform the marriage
ceremony. A magistrate, a captain almost any
man of dignity in the community except the
parson could be authorized to marry Puritan
lovers.

A trying unregenerate in New London con
summated a seventeenth century companionate
marriage without benefit of clergy, and this, of
course, was a great scandal to the town. A
magistrate, meeting the ungodly couple on the
street, reproved them thus:

"John Rogers, do you persist in calling this
woman your wife?"

"Yes I do/' violently answered John.

"And do you, Mary, wish this man to live
with?"

"Indeed I do," said Mary.

"Then," said the Magistrate coldly, "by the

10 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

laws of God and this Commonwealth, I pro
nounce you man and wife."

No detail of domestic life was too insignifi
cant for the attention of Puritan authorities,
Winthrop heard that Captain John Underhill
was calling on the young wife of an antcient
cooper, and went one afternoon to investigate.
And the Governor found the house locked
and the Captain within!

The lady was in great trouble of mind, ex
plained Captain Underhill. And he had com
forted her, he added, as best he could. . . But
she seemed very happy, the Governor said, and
pulled his gray beard angrily. Extraordinarily
happy, in fact.

Adultery in the Bay Colony was punishable
with death. And it may have been significant
that the Captain went rushing off to New
Hampshire, where the Green Mountain boys
and girls received him with open arms . . ,
adultery in New Hampshire was the mainstay
of civilization.

The Bay Colony sent letter after letter ex*
horting the authorities to proper action. But
the people retorted by electing the Captain for
their Governorand that for Boston Puritans!

THE PURITANS 11

In Governor Winthrop's Diary, side by side
with affairs of state, are details of the sinful
amours of Puritan girls and the obstetrical ad
ventures of stainless matrons. Twice widowed
and the father of seven children, the Governor
was interested in sex and obstetrics.

To relieve the labor pains of the third Mis
tress Winthrop, he contrived a prescription
"good for agues of all sorts" and bequeathed it
to prosperity.

Let the patient's nails be pared and gather ye
parings (he instructs) , and tie around the neck of
an eel in a tub of water. Boil well.

The eel, we take it, died. And the patient, we
trust, recovered.

It was rumored that Goody Hawkins, the
illiterate midwife of the Colony, although she
was very old, had the Devil for a lover. She was
a widow who evinced no desire to re-marry, and
for this reason, among others, she was suspect.
It was believed that a woman who had known
an infernal lover would never again content
herself with a Puritan Puritans being, after the
love of hell, but pale and meagre men who
could never please an amorous Witch.

12 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

In Jane's house were found clay and rushes
for the making of poppets (dolls) , and pins and
needles to stick in the poppets, to cause pain to
those whom Witches pleased to harry. Because
of her past piety, Jane was not prosecuted, but
only admonished.

And when Mary Dyer was brought to bed of
a child there was Goody Hawkins-boiling Slip
pery Elm and Papoose Root, to help Mistress
Anne Hutchinson whose knowledge of mid
wifery was greater than her own.

Mary Dyer was a bridea woman of "good
estate and learning," delivered now, by great
misfortune, of a Mongolian idiot a creature
with a queer, flat head that died as soon as it
breathed.

Mistress Hutchinson consulted with the Rev
erend Mr. Cotton, who agreed to register the
birth as still-born, and to keep Mistress Dyer's
calamity a secret. But a few months later Mr.
Cotton, on the outs with the ladies, decided to
make a scape-goat of Mary, and killing two
birds with one stone call attention to the
miscarriage situation in the sinful town of
Boston.

Assisted by his tireless Colleague Wilson, Mr.
Cotton disinterred the corpse of the poor little
monster, and "shewed it to above 100 people/'

THE PURITANS 13

After which, he publicly admonished Mister
Dyer for his part in the matter!

Later the Dyers became Quakers, which was
an even worse sin than having a Mongolian
idiot, and a great mistake for poor Mary who
was charged with blaspheming the ministers,
and hanged on Boston Common. Mary was the
stuff martyrs are made of but she was mad, as
many zealots are. And taunting the magistrates,
she carried her shroud on her arm to show them
that she was not afraid to die.

The Reverend Mr. Wilson went with Mis
tress Dyer to the scaffoldnot to offer consola
tion but to try to break her down, and when he
couldn't, his fury was fearful to behold.

"I will carry fire in one hand!" he cried,
"And faggots in the other, to burn all the Quak
ers in the world/'

As a hater Mr. Wilson was practically tops,
.and I wouldn't be surprised if he was a misog
ynist for he had always trouble with the
ladies. Before coming to New England he was
chaplain to Lady Scuadamore, until the Sunday
he rebuked her ladyship's guests for talking
nothing but hawks and hounds and was felt to
be undesirable company. Dismissed from the

14 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

castle, the censurious clergyman sought a more
pious fold afar.

When John Cotton, persecuted in England
for his Puritan proclivities, fled to America,
Mr. Wilson followed on the first ship. On the
same boat were Anne and William Hutchinson,
with two hundred Puritans, and a hundred
cows bound for New World pastures. . . Mr.
Wilson was later to remark that the only things
cheap in America were milk and ministers
(milk was a penny a quart) . But at the mo
ment he was giving his hostile attention to Mrs,
Hutchinson who, during the long voyage, de
bated the Bible and interpreted the Word in
ways that displeased the Cloth.

When the ship reached Boston Mr. Wilson
kept his eye on the lady, and in a preliminary
skirmish tried to keep her from winning Church
membership.

Now the Puritan Church in Boston was the
Outpost of Life Hereafter. Once the Church
was gained, Paradise was as good as won, for
Puritans were God's elect and destined to sit in
Heaven's front pews. . . And they were the
Bay's elect too. Four-fifths of the Colony was
outside the Church, but only Church members
could vote. And without the vote there was no
social prestige.

When a new-comer desired to become a

THE PURITANS 15

citizen of the Bay, and of Heaven too, he made
application to be examined by the Elders. And
it took only one vote to blacklist him to the
Devil. Mr. Wilson gave testimony that Mrs.
Hutchinson had boasted on shipboard concern
ing events in her life of which she had knowl
edge beforehand. This Mrs. Hutchinson af
firmed to be true, and the ministers went into
a huddle.

Intellectually she was too much for them.
She was an agitator, and she made them nervous.
She declared that a mere profession of faith did
not prove salvation, since a hypocrite might
lead the seemingly holy life of a saint and only
God could know what he was getting away with.
This was in direct opposition to the Puritan
convenant of works. But when the Elders asked
her questions, she wearied them with quibble
and repartee until the old men were tired.
They admitted her against their better judg
ment.

Filled then with triumph, and brimming
with zeal, Mrs. Hutchinson got the church
women together, to improve themselves and
the rest of the world forming in this way the
first Women's Club in America (if I'm up on
women's clubs) . On Mondays the ladies met
to talk over Sunday's sermon and that made it
the Monday Club. Mistress Hutchinson re-

16 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

peated the sermon developing, explaining, and
usually criticising. When the criticisms held
over, the ladies met again on Tuesday and then
it was the Tuesday Club.

Such goings-on, reported by the Reverend
(Snooper) Wilson, incurred the withering
wrath of the clergy, and the ministers rose as
one. Wilson persuaded John Cotton, for whose
sake Mrs. Hutchinson had come to America, to
turn against her. Then, preferring charges,
Wilson rallied the Cloth for the prosecution.

It was November 1637 in the town of Boston,
and the stage was set for New England's first
famous trial. Mistress Hutchinson, heavy with
child, stood before the General Court of Massa
chusetts, charged with reviling the ministers.
Conviction of the crime carried the terrible
sentence of expulsion from the Colony and
excommunication from the Church. Exile from
lifeand Hell after it.

On the bench was Governor Winthrop, who
was both Judge and Prosecutor. Forty members
of the Court surrounded the Governor, and be
fore him were all the ministers of the Bay, with
Mr. Wilson in the front row.

The people of the Bay Colony had deserted
their appointed pastors to listen to the talks of

THE PURITANS 17

one who was unordained and a woman! Mis
tress Hutchinson had talked to them of love and
joyand in Puritan Boston there was no room
for love and joy. The meetings she held were
not "tolerable or comely/' the ministers said.
Nor were they "fitting for the brains of her sex/'

She said she had received a direct manifesta
tion of the Holy Spirit, that she had a mission
to deliver to the churches of New England. And
considering her brains and personality, the
ministers were afraid she was going to get away
with it.

Mrs. Hutchinson had money, social position,
and a tongue like an adder. She was forty-six
years old, and carrying her sixteenth child. But
she had strength to nurse and time to comfort.
And she was beloved by many, including her
husband.

Mr. Wilson had tried to persuade William
Hutchinson to abandon Anne, and William had
said, "I am more tied to my wife than to my
Church, and I think her to be a dear saint and
servant of God" which lovely remark was Wil
liam's only public statement.

Boston Puritans did not want anyone to be
happy. And although many of them seem to
have acted pretty naturally they did not enjoy

i8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

it, because that fierce thing called Conscience
kept them awake nights. They hoped to merit
Heaven by making Boston Hell. And many of
them brought up their children on verse that
would make a psychologist jump in the river.

In hell at last thy soul must burn,
When thou thy sinful race has run,
Consider thisthink on thy end
Lest God do thee to pieces rend!

Mistress Hutchinson had taken occasion to
protest child education (only you couldn't call
it education) , and this had further incensed the
ministers, who called her Jezebel because she
so harassed them.

There is a statue of Mrs. Hutchinson in front
of the State House on Beacon Hill in Boston,
showing her as she is thought to have looked at
the trial. A majestic figure, in a long full gown
of grace and dignity. Her head is flung back, as
when she faced her Judges. And in her hand
she holds an open Bible.

By her side is a little girl, her daughter Susan
nah. Susannah was captured by the Indians-
rescued much against her will! And married
at last to a white man. To her dying day Susan-

THE PURITANS 19

nah preferred Indians to Puritansand no won
der, the way the Puritans treated her mother.

There were chairs and tables for the magis
trates, chairs for the ministers and benches for
the audience. . . Mistress Hutchinson stand
ing before them drew her cloak about her, and
smiled at William sitting among their enemies.
Life with its curious loneliness had its warm
moments, and William, through un-Puritan
tears, smiled back.

It was a bitter winter, with sleet and snow
and a wind from the roaring sea. The cattle
froze. The dead could not be buried. And the
magistrates brought their foot-warmers into the
Meeting-house where court was held, and
huddled in their great chairs.

The trial lasted three days, and when they
found her guilty, Wilson, the man of God,
arose. His voice was like a prophet's word and
in its hollow tones he cried,

We do cast you out, and deliver you up
to Satan . . . and account you from this
time forth to be a Heathen and a Publican
. . . and command you, in the name of
Jesus Christ, as a Leper to withdraw your
self out of this Congregation.

20 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

William Hutchinson went to Rhode Island
to make arrangements for a home for his fam
ily. And the magistrates sent Anne, while he
was gone, to a house in Roxbury, where she was
separated from her children, and badgered by
nearly every minister in the Bay. For four
months her Inquisition went on. And this was
the time between her excommunication and
exile.

In March William returned, and the family
set out for Newport, via the Providence Planta
tions where Roger Williams had gone before
them. It was a six-day journey, and Mistress
Hutchinson with a young child in her arms,
slept at night on the ground.

Roger Williams gave the Indians wampum,
ten hoes and twenty-three English coats for the
island of Aquidneck (which is now Newport) ,
and nineteen Englishmen became Proprietors
of the land. People came, for Anne's sake, from
Boston to settle there. And Goody Hawkins
came, to deliver Anne of the child she carried.

But when her time came a terrible thing hap
pened, and there was no living child, but some
thing dead and fearful that Goody buried in
the night. The story was whispered about as
such stories are. And it reached Boston where
the Governor heard it, and the ministers.

Winthrop said it was no human child that

THE PURITANS 21

Mistress Hutchinson bore, but twenty-seven
monsters! He wrote it in his famous History.
And the ministers proclaimed it from the
pulpit.

The twenty-seven monsters, they said, were
God's punishment for a woman who had reviled
His ministers.

Three years later William Hutchinson died
and that was more of God's punishment. His
widow moved then to the Dutch territory of
New Netherlands, and settled near what is now
New Rochelle. And there the Indians came
down like the wolf on the fold, when sunrise
was gleaming in purple and gold and killed
Mistress Hutchinson and all her family but
Susannah, as well as a number of persons who
had never reviled the ministers at all. Even Mr.
Wilson could scarce make sense of the bloody
business.

II

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN
FROM BOSTON

AN old black woman in Antigua (in the
British West Indies) dropped a frog at
midnight before the door of a white man who
lived, last winter, on the road that leads to the
Fort.

The frog was decorated with long strips of
knotted red flannel, and in the knots were roots
and sewing needles. Frogs in the West Indies
are about the size of hens.

The white man's servants* returning from a
dance in the village, saw the strange frog, and
ran away, knowing it to be bewitched. It xvas
extraordinarily large, they said. And one, who
claimed to have seen it plainest, said it was not
a frog at all but the Witch Woman herself,
quite naked, and hopping about on all fours.

There was a good deal of talk. And, of course,
the white man heard the story. Unfortunately,
perhaps, he refused to take it seriously.

The Witch Woman was seized by the police,
but furnished an acceptable alibi, and returned

They distrusted her young beauty and the -faraway
look in her eyes, .

24 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

to her home in the village called Little Kiss.

Natives watched the white man appre
hensively. There was no apparent effect of the
bewitchment. . . But a month later, quite sud
denly, he married a colored girl.

He resigned from the Tennis Club, and was
dropped by the Government House set. And
since he was the only eligible bachelor on the
island, the white women were furious. The
natives said that the Witch Woman had worked
a charm on him, to make him fall in love with
the girl. And a number of whites agreed,

To provoke unlawful love is a crime in the
West Indies, punishable with one year in
prison, as it once was in New England. And
maybe it is lucky I left the Indies before I got
in a provoking mood, because I have a love
charm that I bought from the obeah xvoman of
Little Kiss. The police, hearing a rumor of
the unholy transaction, came to question me. I
was obliged to acquit visiting the woman, but
denied all knowledge of her brews; and in this
way I protected her. It would be interesting
to report on the efficacy of the potion, but I am
keeping it for an emergency.

In March 1929, I covered a Witch Story in
York, Pennsylvania. Old Man Rehmeyer, who

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 25

practiced Black Magic, had cursed Milton Hess
and Milton's wife, Alice, who subsequently lost
their appetites, and were pining away.

John Blymyer, another Voodoo man, told
the Hesses that they must get a lock of Reh-
meyer's hair, and bury it eight feet under
ground. This, he said, was the only way to
break the spell, and he himself would negotiate
the matter.

Accompanied by the two Hess brothers,
Blymyer went to demand of Old Man Reh-
meyer a snip of his hair. The Old Man pro
tested.

"The few locks which are left me are gray;
now why should I cut them off, pray?"

One query led to another. And the last one
led to a fight. Blymyer picked up a piece of
wood, and let the Old Man have it and it was
more than the Old Man could take.

Blymyer was charged with mui cjjer, and can-
victed in the second degroe. . . Old Man
Rehmeyer was buried, with all his hair. . .
And Milton and Alice Hess are feeling better.

Witchcraft flourished in Europe for centuries
before it came to New England. And the
Reverend Montague Summers says it still
flourishes in England.

26 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

"Up and down England/' says Mr. Summers
(a celebrated London clergyman) , "there is
hardly a village without a witch. In our great
cities, our larger towns, our seats of learning,
Satanists abound, and are organized (as of old)
into covens of wickedness. Black Masses are
celebrated in Mayfair and Chelsea. . . A band
of Satanists have their rendezvous not far from
the city of Cambridge. . . I am perfectly certain
that there are Witches today both men and
women who do a great deal of harm by their
foul practices. . . I do not consider this is super
stition at all, but just common sense."

When Louis XIV was on the throne of
France, and Madame de Montespan was fear
ful of losing his fickle affections, she went to
La Voisin, the most celebrated Witch of all
times.

There was no sin that La Voisin did not sell
no magic she could not procure. Among the
loathsome creatures who haunted her evil
house were the two executioners of Paris M.
Guillaume and M. Larivire who brought
her fine presents of the limbs and fat of mur
derers who had been be-headed, and political
prisoners broken on the wheel. From these, La
Voisin made tall black tapers for her hellish

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 27

rites. M. le Prieur, who celebrated Black Masses
in the chapel of the Chateau de Villebousin at
Saint Denis, was her friend.

It was these two who received the King's
mistress, and spread the black velvet pall upon
the altar, on which Athenias de Montespan, all
nude, prostrated herself. Then M. le Prieur
said a Black Mass upon her naked body. And
when the Host was consecrated, and the Precious
Blood, La Voisin crept forward with an infant
in her arms. And she held the child over the
King's mistress, and slaughtered it there, so that
its blood fell into the chalice. And streamed
over the white body of the wicked woman who
loved the giddy King.

When La Voisin was finally brought to
justice, she admitted that 2500 French babies
had been murdered for the Black Mass. Her
confessions implicated the highest in the land.
Several nobles committed suicide. Thirty-six
Witches were executed 147 were sentenced
to dungeons. Others went to the gallows and
some to perpetual exile.

When the English monarchs saw what was
happening in France, they decided to clean
house too. For over a century, English sorcerers
had been tortured and burnedbut in a com-

2 8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

paratively small way. Nothing like Geneva,
where 500 were executed in a single week. But
now James I got tough with the Witches-and,
after him, his daughter Mary and her husband.
The witches of New England were then tried
for conspiring "against the peace of our
sovereign Lord and Lady, the King and Queen,
their crown and dignity/ 7

In the fourth year of the reign of William
and Mary (1692), Massachusetts declared an
open season on witches. And eight of the
nastiest brats on record sent twenty persons to
the gallows.

The brats made up a "Circle for Entertain
ment and Practice in the Black Arts/' And
they met on Tuesday afternoons at Elizabeth
Parris' house. Elizabeth was the nine-year-old
daughter of the Reverend Samuel Parris, and
she was President of the Circle, because of the
books her father had. (This reminds me of the
Sunshine Club, and the way I was President,
on account of my father had a store and any
thing the Sunbeams wanted could be managed.
Little girls are so practical!)

The book that Elizabeth's league liked best
was Discourses on the Damned Art of Witch
craft, by William Perkins (published in
London in 1600) . This was the most thrilling of
Mr. Parris' interesting library on Demonology.

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 29

Elizabeth was so smart, she could almost read
it backward. But most of the girls could not
read at all.

There was Abigail Williams, Elizabeth's
cousin, who was eleven; and Ann Putnam who
was twelve. The other girls were older Mary
Walcott, the Deacon's daughter, Mary Lewis,
Elizabeth Hubbard, Sarah Churchill and Mary
Warren. Sarah and Mary were servants.

Mary worked for John Proctor, and when she
began her goings-on, Mr. Proctor threatened to
whip the devil out of her. But before he got
around to it, Mary paid him back. She said he
was a wizard, and that Mrs. Proctor was a witch.
They were arrested and brought to trial, and
Mary did most of the testifying. When she had
finished, Mr. Proctor was hanged, and his wife
convicted. Mrs. Proctor was pregnant at the
time, and sentence was deferred until her baby
was born. But by that time, Salem had come to
its senses and called the whole thing off. And
Mrs. Proctor lived to collect twenty pounds
from the Governmentfor her husband's death
and anguish!

Mary Warren was principal witness against
twelve persons, all of whom were found guilty,
and seven killed. What happened afterward to
Mary I cannot discover, but I hope it was
nothing trifling.

S o A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The Parris family had a black slave named
Tituba, who came from the West Indies. The
old records call Tituba an Indian, but she seems
to have been part Carib and part Negro. She
came from the island of Antigua, where the frog
in red flannel bewitched the white man.

Tituba knew witchcraft out of Africa, and
all the dark superstitions of her people red
and black. She lived with a man called Indian
John, who also came from Antigua, out of
Africa. Mr. Parris had wecl the two with bell
and book. And they lived on the square like a
true married pair, in an out-house adjoining
the parsonage.

When the girls formed their jolly little club,
they let Ann Putnam bring her mother along,
because Mrs. Putnam was more like a sister
than a mother, as the girls in the Bridge Clubs
say about themselves. What Mrs. P. really was
was a case of retarded development, which is
the last thing a woman ever suspects about her
self.

She practiced mumbo-jumbo with the girls,
and listened when Elizabeth went to work on
Author William Perkins, expert on Witches,
Then Mrs. Putnam went to work on Tituba.
She got Tituba to show them a lot of tricks.

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 31

and she told the black woman what Elizabeth
read from Mr. Perkins 1 book. Before long they
were all giving points to each other. Then one
day Mrs. Putnam did not come to meeting.
And that afternoon, when Mrs. Parris finished
whatever good works she was doing, she heard
a most peculiar sound in the Reverend
Samuel's study.

The girls were talking gibberish, crawling
under chairs, rolling on the floor, and making
monstrous noise. Mr. Parris, happening home,
she told him she didn't know what had got into
the children, and he should speak to them him
self.

Mr. Parris hurried to the study, and was
shocked at what he saw. He patted his wife on
the shoulder, and told her it probably was
nothing serious, but they had better be on the
safe side. We'll call Dr. Griggs, he said.

Dr. Griggs was the uncle of ly-year-old
Elizabeth Hubbard. And problem children
were not in the Puritan vernacular.

"Grr-rr," said Elizabeth, when he felt her
forehead. "Grr-rr" and she bit his ankle.

The others mewed like cats, and then they
moo-ed.

"They are most plainly bewitched/' said
Doctor Griggs, who was considered a very good
diagnostician.

3 2 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Mr. Parris called in the neighbors, for prayers
and appointed a day for public fast.

"Elizabeth," he besought his daughter, "has
the Devil bewitched thee?"

"Good," muttered Elizabeth. "Good. . .
Osburn. . . Tituba."

And the other brats took up the refrain.
"Good. . . Osburn. . . Tituba."

Good and Osburn were two old xvornen of
the village. On the last day of February, war
rants were issued against them, on complaint
of three of the most prominent men in town.
Then they were indicted along with Tituba
and brought forward for examination, charged
with "torturing, affecting, consuming, wasting
and tormenting" the members of the Circle.

On the first of March, two distinguished
magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John
Hathorne came in their official capacity to
Salem. And the brats stayed up all night,
practicing their stuff.

The crowd next morning was so great that
Court adjourned from the Ordinary, where it
usually convened, to the meeting-house. The
Judges sat on a raised platform in front of the
pulpit. And the accused were brought before
them. They were not permitted counsel.
Ezekiel Cheever acted as secretary. His notes,
transcribed in a nervous hand, and faded now,

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 33

(so that you will nearly lose your eye-sight, as
I did, if you want to read them) are in the
Clerk's office in the Superior Court in Salem.

The WPA was working on a Witch Project
this spring, and the WPA thought they owned
the Witches. They had the records practically
impounded. But in a glass case in the Clerk's
office which they apparently hesitated to ap
propriateare ten pins that Sarah Good was
accused of sticking in the brats. There is the
death warrant of Bridget Warren. There, in
the hand-writing of the Reverend Mr. Parris,
is the examination of Rebekah Nurse, who was
also hanged. And there, one of these days, will
be a WPA tome on the Witches, I expect.

In my day I have covered many murder trials,
and interviewed some very tough dames. But
for girlish viciousness, none could compare
with those eight little maids from Salem plus
Mrs. Ann Putnam, mistress of ceremonies.

Mrs. Putnam had been married at sixteen
to Sergeant Thomas Putnam, a contentious
Puritan, who quarreled with nearly everyone,
including the ministers. There had been three
ministers in the Village shortly before Mr.
Parris. And they all went away mad. Sergeant
Putnam had gone so far as to attach, for debt,

34 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

the body of the last onethe Reverend Mr.
Burroughs. Which was a scandalous thing to
do, and most unfair, since the parish had never
paid Mr. Burroughs what was due him, and the
poor man hadn't a sou.

Mr* Parris, who succeeded the unfortunate
Mr. Burroughs, was a merchant in the West
Indies trade before he prepared for the ministry.
And he was perhaps a little shrewd and
cunning for a man of God, He and the Sergeant
were excellent friends, however, and saw eye
to eye on the Witches.

The first three who were arrested were poor
and unimportant. Later there were rich and
powerful persons who were enemies of Ser
geant Putnam. But this was undoubtedly a
mere coincidence,

Sarah Good was seventy years old, and a
beggar-woman. Sarah Osburn was bed-ridden.
And Tituba didn't have the brains she was
born with, if any.

Later the Circle bagged bigger game a
captain, a merchant prince, and the minister.
But, for the first sacrifice, there was Sarah Good.

The Worshipful Mr, Hathorne leaned from
his high-backed chair.

"Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you
familiarity with?"

"None/' said Sarah Good.

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 35

''Have you made contract with the Devil?"

"No."

"Why do you hurt these children?"

"I do not hurt them. I scorn it."

"Who do you employ then to do it?"

"No creature; but I am falsely accused."

The Worshipful Mr. Corwin cleared his
august throat.

"Why did you go away muttering from Mr.
Parris' house?" he demanded.

"I did not mutter, but thanked him for the
penny he gave my child."

"Then Mr. Hathorne ordered the children to
look upon Sarah Good, and see if this were '
the person that had hurt them. And they did
look upon her, and said this was one of the
persons that did hurt them. And presently
they were all tormented. . ."

Pretending to be bewitched, they rolled about
on the floor, screaming and writhing. Sarah
Good looked stonily on.

"Sarah Good," said Hathorne. "Do you not
see now what you have done? Why do you not
tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment
these poor children?"

"I do not torment them," she said.

"How came they thus tormented?"

"I have no hand in witchcraft."

Samuel and Mary Abbey then took the stand.

36 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

They had befriended the Goods, they piously
attested, and taken them into their house, and
fed and clothed them, as the Savior bid. . .

"But Sarah was so Turbulant a Spiritt, Spitefull,
and so Mallitiously bent that they were forced for
Quietness Sake to turn her out/' . . Mr. Cheever's
quill raced across the pages. Quickly he sanded
them. . . "And when Sarah Good was told what a
Sad Accident her naybor Abbey had, that he had
lost, moreover, 2 Cowes, both dyeing within halfe
an hower, Sarah sayed she did not care if he lost
all his Cowes. . . Samuel Abbey opened ye dead
Cowes and found nothing."

Then Johanna Chibbun testified that an ap
parition of Sarah Good and her last child came
to her in a dream . . . "and the Child did
tell its Mother that she did Murder it ...
and Sarah Good said that she was a Witch, and
that she had given the Child to the DivelL"

Although the records say that Sarah was
seventy, she had a daughter Dorcas, age five, who
testified that she thought her mother was be-
witched. And if the old lady had Dorcas when
she was sixty-five, maybe she was or her old
man was.

All Witches had familiars-- -demons sent by
the Devil. Sometimes a black man sometimes

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 37

a dog or a bullgenerally invisible to the virtu
ous. Sarah Good's demon was a little yellow
bird Sarah Osburn J s a monkey. Other Witches
had cats, toads, and rats. There was a secret
place on the body of a witch said to secrete
milk that nourished her familiar. The familiars,
even in animal form, could talk. They were
almost always hateful, and usually wicked. But
each Witch loved her demon, and called him
pet names.

The child Dorcas testified that her mother
kept a small bird the color of mustard and at
this Ann Putnam cried out:

"See where Good sits upon the beam, suck
ing the yellow bird between her fingers!'*

All in the meeting-house looked where she
pointed. But only the children could see the
apparition there poor old Good astride a beam,
a yellow bird between her fingers!

Then it was Cousin Abbie's turn. . . "Good
has stabbed me!" shrieked Abigail Williams
and pulled a broken blade from her bodice,
which she had planted there.

Good was then removed from the meeting
house, and Sarah Osburn brought in. And
again Mr. Hathorne desired the children to
stand up, and look upon her, which they all
did. And every one of them said that this was
one of the women that did afflict them. And
Abigail Williams said she had seen Osburn

3 8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

drink her own blood. The old woman denied
everything, and swore she served only God.

"Before my Eternal Father, I am innocent,"
she said.

Then Tituba took the stand and Tituba
was made in heaven for the Worshipful Magis
trates to question. They asked her if she served
the Devil, and she told them Yes. If she rode
on a broomstick? If she tormented the chil
dren? If she had a familiar? And Tituba told
them always Yes.

She had two cats a red one, and a black one,
she said. And Sarah Osburn had "a thing with
a head like a woman, with two legs and wings"
-and she had, also, "a thing all over hairy that
walked on two legs, like a man."

Tituba said she saw Good set a phantom wolf
upon Elizabeth Hubbard, to torment her. And
she saw Good set a hog from hell upon Ann
Putnam.

Tituba said the Devil was a "tall man from
Boston," and that he had promised her pretty
things, if she would do what he asked.

The examinations were repeated for a week
Good and Osburn steadily denying, and Ti
tuba confessing all. Each night the prisoners
were sent to Ipswich, ten miles away. And on
the seventh day, they were sent to Boston, and
put behind iron bars, with heavy chains upon

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 39

their arms and legs, as was considered necessary
with a Witch. And there they were abandoned.

Sarah Osburn could not wait to be hanged,
but died in gaol, in nine weeks and two days.
Tituba was sold in a year and a month, to pay
the jail fees. And Sarah Good went to the gal
lows, on a nice June day.

Pious Puritans believed that Witches and
Wizards made contracts with the Devil. Some
to be rich some to be eloquent and others,
great in strength. Some wanted lovers. . .
And the Devil pleasured them all.

The old women of Salem were little girls,
when a spinster in Hartford confessed that a
demon had carnal knowledge of herwith much
delight to herself, she added pertly and though
she swung, 'twas worth it. . . And swing she
did.

It was reported that demon-lovers were "icyee
could." And the children they gave mortal
women were tall, hardy, arrogant, and de
liberately wicked.

Susanna Martin, a widow of Amesbury, was
said to have a Black Man for a familiar. Charged
with this and other sins, she was indicted and
brought to Salem Village.

Susanna was "a small, active woman, wear
ing a hood and scarf, plump and well-developed
in her figure, and of great personal beauty."

40 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

It is possible to look at some women and know
that they lead a secret life of ardors and ecsta-
cies, and Susanna, I expect, was one of these.
Such a one should re-marry, and save young
men sinful dreaming.

She laughed easily. And twitted the Elders,
as she sighed to herself in a pensive way. And
in the Puritan marrow of their bones, they dis
trusted her young beauty, and the far-away
look in her eyes.

One accusation against her was singular. A
woman of Newbury deposed that Susanna
walked from Amesbury to her home "one very
dirty season, when traveling was not fit to be
abroad in." When Susanna entered the room,
the children were bid make way for her at
the fire, to dry herself.

Said Susanna, "I am dry as you are/' And
when she cast aside her coat she was, indeed, as
dry as a bone.

"I'd scorn to have a drabbled dress on/' said
the damnably neat Susanna, and preened herself
in front of the keeking glass.

As this dangerous testimony was concluded,
the girls began to shout.

"Susanna pinches me! . . . Susanna bites!
, . . Oh, my throat Susanna is choking me!"

And Indian John getting into the spirit of
things, cried:

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 41

"She bites! She bites!"

"What ails these people?' * demanded Mr.
Corwin.

"I do not know."

"But what do you think ails them?"

Susanna shrugged. "I do not desire to spend
my judgment upon it."

"Do you think they are bewitched?"

"No, I do not think they are."

"Well, tell us your thoughts about them,"
urged His Worship.

"My thoughts are my own when they are in,"
retorted Susanna. "But when they are out, they
are another's."

"Have you not compassion for these af
flicted?" inquired Mr. Hathorne.

"No, I have none," Susanna said.

Then the children cried that they saw the
Black Man whispering in her ear. . . And
Susanna was consigned to prison. And on the
nineteenth of July she was hanged.

Deliverance Hobbs arraigned, like the rest,
on complaint of the Circle was a feeble-minded
girl who confessed that she knew the Devil.
And that she went to a meeting of Witches in
Mr. Parris' field, and saw Bridget Bishop there.

Bridget Bishop kept an Ordinary called the
Ship's Tavern, where she sold sailors more rum
than was good for them, and played with them

42 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

at shuffleboard till late into the night. Goody
Bishop wore bright colors, and the Elders had
reproved her for this sin. They had guessed
her for a Trollop. And now the Circle said
she was a Witch. She was speedily indicted
and tried after Tituba.

The Judges reproached Goody Bishop be
cause her eyes were dry. (It was believed that
Witches could not cry.)

'Tou do not know my heart/' the poor thing
said. And when they sentenced her to hang,
still she did not cry.

Three sisters followed Bridget Bishop to trial
Rebecca Nurse, Mary Eastey, and Sarah
Cloyse who were women of wealth and social
position. The Circle claimed that the sisters
had visited them in apparitions, and tried to
make them sign the Devil's Book. And Ann
Putnam said:

"I verily believe in my heart that Mary
Eastey is a most dreadful Witch, and that she
hath very often most dreadfully tormented me/*

Then the Circle performed as usuaL

Judge Sewall wrote in his Diary: "It was
awful to see how the afflicted were tortured
and in the margin, he wrote, "Alas! Alas! Alas!"

As tumblers, rollers and screamers, the girls
were experts now with fancy trimmings.

Mrs. Nurse went first to the noose on Witches

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 43

Hill and then Mrs. Eastey, who had seven
children and a husband who loved her. Mrs.
Eastey sent a letter from her cell, addressed to:
"The Governor, the Judges, and Ministers
of the Bay Colony" which did her no good at
all, but is so touching, you might like to read it:

Not for my own life I plead, for I know I must
die. But that no more innocent blood may be shed.
By my own innocency, I know you are wrong, and
I humbly beg that your Honors would be pleased
to examine all afflicted persons, separately, and to
keep them apart. These confessing Witches, I am
confident, have be-lied themselves and others, as
will appear, if not in this world, then surely in
the world to come, whither I now am going.

It had been discovered that the way to be
saved was to confess and the accused became
accusers. Margaret Jacobs accused her grand
father, and Richard Carrier his parents and
all were hanged.

Sarah Carrier, age eight, testified that she
had been a Witch for two years. Richard said
that he and his brother were Wizards.

It was asked little Sarah: "Who made you a
Witch?"

"My mother. She made me set my hand to
the Devil's Book. And she turned herself into
a black cat."

44 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

"How old are you, Sarah?*'

"Near eight Brother Richard says I shall be
eight in November/'

Martha Carrier's children were taken with
her into confinement, and their little minds ter
rified into confession.

Cotton Mather, who aspired to be considered
the leading champion of the Puritan Church,
tells us that "This rampant hag xvas found
guilty on the words of her own flesh and blood.
Her own children, among others, agreeing that
the Devil had promised Martha Carrier that
she should be Queen of Hell."

Now husbands and wives accused each other.
Parents acknowledged their children bewitched.
And children swore away the lives of their
parents.

Samuel Wardwell declared that for many
years his favorite exclamation had been, "Devil
take it!" He was sensible, he admitted, that this
put him in the snares of the Devil.

When he was twenty-four (which was shortly
before the trial) , the Devil appeared to Samuel
in a dream. Samuel loved a maid ("a gurll of
14," the records say) and, at this time, could
not have her. He promised to serve the Devil
for twenty-six years for when a man is twenty-

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 45

four and in love, he knows that life after fifty
is not worth living and the Devil promised
him the gurll Abigail Martin, of Andover. . .
And they were happy, for to their young eyes
each was an angel, and earth paradise.

It was strange that Samuel should want this
small and indifferent maid. But want her he did
and married her toothough he was a man
whom many would have loved. For he was of
prodigious strength, with dark, good looks. And
he could drink strong rum, yet keep his head.
He stood six-feet-two, before the shriveled magis
trates, and dxvarfed them sitting there.

Men arrive, sometimes, at being moralists by
judging guilty those whom they cannot, or dare
not, imitate. And so their Worships, whose
bodies were frail, judged Samuel, who could
drink rum, and pleasure the women. They
judged him guilty of selling his soul to the
Devil and they sent him to the gallows.

It is difficult to separate hallucination from
reality in the mass of witchcraft testimony. Did
Samuel Wardwell really believe he owed his
dear wife to Satan? That he had sold his soul
for her arms and kisses, and her yellow hair
upon his pillow? We can better understand
the old women who slipped their pitiful heads
within the noose on Gallows Hill. They went
to their Master who loved them well, and left a

46 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

troublous world behind. But Samuel and his
yellow-haired wife! . . . Why, Heaven was
not Heaven if Abbie was not there.

While Samuel languished in jail and Abbie
wept, Cotton Mather of Boston came again to
town, to hear testimony and watch a hanging.
Dr. Mather wrote a book called Memorable
Providences that begins:

"Go then, my little book. . . Go tell Man
kind that there are Devils and Witches in New
England!"

Dr. Mather tells of Mrs. Elizabeth Howe, who
was baptised by the Devil at Newbury Falls
. . . before which (says Mather) he made them
kneel down by the Brink of the River and
worship him/' And after which, the Puritan
wives "kisst the Devill's arse" . . . and went
home to their husbands.

And if you think Cotton Mather was an ig
noramus who went around telling terrible lies,
I must remind you that he was the distinguished
son of Increase Mather, President of Harvard
College, and he spoke with the tongues of angels,
practically. For he was fluent in seven languages,
including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Iroquois.
He was undoubtedly the most learned man in
America, and he was the greatest authority on
Witches in the New World. And he saw to it,
you may be sure, that Mrs. Howe was hanged

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 47

on the same day as Susanna Martin, and Sarah
Good, and Sarah Wildes.

And on this day Dr. Cotton saw a colleague
on the way to Gallows Hill. It was the Reverend
George Barrows, who had been pastor, before
Mr. Parris, of Salem Village, and was said now
to be a Wizard. Cotton Mather rode among the
crowd on his white horse, shouting to them to
"Beware the Devil!" when they would have
shown George Burroughs mercy. For the
wretched man stood on the ladder with the rope
about his neck, making so noble and moving a
speech protesting his innocence, and forgiving
his enemiesthat all the people murmured
and some wept.

"Let Satan triumph?" cried Cotton Mather.
"No! Burroughs must die!"

A year after the Salem trials, Mrs. Mather
bore her husband a monstrously mal-formed
child that died soon after its birth, and how
Dr. Mather explained the matter I cannot
say. . . But now he was God, on his fine white
horse and God's finger in the Circle's pie.

Never had testimony been so blood-curdling
as at the trial of the Reverend Mr. Burroughs.
Ann Putnam, in a new dress, took the stand.
She had been visited in a dream by an apparition
of Mr. Burroughs, who grievously tortured her,
she said, and urged her to write in the Devil's

48 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

book. The apparition told hpr that his two
dead wives would come to her, with their
tongues full of lies.

And the next night the wives did come, in
winding sheets, with napkins round their heads.
And when they talked of the man they had mar
ried, their faces were "red and angry/' They
said he had murdered them both. And one re
moved her winding sheet, and showed Ann
where he had stabbed her under the left arm,
and covered the wound with sealing wax. This,
she said, was done in the Village parsonage. The
second said she had been killed by Mr. Bur
roughs, assisted by a strange woman. The
"strange woman," she added, was now the third
Mrs. Burroughs.

"Because," said twelve-year-old Ann, "they
would have each other."

As the apparitions told these things, they
looked "as pale as a white wall." Then there
came the dead wife of the Reverend Mr. Law-
son, with a dead babe new-born. And also the
dead wife of Goodman Fuller. And these said
that Mr. Burroughs had killed them also.

On hearing these dreadful charges, the
screams and tumblings of the Circle were so
great and so protracted, that they were removed
for a while from the room. The prisoner was
then asked what he thought of the carryings-on.

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 49

He meekly replied, "It is truly amazing, but
I understand nothing of it/'

Mary Warren, who had been a servant in the
minister's house, said that Mr. Burroughs had
a magic trumpet he blew, to call the Witches to
their sinful Sabbath, in the orchard near the
parsonage. Its notes reached every town in New
England, she said. And the Witches came on
their broomsticks, from Casco to New Amster
dam.

Philip English was the first merchant prince
of Salem, and the richest man in the New Eng
land Colonies. He lived in a mansion above
the ocean, with many projecting porches and
upper stories that hung over the street and
twenty servants, to make it shine. He owned a
wharf and warehouses. Fourteen buildings in
the town, and twenty-one ships upon the sea.
But, for all his wealth, Philip English and his
wife Mary * were "cried against" by the Circle,
and committed to prison in Boston (for the
Salem gaol was filled to over-flowing) . And
they would have been executed, except for the

* There is a sampler that was made by Mrs. English in the
Essex Institute in Salem, and another the oldest in America-
made by Anne (Gower) the first wife of Governor Endicott,
when she was a little girl in England.

50 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

connivance of the Government and clergy of
Boston, who "provided a conveyance for their
escape and arranged their flight to Manhattan/'
While they were in exile, Philip and Mary
English learned of the wants of the poor in
Salem, and sent a vessel of corn, with a bushel
for every child. And when the persecution was
over, Mr. English returned to Salem because
he loved it so! and opened his Great House on
the sea. But poor Mrs. English died in New
York.

One of the most brutal features of the Witch
persecution was the legalized plunder. Homes
of the accused were pillaged by the sheriff and
his men, and all livestock, furniture and food
confiscated. Persons arrested were compelled to
pay for their board, fuel, and traveling expenses
from jail to jail. There were fees for clerks and
sheriffs. A fee for a reprieve, a fee for a dis
chargeand a fee for the hangman! And there
were fees for the bodies of the dead.

Superintending the executions, there was
generally someone like Cotton Mather, whose
heart was in itor the Reverend Mr. Noyes.

On the twenty-second of September, eight

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 51

women were hanged, and Mr. Noyes, having
assisted them from cart to gallows, mounted a
hummock and made a speech.

"How sad it is," cried Nicholas Noyes, "to
see eight firebrands of hell hanging from our
trees!"

Captain John Alden, Indian fighter and
naval commander son of the famous John
and Priscilla was seventy now, and living in
Boston. How he came to be "cried against" is
not known. But the Circle got after him, and
he was brought to Salem to meet their charges.

"There stands Alden!" cried Abigail Wil
liams. "A bold fellow with his hat 'on before
the Judges. Take your hat off, Alden!"

"He sells powder and shot to the Indians and
French," cried Elizabeth Parris.

"And he has Indian papooses!" chimed in
Ann Putnam, who was indubitably precocious,
in an interesting sexual way.

"Papooses!'' screamed the Circle. "Alden has
papooses!"

And they fell down before him, writhing and
screaming, and into their act again the Puri
tan Song and Dance Girls.

"So what?" said the Captain. . . And he was
hustled off to gaolfrom which, it is pleasant

52 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

to report, he escaped in nine weeks. And beat
his bill for bed and board!

The accusing girls followed the cart that car
ried their victims from the gaol to Gallows
Hill, and stayed to watch the hangings. And
when the time came that a new Governor or
dered the prison doors thrown open, one hun
dred and fifty were freed whom the girls had
"cried against/' And their day in the sun was
over.

It was a sad time for the Circle. In vain they
summoned ghosts and visions. And in vain
they cried against the Governor's Lady who
had roused his pity.

One by one, their supporters deserted them
all save Judge Stoughton, who never forgave
the Governor for reprieving seven whom the
Judge had condemned.

"We were in a way to have cleared the land
of Witches!" cried the Judge. "The Lord be
merciful to the Country!" . . . And so (the
ancient records say) he went off the bench, and
came no more into that Court.

Judge Sewall, who had condemned the
Witches with much satisfaction, did a right
about face. He rose before the congregation of
the Old South Church in Boston, and, handing

THE DEVIL WAS A TALL MAN 53

the Pastor his written confession, remained
standing while it was read aloud. Then the old
man begged the people to pray for him, and for
their guilty State. And as long as he lived,
Judge Sewall spent one day each year in prayer
and fasting.

"All the day long, from dawn to dawn,
His door was bolted, his curtains drawn,
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms
Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms.
His faith confirmed and his trust renewed
That the sin of his ignorance sorely rued,
Might be washed away in the mingled flood
Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood 1" *

The stern old Judge repented. But the girls
were brazen, and "vile varlets" from childhood
to the grave all but Ann Putnam, the star of
the Circle.

Ann's mother, who was said to have been
largely responsible for her daughter's conduct,
died when Ann was eighteen, and her father
a few weeks later. They left a large number of
children, all younger than herself, in Ann's
care.

By the time she was twenty-six, the kids had
Ann down. Then she joined the Church, and
made a public confession of sin; "wept an be-

*John Grecnleaf Whitticr.

54 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

waylecT the wrongs she had done; said she was
deluded by the Devil; and begged to lie in the
dust.

Three years laterstill blaming the Devil-
she died.

Now Ann is dust, long laid in grave,
And all her bones are rotten.
But for her sins she'll be remembered,
When better girls are all forgotten.

Ill

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS
MAGNIFICENT

When the twilight mist from the harbor blows,

O'er the lilac bush, and the trellised rose,
Where the garden walls near the ocean lie,

There are wraiths that drift from the deep

nearby. .
From the masted ships of the long ago

There are scents in the thin white mists that

blow,
Of Arab coffee, Madeira wine,

Of figs and grapes from a Tuscan vine,
Of Indies rum, and molasses brown,

That float with the dusk o'er Salem town. ,

And Derby wharf lies long and black,

And the ghosts of the years come floating back.
Now trippingly in the misty shades,
. In scarlet hoods, come little maids,
Now Captains home from the salty sea,

With Loewstoft cups and with Bohea tea,
And roots from the flowers of Zanzibar,
From Mombazique, and from lands
55

56 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Brought home to a maid in a hoopskirt gown,
To plant in a plot in Salem town.

nnHE first ship in New England was built in
* Salem in 1636, and they called her Desire.
(Desire meant God and Heaven, and not what
it does in the movies.) And then was the be
ginning of the Golden Age of Adventure in the
New World. As time went on, there were more
ships and more, and more until their masts
were like a forest in the sea.

Philip English built sloops and queer little
ketches, for coastwise trade; and bigger ships, to
cross the ocean. Ann Putnam had cried against
Philip and his wife Mary, and called them
Wizard and Witch. But when the persecution
was over, Philip English went on building, and
traded salt cod with Barbados, for rum and
molasses. And in this way he opened trade with
the Indies. (Ann and her league were thorn-
backs * by then and a thornback was the worst
thing a girl could be.)

A grandson Philip English the third inher
ited the wharves and ware-houses, and sold them
to Richard (King) Derby, who became the
father of Elias Hasket Derby, who became the
greatest merchant in New England, and the
first millionaire*

* Spinsters.

In scarlet hoods come little maids . . . and captains
home from the sea

5 8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Shipping that began in Salem spread rapidly,
and marine dynasties flourished like woad-
waxen. . . Woad-waxen was a weed that Gov
ernor Endicott brought from England as a pack
ing for his belongings, and it grew and spread
after the Governor threw it in his back yard,
until it filled all the meadows of Salem. Deep
and yellow like a sea of gold, it mocked the
Puritan air with color idly spread, 'til there
was woad-waxen everywhere and is to this
day.

But shipping is as dead as a door-nail. Scions
of the marine dynasties are land-lubbers now.
And only the gadding woad-waxen roams.

Woad-waxen, which some call broom, grows
in mid-summer in fields of purple asters and
oxeye daisies. And when you see it bloom
ing yellow in the sun you will be glad that the
Endicotts packed so carefully.

Endicott was the fierce old man who hated
Quakers and hanged them on the Common.
And he didn't think much of sailors either. Gov
ernor Endicott wanted everyone to go to church,
and worship as he did. And the sailors were con
trary-minded. "Presumptuous Sabbath-break
ing" was a crime punishable with death. But
public opinion would not sanction such a hang
ingand all the Governor could do was talk.

"It is a matter of saddest complynt," he

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 59

mourned, "that there is little serious piety in
the sea-faring tribe."

There was a passion for the sea in the first
New Englanders who lived on its shores. Their
sons, born within sight and sound of the ocean,
felt its challenge, and dreamed of the sea, and
longed to follow it from the time they were
children.

New England women sailed with their hus
bands to Mozambique, Fayal, and Zanzibar
and raised their daughters to marry, and do
the same. They sailed to the Indian Ocean, and
rounded the Horn. And it was said that children
conceived at sea were never seasick.

Commerce had begun with ship-building.
The first ships of Colonial days were built
for the trade of the expanding Empire. New
England was all seacoast then. Down to the
sea marched forests of oak and white pine and
pitch pine. And the forests were felled to make
wooden ships with tall masts. On nearly every
navigable stream that bordered the woods arose
small shipyards, where farmers, trappers, and
fishermen worked in their off-seasons, building
ships for His Majesty's Navy. As trees became
thin in Massachusetts, men moved to Maine
where the great oaks grew. Until every sea town

60 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

on the coast was loud with hammers day and
night.

Ship building in New England lasted for
two hundred years and more. The young mer
chant marine of the New World sailed un
charted seas, to ports where none had dared
to go. And the masters traded where no one
had traded before.

About 1670, early sea-farers started chasing
whales, in a rather small waymostly off Long
Island and in Delaware Bay. But when a Nan-
tucket whaler captured a sperm whale at sea,
the fleet got ambitious. And men set forth on
voyages that took two years, and three. They
came home with Oil for the Lamps of America,
and Whalebone to corset the World. And New
Bedford became the greatest xvhaling port in
the world-New Bedford first, and Nantucket
second.

Whalebone is not a whale's backbone, as
most people thinkbut the hard palate of his
mouth. And to appreciate the mouth a whale
has you should know there are about two thou
sand pounds of whalebone tucked away on the
roof. All mammals have bony ridges on the
roof of their mouths, but the whale's are an
exaggeration. Whalebone was valued in the
old days at five to seven dollars a pound, and was
regarded as "a necessary for females/'

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 61

Little girls, who always dressed like their
mothers, wore stays or a "paire of bodices"
from the time they were two not for fashion's
sake, but because it was the custom. As clothes
grew elegant, full skirts were distended with
hoops of whale-bone. And when wigs became
enormous, silk hoods were shirred on frames of
whalebone, to protect the powdered hair. Head
dresses were elaborate, with tiers of curls and
ornaments of all kinds, until it was all a girl
could do to keep her chin up. After the Revolu
tions, the young Republics of France and Amer
ica became friendly. And Paris set the styles
we learned to copy. Then bodices were boned,
and so were quilted, satin petticoats. And every
stylish lady wore whalebone by the pound.

Another whaling revenue came from sperma
cetia fatty substance in the head of the whale
that was used for making candles. And the
blubber was tried out for oil. But after a while,
somebody tapped a well in Pennsylvania that
gave the whales a rest, and the whalers a head
ache.

Meantime there was other trade. Pious cap
tains saw no wrong in taking cargoes of New
England rum, to seduce the black tribes of
Africa and no wrong in exchanging gunpowder
for slaves. The Sally and Polly went winging
early out of Salem, with rum and tobacco and

6* A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

gunpowder for Senegal. And when the Sally
and Polly came home again, they had slaves in
the holds. And on deck, there was palm oil and
gold dust and ivory. A little later, Newport
and Bristol became the great slave ports of New
England.

Puritan towns were tainted soon with mag
nificence. And Merchants and Masters became
great and polished gentlemen.

New England was English still. When the
Queen had a baby, the church bells rang. When
the King had a birthday, there were banquets
and balls. And the hearts of the people fell,
when His Majesty went to bed of the gout.

With prosperity, an aristocracy was rising.
New Englanders were no longer middle-class,
nor bleak and grimly virtuous. There was color
in imported finery. Girls wore scarlet hoods,
and used rouge, and patches. And in their
monstrous wigs, grand ladies wore little ships
with colored sails, and love-birds in golden
cagesl And their gowns were so low they were
a scandal. Patrician youths wore French trow-
sers, and gaudy satin vests. And they were so
pleased with their magnificence, that many of
them had their portraits painted. Canvases in
the museums tell the story of their glory.

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 63

It was the fashion for ladies to give sixteen
sittings to portrait painters. They sat for six
hours, with time out for wine and cakesand
to flirt with the young painter. There are
portraits by Blackburn, who painted the fine,
beef-eating Tories of Portsmouth, with their
red coats and their red faces. And by Copley
and Stuart the fashionable John Singleton
Copley, of Boston and Gilbert Stuart of New
port, who was the son of a snuff grinder. Many
of these portraits hang in the Peabody Museum
and the Essex Institute in Salem. Among them
are black, old paintings of Governor Endicott
and Cotton Mather that bring back the days
of the Puritans. And if anyone visting New
England and interested in Americana, should
fail to visit these museums, they might almost
as well stay home*

Those were days of high adventure and
strange romance. William Tudor cut ice from
a New England pond, and sent it to Jamaica,
for Creoles to cool their wines. And Timothy
Dexter sent forty-two thousand warming pans to
Martinique and the planters used them to
skim molasses!

David Whepley, a New England seaman,
deserted in the Fiji Islands, and became a chief-

64 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

tain, and a friend of the King of Bou. John
Young, a Cape Cod boatswain, married the
daughter of a cannibal King. And John's grand
daughter became Queen of the Cannibal Isles! *
But the greatest adventurers of all were the
masters and merchants for whom the world
had grown too small. The men who owned the
ships, and the men who sailed the ships, that
sought the mysterious East the ports on the
other side of the earth, that no man knew.

It was on a bright May morning (in 1787)
that Elias Hasket Derby's ship, the Grand Turk
Captain Ebenezer Westreturned from China,
She had been gone eighteen months. And when
she came into port, all Salem was out to greet
her. The Grand Turk was the first American
vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, And
now she had opened trade with the Orient!
"Here comes the ship from China!"
The people flocked to Derby's Wharf. Sailors
and merchants, pretty girls, and old ladies, and
every little lad in town. It smelled exciting
on the water front. The lovely smells of hemp
and rum mingled with Eastern spices and
Madeira wines, and coffee from Arabia, and

* For more stories of New England seameiu read the author's
travel books; And This Is Cape Cod: And This Is Boston.

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 65

tropical fruits ripening in the sun. And the
wind from the sea blew the beautiful smells to
every nose in town.

"What was the cargo?" the people cried.

And all the while men were clearing the hold,
and taking queer bales to the warehouse. The
ladies could hardly wait to see! Silks, and
tea, and china. Jade, and fans, and pearls 1
Cabinets, and statuettes, and inlaid tables.
Teakwood, and mother-of-pearl. And chests
of shining, crimson lacquer.

Now, with such treasures to show, men built
mansions from the fortunes they made. They
built on the elm-shaded streets of every seaport
town. Some on the sea and some away from
the black wharves, and the slips, and the sea-
tides tossing high.

There is no street in New England that can
compare with Chestnut Street in Salem, where
Samuel Mclntire carved beautiful doorways and
slender columns, and made the loveliest fan
lights in the world. For a few days each sum
mer, mansions and gardens of Salem are open
to visitors. And then, for fifty cents, you can
walk through a Mclntire doorway, and into a
Captain's parlor.

The first wealthy Colonists had furniture

66 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

from England. But before long they were bring
ing mahogany home from the Indies. Then
Mr. Duncan Phyfe made handsome tables and
chairs and sideboards, in his little shop in New
York. And John Goddard of Newport made
splendid cupboards and writing desksand Wil
liam Savery of Philadelphia, the finest high
boys that ever were seen. Besides these three
men who were designerswere many crafts
men who could copy. They copied Chippen
dale and Hepple white and Sheraton. And the
pieces of these Early American cabinet makers
are a lovely heritage in New England today.

Slaves rubbed the mahogany with beeswax
until it shone like silver and damask. And
every afternoon the ladies sat in their drawing-
rooms, as straight as poplar trees (a lady's back
never touched a chair's back!) . And they
poured Bohea tea from a Mandarin pot. They
had kumquot and mango marmalade, and shad
dock jam with their bread and butter. (Shad*
docks were brought from the tropics by Captain
Shaddock but now we have forgotten, and call
them grape fruit.) They nibbled sweets from
a celestial chest and Barbary almonds. And
wondered what another ship would bring.

Every seaport household had Lowestoft china
or deep blue Nanking. Ladies wore crepe-
de-chine gowns, and little girls, gay yellow, or

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 67

striped Nankeens. And they all had Indian
shawls, with gorgeous fringes. Old-fashioned
merchants still wore knee breeches and em
broidered waistcoats, and buckles and buttons
of silver. Younger men wore the new, tight
trousers, and beautiful shirts with ruffles, and
form-fitting coats, that made them tall, and very
slender.

The Sultan of Muscal sent a snow-white
stallion to Salem, with an Arab groom to ride
him. A Rajah in India sent a cage of monkeys,
to make New England children laugh. And
home came Jacob Crowninshield with an ele
phant! No one in America had seen an ele
phant before. The newspapers said he was ten
feet high.

. . . and of large Volume. His skin black, as
though lately oiled. A short hair was on every
part, yet not sufficient for a Covering. His tail
hung one third of his height, but without an hair
on the End of it. His legs were in command at
the Joints, but he could not be persuaded to
Sit. . . Bread, Hay, and Porter were given him. . .
He will probably live between Two and Three
Hundred Years.

There was a Lyon exhibited in Bostonand
an advertisement in the Boston News Letter:

68 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

All Persons having the Curiosity of seeing the
Noble and Royal beast, the Lyon, never one be
fore in America, may see him at the House of
Captain Arthur Savage for six pence.

A few years later, a Tyger-lyon and a Lepard
were shown together, for a shillingand a
2-headed Foal and a Catamount, for six pence.
The most marvelous collection of wild ani
mals ever seen paraded through a dozen sea
side towns, one summer long ago. Twenty
wagons were drawn by sixty horses. In the
wagons were a lioness, two tigers, a leopard, a
llama from Peru, a Russian bear, and a panther,
a kangaroo with her pocket full of babies, and
a hyaena that laughed its head off. Heading
the procession was an elephant with ten musi
cians on his back. And following it, two camels,
sniffing quizzically and looking extremely bored.

* ******

New England Masters who had been beyond
the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn formed
the East India Marine Society, which started
out Benevolent, and ended up Immortal. The
first purpose of the Society was to help widows
and orphans of deceased members. The second
was to collect facts about navigation. But it
was the third purpose that made the Masters
deathless. They resolved to found a museum

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 69

of "natural and artificial curiosities" collected
in their far-flung wanderings.

They put up a stone building on Essex Street
in Salem, and had East India Marine Society
chiseled on its face. Later, the building housed
a bank and an insurance office, and both names
were added; Asiatic Bank, and Oriental Insur
ance Office. And there, .still, the three names
stand, giving the building a pleasing, ancient
air.

A hundred years later, George Peabody, who
founded the Peabody Academy of Science, left
a behest to perpetuate the glory of the Marine
Society, because the Marine Dynasties were on
the Rocks, and the Masters in Heaven. Then
the Museum was put in charge of the Academy.
And, that is why the East India Marine Museum
is called the Peabody Museum, which is a little
confusing.

This Sampler did not set out to be a guide
(I'm sick of guiding!) But if it sends you to
the Peabody Museum and the Essex Institute,
it's worth what you paid for it.

From museum walls, Merchants and Masters
gaze on Sultans and Rajahs, and the hong mer
chants of Canton. And New England wives
smile from gilded frames smiling still for Mr.
Copley and Mr. Stuart, who painted them in
gauze and satin gowns.

70 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

In the museums are the Paisley shawls the
ladies wore, and the vanities their husbands
brought from Singapore and Pula Penang.
China, and silver, and furniture from their
stately drawing rooms. Their wedding gowns,
and mourning rings. Their jewels, and their
bonnets. Babies' christening robes, and chil
dren's toys. . . And the stays the ladies wore,
when whalebone made the whalers rich!

There was a gentleness in New England sea
faring men that made them dig up roots, and
ask for seeds in every land they knew. So that
seaport gardens bloomed like gardens of the
East, with Lilies, and Poppies, and Persian
Roses. Roses were the flowers the Captains
loved the best. They brought the Musk Rose
home from Jerusalem, and the hundred-leaved
Red Rose from India. The Persian Rose from
Turkey, and hundreds of Tea Roses from
China. Then New England wives made Rose
Conserves and Rose Water, and Potpourri.
And of the hips of Wild Roses they made a
Saracen Sauce with pounded almonds, cooked
in wine and sxveetened.

A Rose hedge is the most beautiful of garden
walls, and the most ancient. In New England
there are many Rose hedges and near the sea

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 71

they are of Wild Roses. Wild Roses make
people pretty sentimental:

Every man's a lover,
Every maid a bride,
When they pass a wild rose
By the wayside.*

If you want to make a Potpourri such as was
made in New England when the first gardens
bloomed, I'll tell you how. (And if you don't
want to, you can skip the next couple para
graphs, and get on to the Pirates.)

Rose Potpourri.

A Chinese Jar

A lot of Rose Petals

And a Handful of Salt

Two Ounces of Whole Allspice crushed

Two Ounces of Stick Cinnamon broken in pieces

One Ounce of Orris Rootbruised and broken

Two Ounces of Lavender Flowers (the toilet

counter kind)

Eight Drops of Oil of Rose
One-fourth of a pint of Cologne (which should be

rather choice)

Gather the roses while the sun is on them,
and all the dew has gone. Add, if you wish, a few
rose-geranium leaves, syringa blossoms, spicy

* Mary Sirtton Leitch.

72 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

little pinks, heliotrope, and mignonette, and
for color add bachelor buttons and marigolds.
But there should be three or four times as many
rose petals as of all the others together.

Separate the petals, and let them dry. Then
sprinkle them in a large covered dish (it sounds
unromantic, but I use a roasting pan myself) ,
and sprinkle each layer with salt. Stir every
morning for ten days. Then let them stand for
six weeks in a covered glass fruit jar, with the
allspice and cinammon at the bottom. And
when you put them in the Rose Jar, add the
orris root, the lavender, the rose oil, and the
cologne.

A proper Potpourri will last for years and
years. All you have to do is add a little lavender,
or rose oil, when you wish and cologne, when
you can spare it. Then

You may break, you may shatter the vase if you

will
But the scent of the roses will hang round it

still . . .

or anyhow that's Tom Moore's story.

During the days of Privateering (in the
French War of i756-'6g) , New England mer
chants took their ships from foreign trade, and

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 73

sent them chasing Frenchmen. Prize ships were
brought to New England ports, and officers
and crews split spoils with the owners.

Then the merchants and their ladies went to
the wharves to bid in the loot at auction, and
in this way many fine Regency pieces became
the heirlooms of our Best Familiesor so I
suspect. For there are old Aubusson rugs,
Beauvais tapestries and a magnificent bureau
du Rotin a certain house I know. And if the
original owners were not pirates, I bet they
went to auctions. It was about this time that
the King's mistress got interested in china, and
persuaded Louis to buy a third interest in the
factory at Sevres (Pompadour period in Porce
lain dates from 1753 to '63), and you'd be
surprised how much of it there is in New Eng
land.

The America took for a prize a ship carrying
a valuable library from Ireland to Montreal.
A Salem clergyman saw the books, and per
suaded his ministerial brothers to pool their
resources, and buy the lot. Then they formed
a Society, and called the books their Philo
sophical Library. But their consciences smote
them, and they wrote to Richard Kirwan of
Dublin, who owned the books, and offered to
pay him. Mr. Kirwan replied that he was glad
his library had fallen into appreciative hands

74 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

and said he wouldn't take a cent. So the
ministers prayed for his Catholic soul, and
called it square.

During the Revolution, New England topped
the maritime map. Then Yankee topsails, like
flying clouds, flecked every ocean, everywhere.
And everybody had an interest in every ship
that sailed. For they all arranged "adventures"
with someone on board. . . A box of salted
cod, to be exchanged for Moroccan red slippers
a gallon of rum, for East Indian bangles
and "Please to lay out $5 for a shawl of sky-
blue with cherry blossoms." It was the Golden
Age of Adventure but the Golden Age was
fading.

In 1807 Jefferson proclaimed an Embargo as
a counter-blow to England's unofficial war on
American commerce, and her wholesale im
pressment of American seamen. The State De
partment announced that there were six thou
sand American sailors captives on British war
vessels. The Embargo forbade the departure
of American merchant ships for foreign ports.

Then ships lay empty and bare. And the
ports were filled with the idle shipping. Count
ing houses were closed, and water-front taverns
deserted. And grass grew up on the wharves.

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 75

The Embargo was lifted in 1809. And when
the Yankee ships spread their white wings and
flew to Europe, Napoleon set a wicked trap
for them.

"Let American ships enter your ports/' he
wrote the Prussian Government. "And seize
them afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes
to me, and I will take them in part payment of
the Prussian war debt."

He ordered that all American shipping found
in the ports of France, Spain, Italy, Denmark
and Norway be also confiscated and plundered.
This was accomplished under the flimsy pre
text of violations of paper blockades.

Then there was a battle cry in New England
of "Free Trade And Sailors' Rights!" And
after this was the War of 1812.

Once more we beat the King. And then we
went after the Bey of Algiers. For the Bey was
a kidnapper too. The Turks were making
slaves of American seamen, as casually as Amer
icans were making slaves of Africans.

The Bey said we could have our sailors back
for $800,000, a frigate worth $100,000, and an
annual tribute of $25,000.

For a while we kow-towed, and gave him what
he asked. Then we went to war. At the end,
an American schooner lay victorious off Gibral
tar. And a Yankee lieutenant wrote to his girl:

76 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The Spaniards think we are devils incarnate, as
we beat the English who beat the French, who beat
them, whom nobody ever beat before, and the
Algerians whom the Devil himself couldn't beat.

* * * * # * *

After the War, New England ship builders
built a new type of three-masted vessel, with a
long bow and a very deep keel designed to sail
faster than ships had ever sailed before. Clip
pers replaced the old East Indiamen for China
and Australia. And they not only were the
fleetest ships, but the most beautiful, that ever
were seen. Gayly they sailed in the gaze of the
world, with streamers afloat and canvas un-
furled-and nobody guessed that soon there
would be ships without a sail!

It was the clipper fleet that took the argo
nauts around Cape Horn to San Francisco,
when news of the California gold discoveries
swept the country. Out of New England they
sailed, with every man on board a-singing:

I corne from Salem City

With my wash-bowl on my knee,

I am going to California

The gold-dust for to see,

It rained all day the day I left,

The weather it was dry,

The sun so hot I froze to death

Oh, brother, don't you cry!

MERCHANTS AND MASTERS 77

Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, returning
from Italy, saw a clipper in Boston Harbor,
drifting into port like a white cloud.

"There/' he exclaimed, "is something I
should not be ashamed to show Phidias/'

When Rufus Choate lay dying in Halifax,
he said, "If a schooner or a sloop goes by, don't
disturb me; but if there is a square rigged ship,
wake me up/ 1

No longer scuds the clipper

Across our summer seas,
With sails of snow, in sunset's glow

Ah! tamer days are these.

When jade and teak from China

Go puffing slowly by
On smoky freight as drab as slate

Oh, Sister, don't you cry!

IV
DRUMS ALONG THE CONNECTICUT

TOHN ELIOT and Roger Williams were two
J Puritans who resembled Christians and
this made them unique in New England.

Threatened by proceedings in England's Ec
clesiastical Courts, saintly Pastor Eliot fled to
Boston, and became the Apostle of the Indians.
Throughout his long life he pleaded their cause
with his pious, hating brothers, and on his
death bed he remembered the Indians still
and plugged charity with his last breath.

"My understanding faileth/' said Eliot. "My
memory faileth, my tongue faileth, but my
charity faileth not. 11

Unfortunately, the Apostle's last words did
not impress his contemporaries, who had little
use for charity.

The Colonists hated the Indians, and wanted
to exterminate them as rapidly as possible.
You can't blame a man for preferring not to

7 8

"T/ze Towm Drummer was up for Drunkenness.

with molasses than vinegar, and a little charity
might have saved a number of scalps.

In 1636 there was a seventeenth century
Real Estate Boom. And many Bay Colony
families moved to the Connecticut River Valley
to establish settlements and take a whack at the
Indians.

Whole congregations migrated, led by their
pastors, and followed by their cows. Eight hun
dred persons settled three towns and thought
they owned the Valley.

Pequots are sheets now, but they were In
dians then. And the Pequots thought they
owned the Valley.

The results of this difference of opinion was
the extermination of the Pequots and the be
ginning of a nice little residential development.

When Indians broke Pale Face laws there
was no use fining them, because they had no
money. So the big-hearted Puritans permitted
them to pay in terms of land. This happened
so often that the Indians ran out of land. But
being "stupid savages," they failed to under
stand. And it was not until they were excluded

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 81

from their hunting grounds, that they began
to savvy and get sore.

The white men explained about titles, and
reminded the Indians of the deeds they had
signed with crosses. . . And the Indians
grunted.

A Pequot was fined for carrying wood on
Sunday, who had carried wood on a thousand
Sundays, and his fathers before him. They
were fined for fishing and hunting and for
failure to "heare the word of God preached by
Mr. Fitch"! The punishment for not hearing
Mr. Fitch was a fine of four shillings or a whip
ping. But I never heard of the Pequots whip
ping Puritans for not worshipping the Great
Spirit.

When an Indian got drunk on rum sold by
white men, he had to work for twelve days for
the white man who accused him and the town
treasury got a cut.

Finally, the Pequots did a little retaliating,
and kidnapped two white girls, whose sex appeal
from a Pequot's point of view was practically
nil. But, of course the men of Wethersfield,
where the girls were captured, did not know
that. . . And, besides, the girls might have
been roasted, which was almost as bad as being
raped or maybe worse.

Mary Rowlandson, who was later kidnapped

8s A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

by the Indians, lived with them for three
months and wrote:

"O, the wonderful power of God! I have been
in the midst of those roaring lions and savage
bears, that feared neither God nor man, nor the
Devil, day and night, alone and in company; sleep
ing all sorts together-yet not one of them ever
offered the least abuse of unchastity to me/' *

Mrs. Rowlandson attributed this singular in
attention to the grace of God. But Indians
preferred Squaws to Puritans, and Mrs. Row-
landson's captor had three of his own an old
one, a middle-aged one, and a young one, and
Mrs. Rowlandson was servant to the middle-
aged one.

It is probable that the Pequots who captured
the Wethersfield girls would have preferred
livestock, or a couple of broadcloth coats. But
the girls were handier, and they took what they
could get. And now the town considered the
poor little girls in danger, and the Colony rose
as a man.

Before this, some Block Island Indians had
killed John Oldham and seized his vessel. By
way of teaching the savages a lesson, three ships
were sent out to ravage the Island. The Eng-

*A Narrative of the Captivity and Removes of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson.

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 83

lish burned the wigwams and sank all the
canoes they could find. But the Indians took
to the woods and saved their necks. Then the
English crossed to the mainland and demanded
the surrender of Oldham's slayers.

Surrendering culprits was a grim reciprocal
practice, inaugurated by the Pilgrims, who
wanted everyone punished who broke their
laws. . . Sometimes, to satisfy the Indians, the
Pilgrims even hung a white man!

One day, while a carpenter was cutting down
a tree, a crowd of Indians stood around watch
ing. Suddenly, the tree fell and killed one of
them. The other Indians set up a great howl
ing, while the carpenter ran away and hid
himself. The English tried to persuade the In
dians that he was not to blame. But nothing
short of the carpenter's death would pacify
them. Until, at last the English promised to
hang the unlucky man themselves; and told the
Indians to return in the morning, and they
would see him hanging.

But the carpenter was young and strong, and
a useful man. The Elders decided they could ill
spare him -especially since there was a bed
ridden old weaver in the village. So they dressed
the old man in the young one's clothesand

84 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

hanged him in place of the carpenter, which
ruse, we are told, completely satisfied the In
dians.*

The Pequots, in spite of previous promises,
refused after the Block Island affair to sur
render Oldham's slayers. For the Pequots were
not so amenable as the Plymouth Indians, and
had a constitutional aversion to hanging. . .
So the English killed a few not entirely in
malice but rather in zeal, because they were
infidels. Then they seized the Indians' ripe
corn and burned all they could not carry away.

This expedition led to reprisals, which in
cluded the kidnapping of the young ladies from
Wethersfield. They were the girls who launch'd
a thousand fights. And when the fights were
finished, so were the Pequots.

In the Spring of 1637, the General Court
of Connecticut decided to march against the
Indians. Ninety men were drafted, and joined
by twenty more from Massachusetts. For allies
they had six hundred and fifty Mohicans and

* An interview with Governor Dudley, as told in Captain
Uring's Voyages, Thomas Morton of Merry Mount relates a
similar event. And, as, if to corroborate these stories, Bradford
says, "Wessaguscus (Weymouth) planters were fain to hang one
of their men whom they could not reclaim from stealing in order
to give the Indians content."

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 85

Narragansetts, who were hereditary enemies of
the powerful Pequots.

On a lovely morning in May they marched
all together on the long way to West Mystic.
And two days later an hour before dawn
they stole up Pequot Hill in the soft gray light
of another sweet day.

On the top of the Hill were seventy wigwams,
surrounded by palisades. . , And seven hun
dred people asleep.

The surprise was a success. Both entrances
were taken, for the sentries slumbered in the
dawn, and the slaughter began. Captain John
Underbill of Massachusetts, in charge of the
expedition, ordered Firebrands thrown over the
walls among the wigwams. And the flames were
swept by a rising wind.

The entrances were barely large enough for
a man to pass through. Those who ran out
were shot down. And the flames that lit the
palisades shone round them on the dead.

The destruction was complete. There was
only one Pequot left, and she was too pretty
to kill. So they took her back to Wethersfield
and out of pure, Christian love, made a pray
ing slave of their little Red Sister.

The remnant of the tribe, encamped a dis
tance off, saw a burning and a shining light, and
fled before it from the wrath of the white men.

86 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Two months later, in the Great Swamp Fight
of Fairfield, they were also destroyed. . .
Never had Indians dreamed of vengeance so
complete and so terrible.

The rest of the Pequots some two hundred
warriors and their families submitted to the
English and were divided, in modern European
fashion, among their enemies, the Mohicans
and the Narragansetts. . . And now the way
was prepared for the last wave of migration that
brought to an end the great Puritan exodus
from England to America,

Not until the time of King Philip's War,
thirty-eight years later, dared the Indian lift
his hand against the white man . . . and Philip,
son of Massasoit, friend of the Whites, was
not yet born.

In 1675 Philip's warriors, determined to re
cover their hunting ground, in a last desperate
offensive spread over New England, burning,
killing and plundering. They violated their
pledge to the Narragansetts, and violated the
peace of the Connecticut Valley. The war
spread into Rhode Island, and neutral villages
were involved and destroyed. Both sides begged
help from their Allies. And the English
launched the first propaganda in the New
World. They told the Indians that Philip was
a mad-man, leading his people to destruction,

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 87

and all he wanted was to be Dictator and God,
Philip's wife and child were captured, and
the little son sold into slavery. The white men
offered the Indians two yards of trucking cloth
(worth five shillings a yard) for every scalp
they took. And in fourteen days a few Pray
ing Indians brought in eighteen heads. (Pray
ing Indians were Christian converts, but still
handy with hatchets.)

For every live Indian the white men offered
an English coat. For Philip's head, twenty
coats. And for Philip alive, forty coats! (with
brass buttons, and chevrons) . . . But Philip,
champion of a lost cause, was shot. And all
the Englishmen could do was cut him up.

His head they sent to Plymouth, where it
stayed for twenty years, on a gibbet. His body
was quartered and the pieces hung from four
trees, in Connecticut. His hands and feet they
sent to Rhode Island.

Guilford Connecticut is a beautiful Colonial
village, with authentic early houses of nearly
every architecture, and a green-house where ten
thousand roses bloom every day the largest
green-house in America, I think and the sweet
est I know.

The oldest stone house in America is in

88 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Guilford, in a lovely grove of trees. And the
W.P.A. has lifted its face and given it a perma
nent. It is a museum now, with big pine rooms
and enormous fireplaces four-poster beds and
hooked rugs all over the place. The house was
built in 1639 by the Reverend Mr. Whitfield,
just two years after the Pequots had been liqui
dated. The Reverend Whitfield founded Guil-
ford, and in those days the parsonage was also
a fort.

On Broad Street were the Leete houses
Jared's and the old Governor's. Jared Leete was
famous for his ribald verse. They say that one
day he dropped into a farm house and asked for
a drink of cider.

"If you'll write me an epitaph, 111 give you
one/' said the housewife, with her mind's eye
on a nice stone on Guilford Green.

Jared could make rhymes as fast as he could
talk.

"Margaret, who died of late
Ascended up to Heaven's gate/' he said.

And Margaret, pleased as could be, brought
him the cider. Downing it at a gulp, he con
tinued:

"But Gabriel met her with a club,
And drove her down to Beelzebub."

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 89

On the site of the Governor's house, a few
doors from Jared's, is a later house. And under
the garage, behind the house is the cellar where
Edward Whelley and William Goffee, two of
the judges of Charles I, were concealed for
nine days, while zealous Royalists sniffed their
trail like blood-hounds.

A man advertised all over England as "tall,
about two yards high, his hair a deep brown,
near black* ' was wandering not far from the
Scottish border, about three centuries ago, with
a thousand pounds on his head. . .

The father of the fugitive had been beheaded
in 1649. The son escaped across the Channel,
but returned the following year to Scotland. In
1651, in the Battle of Worcester, his little army
was nearly annihilated by a force three times as
large, commanded by Oliver Cromwell. Then,
the defeated Prince fled north.

He found a temporary hiding place at Bosco-
bel and bided his time later in Normandy and
Germany. After Cromwell's death, he returned
to England, and, as Charles II, ascended on his
thirtieth birthday the throne his father had
lost.

The splendid story of the wanderings of
Charles after the Battle of Worcester are related,

go A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

in a curious way, to a young New Englander,
named Thomas Walker.

Because Joan Penderel healed the blisters on
Charles' royal feet, and put little wads of paper
between his bleeding toes, Mr. Walker is going
to get sixty dollars a year as long as he lives
because Joan Penderel, who married Francis
Yates (who boosted Charles up the Boscobel
Oak) was one of Mr. Walker's ancestors.

When Charles, after twelve years in exile,
made his triumphant way to London, one of the
first things he did was to settle a pension on the
Penderels and Yates "forever/' In the begin
ning it was a hundred pounds, but through the
centuries it has dwindled considerably.

A few years ago, a member of Parliament ob
jected to a Kings pension for a New Englander,
but nobody wanted to argue about it and Mr.
Walker still gets it.

On May 29, 1660, when Charles II was pro
claimed, New Englanders were ignorant of
affairs abroad. And Englishmen when they
went to bed at night could scarcely be sure who
would govern them in the morning. News of
Charles' ascension reached the Colonies in Oc
tober. And the Judges, who had condemned
his father, sought refuge with the Governor
of Guilford.

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 91

Records of the Plantation Court of Colonial
Guilford reflect, naively, the life of the times
and the conscience of the people. Given names
and place names have a quaint and sometimes
amusing quality. There was Mindwell Chit-
tenden, who lived on Petticoat Lane. There
were the Starrs Comfort and Elizabeth and
their children, The Seven Starrs, who were
called the Pleiades. There were Guilford girls
named Desire, Thankful and Pain. And there
was old Bilious Ward, who had a servant named
Maudlin. There were Zerviah Leete, Bathsheba
Baldwin, and Eliphalet Halla Jehoshaphat
and a Jedediah and a lady called Lovely.

The Naughtys of Guilford owned the Nut
Plains, and an estate called, Cohabitation.
When Mr. Naughty died, he left money for
his widow to build a house on the estate for
their slaves, Montrose and Phillis. To Pompey,
son of Montrose, Mr. Naughty willed fifty
pounds outright, his own best suit, "and all
things comparable to said suit, from top to
toe." And when Pompey grew up, he did the
family proud.

After the death of Madame Naughty, Pompey
was sold to the Reverend Amos Fowler who
allowed him to work out, and save his wages.
Mr. Fowler was kind hearted but he was also
improvident, and when his only son was ready

92 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

for college, there was no money to send him.
So Pompey sent him! and gave him a nice
allowance all the time he was there.

Guilford people were so good their crimes
were only peccadilloes. But for their venial sins
they were haled to court, and solemnly charged
with lying, slandering and "cheating."

William Dudley complained that Benjamin
Wright said he had a cuntry conshuns.

Richard Hubbell swore that John Hill said
that he (Richard) "made no more of lyeing
than a dogge did to wagg his taile" and John
was fined five pounds.

Richard Guttridge accused John Linsley of
saying that Mrs. Guttridge had told "a thousand
and a thousand lyes' 'and Mr. Linsley also paid
a five pound fine.

The village cobbler was sued for shoes that
did not wear, and ordered to make another
pair.

The Reverend Mr. Whitfield paid five
pounds damage to Richard Hubbell whose
cow died of being pushed by Mr. Whitfield's
bull. The bull continued pushing and Mr.
Whitfield was ordered to sell him and give Mr.
Hubbell half the proceeds.

The town drummer was up for drunken-

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT 93

ness. . . "He doth confess that he hath drunk
too much that day, considering that he was
Empty and had eaten Little, and being dis
abled in his Understanding, fell against a stile."

On the Sabbath, the drummer beat his drum
to call people to worship. The town had au
thorized the selectmen to "seat the " meeting"
and pews were assigned according to rank.
Whittier tells us,

"In the goodly house of worship, where in order

due and fit
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked

the people sit;
Mistress first, and good wife after, clerkly squire

before the clown
From the brave coat, lace embroidered, to the

gray frock shading down."

Besides "seating the meeting/' the selectmen
had also to "dignify " it ... that is, to arrange
the seats in different places so that they might
still be reckoned equal in dignity. For instance,
the seating committee using their best dis
cretion- -found that "the third seat below be
equal in dignity with the foreseat in the front
gallery and the fourth seat below be equal in
dignity with the foreseat in the side gallery."

94 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

In winter the women brought footstoves to
Meeting, filled with hotcoals from the fire at
home, or thrust their feet into bags of wolfskin.
But the men scorned such effeminacy, and sat
like frozen Spartans through the interminable
sermons. . . In Woburn, Zachary Symmes used
to preach between four and five hours. The
Reverend Mr. Whitfield was no slouch, but I
think Mr. Symmes hung up the all time New
England record. . . Early New Englanders
were very good people but not the sort you'd
like to spend a week-end with.

V
AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

M

r ARTHA HILTON o Portsmouth was an
old man's darling and a young man's
slave and which a girl might better be, Martha
never told. Her first husband was Governor of
New HampshireGovernor Benning Went-
worth. When they were married, the Governor
was sixty, and Martha was twenty. And when
he died and left her a fortune, she married
Colonel Michael Wentworth (no relation) , ex
of the Army.

The Colonel was young and handsome; and
he gave Martha a good time, and a baby. And
when he died, he said a very nice thing.

"I've had my cake/' said the Colonel, look
ing at Martha ' 'and et it too/'

Longfellow wrote a poem about Martha
about how she was a scullery maid in a great
house on Strawberry Bank. And the Governor
watched her growing up, and he waited and
waited until he could wait no longer.

95

96 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Then the Governor had a party to which he
invited all the big-wigs in town, and among
them the Reverend Arthur Browne, who was
minister of Queen's Chapel, where the blue-
bloods prayed. When his guests assembled, the
Governor rose in shining glory. He wore a
gold-laced coat of purple, and scarlet satin
breeches, and a long, embroidered waist-coat.
His powdered wig was tied with ribbons, and
from his sleeves fell showers of ruffles, threaded
in gold.

"This is my birthday/' said the Governor.
"It shall likewise be my wedding day. . . The
Governor bowed to the minister. "And you,
Sir, shall marry me!"

Then from the kitchen came a vision in
corn-colored silk, with diamonds in her ears,
and her hair three stories high! The vision
curtsied. The Governor took her hand.

"This is the lady. . . What, Sir you hesi
tate? As Chief Magistrate, I command you!"
. . . And so Martha Hilton became Lady Went-
worth of the Hall!

The Hall had fifty-two rooms and no baths,
and a cellar for thirty horses not that Martha
was any equestrienne. It was just an idea of the
Governor's. He had inherited the place from

And I would have a Tory beau to tea

98 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

his grandfather, who built it in 1695. The Gov
ernor had the cellar dug, and added a number
of wings that dwarfed the first little house
until in 1750 it was the grandest place in
town. On Little Harbor, the Great House of
Benning Wentworth still looks out to sea. You
cannot visit it unless you know the Coolidges,
who own it how.

But if you are interested in Colonial and
Federal architecture, there are several places
in Portsmouth you can visit (for a quarter) ,
and others you may admijre from a distance.
A cat can look at a king, and a tourist can
look at anything. And if you are a sight-seer in
New England, you should spend a day, just
looking. Then, from Portsmouth you should
go to the White Mountains accompanied by a
certain little book, for which 111 say a good
word any day.*

There is one thing to be said for Portsmouth
that cannot be said, I think, for any other city
in the country. And that is that any lover of
old buildings can pick out for himself structures
of every period since 1650 (or thereabouts) .

And now I hate to sound pontifical, and stick

* Behold The White Mountains By Eleanor Early. Little
Brown & Co.

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 99

my chin out for architects to wallop but, in
my amateurish little way, 111 tell you what I
know about the beautiful old houses of Ports
mouth.

There is the Governor John Langdon
mansion on Pleasant Street, which was chosen
(in 1907) as a model for a New Hampshire
house, at the Charles town Exposition. This
house was built after the Revolution (1784).
And that was a wonderful period in American
architecture, since there were no more taxes
on glass and a number of other things, that
must have hampered the earlier builders.

Langdon was five times Governor of New
Hampshire, and a stalwart patriot. Before the
War, when the town was filled with Tories and
discord, the Governor pledged himself and his
chattels to Washington.

"I have," he said, "a thousand dollars in hard
money. I will pledge my plate for a thousand
more. I have seventy hogshead of Tobago rum,
which will be sold for the most it will bring. If
we succeed in defending our homes, I may be
remunerated. If we do not, nothing will be
of no value to me."

Many Portsmouth patriots did considerable
profiteering during the Revolution; and the
Governor, we take it, was "remunerated."
With the spoils of war, he built his house. And

ioo A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

when it was completed, he gave a great party to
celebrate. Even George Washington came all
the way from Mount Vernon to visit, and it was
no overnight jaunt in those days.

When General Washington left, the Gov
ernor said that the General had pronounced
his (the Governor's) house the handsomest
house in town. Which it doubtless was for the
commodious Benning Wentworth place lacked
the restraint that glorified a Federal mansion,
and no other house was nearly so grand.

At this period there were more private
carriages and liveried servants in Portsmouth
than in any town in New England. The gentle
men were elegant with their huge wigs and
gold-headed canes. Their velvet coats gleamed
with silver and gold. And their ladies wore
tinseled brocades and quilted satins. And their
ball gowns were studded with rubies and pearls.

But, by and by, the ladies grew tired of this
excessive finery and then they set a new and
most outrageous style! They discarded their
petticoats, one by one and their voluminous
skirts. And they cut down their bodices and
laid aside their wigs until in the summer of
1800 their clothes (including shoes and ear
rings!) weighed no more than half a pound.
Then in the winter, they all caught cold, and
went sniffling around their drafty mansions.

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 101

And the doctors said they had the Muslin
Disease.

The elite worshipped at Queen's Chapel, and
belonged to the blue-blooded flock of the
Reverend Mr. Browne. The Chapel was named
for Queen Caroline, who sent over a silver
christening basin, a chalice, and a plate for the
Eucharistall emblazoned with the royal coat
of arms. She sent a Bible too, that is known as
the Vinegar Bible, because the Parable of the
Vineyard is spelled Vinegar (which reminds me
of a booklet published by the City of Ports
mouth, in which mention is made of the Society
for the' Prevention of New England Antiqui
ties) .

Caroline also sent a chair that was carried,
one Sunday, from the vestry to the Governor's
pew, for George Washington to sit himself upon.
That was when Washington was visiting Gov
ernor Langdon. He attended church in breeches
and coat of black silk velvet, with no ornaments
but his silver buckles and thereby set a fashion
in masculine attire.

Before the Revolution, Royalty had staunch
friends in Portsmouth. And the Queen, who
was more thoughtful than her consort, sent
many beautiful gifts to the Royal Governors.
But people gossiped and told appalling stories
about her. They said that Caroline picked the

102 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

King's mistressesand that each mistress was
obliged to dress the Queen's hairevery morn
ing.

When Caroline died, Mark Hunting Went-
worth was in London and this is the story he
brought home to Portsmouth:

George was at the royal bedside, weeping
and the Queen, with practically her dying
breath, told him he must marry again.

"No," said George, "I shall have some more
mistresses/'

In 1760 the Wentworth-Gardner house was
built. It was built by Madame Mark Hunking
Wentworth for her son, Thomas, who was in the
West Indies. Thomas seems not to have par
ticularly valued the gift, for it was sold shortly
to Major William Gardner, which is how it got
its hyphenated name. And now it is owned by
the Metropolitan Museum in New York. And
it is in charge of the Society for the Preservation
of New England Antiquities, who have bor
rowed most of its furnishings from the good
people of Portsmouth. This splendid home,
shadowed by an ancient linden, is said to be a
perfect Georgian house. . . And now a word
about architecture.

There was Early Georgian and Late Georgian,

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 103

because the four Georges were on the throne
from 1714 to 1830. Maybe you know the old
rhyme the people used to say:

George the First most vile was reckoned;
Viler still was George the Second,
And what mortal ever heard
Any good of George the Third?
When the Fourth from earth descended
Thank the Lord the Georges ended!

There are people who don't know beans
about periods, and when they hear a thing is
Georgian, they exclaim ecstatically, as if that
made it perfectly grand when, as a matter of
fact, Georgian (on the whole) was a pretty
unpleasant period.

George I, who could not speak a word of
English, brought to London the horrors of the
worst of the French rocococopied, and com
pletely surpassed, by his own German crafts
men. And, along with rococo, he brought his
mistresses one of whom he made a Countess,
and another a Duchess. George left affairs of
state to his Prime Minister, Walpole, who said:

"England has now arrived at a time when
the arts have sunk to their lowest ebb. The
new monarch is devoid of taste/'

When George II and Caroline came to the
throne, things were better. Then taste was on

104 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

the up-and-up but it had a long way to go.

After George II, there was his grandson-
George III King for sixty years, and mad
for fifty-five. After George III lost America,
he started talking to himself.

In 1821 in the reign of George IV there
was the Greek War of Independence. Then the
Grecian influence was reflected in architecture.
And Thomas Jefferson, in America, launched a
vogue for columns. Greek Revival interiors
had tall doors and windows, high ceilings, and
marble mantles.

In Portsmouth there are buildings of all these
periods. And the houses generally referred to
as Colonial are frequently not Colonial at all
because Colonial means before the Revolu
tion. It is impossible, of course, to divide
periods into neatly bounded eras. And I am
not trying to be arbitrary, but only to help you
get things straight, if the mania for old-
houses-in-New England has you down, and con
fused.

Portsmouth was a great Colonial port, and it
has remained fairly intact, because it never was
a big center. It was not a direct route to the
interior, and so shipping gradually left it.
There was wealth and trade enough to keep
things up, but not enough to destroy and re
build. And although Queen's Chapel and a

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 105

number of other buildings have been wiped
out, enough of the old town remains to help you
feel the glory that was here, and the grandeur
that has gone.

When the first colonists came to New
Hampshire, the hillsides were covered with vast
virgin woods of white pine. The pines grew
one hundred feet, and more and they were
four feet around.

This was in the days of wooden ships, when
strong masts were needed for the lives of nations,
to bear the white sails, of commerce and of war,
to the ends of the seven seas.

The original settlement was called Piscataqua,
for the river and also Strawberry Bank, for the
sweet berries that grew in the sun. The forests
were called the King's Woods.

Backwoods people, who cut the trees, were
rough and strong, and wore deerskin, and came
to town only to trade. In the town were the
merchants and the aristocrats, who wore brocades
and fine velvets. And among them, by and by,
was Mark Hunking Wentworth, who had con
tracted with the King to deliver in Jamaica, in
Antigua, and in London the finest masts that
could be hewn. The ships that carried trees to
the Indies brought rum to Portsmouth. And

io6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

it was not long before the town, between ex
ports and imports, was rich, and getting elegant,

In the beginning, there had been trouble with
the Indians. And one day Mrs. Mary Brewster
was scalped and left for dead, under the pines
in the King's Wood. Several less fortunate
people stayed scalped, and dead as door nails.
But Mrs. Brewster, a bride at the time, pulled
herself together, and made for the stockade, her
head in her hands. Her husband fixed her up,
with a silver plate and a wig. And Mrs. Brewster
lived to have four sons, and die of old age. Gov
ernor Langdon had a mourning ring from her
funeral, that he gave to George Washington.
And Tobias Lear, who was Washington's secre
tary and came from Portsmouth, vouched for
the scalping story.

This reminds me that the Lear house, on
Hunking Street, is open for visitors. It is not
particularly imposing, but it is really Colonial
(1760) all but the dormers. Tobias was born
the year the house was built, and in 1783, when
General Washington was looking for a private
secretary, Tobias was graduated, with honors,
from Harvard.

Martha thought it would be a good idea to
find someone who could tutor the children,

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 107

when the General was not keeping him busy
answering letters. Tobias was highly recom
mended, and Martha was delighted. But one
morning, shortly after his arrival at Mount
Vernon, the young man was late for dictation.
Apologizing for his tardiness, he said his watch
was slow. The General, who valued punctuality
above most virtues, said nothing. A few days
later, Tobias was late again. And again he
blamed it on his watch.

"Mr. Lear, you must get a new watch/' said
the General, "or I must get a new secretary/'

Madame Lear, Tobias 7 mother, told the story
herself. But it was not long, she boasted, before
the General appreciated her son. And when he
came to Portsmouth, the General proved it.

One morning he sent a note, to tell Madame
Lear that he would call that day and that he
would like to meet all the children. He came
on foot from the Governor's mansion. And in
the front parlor, Mrs. Lear, surrounded by her
children and her grand-children, awaited him.
There was a new baby named George Washing
tonthe little son of Tobias' sister. The chairs
in the parlor were cherry-wood that grew in
the garden, and I think they are still there.

When Washington returned to Mount
Vernon and told Martha what nice children the
little Lears were, she sent them some china

io8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

mantle ornaments from the study in Mount
Vernon. And, after Washington died, she sent
Mrs. Lear some of his hair, and some of her
own. Then little Mary Storer one of the
grand-children whom the General had ad
miredembroidered two remarkable samplers.
They belong to the Lear descendants, but some
times they are loaned to custodians of the house,
and hung in the parlor where Mary proudly
placed them. The inscriptions tell the story:

This is work'd with our Illustrious and
beloved General

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S HAIR

Which covered his exalted head;
But now enroird among the dead,
Yet wears a crown above the skies,
In realms of bliss which never dies.

This is work'd with Lady
MARTHA WASHINGTON'S HAIR

Relict of our beloved General
I pray her honor'd head,
May long survive the dead;
And when she doth her breath resign,
May she in heaven her consort join.

This hair was sent to Mrs. Lear
By her good friend Lady Washington.

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 109

During the General's visit at Langdon's, he
frequently exclaimed on the finery of Cyrus
Bruce, a slave in the mansion. It was said that
only the Governor dressed more elegantly than
Cyrus. The black man wore silk stockings, and
linen ruffles. And his clothes were of fine black
broadcloth. But at last his sartorial magnifi
cence was eclipsed by the finery of another black
man.

Captain Charles Coffin of Portsmouth was a
ship master who sailed to Russia, and with him
he took his black man, Toby. In Russia they
had hardly ever seen a negro. And when the
Czar saw Toby, he wanted him at once. Captain
Coffin could have made a handsome deal, but
he thought it would be more diplomatic to
make a fine gesture so he handed Toby over
with a flourish, and never expected to see him
again. But the next year, with the consent of
the Czar, Toby returned to Portsmouth, to col
lect his family. Cyrus Bruce, when he saw
Toby's gold-laced clothes and diamond ring,
could hardly believe his eyes the Czar had out
fitted him like a Prince!

Opposite Governor Langdon's fine mansion
is the humbler home of his cousin Samuel (built
in 1740). Samuel was minister of the North
Church but for 125 years his home has been
the parsonage of the South Church. Now the

no A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Reverend Mr. Jones lives in it and nobody
has ever lived there but a minister. It makes
me think of what Hawthorne wrote about the
Old Manse in Concord, where the Emersons
lived.

"A priest built it" (said Hawthorne) . "A
priest succeeded to it. Other priestly men dwelt
in it. And children born in its chambers grew
up to assume the priestly character. It is awful
to reflect how many sermons have been written
there!"

One of the early ministers of the North
Church was the Reverend Mr. Shurtleff, whose
grandfather died in the most uncanny way you
ever heard. He was sitting in the kitchen, with
two children in his lap, and a third between his
knees. When down the chimney came a streak
of lightning-and burned Mr. Shurtleff to a
crisp! People in those days saw the hand of
God in practically everything, and I shudder to
think what they must have said about poor Mr.
Shurtleff-especially as the children were not
even singed.

When the Reverend Mr. Shurtleff died, his
widow presented a tankard to the parsonage, in
his memory. "For the minister," she wrote
"for the time being/' Which looked, of course,
as if she meant to take it back. But she must
have forgotten, because it is on Mr. Jones'

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA in

dining room table this minute, engraved just
like that: "From Mrs. Mary Shurtleffi to the
minister, for the time being." The Garvin Col
lection at Yale recently offered $5,000 for it,
but it cannot be sold, since it belongs to unborn
ministers.

Mrs. Shurtleff was a very mean woman, for
all her silver tankard. A historian of her time
says that Mr. Shurtleff "will long be mentioned
for his uncommon meekness and patience under
great t ri als" and what he meant by Great Trials
was Mrs. S. Once she found the parson bending
over the fireplace, broiling a fish for his supper
that she had told him should not be cooked.

"Has this been salted, Mr. Shurtleff?" she en
quires.

"It has," he replies.

"It needs peppering then/' she says, and takes
up a shovelful of ashes.

The fish and his hopes for supper forthwith dis
appear beneath the liberal peppering.

One Sabbath, Mr. Shurtleff retired to his
study, to brush up on his sermon. Presently it
was time for service. The parishioners waited.
Mrs. Shurtleff, seated in the front seat, waited.
Everyone waited. Finally the deacon asked
Mrs. Shurtleff where her husband was. He was
at home, she said. A hastily appointed com-

112 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

mittee hurried to the parsonage. And there
was Mr. Shurtleff locked in the study! He
begged them to keep the matter quiet and
until he died, they never told a soul.

The Warner House, built in 1716, was the
first mansion in Portsmouthand maybe the
first in New England. It was built by Captain
Archibald MacPhaedris, a Scotch merchant, who
married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen
children of Governor John Wentworth. And
the Captain gave her the house for a wedding
present.

The MacPhaedris had one daughter, Mary.
Then the Captain died and Mrs. MacPhaedris
married George Jeffrey. And Mary grew up,
and married Jonathan Warner. Then Mary
died, and Jonathan married again. And when
Jonathan died, there were no MacPhaedris
heirs but only some Warners, who were
nephews and nieces and they inherited the
mansion. If ghosts have feelings, Captain Mac
Phaedris must be pretty sore.

There are portraits, by Blackburn, of the
two Marys, mother and daughter. And there
are portraits of fine Tories in red coats who'd
have led a girl a pretty chase, I bet. Red coats,
and the sea. . . Oh:

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 113

If I could be where I wished today

O'er the waters blue of Portsmouth Bay.
In a stately Georgian house I'd be

And I'd have a Tory beau to tea,
In his scarlet coat and his cuffs of lace,

With his powdered wig, and his high-born face.
And I'd dress in a ruffled crinoline,

And my silver'd shine with a wondrous sheen,
And the china egg-shell thin would be.

And we'd sit and sip of our jasmine tea. . .
And the lily'd grow with the purple phlox

In my garden hedged with the close-clipped

box. . .
If I could be where I wished today

O'er the waters blue of Portsmouth Bay.

Before we go around to the garden, let me
call your attention to the lightning rod that
Benjamin Franklin put on the Warner house,
when he came to visit Joshua. The Doctor's
talents were so diversified that it was difficult
to keep track of them but did you ever
hear about the international illegitimacy he
fathered? , .

Benjamin's son, William, was born in Phila
delphiaWilliam's son, Temple, in London
and Temple's son in Passy and they were all
illegitimate. But Temple's son was short-lived,
and dying broke the record. Temple became
unofficial secretary to the Legation in Paris,

ii4 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

and his grandfather, when he was dying, asked
the U. S. Government to give the boy a grant
of land.

"I find it practically impossible to be good/'
observed the Doctor on his deathbed. "But I
can do good/'

From his fiftieth year to the end of his life,
women delighted in the ageless charms of old
Doctor Franklin. And the girls of Portsmouth
adored him.

The Warners at this time had a slave named
Peter. One day Peter asked for a new hat, and
his master told him he could have one for a
rhyme. Peter couldn't make up a rhyme to save
his life, so he appealed to the literary guest.
And Franklin gave him this:

"Peter Warner threw his hat in the chimney
corner/'

Peter was charmed. "Massa!" he cried. "I
done made up that rhyme, Massa. . . Peter
Warner took off his hat and threw it in the fire
place/'

The finest old gardens in Portsmouth are at
the Moffatt-Ladd house. But there are lovely
ones, also, at the Peirce, the Boardman-Marvin,
and the Aldrich houses.

Captain John Moffatt, Commander in the

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 115

King's Navy, built the Moffatt-Ladd place in
1763 for his son Samuel. Samuel died in the
West Indies, and the house passed into the
hands of a granddaughter, Mrs. Ladd.

A Colonial garden is lovelier, I think, than
a Colonial house, for there is a wistful beauty
in an ancient garden, while houses change and
spoil. Colonial gardens rose in terraces. There
were arbors and bowers wreathed in honey
suckle. There were blossoming cherry, and
apple, and plum trees. And, under the pink
peach petals and the snowy blossoms of apple
and pear, there grew English violets and lilies-
of-the-valley. There were narcissus and daffodils
and tulips, in the spring. And then there were
lilacs and flowering almond. And in the sum
mer there were damask roses and poppies and
marigolds. And lupins and sweet^peas. And
bell flowers of violet-blue, and lemon lilies and
sweet-smelling stock. There were red and white
peonies (called pinys) , and moon-white honesty.
And there were primroses of pale pink and
rosy-yellow, and fuchsia and flame. There were
holly-hocks of strawberry and raspberry and
cream and sky-blue larkspur, and sweet
William.

There were pavilions twined with virgin's
bower and matrimony vine. And there were
garden seats under the syringa and snow-balls.

ii6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Box grew low about the herbs, and in hedges
along the paths. And it grew with a strange and
bitter fragrance, dear to Puritans as the odor of
Eternity. I have heard New Englanders say
that they have an affinity for Box that it exerts
a power like a hereditary memory, and affects
them with an almost hypnotic force. This is
not felt by everyone, but only by those who have
loved Box for centuries, in the persons of their
ancestors.

There was a New England girl who went to
Cuba as governess in the family of a planter.
The planter's wife died, and the girl married
the widower, by whom she had a daughter.
Then she herself died, and her child was brought
up by the Cuban grandmother.

When this girl was twenty years old, she re
turned to New England. And shortly a maiden
aunt took her to visit a garden her mother had
loved. As they walked down the path between
high rows of Box, the girl suddenly screamed.

"The dog! Oh save me he will kill me!"

No dog was there But at that very spot,
twenty-five years before, her mother had been
attacked and bitten by a dog. And her aunts,
good New Englanders, believed that the Box
remembered, and could tell.

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 117

It is interesting to know that there was a fine
commercial nursery in Colonial New England.
A group of French Huguenots brought many
French fruits, by seeds and cuttings; and, es
tablishing themselves on Long Island, started
a mail order business. Then a gentleman in
Portsmouth set himself up as a landscape
gardener. Seeds were sold in the bonnet shops,
and a lady could buy a bonnet like a flower-
garden, and a package of Love-in-the-mist and
rosemary, to go home in the same bandbox.
And when the bonnet withered, the flowers
were fresh and sweet.

Before you leave the Moffatt-Ladd house, I
should tell you about the Grinling Gibbons
mantel in the back drawing room. Captain
Moffatt brought it, they say, from his father's
home in England. If you are especially in
terested in old houses, you probably would
enjoy a book called Some Historic Houses, pub
lished by the Colonial Dames (Macmillan) .
The Moffatt-Ladd place belongs to the Dames,
and is typical of the way they restore and
furnish.

There are so many fine houses with ripe old
rooms, that it would be tiresome to enumerate
them but I like the polite traditions of the
pleasant Wendells of Pleasant Street. Five
generations of Wendells have lived in the same

ii8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

house, and all the furniture and treasures of
their forefathers are there. No division of
property has ever taken place Chippendale,
Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Phyfe! What keeps
the heirs from quarreling? And, since the place
is filled to the roof, what does Mrs. Wendell
do when she can't go shopping?

The Boardman-Marvin house is a splendid
place, with Lady of the Lake wall-paper, and
Mclntire mantels and doorsbut it is not open
to the public (except on special occasions) .
And the paper, which is very grand and about
a hundred years old, affects me like Box. . .
When we read The Lady of the Lake out loud in
high school, the boys substituted Eleanor for
Ellen. . . "Nay, Eleanor, lovely lady nay/'
they would say. Then the teacher would make
me stand in the hall! And when I saw the Lady
of the Lake wall-paper, with Eleanor (nee
Ellen) 'like a sunbeam swift and bright, dart
ing to her shallop light/' I felt like the girl who
screamed, "Oh save me!"

There is a Friendly Fire Society in Ports
mouth that was organized in Colonial days.
Membership descends from father to sons, and
equipment consists of a leather bucket holding
a bed screw (to take apart four-posters) , and
two linen bags "capable of holding 2 bushels
of silver/'

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 119

The Portsmouth Athenaeum was designed
by Bulfinch, and so was the Public Library.
The Library was originally an Academy, and
Thomas Bailey Aldrich went there which re
minds me that the Aldrich house (the "Bad
Boy's" house) is open to visitors. Once a
maiden aunt named Abigail went to Aldrich's to
call and stayed for seventeen years! . . . But
what I started to say was that the City Fathers,
proud of their Library, put Bulfinch's name
over the door. Charles Bulfinch, Architect, it
says and Dorothy Vaughan, the assistant libra
rian, says that salesmen are forever calling, to
sell Mr. Bulfinch a T-square or something.

There is another Wentworth story I'd like
to tell and then I want to tell about the Small
Pox parties.

The story is about Joshua Wentworth, whose
debts would make a man grow pale, and George
Jaffrey, who left a fortune, to point a moral
and adorn a tale. Young Joshua was the bosom
friend of old Mr. Jaffrey, and heir expectant
to his great wealth. Mr. Jaffrey signed some
notes for Joshua. And when Joshua could not
meet them, Mr. Jaffrey was so angry he changed
his will, and named as his beneficiary a boy
from Boston named Jeffries. The conditions

120 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

under which Jeffries inherited were these:
First, he must change his name to George
Jaffrey Second, he must become a permanent
resident of Portsmouth Third, he must be a
gentleman and nothing else at all!

The conditions were strictly complied with
upon the death of old George Jaffrey, young
George Jaffrey came to town. And all his life
he was a gentleman of leisure, with a gold-
headed cane and a tall silk hat. As an eligible
bachelor, he received considerable flattering
attention from the belles of Portsmouth. And
once he beaued a young lady to a Small Pox
party. But nothing came of it and George
Jaffrey the Second died a bachelor.

In 1782, the French fleet anchored in Ports
mouth harbor. The girls couldn't decide that
summer whether to take the Small Pox, or take
up with an officer. The officers had a delight
ful peculiarity they knit silk gloves! And
every pretty girl in Portsmouth had a pair.
Everywhere the French boys went, they took
their knitting, and local lads, sulking on the
side lines, called them whatever was i8th
century for pansies.

Pest Island was a little green isle in the
Piscataqua, where "the flower of youth and

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 121

beauty" went to get vaccinated (from 1774 to
1797) . Old diaries tell us that "a greater amount
of love-making was never before concentrated
in so brief a space and period/' Small Pox
parties became social gatherings, and it was
smarter to spend a summer month getting
vaccinated than at the watering places.

Patience Wentworth wrote to the mother of
a friend in Boston:

Aunty has invited a few young friends
to take the Small Pox with me. If you
wish to get rid of your fears in the same
way, Aunty bids me say we will accom
modate you in the best way we can.
Aunty has several friends that she has in
vited, and none will be more welcome
than you.

Every night were candy parties and sings
in the houses on Pest Island where the patients
lived. And, after midnight, the Dutch Doll
went calling.

The Dutch Doll was the invention of the
Prince of Wales and his friend Beau Brummel.
They were in a tavern one night in London
when Beau dressed a broom in a bar-maid's
dress, made a mask for the face, and topped it
with the tavern keeper's wig, and the bar
maid's cap. Then he presented it to Prince
George, and dressed another for himself.

122 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The young men held the brooms in their up
raised hands, so that the skirts concealed their
faces. Then they wrapped themselves in sheets,
and went roaming through the streets, terrify
ing the bobbies out of their wits.

French officers introduced the sport to Ports
mouth. And the girls on Pest Island were
awakened by Dolly, poking her head in their
bed-room windows. . . Vaccination isn't so
much fun now.

VI

GHOSTS GO WAILING DOWN
THE WIND

THHE Devil came personally to New England
* toward the end of the seventeenth century,
in a determined effort to root out the Christian
religion. His presence and motive were de
clared from the pulpit by Cotton Mather and a
number of lesser lights. And, as men in an
emergency turn usually to God, the people
fasted and prayed. And some had visions. But
Margaret Rule had the d.t's.

Miss Rule was haunted by "8 malignant
spectres/' led on by a " principal demon/' who
wanted to be her lover.

With maidenly modesty, Miss Rule demurred
"and the Devil lifted her bodily off the bed/'
like a cave man. He also pinched and stuck
pins in her.

When the Reverend Mr, Mather heard what
was happening to his unfortunate parishioner,
he took her to his home for observation. There

123

124 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

she languished "for just six weeks together"
during which time she could not eat food. But
subsisted on rum altogether!

Finally the Devil, intimidated by Dr. Mather,
gave up the siege, and the lady's chastity was
saved.

Dr. Mather, greatly pleased with himself,
wrote A Brand pluckt from the Burning or the
story of a Puritan Spinster and her Demon Beau.
And Margaret (we hope) went on the wagon.

After this struggle with such a worthy, if
evanescent adversary, Dr. Mather could not de
cide whether ghosts were evil spirits, or only
poor, unhappy souls with something on their
minds.

Now, however, there were no more immedi
ately at hand to be investigated, and the Doctor
had to carry his research elsewhere. He had
heard, of course, about the phantom ship of
New Haven, and since the facts about it were
now permanently set in the firm mould of time,
and not likely to get complicated by the love-
pattern of a living woman and a rum-weary
demon, it looked a likely field to Dr. Mather.

He had been gathering material for his
Magnalia Christi Americana, and forthwith set
out for Connecticut to interview those, still

Jonathan became avaricious

126 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

living, who had seen the ship. Since practically
every one had seen it, confirmation was not dif
ficult and Mr. Mather confidently added the
miracle to his immortal opus.

New England ghosts are harmless enough,
but hard to get rid of. Dr. Mather spied out
much, as any true Mather would, but to his
dying day, he pondered the lot of that shipload
of spooks. The man who had handily van
quished the Devil, let those ghosts get him
down. His record of them is the oldest, and so
111 tell their story first. Then I will tell about
Ocean Born Mary and the Moultons.

In mid-December, a Rhode Island ship, carry
ing a rich cargo* 'and a far more rich treasure
of passengers' 1 put out for London from New
Haven, with several of the most eminent persons
in the colony on board. The Reverend Mr.
Davenport and all the town came down to see
them oS. As the ship passed slowly out to sea,
Mr. Davenport fell upon his knees and his
invocation was wafted across the ice, like a
prayer for the dead.

"Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury these our
friends in the bottom of the sea, take them; they
are thine."

It was in the heart of winteroh, the long and

GHOSTS GO WAILING

dreary winter! The harbor was frozen over, so
that the ship's way had to be cut through the
ice oh, the cold and cruel winter! While Mr.
Davenport prayed, gloom crept in from the sea
like an icy fog, so that men trembled. And all
the women cried.

In the spring, ships arriving from England
brought no tidings either of the ship or her
company.

"Then," recounts Dr. Mather, "New Haven's
heart began to fail her." And the people began
to pray, "both public and private," and begged
God, "if it was His pleasure," to let them hear
what He had done with their friends.

"Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and

died,

In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,
Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,
And the slow months sailed by and ceased to be."

Then one afternoon in June a great thunder
storm came out of the northwest. And when
the black clouds rolled away about an hour
before sunset the watchers saw a large ship,
with all her sails spread, and her colors flying,
sailing gallantly up from the harbor's mouth.
Though the wind was dead against her, she

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

moved as if her sails were filled with a heavenly
gale. And the people looked on in wonder and
in awe.

Children clapped their hands, and cried out,
"There's a brave ship!"

And up the harbor she sailed, stemming wind
and tide without a ripple at her bow!

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,

Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,

And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.

She crowded as near as there was depth of
water for such a ship. Those on shore could
see a man, with a naked sword, which he pointed
out to sea. . . Then suddenly, noiselesslyas
if struck by a squall her main-top was blown
away, and falling in a wreck hung limp
among the shrouds. Then her mizzen-top, and
all her masts, and spars, and sails.

And the masts, with all their rigging,

Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,

As a sea-mist in the sun!

GHOSTS GO WAILING 129

And the people who saw this marvel

Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,

And thus her tragic end.*

The learned and devout Mr. Davenport de
clared on Sunday, from the pulpit, that "God
had condescended, for the quieting of their
afflicted spirits, this extraordinary account of
His disposal of those for whom so many fervent
prayers were made continually." . . And so
Mr. Davenport voiced the belief of the people
in an anthropomorphic God who guided the
destinies of ships, and the affairs of the people
of New Haven.

A hundred years after the Phantom Ship was
sunk, the seas were filled with pirates, and
sailors sang of Captain Kidd:

My name was Robert Kidd, when I sail'd, when I
saiFd,

My name was Robert Kidd, when I sail'd;
My name was Robert Kidd, God's law I did forbid,

And so wickedly I did, when I sail'd.

I'd a Bible in my hand, when I sail'd, when I

sail'd,
I'd a Bible in my hand, when I sail'd;

* Henry W. Longfellow.

130 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

I'd a Bible in my hand, by my father's great com
mand,
But I sunk it in the sand, when I sail'd.

I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd, as I sail'd,

I'd ninety bars of gold, as I sail'd;
I'd ninety bars of gold, and dollars manifold,

With riches uncontroll'd, as I sail'd.

Come all ye young and old, see me die, see me die,
Come all ye young and old, see me die;

Come all ye young and old, you're welcome to my

gold,
For by it I've lost my soul, and must die.

Philip Babb was one of Captain Kidd's men.
When Kidd was hanged, Babb took his place
as King of the Pirates.

Legend says that Babb was murdered by his
own men, so that his ghost might guard their
buried treasure. The murder is said to have
taken place on Appledore Island in the Isle of
Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire. And
if this is true, poor old Babb is still there, be
cause a pirate's ghost could not desert his gold
if he wanted to.

Babb was pretty sentimental for a pirate, and
he fell in love with a little girl on a ship he
captured. His attachment to Ocean Born Mary

GHOSTS GO WAILING 131

began the day she was born. He gave her a bolt
of sea-green brocade for a wedding gown. And
waited until she was a widow, to build her a
house.

In 1720 a company of emigrants on their
passage from Ireland to New Hampshire were
captured by pirates, captained according to
tradition by Philip Babb.

Among the emigrants was a recent bride
named Elizabeth Fulton, who was so frightened,
that she had a baby right then and there. This
must have embarrassed the pirate captain, who
probably did not know much about maternity
cases. But when he saw the baby, he was touched
by its tiny helplessness. And he asked Elizabeth
if she would name the child for his wife, whom
he had loved and lost.

Elizabeth, who was still very scared, promised.
And the pirate sent one of his men back to his
ship for a bolt of Chinese brocade, as delicately
green as young leaves in the spring-time, and
shimmering like the sea in the sun. And he
gave it to Elizabeth.

"Save it for the child's wedding gown/' he
said. "And call her Ocean Born Mary/'

Now it happened that a child born on the
Mayflower had been christened Oceanus. And

13* A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

John Cotton's son, who was born at sea, was
called Seaborn. Both babies had died. And
some people said their names were too much for
them.

When the emigrants reached Boston, and
everyone heard about the pirate, people advised
the Fultons not to call their baby by any such
outlandish name. But Elizabeth said she had
promised. And since the pirate had been ex
traordinarily kind to them, she meant to keep
her word.

There was little worth taking on a poor
emigrant ship, and that little the pirate had
left alone. Nor did he harm a soul, but called
his men and returned to his ship. And as they
rowed away, the Captain stood in the boat and
called back:

"Tell Ocean Born Mary 111 see her again!"

Ocean Born Mary's father died in Boston
soon after landing. And his widow brought
their baby to New Hampshire, to the settle
ment called Londonderry, in memory of their
home in Ireland.

Ocean Born Mary married James Wallace
when she was twenty-twoand she married him
in a gown of green brocade, as soft and green
as moss.

Legend says that Ocean Born Mary was then
six feet tall, and a lovely Irish Juno, She bore

GHOSTS GO WAILING 133

her husband four great sons. And the tallest of
them was six feet and eight inches tall.

With this imposing family, Philip Babb, the
pirate, kept in touch. When he grew old and
tired of pillaging, he built a house in Henniker
in the foothills of New Hampshire. A square,
high house such as sea captains built and a
much grander house than any of the farmers
round-about.

When Ocean Born Mary's husband died, the
pirate brought her and her sons to live with
him. And Mary brought her sea-green wed
ding gown. She put it in the attic, and the
moths got into it. But what the moths did not
eat is still there.

There are some who say that Babb went
again to sea, and on his return was killed on
Appledore. Others say that his body was found
in a meadow west of the house, with a cutlass
through his throat. But nobody knows what he
did with his gold (and they're looking all the
time) .

Ocean Born Mary lived to be ninety-four,
and was buried in the Center Burying Ground
in Henniker, among many of her descendants.
Then for more than a hundred years the big old
house was neglected, and it went to rack and
ruin.

Once some boys set a fire to burn it. But

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Ocean Born Mary "sent a man from town" to
discover them, and save her house.

Finally the Roys, who live there now, saw an
advertisement in a farm paper.

"I was brought to Ocean Born Mary's house/'
says Mrs. Roy. "I never saw it I only read the
advertisement. But I knew I must have it.
When I came, someone walked up the path
with me, and through the door. She is here
now. We feel her presence always/*

Ocean Born Mary haunts the bedroom where
she slept, and flits through the shadowed yard.
They feel, but never see her, in the rooms she
loved.

Yet on the night of New England's historic
hurricane, Mrs. Roy saw Ocean Born Mary as
plain as though she were flesh and blood. Mrs.
Roy's son, Gussie, was propping an out-building
with joists. By his side, his mother, watching
from the window, saw a tall woman helping.
When he moved, she moved and her arms
were raised, protecting his head from the storm
that blew about them. When the work was
finished, Mrs. Roy saw them come toward the
house together. Ten feet from the door, the
woman vanished.

When darkness came, ghosts went wailing
down the wind that night. And in the morning,
the Roys found that a giant elm at the corner

GHOSTS GO WAILING 135

of the house had been broken off from the roots.
The boughs, instead of lunging through their
roof, had uncannily folded in pieces, and lay
beside a doorstep.

A twin elm the only other in a plot of birch
and pine was uprooted from a hummock, sixty
rods distant, in line with the north star. No
tree between was damaged.

The isolated elms, the Roys think, offer a clue
to the pirate's buried gold. Radiating west from
the shattered elm, lies the stump of a third
elm also at sixty rods. This stump, in turn, is
sixty rods from the uprooted elm on the hum
mock. In the exact center of this equilateral
triangle is a gravel slope a logical spot for
buried treasure.

Mr. Roy began digging at once. It would be
pleasant to tell that Ocean Born Mary led him
to the pirate's gold. But all he found was the
rusty hinge of an old chest a chest such as sea
men used.

New Hampshire has more ghosts, I think,
than any other state in New England and the
most famous are the ghosts of Hampton.

When Lawyer Whipple bought the Jonathan
Moulton house, he sent to Portsmouth for two
ministers to lay the Moulton ghosts. The

136 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

ministers drove the ghosts into a bin in the
cellar, and kept them there until the hired man
got the bin boarded up. But when Squire
Towle bought the place, he foolishly had the
boards taken downand the ghosts went back
to their old tricks.

Now Mr. Harland Little and his sisters have
restored the house for their summer home. The
ghosts, they say, are little bother these days.
Sometimes they blow out candles. The Littles
hear them on the stairs at night, and sometimes
feel them drifting through the rooms. But
there is none of the clanking of chains that drove
the Whipples mad, and terrified the Towles.

The Littles have restored the Haunted House
to its ancient dignity. It is a, square-set, yellow
mansion, with a fine hip roof, and pediments
over its shining small-paned windows, like
arched eyebrows over wide eyes. For the
kitchen, there is a little ell a hundred years
older than the mansion. And the ell has a
gambrel roof. And there is an old-fashioned
flower garden, with larkspur and hollyhocks
growing side by side, and fox glove and bee
bairn and Canterbury bells.

General Jonathan Moulton was a self-made
man with a flair for the flamboyant. And he

GHOSTS GO WAILING 13?

got more publicity than the Royal Governor.
If Jonathan were alive today, Time would put
him on the cover, and the Associated Press
would have a two-column obit ready for the
day he died.

He was born in New Hampshire in 1726,
as poor as poverty. And he wanted to be the
richest man in the Province. Almost everybody
who is poor would like to be rich, but most
of us do not go about it the right way. . .
Jonathan bought a young ox as white as a
daisy.

He fattened the ox until he weighed 1400
pounds. Then Jonathan hung him with
flowers and ribbons and gilded his hoofs, and
tied a bow on his tail. And drove him to Ports-
mouth, for a gift for the Governor.

The Governor offered Jonathan a present in
return. Jonathan remonstrated politely but
finally said since the Governor insisted he
would accept a parcel of land adjoining the
town in which he lived. The Governor made
out a grant, without a suspicion of what it
amounted to and Jonathan went home with
a deed for half a dozen towns! And in this way
he became the richest man in the Province.

But instead of becoming loving and giving,
he got as hard-boiled and mean as a miser.
People said he sold his soul to the Devil, and

ist8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

</

that was how he got his money. And Jonathan
never denied it. They said that the Devil, in
exchange for his soul, agreed to fill Jonathan's
boots with gold pieces, on the first night of
every month. Jonathan had ordered a pair of
enormously large, high boots-too big for mortal
man to wear. And this extraordinary purchase,
broadcast by the bootmaker, gave credence to
the story.

The Devil was as good as his word, and filled
the out-size boots regularly, though it must
have annoyed him to see the size of the things.
Then Jonathan became more avaricious, and
determined to out-smart the Devil. He cut the
soles out of the boots and the Devil's gold
flowed down cellar through two holes in the
floor! But the Devil was no fool, and that night
he burned the General's house to the ground.

With the house went much of the gold. But
there was enough buried in the ground to build
a mansion grander than the first. And when it
was finished, the old General married the
prettiest girl in town.

His daughter Nancy, the child of his first
wife, was married at the same time to John
Marston, who was the General's secretary.
For a wedding present her father gave them
the whole town of Sandwich which is quite
a town. After the wedding, Nancy sat in state

GHOSTS GO WAILING 139

for two weeks, receiving all the Tories and
half the yokels in New Hampshire. And every
one said she was the luckiest girl in the Province.
Things were not going so well with Nancy's
stepmother, Sarah. For on her wedding night
a most terrible thing happened.

"Asleep she lay where the first wife's head
Had pillowed itself on the fateful bed" . . .
when-

waking Sarah saw Jonathan's dead wife,
Abigail, bending over her! And Abigail's cold
hands were drawing the rings from Sarah's
fingers.

Sarah nudged Jonathan, who jumped a foot.

"Sh!" she said, "your wife is here!"

Tremblingly her hand she raised,
There no more the diamond blazed,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold
"Ah!" she sigh'd, "her hand was cold!" *

The General, who was a doughty old soldier,
and not afraid of his first wife (not much) ,
got up and looked around. But he could not
find the rings. And nobody ever found them,
nor saw them again. . . And that was the first
of the ghosts.

*John Greenleaf Whittier-T/ze Old Wife and the New.

140 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Jonathan had a son Josiah who hated his
stepmother, and made accusations against her
to recover his mother's old clothes:

My Mother's Riding Hood Sarah took to wore,
and would of kept, but a small remain of Modesty
she had left discovered to her her Shamefacedness,
and she gave it up. A neat costly black lace from
off my Mother's black Silk Cloak she put on her
own. She took my Mother's Best Caps. . . Noth
ing short of a Representation of Images of Hell
can represent her true Conduct & Character.

The General, in his old age, became friendly
with a chemist who boasted that he could make
a poison so subtle it could not be discovered
by taste, or smell, or color. With an astonish
ing lack of caution, the General cheated this
chemist friend in a business deal, and a little
later invited him for dinner. That night the
General died in a strange and inexplicable
spasm. . . Then there were two ghosts. . .
And I wonder if they made it up, and go wail
ing down the winds together or if Sarah, when
she got to be a pale phantom, got between
them, and raised hell about the rings that Abbie
took.

VII
MADMEN AND LOVERS

"p\IFFERENT sorts of madness are innumer-
**-* able. Jonathan Edward's madness was
born o hell-fire and a vision. Timothy Dexter's
was a pleasant madness. And Henry Tuft's a
very mid-summer madness.

Jonathan was a minister; Timothy, a Lord.
Tufts was a vagabond, with a girl in every
town. And each of these three reflects, in a nice
mad way, a bit of old-time New England.

Jonathan Edward's life was dark and gloomy
Jonathan is the black star in our crazy-quilt.
For Henry and his amours well make a purple
patch. And for Lord Timothy Dexter, yellow-
in a pumpkin splash.

Jonathan Edwards loved the Lord and
lovers' songs he turned to holy psalms. Timothy
Dexter loved money, and made a fortune on
the Bible. Don Juan Tufts loved the girls
and kissed and told.

Jonathan Edwards wrote The Freedom of the
Will, on which his fame rested for a hundred

141

142 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

years. Timothy Dexter wrote A Pickle for The
Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun
Dress. And Henry Tufts, The Autobiography
of a Criminal. . . And they all were best sellers.

1 'There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but wise men know."

That goes for Lord Timothy and Mr. Tufts.
But I don't think the Reverend Mr. Edwards
got much fun out of it.

When Jonathan in the bush with God did meet,
Jonathan was eight, and of high conceit.

It was hell being a child in Puritan New
England. And, to be fair to Jonathan Edwards,
his lot was likely worse than most, for he was
the only son of a Connecticut clergyman and
he had ten sisters!

Like most sensitive children in extremely re
ligious environments, Jonathan had a morbidly
precocious interest in salvation. When he was
eight, he was affected by a revival of his father's
church at East Windsor, and built a hut in
the woods so he could say his prayers in peace.

There he went to pray five times a day. Or
anyhow that is what he told his sisters. And
with ten sisters to work on it, you can see how
a story like that would get around so that

Lord Timothy took a flier in warming pans. . .

144 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

everyone in town was saying what a good little
boy Jonathan Edwards was.

Of course, it wasn't all Jonathan-or his
father's preaching or his ten sisters. Children
in Colonial days learned to read from the New
England Primer. And the Primer's nursery
rhymes gave them heeby-jeebies.

In the burying ground I see
Graves shorter there than I,

From Death's clutch no age is free
Young children too must die.

Little girls embroidered samplers, for re
minders:

REMEMBER YOU WAS BORN TO DIE!
They were brought up on original sin:

In Adam's fall
We sinned all.

And many of them had hysterics, which were
regarded as a sign of grace.

Judge Sewall tells how his small Betty "could
scarce read her chapter for weeping. She said
she was afraid she should goe to Hell, since her
Sins were not pardon'd. She cried so hard, she
caus'd all the Family to cry too."

MADMEN AND LOVERS 145

Jonathan abandoned his chapel in the woods
to enter Yale when he was twelve. There he
wrote his father of the "Monstrous Impieties
and acts of Immorality lately committed in the
Colledge." There was "Unseasonable Night-
walking/' he said, and "playing at Cards/'
There was "Cursing and Swearing and Damn
ing, and Using all manner of 111 Language."
There was also "Breaking of People's windows."
And, particularly, there was "Stealing of Hens,
Geese, turkies, piggs, Wood, etc."

"The Upshot," predicted the twelve-year-
old, "will be the Expulsion of some and the
Publick Admonition of others."

Johathan had a chamber-mate who joined the
student body in protesting meals served in
Commons.

"But, through the goodness of God," reported
Jonathan, "I am free of all their janglings."

He was taking his tonic, he said (his lignum
vita] . And he sent his humble Duty to his
Mother his hearty love to his sisters.
And

"I am
Honoured Sir

Your
Most Dutyful

Son
Jonathan E."

146 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The letter sounds self-righteous. But Jona
than was a good boy, and he knew it.

When he was eighteen, he accepted a pastor
ate in New York. At twenty, he was appointed
Tutor at Yale, And at twenty-three, he went
to Northampton.

His parish was large and important. But
Northampton was a provincial town, and young
Mr. Edwards ran into trouble almost as soon
as he arrived. There were various difficulties,
but for the purpose of this sketch, we will review
only the most colorful, which have to do with
Bundling, and a "Bad Book."

Cotton Mather had recently prepared a Dis
course (and preached it in installments) Shew
ing what Cause there was to Fear that the Glory
of God was Departing from New England.

But people paid less attention to Dr. Mather
than they used to. He said that God would
punish "with multiple and repeated mis
carriages" all women who cried against the
labor of child-bearing.

Dr. Mather had three wives (one at a time,
of course) who had borne him fifteen children,
and done their share of crying. And who was

MADMEN AND LOVERS 147

he, the women asked, to say who God should
punish? Superstition and implicit faith in what
the clergy said was dying. And Puritan
preachers were preaching in vain.

Jonathan Edwards married Sarah Pierrepont
shortly after he reached Northampton. Sarah
was seventeen, and very religious. She had
eleven children one every two years, until she
was forty. And she loved Jonathan devotedly.

From this union there have been (so far)
some fifteen hundred descendants, and most
of them distinguishedthirteen college presi
dents, more than two hundred professors, mis
sionaries and ministers, eminent doctors and
jurists, Governors, Senators, and a Vice Presi
dent, famous editors and writers J. P. Morgan,
and Winston Churchill. . . And so seventeen-
year-old Sarah with Jonathan's help became
the Great American Ancestress.

In school we were told about the Edwards
and the Jukes, who have been the last word
in heredity arguments for nearly seventy years.
The Edwards without reproach. The poor old
Jukes bad, sad, and awful mad.

In 1875 Richard Dugdale made a study of
the two families, and his findings became text
book gospel. But what Mr. Dugdale (and I

148 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

suppose our professors) didn't know about
was the Edwards before Jonathan-and if you
don't mind a little digression, I'll tell you
about Grandma Tuttle, who was Jonathan
Edwards' father's mother, and the scandal of
her day.

Elizabeth Tuttle married Richard Edwards
in 1667. Three months after their marriage,
she named another man as the father of the
child she was carrying. Richard paid the cus
tomary fine, and kept his peace. When the
child was born, Elizabeth gave it to her mother
and bore Richard a houseful of his own.

Twenty-four years after their marriage, Rich
ard divorced Elizabeth. Her faults, he said,
were "too grevious to forgitt, and too much to
relate' '-and for her first sin he "did never yet
forgive her."

Elizabeth's brother killed one of his sisters,
and another sister killed her own child. So it
seems that through the Tuttle family, a taint
of insanity must have entered the Edwards'
inheritance.

Timothy was the only son of Richard and
Elizabeth and it was he who became the father
of Jonathan and the ten girls. Timothy, at
twenty-two, had testified against his mother,
and God punished him with a queer daughter,
who was called Martha. Martha had two

MADMEN AND LOVERS 149

daughters who were also queer. Pierrepont,
the son of Jonathan, was erratic, as was also the
son of his daughter, Mary Dwight.

Aaron Burr was the son of another of Jona
than's daughters. And people said that Aaron
was the black sheep of the family, and as mad
as a hatter. After he became a political scape
goat, Aaron won distinction as an A. No. i Lady
Killer, which was probably more fun than be
ing Vice President, or a missionary. But his
morals would certainly have made Grandpa sit
up in his shroud. Because, if there was one
sin Jonathan Edwards hated worse than any
other, it was lovemaking.

There was a curious New England custom
in those days called Bundling, which was love-
making under peculiar circumstances. And
Jonathan knew it and Jonathan couldn't rest.

Boys and girls who bundled went to bed to
gether, with their clothes on, and stayed until
morning. Sometimes they got married after
ward. And sometimes they didn't.

Bundling was the cozy custom of rural New
England, and hardly anybody thought it was
wrong except the Reverend Jonathan Edwards
and his cultured associates. Very few ministers
opposed it and some even practiced it.

From the journal of an i8th century divinity
student, we learn that he had five love affairs

150 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

in succession, and bundled with the fourth of
his inamorats magna cum voluptate.

The Reverend Ebenezer Parkman tells of
making a journey with a brother minister (it
was the custom of the clergy to travel in pairs) .
Putting up for the night, they slept in one bed
for beds were very scarce. . . "And the
daughter of the house/' relates Mr. Parkman,
"thought nothing of bundling in another bed
in the same room/'

It was a lovers' custom as old as the first settle
ment, and until Mr. Edwards got excited about
it, it was scarcely a matter for gossip. But after
Mr. Edwards' first "hell-fire and conniption-fit
sermon/' his colleagues took up the subject.
And one of them wrote a poem with twenty-
seven verses dedicated to "Ye Youth of Both
Sexes/' that ended like this:

Should you go on, the day will come
When Christ your judge will say,

"In bundles bind each of this kind,
And cast them all away.

"Down deep in hell there let them dwell,

And bundle on that bed.
There burn and roll without control

'Till all their lusts are fed."

The Reverend Samuel Peters of Hebron, Con
necticut, wrote a History of the Colony in 1781,
and in it he tells us that:

MADMEN AND LOVERS 151

Notwithstanding the great modesty of the fe
males is such that it would be accounted rudeness
for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter,
or her leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility
to ask her to bundle.

If she was an honest, country bundling girl,
she probably expected it.

Boys came a long way to court. When they
had done their day's chores and reached a girl's
home, it was supper-time. And after supper,
it was bed-time and the fires went out, and the
house grew cold. Then, in a big feather bed,
there was warmth and loveliness and the long,
long night to talk!

Since in a bed, a man and maid

May bundle and be chaste,
It doth no good to burn up wood.

It is a needless waste.*

Many Mayflower Descendants have a bun
dling ancestry, though they never mention it.
And the rural grandmamas of the D.A.R. went
to bed with their beaus, and took the conse
quences. (Mr. Peters says "the consequences
commonly made its appearance within seven
months of a country marriage/')

City folk became sooner sophisticated, and
in 1745, according to Mr. Peters:

* Old Song-1786,

15* A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be
more polite than their ancestors, forbad their
daughters bundling on the bed with a man, and
introduced a sofa, to render courtship more palat
able and Turkish.

Northampton, being countrified, clung to the
four-poster. And the Reverend Jonathan Ed
wards determined to do something about it
that, and the general sin that was then rife.

* * * * * * *

People in Colonial New England had long
believed that God punished them with the
"throat distemper ; and blasted their harvests,
for their sins. For years they had pleased and
placated Him as best they could. And things
were going pretty well between God and the
Puritans. Then a new generation grew bold,
and tempted Providence.

Men began to smoke in public. Young people
organized husking bees, and bonfires. There
were "journey ings, and unsuitable discourse
on the Sabbath/'

The elders devised laws to insure a return of
piety. Connecticut passed resolutions against
"covetousness, extravagence, and drinking."
But still the people sinned until Jonathan Ed
wards was given strength to save them.

Mr. Edwards was a revival preacher a hell

MADMEN AND LOVERS 153

and brimstone preacher. He could preach for
hours. His passion and ruthless sincerity made
people weep and groan, as he compelled them
to face their eternal doom. Women screamed
and fainted when he set forth the evils of mirth-
making, company-keeping, and bundling.

His first converts were the "greatest company-
keeper in town" and "a young woman addicted
to night-walking" -which did not mean at all
what we might mean by the same expression.

Then there was Phoebe Bartlett, age four,
who "feared hell and shut herself up in a
closet, until she had received evidences of salva
tion/' . . And after Phoebe, were many hard
ened sinners so many that the meeting-house
could not hold them. So they built one twice
as big.

Religion had struck like lightning, and the
hearts of the people were filled with fear. Hell
yawned for young and old and especially for
babies.

"God is very angry," said Mr. Edwards, "with
the sins of little children/'

Small boys, he declared, were vipers and
since he had a houseful of his own, perhaps he
knew.

Schools closed, so that little ones would have
more time to repent. Merchants locked their
stores, to pray. And it was said that the shrieks

154 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

of the terrified could be heard for a mile. . .
If only Cotton Mather had lived to hear! Cot
ton Mather, by the way, was the grandson of
Mrs. John Cotton, whose husband persecuted
Ann Hutchinson, and called a miscarriage a
monster. When John died, his widow married
Richard Mather, who had a little boy named
Increase. And when Increase grew up, he mar
ried his step-sisterMrs. Cotton's daughter,
Mary and became president of Harvard and the
father of Cotton Mather.

Men of the Mather family were always
ministers, and girls became the wives of min
isters, so that the Mather blood and influence
spread throughout New England, until Mather
traits of character were felt in most of the
cities and remote parishes of the six Yankee
States. For good or evil, we owe much of our
New England character to the intolerance and
bigotry the God-fearing faith and example
of that terrible tribe of incorruptible, malevo
lent Mathers.

Jonathan Edwards was spiritual kin to this
pious brood, and as extraordinarily virtuous as
any of them.

The Great Awakening was in full swing when
some unrepentant small boys found a book

MADMEN AND LOVERS 155

called The Midiuife Rightly Instructed. When
their mothers went to prayer meeting, the un-
regenerate vipers gathered to read it. Before
long a large circle had passed the book around.
And someone it may have been one of the
young Edwards told Jonathan, who immedi
ately told the congregation and took a vote
authorizing investigation.

A few Sundays later Mr. Edwards read from
the pulpit the names of the young people who
were involved and among them were the chil
dren of the elite. Oh tactless Mr. Edwards!

There was a terrific row, with inquiries last
ing three months. But finally the confessions
of the ring leaders were read aloud in Meeting,
and the affair officially closed.

Time passed, the Bad Book boys grew
up. . . And six years after the "Midwife Scan
dal/' the Reverend Jonathan Edwards was dis
missed from Northampton, and the church he
had made the most famous in the world.

Forsaking prestige, he went to an Indian mis
sion in Stockbridge. There, with an unerring
instinct for discovering the prevalent fun, he
preached mostly about rum the "darling vice"
of the Red Men.

"If you don't do your duty," he told the In
dian, "you will have a hotter place in hell than
the heathen who never heard of Jesus Christ/'

156 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Stockbridge was less demanding than Nor
thampton, and between sermons, Mr. Edwards
wrote his dreary magnum opus. After it was
published, he was called to Princeton, to be
President of the College. There he was inocu
lated for the smallpox, and died in a week.

Now his theology is dead and his books un
read. But his intellectual and moral force has
held out through eight generations. . . Though
Jonathan may have been a prig, he was a grand
ancestor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, lecturing at Har
vard, counseled his students, "To be a gentle
man, see that your grandfather was one."

The Edwards prove the precept, but now
comes Henry Tufts, whose grandfather was a
Harvard man and a Boston minister but Henry
was a thief!

By his own confession, Henry Tufts was "ac
counted the greatest knave and most arrogant
horse-thief in all the country/' And to prove
it, Henry wrote a book. He did not write it
himself, but employed a ghost and split the
profits. Henry was a good talker, but his only

MADMEN AND LOVERS 157

books were woman's looks, and folly's all they'd
taught him.

Henry could never resist a woman (or a
horse) . He cultivated them all over New Eng
land, and loved and left them everywhere.
And when he was old, and sated and sick of sin,
he hired him a ghost and settled down to
write his memoirs (which are now worth $45 a
copy) .

Henry Tufts was born in Newmarket, New
Hampshire, in 1748, and fell early into sin.
First he robbed the neighbors. Then he stole
his father's horse. He done a girl named Sally
wrong. And then he robbed a store. They put
him in jail, and he burned it down. When he
was caught, he was exposed for sale. But no
sane man would buy such a boy (and the girls
hadn't any money) .

When Henry was twenty-two, he married
Lydia Bickford. His vices, he tells us, "then
lay listless and dormant, as though they had
lost primeval energy, and were fast progressing
toward oblivion, while each succeeding day
wore a more serene aspect, and glided away in
tranquility and peace."

There were six blissful months. Then the

"dormant vices" raised their ugly heads and

Henry glided away. Occasionally he returned

(Lydia had nine children by him) . But the rest

i 5 8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

of his life was spent mostly with other women,
or in jail.

"I have often/' he says, "heard it observed of
a sailor that he has a wife in every port, and
supposed myself entitled to a like privilege,
though belonging to a different element."

It was spring when Henry left Lydia:

"Now had the vertical rays of propitious
Phoebus subdued the rigors of the inclement year,
and transformed the surly, hiemal blasts into
pleasing zephyrus gales, renewing the beauties of
vernal bloom, and restoring to the animate world
the festive joys of a mild atmosphere. . ."
Toodle-de-oodle-de-oo! and a hi-nonny-nonny for
Henry's May-time amours.

The first was a widow in Exeter named Lucy.
For three weeks, our hero boasts, he was rarely
absent, night or day, from her arms:

"In soft battles I could pass the night,
And rise next morning, vig'rous for the fight,
Fresh as the day, and active as the night/'

He had serious thoughts of marrying Lucy,
but to enter "Hymen's soft domains within so
short a distance of Lydia would be a procedure
too perilous for experiment."

So he robbed a store with a pal named Smith,
and went to jail instead. He was put in a cold,
dark dungeon to await trial, with his feet

MADMEN AND LOVERS 159

shackled together and chained to a staple in
the floor. After ninety days, he and Smith were
found guilty, and given twenty-five lashes each,
sentenced to imprisonment for thirty-one days
longer, and ordered to pay damages with costs
in default of which they were to be sold from
the pillory.

In a few days Henry's friends supplied him
with tools, and he succeeded in drilling a hole
for his escape. He told Smith, who was in a
nearby cell, that he was going to leave. And
Smith begged to learn how.

"By the help of the Devil/' said Henry, "who
is always at my beck and call."

Smith had heard it reported that Henry was
a Wizard, and implored his help.

"If you will follow my directions/' said
Henry, "you may leave when I do."

Smith promised, and Henry told him he must
take off all his clothes, and throw them out the
window. Then he should wait ten minutes, and
say:

"Come in old man, with the black ram,
And carry me out as fast as you can."

When Henry gained his freedom, he picked
up Smith's clothes, which he expected to need
and hurried away, leaving poor Smith to
mumble his rhyme.

160 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

From Exeter, Henry went to Canada, and
lived with the Indians for three years, learning
about herbs, and making love to Polly Susap,
a niece of King Tumkin Hagen. Polly wanted
to be married. But infidelity, among the In
dians, cost a man the tip of his nose and Henry
valued his nose.

He left the tribe to enlist, and in the Army
won fame as a wrestler. (Our Henry was six
feet-two, and strong as an ox.) He deserted be
cause the food was poor, and wretchedly scarce.
And spent his last cent for a new black suit,
a Scotch plaid gown, and a cocked-up beaver
hat, that he might pose as a wandering preacher.
Then he stole a horse, and rode to Little Falls
in Maine.

Attending a revival, he addressed the as
sembly, who declared him to be a heaven-born
saint. . . Whereupon a young woman, by name
Peggy Cotton, exclaimed:

"He a saint? He is the Devil incarnate! My
opinion is derived from his conduct, as it is
said a tree may be known from its fruit. I took
notice, on his entrance into the meeting, that
he first surveyed my face then my ankles.
Then my whole person. And in such a carnal
way and manner, that I perceived he has Satan
in his heart."

MADMEN AND LOVERS 161

This accusation (which Henry would be the
last to deny) "disordered his muscles not a
little." But the minister and the people defend
ing him, Peggy prudently took her departure.

For some time, Henry pursued his ministerial
ways. Then he became a strolling physician,
curing with Indian herbs. Then a sooth-sayer
of such sagacity that he was known as the Salem
Wizard. But before long, he was stealing
horses again painting the white ones dappled,
and the black ones gray.

In Hampton Falls, he wheedled away a large
dog, and sold him near Newbury for ten shill
ings. He scarcely had crossed the ferry, when
the dog swam after him. Henry sold him for a
second time in Newburyport for six shillings.
Then taking the road to Bradford, he went on
two miles, when the dog again overtook him.
At Bradford he parted with him once more for
five shillings. With the proceeds he bought a
jug of rum. And before long he found another
Charmer:

"With the joys of great Bacchus I quicken'd each

sense,
Till my guineas and pounds were transmuted to

pence;

In the arms of my mistress, entranced ev'ry night,
I pass'd the soft moments in am'rous delight/'

i6a A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

One day Henry called at the house of a
gentleman who owned a valuable horse, and
knew Henry by repute.

"This horse," said the gentleman, "I keep
closely locked up, and guarded by sentries every
night; so, if you can make out to steal him, you
shall be extremely welcome, and never be called
to account."

That was enough for Henry. Feeling some
what nettled, as a gentleman of his profession
would, at being bantered, he added, he says, a
suitable quantity of opium to a quart of rum,
and that night approached the stable. Hailed
by the sentries, Henry said that he was look
ing for a thief named Henry Tufts. They said
that they had frequently heard of Tufts where
upon their "dialogue growing Familiar/' Henry
offered them a drink -and another and an
other. Until they were "stretched on the
ground, encircled in the arms of Morpheus/'
Searching their pockets, Henry found the key
to the stable, and soon had "the pleasure of find
ing himself on a fine horse/'

Next Henry purchased an elegant suit, a
laced hat, and embroidered waistcoat "rings
of gold, to adorn my dainty fingers, and a costly
watch to decorate my fob/' In this splendid
garb, he rode to Hudson, N. Y., where he took

MADMEN AND LOVERS 163

shelter in a house where there were two young
ladiesone very beautiful, the other, ugly and
uncouth.

Henry's recital of the night's adventure
sounds like a piece from Esquire. He scraped
some acquaintance with both; but felt the
most irresistible inclination to make the more
beautiful his companion for the night. Unable
to conquer his insatiable desire . . . but the
story is Henry's, and Henry should tell it:

I mustered courage, with silent steps, to invade
the precincts of the handsomest damsel; and had
the supreme felicity, to find her so far from ob-
stinancy, that at the first summons, she surrendered
the castle, and admitted a friendly parley until
morning. Even yet, O, memory, thou presentest
to view this feast of love, as of yesternight! How
delighted, how transported was I, with the elegant
person of my fine companion 1

The hours passed away in transports of ecstacy
unutterable; nor was the potent charm dissolved
'til Phoebus shot his officious beams through the
casement, and imparted to my, until now intoxi
cated senses, a view of surrounding objects.

Paint now in imagination my surprise, my con
fusion, when I saw myself encircled in the arms of
the ill-favored, the rejected damsel, in close con
tact with the same bundle of deformity I had con
templated with such cold indifference, such killing
disgust, the preceding evening.

164 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The scene was truly farcical; I was planet struck.
What surprise she noted in my aspect, I pretend
not to say; but she demanded with a sarcastic
sneer, whether I had been deceived in my partner.
I answered that I had been confoundedly so.
"See" cried she, "the force of imagination!"
Her logic was irrefragable. But, as I wished,
for cogent reasons, to wave further discussion, I
quitted the house abruptly. And upon revolving
in my mind, as I paced the street, the ludicrous
adventures of the night, came to the following
resolution: Never to differ with a wife, much less
a mistress, upon so light and trivial a consideration
as the want of external beauty.

Henry had an adventure with cannibals
in Poughkeepsie. . . He passed counterfeit
money. . . And he practiced black magic.

Occasionally he went home to see Lydia and
the family. In the meantime, besides many
mistresses, he accumulated another wife. Girls
cried when Henry left, and some had Henry's
children to remember him by. But Nabby
cried the hardest and was the one he loved most,
so he married her too. She bore him four
children, and she clung like a burr.

When Henry was not making love, or steal
ing, he was usually being whipped, or loaded
with chains in a dungeon. . . And, for stealing

MADMEN AND LOVERS 165

spoons he never stole, he went to Salem jail,
and was sentenced to be hanged.

In the spring of the year 1793 (he writes) I
bought of a John Stewart one silver tablespoon
and five teaspoons of the same metal (would to
God I had never set eyes on them, or him!)
Stewart being bare of clothing, I supplied him
with a fustian coat and pair of stockings by way
of payment, and thought no more of the matter.

Someone saw the spoons in Henry's house,
and told Daniel Jacobs, who was the rightful
owner. Jacobs swore out a warrant Stewart
disappeared and Henry was arrested. He was
taken first to Salem jail, where he nearly suc
ceeded in cutting a hole through a wall. Then
he was moved to Ipswich, which was the strong
est jail in New England. And there he was
strongly handcuffed, and chained to the floor.
A month later, he was brought to trial, charged
with burglary a capital offense, and punishable
with death. Samuel Sewall, who was appointed
by the court to defend him, was a grandson of
old Judge Sewall who tried the Witches. Sewall
was an able attorney, but the jury was greatly
prejudiced, and:

"On their oath they presented that Henry
Tufts, Not having the fear of God before his eyes,
but moved and seduced by the instigation of the

166 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Devil, feloniously and buglariously did break and
enter in the night the dwelling house of Daniel
Jacobs, and stole six silver spoons of the value of
18 shillings . . . also i beer glass, i beaver hat,
an iron spoon, and a walking stick.

The Judge, pronouncing sentence, declared
that Henry should be taken to the jail from
whence he came, and from thence to the place
of execution . . . "there to be hanged by the
neck until dead/'

He was loaded again with chains, and carried
to Ipswichto wait six weeks to be hanged.

While waiting, he was visited one day by a
certain physician "sunshine sat upon his per
son, honey distilled from his lips" and he of
fered Henry two guineas for his skeleton!

The next day, a newspaper man from New-
buryport offered seventy dollars, for what Henry
calls "a license to publish a narrative of my
adventures." Meantime, Nabby had been to
see the Governor. The "young gentlemen of
Harvard" had sent His Excellency a petition
and 'likewise the ladies of Ipswich" all beg
ging clemency for Henry.

Weeks passed "and now appeared the dread
ful morn of August the 141*1." At eight, Henry
saw a grave digger passing with pick and shovel,
to dig his grave beneath the gallows. An hour

MADMEN AND LOVERS 167

later, a school mistress looked through the bars,
and exclaimed, in a tremor, that she had just
beheld an awful sight a coffin made, and a
grave dug, for a living man! By noon, there was
a multitude collected (three thousand people,
the papers said) . And Henry could hear them
asking:

"Where is the man who is going to be
hanged?". . . "At what time will he be
hanged?" (The time was set for the hours
between two and four.)

At three, the warden told Henry he had re
ceived no order for his removal from cell to
gallows. At four, there was still no word; and
then the warden said the execution was respited.
But for how long he could not avouch.

Henry says he sent to the Governor, "to
know the result of his destiny, but could receive
no intelligence in the least, and lingered in
uncertainty until the middle of September."
Then he was sent to the Castle an island
prison in Boston Harbor.

Prisoners lived on black bread and bullocks'
heads. Henry broke his arms, and froze his feet.
But faithful Nabby went to see him, and
brought him all that she could buy with her
small earnings. And one day Henry wrapped
his head in sea-weedand swam away! But
a guard from the watch tower saw the grass

168 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

floating against the current. And men put out
in a boat, and brought him back.

Five years later, the Commonwealth of Massa
chusetts ceded Castle Island to the Government,
and the prisoners were transferred to other
prisons. Henry, by great good fortune, was sent
to Salem. And Salem was a jail he could always
get out of. He arrived in the afternoon.

* 'Scarce had twilight discolored the face of
things," ere he fell to work. In half an hour,
he had "opened a sufficient breach clambered
into the entry and gained the open street/'

Nabby and her four children were living in
Rockingham, Vermont Lydia and her nine in
Limington, Maine.

"I loved Nabby unquestionably beyond all
women on earth," says Henry.

But Henry was fifty-two, and very tired. His
sons were prosperous farmers his daughters
married.

"I began to think," he admits, "that it was
high time to have sown my wild oats, and at
the same time set about a very necessary piece
of business to wit: reformation."

So Henry returned to Lydia. . . "Of that
venerable darne, my spouse, it could only be
said, she was once young."

But Lydia was a good cook, and presently
Henry was feeling better. With the help of his

MADMEN AND LOVERS 169

sons, he bought a small farm, and practiced
medicine, until the old wanderlust got him
again, and he "mounted his stout horse, and
set off on a medical excursion to Nova Scotia/'
Then he visited the White Mountains.

He seduced a Shaker. And enraptured a
widow. And, at fifty-five, he eloped with a
"young lady of Limington"! She was eighteen,
and an invalid. He cured her with his Indian
herbs, and she suggested that they run away.
"This declaration demonstrated so great a de
gree of ardor/' that it irresistibly excited poor
old Henry (who was a grandfather now) , and
caused him to forsake his former resolutions.

They departed on horseback, and rode a
thousand miles. Then Henry learned that the
light that lies in woman's eyes lies and lies
and lies. Twice on their honeymoon, his "spar
row" deceived him once with a "well looking
traveler on horseback" once with an "Irish
pedagogue/' And now, for certain, Henry was
sick with 1'amour, and wanted his sparrow no
more. It was a great relief when her father
caught up with them in Hanover, and dragged
her away.

Henry returned again to Limington.

One would have supposed (he mournfully com
ments) that it was high time for my old wife to
exhibit a small portion of indifference for the

170 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

hymeneal banquet, and to the indulgence of
others in its delicacies. Far otherwise; her juvenile
feelings were not so forgotten, but she could view
my capers, and those of my female adventurer, in
the same odious point of vision, as though Madam
herself had been yet on the threshold of twenty.
Be this as it might, the multiplicity of curtain
lectures, that were constantly chiming in my
stunned ears, I had scarce thought pardonable in
a newly wedded wanton of the age just mentioned.

The Autobiography ends with an epigram
a tribute to Lydia with love from Henry:

Women, like men, will fade away,

Their eyes grow dim, their teeth decay,

But while they breathe the vital gale,

'Tis strange their tongues should never fail.

And now we come to Lord Timothy Dexter
who was not a Lord at all, but a mad tanner
and far too shrewd to hide his talents in a
vat.

A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain
Truths In A Homespun Dress is the title of
Lord Timothy's Autobiography, and its pho
netic spelling is as mad as its subject.

New England is famous for Queer Sticks
and Lord Timothy was the queerest of the

MADMEN AND LOVERS 171

queer. He made money in idiotic ways, and
became exceedingly rich. He thanked God that
he was "neither colidge larnt nor divel larnt."
And he believed in dreams and sooth-sayers.
He drank so much, it was often said that he
was "drunk as a lord." Taking the title seri
ously, Timothy proclaimed himself a noble
man "First in the East, First in the West, and
the greatest philosopher in the known World/'
He hired a fish peddler to be his poet laureate.
And wrote a book without a punctuation mark.

I was born when grat powers Rouled I was
borne in 1774 Janeuarey 22 on this day in the
morning A grat snow storme - mars came fored
Joupeter stud by holding the Candel I wuz to
be one grat man. . .

and a grat man he was, in a queer, crazy way.
# # # # # * #

Timothy Dexter was born in Maiden, where
he learned the tanner's trade. When his ap
prenticeship was ended, he walked to Newbury-
port, with a bundel under his arm. In the
bundel was every thing that Timothy owned,
and leather gluvs and briches for the gentry of
Newburyport.

Timothy opened a store, and hung out a sign:

GENTS BRICHES ALLSO ARTIKLES SOU-:
TABLE FOR WIMMINS WARE

172 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The store was uncommonly successful, for
Newburyport was a thriving town, and the gents
and wimmin liked Timothy's gluvs and briches,
and paid him well.

With his profits, he bought all the paper
money he could get his hands on. People said
he was mad, for the paper was practically
worthless.

"I had a dream," Timothy said, "and a black
man told me what to do."

Folks tapped their heads and smiled. And
then suddenly-the new Government was
firmly established, and began to make its money
good. And Timothy was worth a fortune!

He bought the finest house in town, and
filled the cellar with wines and rum, and
stocked the pantries with imported provisions.
When ships came in, he went to the wharves
and bought whole cargoes of treasures, right
out of the holds. He had fine furniture, and
silver, and china. But Society would not sit
at his lavish board. Because Timothy didn't
have any Lifebuoy or Listerine. He was a
social pariah, because he smelled like a tan
ning yard and what could the poor man
do?

He offered to build a public market, if it
should be named for him and to repair High
Street. But both proposals were rejected with

MADMEN AND LOVERS 173

the prim thanks of a nervous aristocracy. And
then Timothy gave up.

His best friend was Jonathan Plumrner, a
fish peddler-poet. And Jonathan could not tell
Lord Dexter what the matter was, because
Jonathan smelled worse than the Lord.

Timothy dressed the rhymster in a velvet
robe, with silver stars and made the peddler a
poet laureate, fit to sing his patron's virtues
and embalm his fame.

Jonathan's poems were published as paid ads
in the newspapers, and this is what they said:

Lord Dexter is a man of fame,

Most celebrated is his name,

More precious far than gold that's pure;

Lord Dexter, shine forever more!

His house is white and trimmed with green,
For many miles it may be seen;
It shines as bright as any star;
The fame of it has spread afar.

Lord Dexter, like King Solomon,
Hath gold and silver by the ton;
And bells to churches he hath given,
To worship the great King of Heaven.

The house still "white and trimmed with
green" looks almost as it used to. But the
statues Timothy loved are gone and no one

174 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

knows where. Henry Ford would give practi
cally his right eye for one.

Shortly after Timothy's death, a gale blew
several of the statues down, and the place grew
dilapidated. It became a factory boarding
house for a while. But now it is a fine home
again. And Timothy's gilded eagle spreads his
wings up on the roof.

There was a ship's wood-carver in Newbury-
port whom Timothy employed to make forty
gigantic statues of the most famous men of the
period. The statues were mounted on pillars,
and placed about the mansion. They were
painted with blue coats and buff breeches. And
some of them wore scarlet.

George Washington was in the center, with
a cocked hat and a sword. On his right was
John Adams, bare-headed for Lord Dexter
said that no one should stand covered in the
presence of the General. There was Thomas
Jefferson, with a scroll in his hand inscribed
Constitution; and Louis XVI, with a crown on
his head; King George, and Lord Nelson, and
the Indian Chief, Corn Planter. There was
a lady called Maternal Affection, several out
size lions, and a Traveling Preacher. And there
were two statues of Dexter himself.

Timothy had a pumpkin-colored coach,
drawn by cream-colored horses. Every after
noon he went driving, with a little hairless dog

MADMEN AND LOVERS 175

sitting by his side. And the small boys cried:
"Here comes my Lord! . . . Clear the way
for my Lord's carriage!"

Timothy was imprisoned for a few days be
cause he fired his pistol at a countryman who
laughed at his statues. And he drove to the jail
in Ipswich, in his pumpkin coach. (I wonder
if Henry Tufts was there then.)

Everything Timothy Dexter touched turned
to gold, and some of his ventures were the mad
dest things you ever heard. Once he sent mit
tens to the "West Injes"! And they were sold,
at a nice profit, to a ship clearing for the Baltic.
He literally shipped coals to Newcastletwo
cargoes of coal to that coal-mining town! And
when the ships arrived, there was a strike at the
minesand the coal was worth a fortune. He
bought Bibles, and sent them to the Indies,
where the negroes could not read a word.

"I dreamed/' he said, "that the Good Book
was run down in this country as low as half
price. I had the ready cash by wholesale. I
bought twenty-one thousand. I put them in
twenty-one vessels, and sent as a text that all
must have one Bible in each family, or they
would go to hell.". . And every colored
family bought one!

Then he took a flyer in warming-pans. Three

176 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

nights running he had dreamed that warming-
pans would do well in the West Injes . . . and
the present-day aftermath of Lord Dexter 's
dreaming was this:

On the islands there are little stores called
Self Helps, where the natives bring anything
they wish to sell-mango chutneys and coco
nut candies, trash and trinkets. A Self Help
is a sort of pawn shop, with a Woman's Ex
change out front, and Yankee notions in the
show-case. Sometimes there are treasures-
hurricane lamps, or lustre tea cupsand old
silver. And once I saw warming-pans, shining
in the tropic sun. . . Yellow brass, on a white
wall and bright as northern sunflowers.

"Folks in dis islan' doan use dem no moah,"
the store keeper said.

"Warming pans in the Indies?" I exclaimed.
"I should think not!"

"What youah mean warmin' pahns, Mis
tress? Dems skimmers, Lady, foah skim de
mlasses."

I did not know then about Lord Timothy
Dexter. And how he sent forty-two thousand
warming pans to the Indies and sold them like
hot tamales. . . Dem ol' skimmers, Sah, were
nearly a hundred and fifty years old! But Lord
Timothy who sent them there had been paid
for them, every one, long before he died.

MADMEN AND LOVERS 177

Earlier in life, Timothy had acquired four
children and their widowed mother. The
widow stood a good deal of nonsense from
Timothy but Chief Corn Planter in the front
yard was too much. There was a terrible row
and Timothy wrote:

My old hed has wore out 3 boddeys it wud take
a jourey of Doctors one our to find and count the
scars on my hed.

From this time on, he called her the Ghost.
The haddock poet wrote her epitaph. And the
two of them treated her as though she had been
dead a long time.

When the Pickle was published, Newbury-
port chuckled over Timothy's marital woes.
He bargained then with the poor old Ghost for
his freedom, and gave her two thousand dollars
to go away. When she had gone, he advertised
for another wife. But after a long wait there
being no applicant he sent for the Ghost. And
hired her back again!

In the first edition of the Pickle there was no
punctuation. But in the second, there are two
solid pages of periods, commas, exclamation
points, and question marks with this note to
the printer:

178 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Mister printer the Nowing ones complane of
my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A
Nuf here and they may peper and salt it as they
plese.

When age and the gout caught up with Lord
Dexter, he decided it was time for a funeral.
He ordered a tomb built in the garden, and
chose a green and white coffin. He bought
scarves, gloves, and rings for the mourners
and ordered a funeral feast, with wines.
Jonathan Plummer wrote an Ode, and Timothy
bought a church bell. Then he invited every
one in town and watched the proceedings
from the Captain's Walk, on top of his house.
Everything went off beautifully. But the
Ghost did not cry as Timothy thought she
should; and this angered him so that he beat
her.

A little later, Timothy had a real funeral
(and I bet the Ghost didn't cry that time either) .
Then Timothy lay in his green and white coffin.
And Jonathan wrote another Ode. The town
father would not permit burial in the garden.
So the green and white coffin was carried to the
public Burying Ground, and buried next the
Frog Pond. And the frogs croak a requiem
every summer night.

VIII
LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY

T^VEBORAH SAMPSON was a soldier. . .
"""^ And Jemima Wilkinson died twice.

Maria Monk was a prostitute who swore she
was a nun. . . And Mrs. Jack Gardner was a
lady who did what she chose, and didn't care
what the neighbors had to say.

C'est mon plaisir was Mrs. Gardner's motto
and it might have been Deborah's and Jemi
ma's too. For they were girls who got what they
wanted, and survived their reputations. . . But
Maria was only a tramp. And her True Con
fessions were a lie. Maria Monk's Awful Dis
closures started a religious war in New England.
And when the war was over, Maria picked the
pocket of a wretched paramour, and went to
jail, and died.

Maria was a fancy lady. And Jemima was a
preacher. Mrs. Gardner was a great lady. And
Deborah was a Mayflower Descendant and an
aunt of the D.A.R.

179

i8o A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Deborah Sampson fought and bled and prac
tically died for her country. And she was the
first woman in America to go on a lecture tour:

TICKETS 25^
Children Half Price

She was our first and last enlisted woman soldier.
She served in the Revolutionary Army for three
years, was wounded twice and "never found in
liquor once."

Neither did she wrestle, nor suffer anyone to
twine his arms about her shoulders, but kept com
pany with only the most temperate and upright
soldiers.

Deborah was born to the purple, in a big,
ancestral way. Her mother was a descendant
of Governor William Bradford, and her father's
people came over on the Mayflower along with
the Governor. A great uncle married a grand
daughter of Myles Standish and Deborah's
grandmama was a Puritan from Boston. But
her paternal grandpa married a French girl
and her daddy was a sailor.

"What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father
was a friar?" *

* Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Deborah was a Soldier. . , Jemima died twice. . .
Maria was a Tramp. . . Mrs. Jack, a Glamour Girl

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

When Deborah was ten, she was bound out
to Deacon Thomas in Middleborough, Mass.,
for eight years. And there she learned to spin
and weave and cook though she preferred to
make milking-s tools and sleds, and do a man's
work on the farm.

She kept a diary, with her good deeds written
on the even pages and her sins on the odd.
And she coaxed the Deacon's children to tell
her what they learned in school, because she
was not allowed to go schooling ruined serv
ants, the Deacon said.

There was a squaw who lived in a cellar-hole
next the Deacon's house. And one day the
squaw had four babies. The Deacon, in whose
cellar-hole the remarkable event had taken
place, named the quadruplets Remarkable,
Wonderful, Strange and True.

When Wonderful was old enough, he went
to work for the Deacon, and helped Deborah
with the dishes. But Deborah disliked Indians,
as you shall see.

She also disliked Domesticity, Puritans, and
the Deacon. And the odd pages of her diary
she filled with her poor little sins. One night
she borrowed the hired man's pants, and went
to an Ordinary. And the Deacon told the
minister.

For this 'loose and unChristian-like be-

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 183

havior," Deborah was excommunicated from
the Baptist Church. . . And then she ran
away, and joined the Army.

After all's said and after all's done,

What should she be but a soldier and a nun?

She enlisted under the name of Robert Surt-
leff. But because of her fair skin, the company
called her "a blooming boy " and the Captain
called her Molly. She wrote her mother that
she had found "agreeable work in a large but
well-regulated family" and with half a truth,
salved her Puritan conscience.

She learned the Manual of Arms, and 'lost
her appetite/' At East Chester, she was shot
in the hip, and carried to a dressing station.
There she convinced a doctor that the wound
was not serious and crawled ofi until it was
healed. (When she was an old woman, and
pensioned for disability, the bullet was still
in her hip.)

She fought at Ticonderoga. And then her
company' went west, to get the Indians on the
war path. They came upon a settlement that
was being attacked by Red Skins.

"The mother lay dead and mangled. Two
children hung by their heels from a tree. . ."
The attackers ran. And the soldiers after them.
Deborah chased a youth swifter than the rest.

184 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Catching him, she was about to plunge her
bayonet. . . Instead she thrust her hand "into
his bosom and made a wide rent in his nether-
garment. . ." And his body was white! . . .
"though his face was red and his heart was
black. . ." They sent him to Headquarters,
and executed the rest.

In the spring there were general orders for
every soldier to bathe. Deborah's regiment
paraded to the river. The soldiers stripped.
And Deborah toyed with a shoe lace. Suddenly
she heard a water-fall. Years later, her home
town paper told the story:

While the Hudson swelled with the multitude
of masculine bodies, a beautiful rivulet answered
every purpose of bathing for a more delicate form.
Nor were there any old letcherous, sanctified
Elders to peep through the rustling leaves, and be
flamed with her charms.

Deborah, by the way, was five feet, seven. And
she wore an improvised brassiere that ruined
her figure. Her waist, we are told, was large
and her legs handsome.

Two girls fell in love with her. And one sent
Deborah "6 shirts, a watch, and 25 Spanish
dollars" and wrote a number of love letters
that appeared later in Deborah's Autobiography.
When Deborah thought the affair had gone

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 185

far enough, she wrote the lovesick girl a letter,
and signed it Your Own Sex, which cleaned
the romance up.

Deborah became orderly to General Patter
son. While she was with him in Philadelphia,
she got malignant fever, and was sent, protest
ing, to a hospital. There she heard two men
nurses, who thought she was unconscious, fight
ing over who should have her clothes when she
was dead.

When the doctor came, he put his hand on
her heart and found the brassiere. She per
suaded him to keep her secret. And until she
had recovered, he was as good as his word.
Then he told General Patterson, who refused
to believe it, and finally went to the hospital
to see.

Deborah cried unsoldierly tears and admitted
everything, sobbing like a lily-livered boy.

"With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?"

They gave her an honorable discharge, and
she went to Stoughton, Mass., where she got
work as a farm hand. But in the Spring, Deb
orah got feeling skittish, and moved to Sharon.
And there she blossomed out in girlish petti
coats. A little later she married Benjamin
Gannett, a farmer. The neighbors talked as

i86 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

neighbors will. And in the summer of 1785,
an eighteenth century Walter Winchell dipped
his quill, and wrote:

It is hearfay that Mrs. Gannett refufes her hus
band the rites of the marriage bed. She muft then
condfcent to fmile upon him in the filent alcove,
or grafs plat; as fhe has a child that has fcarcely
left its cradle.

That year Deborah received an invalid bonus
of one hundred pounds.

Seventeen years later, she took up lecturing.
Her first engagement was at the Boston Theatre.
And her diary says that she had to pay to have
the place swept, the seats brushed, and the
candle-sticks cleaned. Besides this, she had to
buy candles, pay the janitor, and have her hair
done twice. Tickets cost twenty-five cents
apiece- children half price. And the hall was
filled. But Deborah had to pay for printing,
a manager to introduce her politely, and front
page ads in the newspapers. When she balanced
accounts she was seven dollars to the good.
These she sent to Sharon, where Benjamin was
holding the fort with their three children.

During her lecture tour, Deborah visited her
Captain in Worcester, and stayed three weeks
with him and his family. She also visited Gen
eral Patterson in Lisle, N. Y., and stayed a
month.

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 187

General Patterson helped prepare a petition
for her pension. And in 1805, she received
four dollars a month as an invalided soldier. . .
Poor Deborah! In 1818 the amount was
doubled, and until her death, it was eight
dollars. . . Then Benjamin got busy. He had
paid six hundred dollars, he said, to have the
bullet extracted from Deborah's hip. And he
petitioned Congress for reimbursement. And
Congress gave him eighty dollars a month as
long as he lived!

Deborah Sampson was in the hospital with
malignant fever the day Jemima Wilkinson
stepped out of her coffin, and put the war news
in the shade.

Jemima died and went to heaven. She had
been ill for some time, and in a trance. And
one night she stopped breathing, and her heart
stopped beating.

The next day she was carried to the church,
and her friends assembled for the funeral
service. . . Suddenly there was a pounding on
the inside lid of the coffin, and a commotion
within. Then the lid went off and up sat
Jemima!

Stepping vigorously out, she straightened
her shroud and, standing by her coffin, began

i88 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

to preach! And the words that fell from her
lips were honeyed and gold.

The old Jemima Wilkinson, she said, was
dead and gone to heaven. But God had re
animated her, and sent her back. . . Her
friends could believe neither their ears nor
their eyes, for she preached so sweetly and
looked so beautiful.

Jemima Wilkinson was born in Cumberland,
R. I., in 1759, of good Quaker stock; and moved
with her family to Connecticut, where she was
converted by a traveling evangelist. She fell
in love with a British major, and married him
when she was eighteen. A little later he left to
fight the Yankees. And that was the last his
bride ever saw of him.

Convinced that she had been deserted and
betrayed, Jemima got neurotic, and went to
bed. And there she had fits and visions. And
carried on like a mad girl, to the day she first
died.

It was said that Jemima had scarce read the
Bible, and knew no psalms. But after she was
born again, she could recite the Holy Book from
cover to cover, and sing psalms from dawn to
dark. She said she could tell the hearts' secrets,
and all the future. And the country people said

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 189

that she could heal, besides. They called her
Friend, in the Quaker fashion. But Jemima,
with ideas in the back of her head, asked them
to call her The Universal Friend. With such
a name, her fame began to spread. And the
people who came to hear her preach banded
together, and called themselves Jemimaites.

Jemima went to Providence to preach, and
the churches closed, so that everyone might
hear her. She went to Newport, and preached
to the British officers. And to New Bedford, to
preach to whalers and sailors. And her converts
brought gold and precious things, and gave
them to her, everywhere.

It is said that she was very beautiful, and that
men fell in love with her, and followed her
around like puppy dogs.

To discourage their attentions or, perhaps,
because she fancied the role Jemima cut her
hair, and brushed it back with oil, so that it
folded her head like black and shining
wings. And she wore men's waistcoats over
white shirts, and black stocks, and handsome
cravats.

She called Love a Madness, and Marriage a
Failure, Nobody who accepted marriage vows
was of sound mind, she said.

And those who had not successfully survived a
double-bed at night and three meals together

igo A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

in the day-time, flocked to her standard, and
renounced matrimony.

Nearly everyone wants to marry, and almost
everyone succeeds. And everybody, I suppose,
wishes at one time or another that he hadn't.
Jemima, working on their discontents, broke
up a thousand homes, and when the women
saw their husbands wandering off into Elysian
fields with Jemima and Rachel Miller, they
were furious.

Rachel was a blonde, and very attractive. And
Jemima was dark, in the luscious manner.

Rachel said that Jemima was "the prophet
Daniel operating as a female. . ." And Jemima
said that Rachel was more comfort than a dozen
husbands.

It happened that many o the converts were
men of substance, who gave Jemima costly
gifts. No woman, unless she has her own irons
in the fire, can watch her husband lavishing
expensive presents on another woman, and this
was more than the deserted wives could stand.

Jemima had a sedan chair shaped like a
young, upturned moon, and gilded like the
moon, with golden curtains and cushions of
damask.

She loved jewels and barbaric things, and
wore them like a Pharaoh. Her mannish clothes
were of fine broadcloth and exquisite linen. . .

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 191

And the wives clicked their tongues, and bided
their time.

Jemima's disciples went to New York to
establish a place where they could lead their
holy lives. And after a while, Jemima and
Rachel followed.

They called the place Penn Yann, because
many of them were Pennsylvanians, and most
of the rest were Yankees- and Penn Yann it
still is.

Jemima was thirty-two when she went to
Penn Yann, and at the height of her beauty.
The disciples had built her a fine house, with
nine fireplaces, a boudoir with a full-length
mirror, and a dining room where she might eat
with Rachel. (For company, there was a ban
quet hall.)

At about this time, Judge Potter, a solid
citizen of Connecticut, and an early convert,
sued Jemima for blasphemy. She defended
herself successfully. And then the Judge sued
again this time for a financial accounting.
Jemima readily admitted that he had supplied
considerable financial backing but she had
made a free gift of everything, she said, to
Rachel Miller. And the Judge, completely re
covered from his bewitchment, could not collect
a cent.

Jemima had seven pretty ladies-in-waiting

192 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

who were spinsters. And the disgruntled wives,
led on by Mrs. Judge Potter, buzzed and buzzed
but they never could hurt the Universal
Friend.

At forty, Jemima is said to have looked thirty
and at fifty, like a woman of forty.

She was sixty-one when she died. And her
disciples buried her in a secret place, because
they thought she would rise again. But she
hasn't yet, and I guess she never will.

The Universal Friend and the Jemimaites
left Connecticut, because New England was
so bigoted. And they established their colony
in New York, because New Yorkers were broad-
minded.

New England was founded to afford religious
freedom, but it soon became a hot-bed of
fanaticism, and Boston, under Endicott, was
more savage than the England the Puritans
left. "Freedom to worship God" meant free
dom to worship the Governor's God. And
Puritan atrocities had a flavor of their own.
Those who did not conform were exterminated.
And those who protested were exiled.

Quakers were tied to the tails of carts, and
whipped from town to town. And after their
tongues had been bored with a hot iron and

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 193

their ears cut off, several were hanged on Bos
ton Common. Anne Hutchinson, you remem
ber, was exiled, because she dared to think for
herself. And so was Roger Williams, who be
friended the Indians and Thomas Morton
and a number of others.

Morton, a gay bachelor (all bachelors were
suspect with the Pilgrims) , set up a May Pole,
and invited the Indians to a May Dance, and
served them rum. Besides drinking too much
and dancing, Morton used the Book of Common
Prayer, which the Pilgrims abhorred. They ac
cused him of being an atheist, and said he had
fallen into great licentiousness. For these sins,
he was seized by Captain Myles Standish. His
May Pole was cut down, by Endicott's order
and his property confiscated. Then without
law, or other warrant Morton was shipped, a
prisoner, to London. Upon the expiration of
his sentence, he hastened back to New England,
where he was rearrested, and transported once
more to London.

With inexplicable perseverance, this licen
tious old atheist returned again. And his in
fatuation for New England was the death of
him. For they threw the poor man in a fireless
dungeon and there he died.

Endicott not only chopped down May Poles
he abolished Christmas (including mince

i 9 4 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

pies) ! And cut the red cross out of the Eng
lish flag, because it reminded him of the
Pope.

Thirteen years later, Massachusetts put up
the bars on Jesuits. The first time a priest
visited Boston, he got off with a warning. The
second offense carried death.

Other New England colonies fell in line.
Catholics were forbidden entrance. And only
Rhode Island held out for tolerance.

On Pope Day (November fifth) , effigies of
the Pope and the Devil were carried in rowdy
procession to Boston Common and burned,
while godly Puritans applauded.

During the Revolution, George Washington
forbade the Pope Day celebration, because he
needed all the soldiers he could get for the
Army including Catholics. . . And observance
of the day perished.

From 1620 until the turn of the nineteenth
century, the population of Massachusetts in
creased solely from its own people. Protestants
had founded New England, and for two hun
dred years they ruled it.

Then came Emigration and with famines
and wars, it came like a flood. Until in 1 850,
there were refugees in every city and town in
New England. Immigrants comprised one-
seventh of the population of Boston the Athens

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 195

of America. And two- thirds of them were
Roman Catholics.

Then Catholic-haters organized, and took
the name of Nativism. And out of Nativism
crept the political party called Know Nothings
which nominated Millard (Pope-baiter) Fill-
more for the Presidency. Lyman Beecher
preached in Park Street Church on The Devil
and the Pope of Rome. And a mob, aroused by
his exhortations, attacked the homes of Irish
Catholics in Boston, and stoned them for three
days.

" Runaway nuns" told lies. And a group of
drunken Irishmen beat a "black Protestant"
to death in Charlestown. The next night five
hundred Americans marched on the Irish sec
tion, and sacked and burned it. There was a
clash between a fire company and a Catholic
funeral and a riot in the streets of Boston.

A religious paper called The Protestant Vin
dicator published the Awful Disclosures of
Maria Monk, an alleged nun. And Maria was
dynamite. The Ursaline Convent in Charles-
town was burned. Ten nuns and fifty children
fled for their lives, and John Buzzell, leader of
the rioters, received so many gifts, he put an
ad in the paper, to thank his well-wishers!

The night after the firing of the Convent, a
thousand Bostonians waited, with clubs and

196 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

muskets, for the Irish to descend upon the city.
But the boys from Erin knew (for once) when
they were licked. And the Mother Superior and
her nuns went to Canada.

Then, with mass meetings at Faneuil Hall,
and resolutions everywhere, hostilities were in
terred. But the blackened ruins of the Convent
stood for fifty years a monument to Boston
bigotry New England's Auto da Fe.

Back of the riots were a number of witless
women and a parcel of Protestant clergymen.
After the burning of the Convent, The Pro
testant Vindicator published Further Dis
closures by Maria Monkand Elizabeth Harri
son, innocent tool of trouble-makers, died of a
broken heart.

Elizabeth was a music teacher at the Convent,
who had the vapours and the blues a convert,
with God and fifty pupils on her mind. One
day she climbed over the Convent wall (in
stead of leaving by the front door, as usual)
and had hysterics on the sidewalk. The Mother
Superior sent her home in a hack. And, after
she'd had a good cry and a cup of tea, Eliza
beth returned to the fold accompanied by her
brother and Bishop Fenwick.

This should have ended the matter. But the

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 197

Boston Journal published an editorial headed
Mysterious!, hinted that Miss Harrison was
being held against her will, and suggested an
investigation.

A committee of citizens subsequently called
at the Convent met Miss Harrison and de
clared that all was well. But before their re
port was published, there appeared a book called
Six Months in a Convent, by Rebecca Theresa
Reed. Convents, declared Miss Reed, were
"domiciles of inordinate wickedness and dun
geons of unmitigated despair/'

The Journal reviewed the book in headlines.
And Boston bought ten thousand copies. Then
The Protestant Vindicator serialized Maria
Monk's Awful Disclosures and its circulation
doubled over night.

The Boston Committee of Publication who
backed Miss Reed then prepared A Supplement
to Six Months in a Convent. And there came
to Boston two "runaway nuns" Frances Par
tridge and Rosamand Culbertson. The Journal
cheered like a Hearst tabloid, and interviewed
the fair adventuresses in 96 pt. Gothic.

Frances Partridge was a friend of Maria
Monk's a fancy lady from Philadelphia, with
a purple past. And Maria was a poor little
prostitute, a protege of the Reverend W. C.
(Pope-hater) Brownlee and W. K. Hoyt, who

198 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

peddled Sunday School pamphlets. Mr. Hoyt
claimed to be a minister, but he appears mostly
to have just peddled his pamphlets.

There was a preface to Awful Disclosures, in
which Miss Monk begged the sympathy o her
readers for the trials she endured, and implored
them not to regard her as a voluntary participa
tor in the "awful revels of priest and nun."
The Disclosures, she assured them, were not
fiction, but terrible facts! She thanked God, on
bended knee, for her escape "from the power of
the Superioress/' And then (with the con
siderable help of Messrs. Brownlee and Hoyt)
Maria presented her True Life Story.

It would distress the reader (she begins deli
cately) if I should repeat the dreams with which
I am terrified at night. Frequently I seem as if
shut up again in the Convent. Often I imagine
myself present at the repetition of the worst scenes
I shall hint at, or describe. In sad recollection, I
hear the shrieks of helpless females in the hands
of atrocious men.

Her parents, she said, were Scotch Protestants
who immigrated to Montreal. Her late father
was an officer in the Army. (He was really a
corporal.) And her mother had a tidy pension.
(She was poor as poverty, and took in washing.)
Maria went to a school kept by a Mr. Workman.

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 199

(She never went to school at all.) Her little
friends (who were Catholics) went to day
school, at the Convent of the Sisters of Charity.
And Maria, at thirteen, decided, she said, to
become a nun. An old priest took her to the
Superior, and she was accepted (she said) as
a novice.

As a matter of fact, she was admitted to the
hospital of the Sisters of Charity, who found
her in sorry condition and nursed her back to
health. Then she went to Saint Denis, to be
come a servant in the household of one William
Henry. According to her own story, she re
mained in the Nunnery until she was seventeen,
when she resented the censure of a nun, and
left the Convent to teach school.

Then, Maria said, she met a man who pro
posed marriage. " Young and ignorant of the
world/' she heard his offer with favor "and
married in haste, to repent at leisure' ':

I determined to return to the Convent; but
should the nuns know I had been married, they
would not take me. I therefore persuaded a friend
to say that I had been under her protection during
my absence, and was re-admitted. . . A year
later, I took the veil, and was initiated at once
into all the crimes of the Convent. . . From then
I was required to act like the most abandoned of
beings.

200 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

With gory delight, Maria (or her imaginative
ghost writer) recounts the story of "a nun called
Saint Frances, because she would not sin with
the rest. . . "Saint Frances, according to the
Disclosures: was taken before five priests and
the Bishop of Montreal, and sentenced (for
her good deeds) to death! . . . after which,
she was bound and gagged, and tied, face up
wards, on a mattress. Other mattresses were
then thrown on top of her, and the five priests
(accompanied by several nuns) jumped up
and down on her. . . Saint Frances was then
buried in quicklime, in the cellar/'

Each year (Maria's story ran) thirty or forty
babies were born in the Convent (offspring of
the helpless females and the atrocious men) ,
promptly murdered by their mothers, and
buried by their fathers. Maria said that she was
in the Convent for two and a half years, and that,
during this time, there were at least seventy-five
children born. . . Since there were only thirty-
six nuns in the Convent, and half of them were
too old, it would be interesting to know how
many babies each of the younger ones had in
a year.

Finally even Miss Monk was pregnant. . .
Subsequent investigation indicated that she got
this way in St. Denis. She was sent by her
employer to the Magdalen Asylum in Montreal,

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 201

where the nuns sought to reclaim fallen women
to a life of virtue. But they had no luck with
Maria. She ran away, and was found by three
young men on the bank of a canal, threatening
to drown herself.

She told them that she had been chained in
her father's cellar for four years, and that her
mother had covered the irons with cloths, so that
there would be no tell-tale marks. Her father,
she added, was Dr. William Robertson of Mon
treal. The young men took her to Dr. Robert
son's house. And the Doctor who was also a
Justice of the Peace, and invested with sufficient
authority sent her to jail as a vagrant.

The next we hear of Miss Monk she is living
with Mr. Hoyt, who took her to New York and
introduced her to the clerical gentlemen
who sponsored her story in the Vindicator.
Among her patrons were the Reverend Dr.
Brownlee, the Reverend John L. Slocum, and
Theodore Dwight, a nephew of the President
of Yale.

Harper's published Awful Disclosures, and
it became an immediate best seller. Over 300,-
ooo copies have been sold, and the book is still
in circulation. Maria received $3,000 in royal
ties on her first 80,000 sales, and Mr. Hoyt
persuaded her to name him as her heir. Then
he and Mr. Slocum quarreled over the profits.

202 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Slocum compromised with the English rights
to Awful Disclosures and then they went to
work on Further Disclosures assisted, it was
said, by the scholarly Mr. Dwight.

Then came Maria's mother. The men of
God, she said, were taking advantage of her un
fortunate daughter. Maria had stuck a slate
pencil in her head, according to her mother,
when she was a child and she had never since
been the same.

Mrs. Monk said that Mr. Hoyt had offered
her a hundred pounds to "make out" that Maria
was a nun, and said that she should leave Mon
treal, and would be better provided for else
where. Then Mr. Hoyt got saucy. And now
Mrs. Monk swore that Maria had never been
in a nunnery at all But was touched in the
head, and susceptible to men with money in
their pockets.

By this time, the whole country had taken
sides. Catholic prelates preferred to ignore
the charges. But the Protestants of Montreal
instituted an investigation to clear the good
name of their city.

Then Colonel W. L. Stone, editor of the
New York Commercial Advertiserand pre
viously a Monk fan journeyed to Montreal,
accompanied by his lady, to conduct a personal
inquiry. Escorted by the President of the Bank

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 203

of Montreal and a number of newspaper men,
the Colonel searched the Convent from attic
to cellar, looking for the trap doors, dungeons,
and secret tunnels of which Maria had written.
When the search was completed, he wrote A
Refutation of the Fabulous Disclosures and
this also received wide publicity.

After this Maria disappeared, and her col
leagues, considerably subdued, hardly opened
their mouths.

The scandal was almost forgotten when New
York papers carried the news of the death of the
poor little prostitute. She had picked the
pocket of a wretched paramour., in a den on
the Bowery. She was tried and sent to prison,
and there "Death removed her from the scene
of her sufferings and disgrace. . ." But Mr.
Hoyt, I am afraid, went on collecting royalties.

, . . And now we are come to a Glamour
Girl.

While Maria Monk was consorting with her
wretched New York paramours, Isabel Stewart,
who lived far up-town, and probably was never
allowed to hear of anything so raffish as Maria's
misdemeanors, was growing into a fine young
lady. The year Maria died, Isabel went to

204 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Paris, and there she met Julia Gardner from
Boston. Julia had oceans of money, tons of
social position and a brother named Jack.
Isabel came to Boston to visit Julia. All the
young men rushed Isabel but Isabel picked
Jack and went home to get a trousseau.

In the summer of 1861, when Isabel was
twenty, she and Jack were married. And the
bride came to Boston in the biggest hoop skirt
that Boston had seen. . . The hoopskirt was
an Empress Eugenie invention that caught on
in her day as the hat did in ours. The Empress
was pregnant and thought up hoops to conceal
what was known as her "precious secret." Then
Victoria wore them, to hide her funny, short
legs (Victoria was bow-legged from the waist
down) . And pretty soon everyone was wearing
them, including Mrs. Jack Gardner, who had
nothing to conceal. . . That was the year the
Civil War broke out Eugenie had her baby
and Victoria had retired into lamenting widow
hood.

Then Arts and Decorations in America were
on the up and up. Godey's Lady's Book ad
vocated Turkish corners, with plush ottomans.
And bead portieres were tres recherche. Draw
ing rooms were carpeted in elegant Wiltons or
Axminsters, and windows were curtained with
lace from Nottingham or Brussels.

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 205

Mrs. Jack, with the towering confidence of
twenty, did 152 Beacon Street, and did it to the
eyebrows. With marble from Carrara, and glass
from a Venetian Palace with brocades and
tapestries, and paintings and statues and a
what-not for her shell collection.

When she had her first at-home every high-
toned gentleman in Boston was there. And
only the ladies were frosty.

Mrs. Gardner was not at all beautiful.
But she was always attractive, and usually
charming. She was small, with a china-doll
complexion, red hair, and eyes of unholy
blue.

She wore pearls around her waist, and rubies
on her slippers. And her two biggest diamonds
were set on springs from a band that she wore
on her forehead, so that they trembled and
twinkled above her red hair.

She went to the zoo, to play with lion cubs,
and to the Old Howard, to see Jim Corbett
box. John L. Sullivan was her friend. Sandow,
the strong man, winced when she pinched his
muscle. Lowell and Longfellow wrote her
poems. And Dr. Henry Bigelow said she had
the loveliest figure in the world.

"I sit on the top of Oak Hill/' wrote the
Doctor, "and think of the way your dresses
fit."

2to6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Oliver Wendell Holmes sent a birthday greet
ing:

May you still blossom in perennial flower,
While I sit ripening in this leafless bower.

And everybody loved her, but the ladies.

Mrs, Jack was the anguish o the young
womenand the terror of the old. She shocked
them on purpose, and she loved to scandalize
the dowagers in their black mits and jet bon
nets. For she knew they did not like her, and
gnawed her name like a bone.

We have in Boston an ancient and honorable
Infirmary called The Charitable Eye and Ear.
When someone asked Mrs. Jack for a contribu
tion, she looked politely puzzled.

"Why I didn't know there was a charitable
eye or ear in Boston," she said.

As she grew older, she became increasingly in
terested in young men who were athletes or
artists. She adored hockey, and went to many
of the Harvard games. When it was cold enough
to freeze a deb, there was Mrs. Jack on the side
lines, yelling like a hoyden. She endowed mu
sicians and painters and "discovered" John
Singer Sargent.

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 207

Sargent painted her in a gown that Dr.
Bigelow would have admired black and very
tight with her celebrated pearls about her
w.k. hips. When the portrait was exhibited, a
few old women of both sexes made such un
pleasant remarks that Mr* Gardner locked it
up, and showed it only to their special friends.
But now it is in the Palace-Museum, where
everyone may see it.

Mr. Gardner died at the beginning of the
century. And by that time Mrs. Jack had out
grown the house on Beacon Street, and begun
plans for a Palace in the Fenway. It was to be
the finest palace in America and done in the
Italian manner. Mrs. Gardner had a penchant
for the baroque. And she loved everything
Italian including spaghetti.

There was a restaurant in the North End
called Hotel Italy, patronized by a few nostalgic
sons of Rome and the proprietors' relatives
and going rapidly broke. One night Mrs.
Gardner brought some friends down, and
raved about the food. She went into the kitchen
and seasoned the Cacciatore, and flavored the
Ravioli, and told the chef how to make
Zabaglione. And from that night, the place was
made.

Once Mrs. Jack, missing a train for a North
Shore coaching party, chartered a locomotive,

so8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

and persuaded the horrified engineer to let
her take the throttle.

When Kermit Roosevelt was a little boy, he
said to his mother, "Father's a funny man.
When he's at a wedding, he thinks he's the
bride. And when he's at a funeral, he thinks
he's the corpse."

My editor, who knew Mrs. Jack, told me that
story. And he said if Kermit had been her
little boy, he might have said the same thing
about Mrs. Gardner.

In Lent, she scrubbed the steps of the Church
of the Advent and called it penance for her
sins. (Then she was the Magdalene.)

And when she built her Palace, she was the
Mistress of a Doge, and her thoughts kept tryst
with ancient chivalries that went their regal
way on tapestries. To give illusion to her dream,
she had a beautiful boy, from Venice, to serve
her like a page. She had taken a ceiling from
a i6th century Venetian palaceand bought a
Madonna and Child from the collection of the
Duke of Mantua. She had the Cellini bust,
and tapestries from the Vatican. And she had
the Rape of Europa by Titian, which Rubens
said is "the greatest picture in the world."

As work on the Palace progressed, Mrs.

LADIES PLAIN AND FANCY 209

Gardner was seen mounting ladders with quick
little steps; wielding a broadax and brushes.
Even straddling the beams!

It took three years to build the Palace. And
when it was finished Boston society thronged to
the opening, and pronounced it splendid be
yond compare.

Over the door was the Chatelaine's motto:
C'est mon plaisir%. grand motto for a woman
who could get away with it.

Mrs. Gardner died in 1924, almost as
dramatically as she had lived. She was eighty-
five, and she had planned her funeral as she
planned her parties, with a touch of the
flamboyant, and a dramatic entrance.

Her body was carried to her Spanish Chapel,
and covered with a purple pall. On either side
of the coffin were burning tapers and tall white
Easter lilies. On ancient prie dieux, black-
cowled nuns knelt and prayed before a black
Crucifix. For three days and three nights, the
Queen of the Palace lay in royal state. And
the chapel was filled with the soft murmurings
of litanies, and the patter of rosary beads.

When the funeral was over and the will read,
it was learned that Mrs. Gardner had left her
Palace "as a Museum for the education and

210 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

enjoyment of the public forever." * . . And
her heirs must attend Mass twice a year at
Christmas and on her birthday and pray, in
her Spanish chapel, for the repose of her
Episcopal soul.

* The Palace is opened on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur
days from 10 A.M. until 4 P.M. (admission free) and on Sunday
afternoon from i to 4. It is closed during the month of August.

IX
SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM

T A7HEN Lydia E. Pinkham of Lynn was
^ * fifty-four years old, and Ulysses S. Grant
was President, there was a financial panic.
Lydia's husband, Isaac, lost his shirt and went
to bed with a nervous breakdown. And Lydia,
a Good Woman and a Genteel Female, rolled
up her sleeves and went to work.

This was in the days of Queen Victoria's
widowhood, and Godey's Lady's Book, when
young ladies simpered on plush divans, and
swooned on Brussels carpets; and had vapours
and the megrims, and thought their legs a sin.
Their swains wore sideburns, and wrote sugary
verse. . . And then they all got married.

Marriage was "a new strain on Milady's
powers" and, by and by, there was "a little
love pledge/' Then Mamma took to the sofa.
And Mamma said Men were Brutes.

Lydia was born and raised a Quaker, and if
the Pinkhams were not Society, they were, at

212 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

least, substantial. They lived in a Lady's Book
House, with jig-saw trimmings and a mansard
roof. And they had the first golden oak dining-
room set in Lynn.

There was a machinist named George Todd,
with Dundreary whiskers, who owed the
Pinkhams $25. He could not pay what he owed,
but he knew about a medicine that was good
for the women folks; and he asked if they would
take the medicine, and forgive the debt. Isaac
copied down the recipe because he did not want
to hurt Mr. Todd's feelings. And Lydia, in
a fine experimental frenzy, added some al
cohol.

Medicine of the day was neither progressive
nor enlightened. Sulphur-and-molasses was the
medicinal stand-by. Lard-and-turpentine came
second. Dandelions for the liver, and saffern
tea for jarnders. Peppermint for nuralgy, and
wintergreen for the rhuematiz. Doctors "bled"
for pneumonia, and "cupped' ' for typhoid. And
mid wives took care of the ladies.

"I am proud to say," declared Prof Meigs of
Jefferson Medical College, "that American
women prefer to suffer the extremity of danger
and pain, rather than waive those scruples of
delicacy which prevent their maladies from
being fully explored. I say it is evidence of a
fine morality in our society/'

Only a woman can understand

214 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

, And I say, Horsefeathers> Doctor! You boys
scared them.

Part of New England evidently thought so
too, and came to bat when Oliver Wendell
Holmes, professor of anatomy and physiology
at Harvard, persuaded the faculty to permit a
woman to enter Medical School. But there was
a storm of protest. And the students struck her
out.

The young gentlemen drew up a furious
resolution, and sent it to the Transcript.

" Resolved that no woman of true delicacy would
be willing in the presence of men to listen to the
discussion of subjects that are taught to students
of medicine . . . and we do protest against her
appearing in places where her presence is calcu
lated to destroy our respect for the modesty and
delicacy of her sex."

The Pinkhams were strictly Temperance,
but when Lydia added twenty percent alcohol
to Mr. Todd's medicine, she knew what she
was doing. When the neighboring Christian
Temperance ladies got bearing-down pains,
she told them of the brew. And when they
begged a taste, she sent a bottle, which was,
of course, a nice neighborly thing to do. Lydia
recommended three spoonfuls a day. But

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 215

severe sufferers sometimes found it beneficial
to take a larger dose. It was also good, they dis
covered, for the Blues.

Lydia called it Vegetable Compound, and
kept a kettleful on the back of the stove, and
gave it all away. Then one day two ladies from
Salem, who were not neighbors at all, came
in a cab. Mr. Pinkham, who was up and about,
answered the bell, and Lydia bustled into the
kitchen. When Isaac shuffled out to see if he
could help, she corked the bottles briskly,
and smoothed her apron.

"Here, Isaac it's for sale now/' she said.
"A dollar a bottle, tell 'em and ask them to
come again, Isaac."

There were three Pinkham boys Dan, Willie
and Charlie. And there was a daughter Aro-
line. Aroline was a high-tonerelegant and
recherche.

Aroline swooned when her mother took
money for Mr. Todd's tonic. People of the
first rank, she said, would not associate with
them if Ma was going to engage in trade.

"Now, Any, you run along and paint your
chiney," advised Lydia, "and don't go fretting
your pretty head."

The ladies from Salem had demonstrated

216 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

the possibilities of trade, and Lydia and the
boys held a sales conference.

Lydia wrote the first advertising copy, and
Dan got figures on printing. Druggists were
persuaded to take bottles on consignment. And
the Pinkhams showered Lynn with fliers. When
sales came in, the boys took more fliers to
Boston. And then they invaded Rhode Island.
Re-orders came, and their mother spent most
of her time over the stove. Then Dan went to
Brooklyn, which was strategically located for
invasion of New York, and a cheaper place to
live.

Dan was twenty-three, and he had a beard
like the Smith Brothers. The Pinkhams all
had beards, but Dan's was the best in the
family as long as his Pa's, and twice as thick.
The toniest whiskers in the family were Charlie's
Piccadilly weepers that made him look like a
parson. Still, whiskers weren't all, and Dan
was older.

Dan found a room for two dollars a week, and
went to the postoffice to write the family:

Fellow Doctors:

I'm bumming on the postal dept. for pen and
ink. I think this part of the country is the right
place to do business, although there are more
high-toned people than I like to distribute among.

The men make no bones about reading our

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 217

fliers, but if you look at a woman while she is read
ing one, she is likely to tear it up.

I think the Irish are troubled this way as much
as any class, so I don't skip the Irish neighbor
hoods. I have an Irish boy to help me, whose
mother is a dressmaker, and knows a good many
sick women. If you can send me a kegful of medi
cine, I think it would be a good idea to let her
give it to parties she knows. Wouldn't it be a
grand thing to get all the dressmakers guzzling it!

Lydia sent the keg; Dan bottled it; and
the dressmaker dispensed it. But apparently
it was not successful, for Dan's next letter car
ried bad news:

Those trial bottles made one woman a good
deal sicker.

Expense money from home was slow arriving,
and Dan was impatient:

Just rec'd your letter, and no money in it. For
God's sake how do you expect me to live without
money? While I am working hard, it takes 20^
to make a good square meal. I've got now just 25^,
so today I shall eat 10^ worth, and have 15^ left
for tomorrow. I can't spare a cent to buy a stamp
with, and cramp my guts. I guess I'll have to get
a job at something else in order to keep my belly
full. I wouldn't have spent io<j> to get shaved
with, if I hadn't thought I'd get money in this
letter just rec'd. I think you are all crazy, or else

*i8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

you think I am getting my meals at free lunch
establishments. If it is necessary to wear a shirt
two or three weeks, in consequence of business
not being good enough to have a clean one, I am
willing to put up with that. But if it isn't good
enough to supply me with food, then I want to
get out of it. My shoes are all to pieces, so that it
bothers me to keep them on my feet and now I
have to live on crackers.

Dan caught what was known as galloping
consumption, peddling fliers in Brooklyn
"walking on the ground, on an empty stomach/*
But he lived long enough to return to Lynn,
share in the fruits of the Pinkham enterprise
and die like a gentleman, in a fine cambric night
shirt, with a closet full of clothes, and money in
the bank. Dan just had a forceful way of ex
pressing himself.

He was in fact the father of modern advertis
ing, and Lydia was its grandmother. Hers was
the first face that ever graced an ad. And Dan
was her Big Idea Man.

On Decoration Day, the Pinkham boys
dropped torn pieces of paper in New England
burying grounds that read like this:

Try Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
and I know it will cure you. It is the best thing
there is for female weakness.

From your Cousin Mary.

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 219

This was Dan's idea. Before illness struck
him down, he had written from Brooklyn:

Fellow-Doctors:

Try dropping notes through the graveyards, and
make them look like the real thing. Every piece
of paper I get hold of I write something that
sounds as if I was recommending the Compound
to somebody, and accidently lost it.

A good way to advertise would be to get small
cards printed so small it wouldn't pay the rag
pickers to pick them up with something on them
like this: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Com
pound is a Sure Cure for all complaints incident
to Females. We would drop them in parks late
Saturday nights, so people would pick them up
on Sundays.

Dan was working in New York when Mr.
Bartlett, a high-class gentleman from London,
arrived in Boston. Mr. Bartlett was writing a
travel book, with references to the ladies; and
the langours of New England intrigued our
genteel visitor.

It was customary, declared the high-toned
Mr. Bartlett, for many English women of true
refinement to walk half a dozen miles a day.
But Boston ladies never walked!

"In America it is not the desire of women to be
in robust health. If a young lady languish with
snowy cheeks, and if she has a tremulous voice, she

220 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

may be expected to break a score of hearts. When
she goes out, it is in a softly-cushioned carriage,
with servants to wrap her carefully from the be
nignant influences of out-of-doors, so the vulgar
wind and sunshine have not a stray peep at that
exquisite skin of hers."

It was elegant to be delicate. Languid ladies
embroidered violets on center-pieces, and wild
roses on sofa cushions. They painted on glass
and china; and made tidies, and petticoats for
ottomans. Tinseled beauties knew a lot of
pretty tricks. And every lady was a fashion-
plate, fragile as a Dresden doll. Their swains
could span their waists with both hands though
this was a liberty seldom vouchsafed.

The swains the belles esteemed wore jeweled
stickpins in flowered cravats, and bowler hats

with narrow, curled brims. Their t s were

tight, and their shoes buttoned and they never,
never smoked segars.

Segar smoke was exceedingly distasteful to
the pure flowers of Victorian womanhood. And
even life and love were vulgar. A man put the
girl he loved on a pedestal, and respected her
tender sensibilities and delicate health.

The notion that women were always ill was
not therefore a Pinkham invention, but they
made the most of it. And the ailing charmers
were push-overs for Lydia.

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 221

Mrs. Pinkham had suggested newspaper ad
vertising, and Dan experimented cautiously.

"We'll use a few lines in a religious paper,"
he said. "It will give a kind of pious tone to
the Compound."

The boys wanted a trade-mark, and per
suaded their mother to have her picture taken.

"You'll be famous as Queen Victoria, Ma/'
they promised. So Lydia sewed some ruching
in her best black silk, and fastened her hair
brooch at the neck. And they all went in town
to get a daguerreotype made.

At first the picture was used only on labels,
but one day Will had a better idea. He had gone
to Boston to collect $84, and the money was
burning a hole in his pocket.

The Compound could be made for almost
nothing, but the fliers were comparatively ex
pensive. Will believed that it would be cheaper
to reach people through the newspapers, and
this was his chance to find out. He went to a
paper, and asked how much it would cost to
print the flier on the front page.

Sixty dollars, they said with Lydia at the
top.

Will left the money, and went home shaking.
It was midnight before he dared to tell his
mother. Then wholesalers started ordering by
the gross. Lydia mortgaged the house, and took

222 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

a $1,000 worth of advertising. One day the
make-up man got drunk, and set her picture at
the top of every column. Lydia did not have
to pay for it, but business increased fabulously,
and she said it was worth it. Since then her
descendants have spent $40,000,000 to keep her
face in the papers.

Later Dan died of his illness. Then Willie
got galloping consumption too, and died.
Lydia carried on with Charlie.

Modern advertising began with woodcuts of
ailing females. Behind the females was the
mysterious malady known as "woman's weak
ness" and Woman's Weakness made Pinkham's
Millions.

Lydia knew psychology before it became a
popular science, and psychoanalysis before it
had a name. She gave sex to advertising, and
advice to the lovelorn. She was the first woman
propagandist, and the world's greatest cure-all
artist. She invented whispering campaigns. She
bestowed health, bliss, and babies. And she
never faked a testimonial.

Elbert Hubbard declared that "Lydia E.
Pinkham takes her place by divine right among
the foremost of America's Great Women" and
the ailing females considered his testimonial
a masterpiece of understatement.

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 223

Mrs. Pinkham collected truck loads of letters,
and answered most of them herself. When
women wrote telling how the compound had
benefited them, she sent them 50 cents, and
asked for a photograph:

Dear Friend,

I note that my Vegetable Compound has cured
you, and write to ask if I may use your letter in
the paper. If so, please accept 50^, and have your
picture taken, which please send at once.

Yours for Health
Lydia E. Pinkham

Lucy E W wrote from Chicago:

Dear Mrs. Pinkham,

I am desperate. Am 19 years of age, and weighed
138 pounds a year ago. Now I am a mere skeleton.
My symptoms are ... Please help me. My uncle
who is a physician told Father that I am in Con
sumption. I had planned to be married in Sept.
Shall I live to see the day?

Five months later, Lucy E W wrote

again:

My dear Mrs. Pinkham,

This is a happy day. I am well and gaining
daily, but shall continue taking the Vegetable
Compound.

I shall be married in Sept., and as we go to
Boston, will call upon you. How can I prove my
gratitude?

224: A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

When people said Lydia wrote her own testi
monials, she deposited $5,000 in the Lynn
National Bank for anyone who could prove
it.

Mrs. Ida Roser, a niece of ex-President Polk,
was having a hard time with her "domestic
and official duties/' But when Mrs. Roser had
taken four bottles of Vegetable Compound, she
felt "as strong as a horse/'

There was a Society Bud who ' 'suffered
silently for years' 'until she took a bottle of
Vegetable Compound every spring and fall
"$2 or $3 a year keeps a woman well and happy/'

"I suppose/' wrote the Bud, "that some of
my friends would question my modesty."

That was the Pinkham battle cry Modesty!

"It is revolting," screamed Lydia (in bold face
type) , "to tell your troubles to a man. Only a
woman can understand a woman's ills. There is
not a moment that women do not have a pain or
an ache. Millions suffer without knowing why,
and die the death daily. Whatever her station in
life, all suffer alike. Pains run rampant through
their entire bodies. They suffer as long as they
can, and then go all to pieces, and don't care what
happens* 1 don't feel very well' you hear these
words spoken every day by women. It's in their
minds all the time/'

Childless women were eager customers.

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 225

We have been married two years, and our home
is not yet blessed by a babe. Dear Mrs. Pinkham,
what shall we do?

They prayed to God and Lydia Oh, God, let
me have a baby. . . Dear Lydia, tell me what
to do!

Interesting condition was the genteel syno
nym for pregnancy. It was an age of euphemism
in which it was bad form to speak directly of
what everybody knew you were talking about.
Women's magazines were roundabout when
they discussed the advent of 'little strangers/'
And only Lydia was frank.

Godey's Lady's Book and The Lily, "a maga
zine devoted to Temperance and Literature/'
printed poems every month about 'love
pledges" that had gone to heaven. But Lydia
guaranteed replacements. One Bottle of Vege
table Compound, two Boxes of Liver Pills
and a baby in every bottle!

From Mrs. John Uberlacker of 1 1 1 Broadway,
came a portrait of a "chubby babe/' and a hymn
of praise:

Dear Mrs. Pinkham:

I wrote some time ago asking why I could not
have a child. You sent me a nice letter in reply,
giving me full instructions. I took your Vegetable
Compound, and followed your kind advice faith-

226 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

fully; and now I have a fine boy, the joy of our
home.

Good news was appended to the testimonials:

IT DON'T COST MUCH
TO GET WELL

ONLY A DOLLAR
OR TWO

Love and beauty appealed to Mrs. Pinkham's
softer side.

Beauty, she declared, is power! A light-hearted
woman is the joy of a man's life. But no woman
can be beautiful who suffers. Tumors may be
forming!

Backache steals the roses from your cheeks, and
puts pimples on your chin. Backache is caused by
Female Weakness.

There was a Woman's Rights Convention.
And Amelia Jenks Bloomer mobilized a
bloomered battalion. Lucy Stone wouldn't pay
her taxes because she couldn't vote and the
Feminist Movement was under way. Hoops
went out, and bustles came in. And there were
kilted skirtsand bikes!

New letter-writing-machines were called type
writers. And so were the young ladies who
could play them.

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 227

Mrs. Pinkham took a page in the Bicycle
Exchange, with a Special Message for Lady
Typewriters.

"This class of women/' she said, "are more or
less afflicted with illness brought on by constant
application in one position/*

There was one Typewriter who had nine fits
a day. Another cried day and night. But the
greatest sufferer was Miss Lucre tia Putnam of
Forrestdale, Mass., whose "spine, liver, heart,
and brain were all diseased/' Lucre tia took five
bottles of Compound, and they made a new
woman of her. Heaven might protect the
working girl but only Lydia could help her.

When skeptics professed to doubt the most
extravagant of Mrs. Pinkham's claims, she in
vited the Mayor to call. She took him to the
Reading and Writing Room, where twelve Lady
Typewriters opened and answered the mail
for the days of the Clinging Vine were over:

Formerly, a girl of 21, unmarried, was regarded
as an Old Maid a Care always, and often a
Burden. And why? Because she was weak and
frequently sick. Her body was frail, and her
mentality mediocre. She was cross, peevish, irri
tablean Old Woman when she should have
been in her Prime. Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable
Compound has done more for Women's Rights
than all the eloquence of the ages or the sages. It

228 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

will end her misery if shell trust and stick to it. It
rounds the cheek. It brightens the eye."

The Mayor, considerably impressed, wrote
a letter to Whom It Might Concern:

No woman (he affirmed) need hesitate to place
confidence in the integrity and ability of Lydia
E. Pinkham. We have personally observed the
work done in the Private Correspondence Dept.,
and know that every letter is opened, read, and
answered by women only.

It was about this time that Mrs. Pinkham
tried some tony advertising in Harper's. The
first advertisement was a house boat on the
Nile, with a lady in a sailor hat and leg-o*-
mutton sleeves writing a letter, while a be-
whiskered Lothario twirled his moustaches. . .
And "Who are you writing to, my dear?"

"I am answering Mrs. Pinkham's letter that
reached us at Cairo. She has told me what to
do, and I am feeling much better/'

Then Lydia invaded Milady's boudoir:

Is your skin muddy? she demanded. Do your
eyes lack lustre? Beware Quick Consumptionl The
lily droops on its stem, and dies before its beauty
is unfolded. Seven-eighths of the men in this
world marry a woman because she is beautiful in
their eyes. What a disappointment then to see the

SING A SONG OF LYDIA PINKHAM 229

fair young wife's beauty fade before a year passes
over her head!

I feel as if I would like to say to every young
lady who is about to be married, "Strengthen
yourself in advance, so that you will not break
down under the new strain on your powers. Build
up with a bottle of Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable
Compound. You can get it at any druggist's."

To the day she died, Mrs. Pinkham cor
responded with her suffering sisters. After
the funeral, the family sent cards, announcing
her passing and the sisters read and wept

Her great-grand-children are in the business
now. They still get testimonials, but the Gov
ernment frowns on extravagant patent medicine
claims, and the young ladies in the Reading and
Writing Room toss endorsements in the waste
basket that would make Lydia turn in her grave.
The heirs put out a few million bottles of Com
pound annually, and about 300,000 packages
of tablets. Lydia called them Liver Pills, but
the Government protested. They are not, it
seems, especially good for the liver.

DID LIZZIE DO IT?

T IZZIE BORDEN was thirty-two years old,
*- J and she had a jaw like a nut cracker. She
wore spectacles, and her eyes were sort o fishy-
looking. Lizzie was plump and sentimental. She
liked fiddling round the kitchen and fussing in
the garden. She adored sentimental poems and
paper-backed novels, and she liked visiting art
galleries. Lizzie had a diamond ring and a seal
skin cape, and she had been to Europe.

Her sister Emma was forty-two. Emma didn't
go around much and she wasn't dressy like
Lizzie.

Andrew Borden, the girls' father, was rich as
they make them he was the richest man in
Fall River. He was president of the Union
Savings Bank, and director of the First National,
and the B. M. C. Durkee Safe Deposit and
Trust Co. He was an undertaker until the
girls got bees in their bonnets. Then under
taking wasn't tony enough for the Bordens,

230

Lizzie Borden took an axe. .

232 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Andrew had the first dollar he ever made, but
he put his undertaking profits in the mills, and
got to be director in three of them.

The Bordens lived in a gray clapboard house
on Second Street, with a barn and some pear
trees out back, and a picket fence in front.
They kept the windows closed and the parlor
blinds down.

They had a hired girl named Bridget Sullivan.
Mrs. Borden helped with the housework, but
the girls didn't. They were sort of hoity-toity.
Mrs. Borden was not their real mother, and
Lizzie made no bones about disliking her. It
was mean the way Lizzie acted, for Abby Durfee
was all that a mother could be to those two girls.
Their own mother died when Lizzie was two,
and two years later their father married again.

When Lizzie was twenty, her father gave
Mrs. Borden a house he owned, in which her
half-sister, Mrs. Whitehead, lived. When the
girls heard about how he gave the house to
Abby, they were fit to be tied, especially Lizzie.

"What he can do for her people, he ought to
do for us," she said.

Then the two of them started be-deviling the
old man, and they kept it up until he gave them
Grandfather Borden's place on Ferry Street.
Grandfather Borden's place was better than
the house he gave to Mrs. Borden, but Lizzie

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 233

and her stepmother had words over it, and
Lizzie started calling Abby Mrs. Borden.

Being landladies didn't suit the girls any
better than being ladies of leisure. They told
their father the rents wouldn't pay for the re
pairs, and the place was a white elephant on
their hands. So the old man gave them $5000
cash, and took it back again. This was in the
spring of 1892.

There was a dressmaker in Fall River named
Mrs. Gifford, and this same Spring Mrs. Gifford
made Lizzie a Bedford cord dress. One night
Lizzie went for a fitting, and she started talking
about her step-mother.

Mrs. Gifford stood it as long as she could.
Then she said, "Lizzie Borden, you shouldn't
be talking that way about your mother/'

Lizzie turned on her. "Don't you say mother
to me! She's a mean, good-for-nothing old
thing, and Emma and I don't have anything to
do with her. We stay in our own rooms most
of the time."

Mr. and Mrs. Borden used the back stairs,
and Lizzie and Emma used the front ones.
When the sisters had callers, they entertained
in their bedrooms. Fortunately, the callers were
always ladies (or unfortunately, as the case may
be).

The girls didn't eat with the old people, only

234 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

when there was company. And the Bordens
weren't ones to have much company.

Mrs. Borden was sixty-four, a short, stout
woman. Mr. Borden was seventy, tall and thin,
with a white whisker around his face like the
frill on a lamb chop. He wore black clothes,
winter and summer. The old man was worth
a quarter of a million, but vou'd never have
guessed it.

On a Wednesday in August Uncle John Morse
came to visit. He was brother to the first Mrs.
Borden, and he and Andrew set great store by
each other. Dinner was over when Mr. Morse
arrived, but Mrs. Borden fixed him a plate of
warmed-over mutton. Mr. Borden had farms
at Somerset and Swansea, and he used to pay
his brother-in-law to look them over. In the
middle of the afternoon Mr. Morse left for
Swansea, to see about some cattle. Lizzie was
in the house all the time he was there, but she
stayed in her room. Uncle John came back for
supper. They had mutton soup, tea and cake.
But still he hadn't seen hide nor hair of Lizzie.

The night before, Mr. and Mrs. Borden were
taken sick. Lizzie, whose room was next to
theirs (with a double-locked and barricaded
door between) said she called in and asked if
there was anything she could do. They said,
No, there wasn't. Lizzie said she wasn't feeling
so well herself.

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 235

In the morning Mrs. Borden said she thought
they should send for Dr. Bowen. She believed
they'd been poisoned, she said.

That evening Lizzie went to call on her
friend Alice Russell, and told her she felt that
"something terrible was hanging over the
family."

"Father has so much trouble/' she said. "He
and Mrs. Borden were sick last night. We
all were but Bridget. We had some baker's
bread, and everybody ate it but Bridget."

Miss Russell said that was funny, but she
didn't think it was the bread. Lots of people
ate baker's bread, she said.

"Sometimes I think our milk is poisoned,"
said Lizzie. "I'm afraid Father's got an enemy.
He has so much trouble with his men. . . And
I saw a man run around the house the other
night. . . And the barn was broken into."

"Now, Lizzie, you know that was boys after
pigeons," comforted Miss Russell.

"Well, they've broken into the house in broad
day-light. They ransacked Mrs. Borden's room,
took a watch and chain, some money, and some
car tickets. I don't know but somebody will do
something., I feel I want to sleep with one eye
open for fear they will burn the house down
over us."

It was late when Lizzie left. It was a swelter
ing hot night, sweet with the scent of phlox

236 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

that grew against the fences on Second Street.
Miss Lizzie walked slowly, and let herself in the
front gate. There were no flowers in the
Borden yard, but at Kelly's next door, there was
a rose garden, and there were nasturtiums
around the fruit trees. Mr. and Mrs. Borden
and Uncle John sat in the room off the front
hall with the door open, so they could get a
breath of air and the pretty smell of little Annie
Kelly's posies. Lizzie said nothing to them, nor
they to her. Without a word, she closed the
door, turned her key in the lock, and went up
the little twisting staircase.

The next morning Bridget was the first one
down. Mrs. Borden came down at six-thirty.
Then Mr. Borden and Mr. Morse. Emma was
visiting in Fairhaven. For breakfast they had
some broth and the left-over mutton, johnny
cake, coffee and cookies.

About nine o'clock, Lizzie had a cup of coffee
in the kitchen with Bridget.

Uncle John departed, and Mr. Borden went
downtown to make some business calls. Mrs.
Borden told Bridget to wash the downstairs
windows on the outside, and said that she would
do the bedrooms. This was about half past
nine.

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 237

A few minutes later she entered the spare
chamberand there, within a minute or two,
she met her death.

Meantime, Bridget had got a pail from the
cellar, torn up an old sheet for rags, and pro
ceeded to wash the windows.

With the members of the family departing
one by one, and Bridget at work out doors,
there was nobody in the house but Mrs. Borden
and Lizzie.

About quarter of eleven Mr. Borden re
turned. Bridget had finished her windows,
and was in the kitchen. Mr. Borden went
around to the side door, and found it locked.
Then he went to the front door, and started
fumbling with his key. Bridget heard him, and
went to let him in. As Bridget stood there, she
heard Miss Lizzie, who was standing on the
landing at the top of the front stairs, laugh.

At this time Mrs. Borden had been dead for
about an hour, the time of her death being later
established by medical testimony.

Mr. Borden came in, and hung his hat on the
rack in the hall. Lizzie came down, and asked
if there were any letters.

"Mrs. Borden has gone out," she said. "She
had a note from somebody who is sick/'

238 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Mr. Borden took the key of his bedroom
from the shelf where he kept it, and went up
the back stairs to his room. After a few minutes,
he came down again, and went in the sitting
room. The curtains on the side facing Kellys
were drawn.

Lizzie was ironing handkerchiefs in the
dining room.

"Bridget/' she asked, "are you going out
today?"

"Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not," said
Bridget.

"There's a sale of dress goods at Sargent's/'
said Lizzie. "Eight cents a yard. Wouldn't you
like to get some, Bridget?"

But Bridget wasn't sure. "Ill be resting me
bones for a few minutes," she said. And she
went up the back stairs, to her room in the
attic.

Mr. Borden was asleep on the sofa in the
sitting room. Bridget lay on her bed and dozed.

"Bridget! Bridget!" Miss Lizzie was shout
ing from the foot of the back stairs. "Bridget,
come!"

"What's the matter, Miss Lizzie?"
"Father's dead. Come down here!"
Bridget was down in an instant. "Someone

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 239

came in and killed him. Go get Dr. Bowen,
Bridget. Go quickly/'

The Bowens lived kitty-corner across the
street. But the Doctor was out, and Bridget
came running back.

"Thank God, it wasn't you, Miss Lizzie!
Where were you, Miss Lizzie?"

"I was out in the yard, Bridget, and I heard
a groan. When I came in, the screen door was
wide open. . . Run get Miss Russell, Bridget/'

Mrs. Churchill from across the way heard
the commotion, and came over.

''Oh, Mrs. Churchill/' cried Lizzie, "some
one has killed Father!"

"Why, Lizzie! Where? Where is he?"

"In the sitting room/'

"Where were you, Lizzie?"

"I was in the barn/'

"Where's your mother?"

"I don't know. She had a note to go see some
one who is sick. But I don't know but what she
is killed too/'

Mrs. Churchill ran to Hall's stable, and one
of the men there telephoned the police station.
It was quarter past eleven, and half an hour had
passed since Mr. Borden entered his house.

Dr. Bowen came, and went into the sitting
room. While he was there, Mrs. Churchill
loosened Lizzie's corset. And Miss Russell
rubbed her forehead with eau de cologne.

240 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Dr. Bowen stayed in the sitting room for
some minutes. According to his own testimony,
this is what he saw:

"The dead man's head and face were so hacked
that he was unrecognizable. The cuts extended
from the eye and nose around the ear. In a small
space there were at least a dozen cuts. Physician
that I am, and accustomed to look on all kinds of
horrible sights, it sickened me to look upon that
face. . . I am inclined to think an ax was the
instrument. . . One of the cuts had severed the
eyeball and socket. . . I think that nearly all the
blows were delivered from behind with great
rapidity. I am satisfied that he was asleep when
he received the first one, which was fatal."

When Dr. Bowen came out of the room, he
asked for a sheet to cover the body. Then Lizzie
asked the Doctor if he would go in his buggy
to the telegraph station, to send a telegram to
Emma at Fairhaven. After the Doctor went,
Lizzie asked Bridget to look upstairs for Mrs.
Borden. But Bridget was afraid the murderer
might be hiding there.

'Til go," said Mrs. Churchill.

From the landing on the stairs she could see
into the spare room. On the floor, between the
bed and the dresser, lay Mrs. Borden, face
down on the flowered carpet, and over the
flowers spread a pool of darkening blood. Locks

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 241

of her hair were chopped off, and lay among
the roses. Her plain old face lay in blood. Her
feet sprawled behind, soles upturned. Her
faded house dress, stiffly starched, sprung up
about her like a monstrous fungus.

Mrs. Churchill went back to the dining room,
and uttered a groan.

Miss Russell said, "Is there another?"
Mrs. Churchill replied, "Yes; she is up there/'

# * * # * # #

Fall River said it was the deed of a maniac.
People on Second Street were afraid to go to
bed nights. Police were stationed in every back
yard. The town was horror-stricken.

Emma came home, and the following day
there was a front page notice in the Fall River
Evening News:

$5,000

REWARD

The Above REWARD Will Be
Paid To Anyone Who May Secure

THE ARREST AND CONVICTION

Of the person or persons who caused the
death of

MR. ANDREW J. BORDEN & HIS WIFE

Signed: EMMA J. BORDEN
LIZZIE A. BORDEN

242 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The funeral was on a Saturday (August 6,
1892) . There were two hearses, and ten hacks.
And Emma and Lizzie and their Uncle John
rode in the front one.

While the funeral was going on, a young man
named Eli Bence, a clerk in Smith's drug store,
told a police officer that on Wednesday, the day
before the murders, Miss Lizzie Borden came
in. the store, and asked for ten cents' worth of
prussic acid. She said she wanted to use it on
a sealskin cape. Eli told her that he couldn't
sell it without a prescription. His story was
corroborated by two other men, and all of them
identified Miss Lizzie as the would-be purchaser.

Lizzie was secretary and treasurer of the
Young People's Society for Christian Endeavor,
a Sunday School teacher, and a particular friend
of a brace of parsonsthe Reverend Mr. Buck
and the Reverend Mr. Jubb. And now she was
an heiress. The police, not unnaturally, treated
her with sympathetic respect. She denied the
drug store incident, and the matter was dropped.

Then the townsfolk started talking. Seven
of them had asked her the same questionand
she had given them seven different answers!

"Lizzie, where were you when it happened?"

Sometimes Lizzie said she was in the back
yard, and heard a groan. . . Sometimes in the
barn, looking for tin to mend a screen or lead,

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 243

to make some sinkers. . . She heard a noise like
scraping. . . She was in the loft, eating
pears. . . She heard a distressing noise.

The neighbors compared notes, and dis
covered there were a number of Lizzie's stories
that didn't jibe.

They speculated about the note that Lizzie
said Mrs. Borden received. If someone had
sent for Mrs. Borden, why didn't they say so,
and clear up the mystery? Lizzie told Bridget
about that note, and Lizzie told her father about
it in front of Bridget. Maybe, people said,
Lizzie didn't want her father going upstairs,
looking for Abby.

There were other contradictions. Lizzie said
she was in the kitchen when her father returned.
Then it was the dining room. After that it was
the bedroom. But Bridget, who had let Mr.
Borden in, said she heard Lizzie laughing on
the landing.

Three days after the funeral an inquest was
held, and Lizzie Borden was arrested for the
murder of her father.

Then the men of God came forward the
Rev. Mr. Jubb and the Rev. Mr. Buck. Mr.
Jubb and Mr. Buck absolved Lizzie, and washed
her whiter than a lamb. They stuck around like

244 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

flies in treacle, sweet as lasses candy. They
beaued her into hearings, and every day the
papers said, "The prisoner entered the Court
leaning on the arm of the Rev. Mr. Buck" or
else it was on the arm of the Rev. Mr. Jubb.

Mr. Jubb, at the Central Church, in public
prayer, told heaven that Miss Lizzie was "in
nocent and blameless/' and asked God to
comfort the "poor stricken girl."

The President of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union joined her prayers to the
parsons (Lizzie was a white ribboner) . And
Lucy Stone took up the cudgels, along with
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, and the Women's
Auxiliary of the Y.M.C.A. Clergymen through
out the country asked prayers for the "un
fortunate girl.". . But Lizzie was held for the
Grand Jury.

The old Judge cried when he gave his de
cision.

The long examination is now concluded, and
there remains for me to perform what I believe to
be my duty. It would be a pleasure for me, if I
could say, "Lizzie, I judge you probably not
guilty. You may go home." But upon the char
acter of the evidence presented through the wit
nesses who have been so closely and thoroughly ex
amined, there is but one thing to be done.

Suppose for a single moment a man was found

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 245

close by that guestchamber, which, to Mrs. Borden,
was a chamber of death. Suppose a man had been
found in the vicinity of Mr. Borden, was the first
to find the body, and the only account he could
give of himself was the unreasonable one that he
was out in the barn looking for sinkers; then he
was in the yard; then he was somewhere else; would
there be any question in the minds of men what
should be done with such a man?

The Judge's eyes were filled with tears.

There is only one thing to do, painful as it may
bethe judgment of the Court is that you are prob
ably guilty, and you are ordered committed to
await the action of the Superior Court.

In the weeks that followed people talked of
nothing else. They made up rhymes and sang
them to the tune of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

They said that on the fourth of August,
Bridget asked Miss Lizzie the time.

"/ don't know/' Lizzie said, "but I'll ax
Father."

The respectable Boston Globe ran a dread-

246 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

ful story on the front page, with a banner line
and three columns, and ten columns on page 3.
It said that Lizzie had a beau, and that he got
her in trouble, and that she and her father had
a fight about it. . . The Globe said someone
saw Lizzie peering through the blinds in the
guestchamber with a rubber cap on her head!

Why, of course Lizzie wore a bathing cap
and a gossamer (a gossamer was a raincoat)
and wasn't that a nice working costume!

' But Lizzie's gossamer hung in the closet-
fresh as a daisy, dry as a bone.

Well then "She was bare-naked!" people
said. . . And the parsons were incensed.

That a New England girl should be accused
of undressing before committing murder pre
posterous! Lizzie's friends knew her for a
modest soul. Walking round the house without
a stitch on Lizzie Borden!

"Not on your tin-type/' they said.

Miss Borden's attorneys threatened the Globe
with libel, and the stories about the beau and
the bathing cap were retracted.

Alice Russell was a witness before the Grand
Jury, and Miss Russell had a real New England
conscience. When she finished her testimony,
which was calculated to help Lizzie, her con-

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 247

science troubled her, for although she had told
"the truth and nothing but the truth/' she had
not told "the whole truth."

Miss Russell had stayed in the house on
Second Street after the funeral, and on Sunday
morning she had breakfast with the girls.

Emma was doing the dishes, and Lizzie came
in the kitchen with a dress over her arm.

"I'm going to burn this," said Lizzie. "It's
covered with paint."

Miss Russell advised her not to let any one
see her do it, and Lizzie took up the cover
quickly, and shoved it in. There were police
men on guard all round the house.

Next day Miss Russell said, "I am afraid,
Lizzie, the worst thing you could have done
was burn that dress. , I have been asked about
your dresses."

When Miss Russell finished her testimony,
the Grand Jury returned three indictments
against Miss Lizzie one for the murder of her
father, one for the murder of his wife, and one
for both, murders. The trial was set for June, in
New Bedford,

Lizzie bought herself some new clothes. A
stylish black mohair, with leg-o'-mutton sleeves
and a boned bodice, an elegant black shawl, and
a small hat with a bird on it. It was the first
time since the murders she had worn mourn-

248 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

ing. Miss Emma got a black outfit too. There
was a sketch of them in Leslie's Weekly, side by
side in the courtroom. Miss Emma had on a
bonnet, and kept her mitts up to her eyes. But
Lizzie stared straight ahead, her eyes sort of
popping, and her heavy black eyebrows drawn
close together.

The stronghold of the defense was the ab
sence of all such traces as most likely would be
found on the murderer. No blood was seen
upon the accused by the five or six persons who
saw her within ten minutes of the time Bridget
came upon the scene. Yet nearly everyone
agreed that it would have been practically im
possible to deal the twenty-nine blows that
battered in the Borden skulls, without getting
spattered.

When the police came, Lizzie was wearing
a pink wrapper. When they asked her for the
dress she had worn in the morning, she gave
them a silk one. People said that looked funny
a sensible girl like Lizzie wouldn't be wearing
a silk dress in the morning.

In the cellar they found a handleless hatchet
that bore suspicious traces of having been
recently washed, rubbed in ashes, and deliber
ately broken. The blade fitted nicely into the

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 249

cuts on the heads of Lizzie's unfortunate parents.
And that looked bad for Lizzie. . . Lots of
things looked bad for Lizzie.

When the Judge asked her if she wanted
to take the stand, to testify in her own defense,
she said:

"I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to
speak for me.'*

People wondered why Lizzie didn't speak for
herself.

The trial lasted thirteen days. The jury was
out only an hour. And the verdict, in this most
baffling and fascinating murder in the history
of New England, was Not Guilty.

Miss Borden returned to her home, and
spent the evening looking at newspaper pictures
of herself, and reading accounts of the trial.
A number of neighbors called, and Miss Emma
made a pitcher of lemonade and passed around
cookies. Miss Alice Russell was not among
those present.

After a short time, the sisters moved from
the house of the murders to a rather preten
tious place on French Street, about a mile and
a half away. And it was to the French Street
house that I made annual pilgrimages during
the last few years of Miss Lizzie's life.

250 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

On the anniversary of the murders, my city
editor thought it was a nice idea to send me to
Fall River.

Sometimes I would telephone from the depot.
Miss Borden was in the directory as Lizabeth
A. Borden.

"Is Miss Borden there?" I would ask.

"Who is it?"

"Miss Early."

"Never heard of you; what do you want?"

'"I want to talk to Miss Borden." ; . So
did a lot of other reporters. But we never
did.

Then I would go to the house, and climb
the stone steps. My heart, I think, pounded
harder than Lizzie's ever did.

It said Maplecroft in raised letters on the
lower step. There was a sun dial on the lawn,
and an out-size bird house in a big maple tree.
The windows were covered with heavy lace
curtains. There was a sun porch, and that was
curtained too.

The windows were always closed, and the
doors locked. I would turn the front door knob,
and then go back and try the kitchen door.
This gave me the same terror-stricken feeling
I got at the morgue and Haymarket Relief.
"Please, God," I would pray, "make her come
to the door." But He never did.

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 251

Then I would go down town, to get some
thing to hang a story on. Miss Borden seldom
went out. And when she did, no one spoke to
her but the tradespeople.

"She's grown very fat," the druggist told me.

She and Miss Emma had quarreled years
before, and Miss Emma had moved away. When
she was younger, Miss Lizzie came sometimes to
Boston, to shop and see a show. She stayed at
the Bellevue, and the colored bell boys were
scared of her.

On June ist, 1927, Miss Borden died at
Maplecroft. A few friends were notified, and
presented themselves for the funeral. There
was not a sign of a coffin, nor a flower, nor even
a minister. Messrs. Buck and Jubb had gone
to their reward, and Miss Lizzie had not been
to church for thirty-five years. The mourners,
wondering no doubt where Lizzie was, sat
waiting.

They could not know that she had been
buried the night before, in the dark of the
moon. The grave was dug by black men in Oak
Grove Cemetery. And black men had borne
the casket. Not a prayer was heard, not a
funeral note, as her corpse to the graveyard
they hurried. They carved not a line, and

252 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

they raised not a stone. But they left her alone
with her pa.

Ten days after Miss Lizzie's death, Miss
Emma died. Then, for the first time, reporters
learned that she had been living in Newmarket,
New Hampshire. She left the place twice a
year once, in the spring, to put her fur coat in
storage, at Jordan Marsh's once, in the fall, to
take it out.

Miss Emma and Miss Lizzie couldn't get
along together when they were alive. But now
they are lying side by side, at the feet of their
father, and the stepmother they hated.

Miss Lizzie's estate amounted to about
$265,000, of which considerable was left to
Charity, and some to the Girl Scouts, and some
to the Boys and $30,000 to the Animal Rescue
League: because, said Miss Borden:

"I have been fond of animals. Their need is
great, and there are few to care for them."

Miss Emma, who was more saving, left almost
twice as much as her sister.

The day after Miss Lizzie's funeral, I was
sent to Fall River again. This time I visited
the old house on Second Street. It is divided

DID LIZZIE DO IT? 253

now into two apartments, so the family upstairs
has the guest room, where Mrs. Borden was
murdered. And the family downstairs has the
sitting room, where Lizzie found her father.

In Kelly's yard the posies bloom, but Annie
doesn't live there any more. And Andrew
Borden's pear trees are gone, and the old barn.
And the street is shabby and sad.

XI

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY

"This was the lad the ladies loved

Like all the girls of quality
And he blacked the eyes of the Boston boys-
Just by the way of jollity. . .
Oh the leathering Irishman
The barbarous, savage Irishman
'Twas the hearts of the maids and the heads of the

men
That were bothered, I'm sure by this Irishman/'

OEPTEMBER-iSgs-ah, golden month in
^ the annals of journalism: The gentlemen
of the press had scarcely finished sleuthing
around the Borden house in Fall River. Lizzie
was barely off the front page. And now the star
reporters were packing for New Orleans, and
another great story.

For John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strong Boy,
was to fight Jim Corbett of the ice cream pants
and the elegant airs. Sullivan, the pride of
Massachusetts, Sullivan of the diamond belt
and the shamrock-spangled trunks!

I remain your warm and personal friend

256 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Sullivan had a handle-bar mustache, and a
crooked left eyebrow that gave him the look
of the devil. He had hands like hams, and
dimples like clefts. And his chest was as big as
a barrel.

There never before was a man like John, nor
a fighter who loved it so. Kids followed him
through the streets, and girls begged locks of
his hair from the barber who sheared him. Re
porters sang his praises* And Right Reverends
heaped encomiums on his dazzled head.

For John was tramping through the vine
yards where the grapes of wrath were stored.
There was a heritage, handed down in New
England from the Puritans, a hatred of Papisti
cal Irish. And now both Priest and Politician
applauded, for John L's Erin-go-bragh pother
had captivated the bigots.

He was emotional, generous, and affectionate.
And, in a Danny-boy way, he was eloquent.
John L. strutted and postured and bellowed!

"God help Gintleman Jim!" . . . The rafters
rang with his threats.

But for all the brave show, some of the fistic
experts went to New Orleans with misgivings.
For the Strong Boy was examined, on the eve
of their departure, by a physician who gave
this gloomy opinion:

"Sullivan is fit for a man of his age and habits

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 257

but his vitality is low and he needs four
months of careful training."

The reporters knew, and his friends knew too,
that most of John's "training" had taken place
in the public houses of Boston and New York.
And for fourteen years, John Barleycorn and
John L. had been victorious.

Everybody remembered the memorable oc^
casion when Charlie Mitchell, "champion of
the British Isles/' came to America. John-
having greeted him like a gentleman went off
on a spree. He was gone for a week and that
time nobody could sober him.

The night of the fight an excited crowd grew
restless, as they waited. And when John L. ap
peared at last, he was not in his usual green
tights (John's tights were emerald-green, en
circled with the Stars and Stripes) but in
swallow tails, and a boiled shirt! Diamonds
flashed in the gas light, gleaming on his shirt
front, twinkling from his fingers. On his head
was a tall silk hat over his arm, an opera coat.
And John was drunk drunk as a lord.

Teetering through the ropes, he called for
silence. And when Sullivan opened his mouth,
the rafters rang.

"Lash and Genman!". . . There was a
mighty silence.

"For the firsh time, Lash and Genman, I

258 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

can't fight. . . Doctor says I'm sick-gotta
shertificate." . .

The audience, that would have mobbed an
other man, cheered and applauded and loved
him, perversely, more than ever. For his weak
ness endeared him to fight fans and made a
moral tale for Prohibitionists, clergymen, and
Carrie Chapman Catt.

He could stay up all night, he boasted
carouse until dawn and then lick his weight in
bar-keeps, teamsters, and wheel-wrights. . .
"The bottle was never distilled, nor the man
born, that could lick John L. Sullivan!"

But on the eve of his biggest fight, liquor
caught up with John L. . . . and the elegant
Corbett knocked him from his throne.

They fought for twenty roundsSullivan
getting always the worst of it. In the twenty-
first Corbett brought the champion to his knees
* 'helpless as an ox before a butcher." Crash!
went Corbett's right against his jaw, and Sul
livan fell forward.

The house was still as death. . . Sullivan
rolled over on his side and the referee counted
him out. . . His seconds picked him up, and
carried him, like a hammock, to the yellow
kitchen chair where he sat between rounds.

As the first glimmer of consciousness returned,
Sullivan staggered to his feet, and groped blindly

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 259

to the edge of the ring. Then he raised his hand
until the bedlam subsided.

"Gentlemen," he mumbled through his bat
tered lips. "Gentlemen, I got one thing to say.
I came into the ring once too often. But if I
had to get licked, I'm glad it was by an Ameri
can. I remain your warm and personal friend,
John L. Sullivan."

# # # # % * *

Boston was completely stunned. In the bars
of the hotels men hung black crepe rosettes.
In the fire-houses and the taverns they spoke in
hushed tones of a fallen idol. For there was a
sort of poetry that went with the name of John
L.--a poetry that first came to New England with
the Irish, who had come in the seventeenth
century and again in the black hunger of the
Forties*

The Irish were a strong and impetuous
people. And John L. was the strongest that e'er
the sun shone on. In twelve years Sullivan won
half a million dollars and spent it (he sighed,
at the end) on "Ladies, Liquor, and Luxuries."
Not that he regretted it!

"Sure 'twas a fine show while it lasted."
#######

When Sullivan was a rackety-packety old man,
I went to Abington to see him. I found him

260 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

sitting on the stoop, singing an old song his
mother taught him:

e twothree Balance like me,
You're quite a fairy-though ye have your faults.
Your right foot is lazy-your left one is crazy
But don't be unaisy I'll larn ye ta waltz."

It was autumn, and there was the smell of
burning leaves, and russet apples ripening. We
followed the sun around the house, and found
a warm little patch in the orchard, for Mr.
Sullivan said there was a chill in his bones. He
gave me a paper bag of apples to take home, and
a photograph of himself in a stove-pipe hat,
with his chest puffed out, and his hand thrust
in the front of his Prince Albert.

"Twas a gisture I had/' he said.

He wrote on the picture, "To a good little
girl from Yours Truly, John L. Sullivan/'

Mr. Reardon, my editor, and John L. >ere
old friends, and John L. told me of the fights
my boss used to cover.

"Twas a grand life then/' he said, "and money
to burn/ 1

"It was too bad to lose it," I murmured. I
saw the shabbiness of the place, and wanted to
cry.

"I was the lucky one that had it to lose/'
said John L.

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 261

He spoke of his mother. "She weighed 200,
God have mercy on her soul. Twas her I took
after for me father was no more than a shrimp/'

He flexed his muscles, and doubled his great
hands. The saga of those mighty fists began
early, when he was not yet one year old. It was
then, he told me, that he administered his first
shiner to the eye of his Aunt Katherine.

"My aunt God rest her was kneelin' on the
floor of the parlor, holdin' out her arms to
me an* I let her have it wit' me right. . . Just
a bit of roguish sport/' he added with a twinkle.

Roguish sport or not, the strapping youth
(200 pounds and six foot-two, at seventeen) was
a great one to "hit him a lick" or "let him
have it right there/' He had as he said "a
great impatience with the people/' He was
always finding some man who had what he
called "excessive pretensions/' and asking him
to step out into the alley.

His mother fondly hoped that her Atlas
would embrace the cloth but he pleaded with
her: "Ah but look at me, wit' the hands like
nail kegs and a neck fit for a horse collar, and
a great impatience with people."

The great impatience served him well at his
first public fight, when a boastful fellow on the
stage of the Dudley Street Opera House taunted
him to come up on the stage. The "impatience"

262 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

swept over him, and he climbed over the foot
lights, letting the "impudent clown have such
a clout as knocked him clean acrost the piano
into the pit/'

Thus he stumbled into his career* A Vic
torian biographer puts these rose-scented words
into his mouth: "Shortly afterwards I drifted
into the occupation of pugilism, and found the
fascinating career I craved."

But John is more graphic: "I was always
gettin' into trouble wit' me maulees, so I put
em to work/' .' . The boy began to hang around
the fight studios, and study the styles of the
older boxers, picking up this and that, that he
could adapt to his own knuckles.

His picture in the Police Gazette late 1879
brought the first blush of national fame to
our hero.

At this time, William Muldoon who was
promoting vaudeville at the Boston Music Hall,
matched Sullivan with Joe Goss, the British ex-
champion. In the second round, John hit the
Englishman so hard, Goss had to ask for a rest.

"The blow," said Sullivan, "virtually ended
the contest/' But he was not without his touch
of gallantry: "Now one word about Goss as a
pugilist and a boxer he is a fine gentleman."

Possessed of an Irish sense of drama, John L.
was always one to put on a good show to pick

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 263

up his defeated adversary in his arms, as
tenderly as a nurse.

There was the fight with John Flood an
other Irishman, Fights were against the law
in those days not only in puritanical Massa
chusettsbut all over the country.

So the fight, which was to be staged in New
York at first, finally took place on a fiat barge
anchored off the shore o Yonkers.

Perhaps it was the marine location anyway
Mr. Flood was taken with a touch of sea-sick
ness, and spent the major part of the fight lean
ing over the rail, with John holding his head.

"Well we meet as friends, and part as
friends/' observed our generous hero.

But not so Flood. . . "It was my dinner that
beat me, and not you," he retorted churlishly.

After this John L, went again on tour. "How
many men I whipped I disrecall," he said.
"They were a lot of stomachs and chins to me
and I hit 'em as fast as they came."

Meanwhile, in New York, Prof, Mike
Donovan was issuing boastful challenges in the
Police Gazette, and all the yellow journals in
town. He invited John to meet him at Madison
Square Garden on October 24th, 1881.

No response from John. . . But on the
night of the show, when Donovan advanced
once more, to shout his taunts, Sullivan rose in

264 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

his dramatic way, very quietly from the ring
side.

"Gentlemen/* he said grandiloquently, "I
come here tonight to spar with this man. But
I don't want his money."

Amid roars of applause, Donovan retreated.

"I ain't got no chance wit' him/' he muttered.
His terrified teeth were chattering.

"Then why did you challenge him?" shouted
someone.

"Because he said I was a cur, and I ain't no
cur," plaintively replied the Professor.

Fortunately for Donovan, the master of
ceremonies had the fight called off, because "the
bad blood engendered might cause serious
injury."

And now REAL money and REAL glory
was beckoning. . . Paddy Ryan, the American
champion, had decided to "take Sullivan on."
The fight was scheduled for February 7th, 1887,
at Mississippi City, Miss. There was to be a
purse of $500, and a side bet of $5,000.

The streets were filled with people. And
hawkers barked the winning colors. Sullivan's
was a white silk handkerchief with a green
border, and Irish and American flags inter
woven. Ryan's, red and blue, with a U. S. shield
in each corner.

At noon Ryan appeared in the ring, to face

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 265

the ever-confident John L. An old overcoat
draped Paddy's white ring drawers. And he
wore long, flesh-colored stockings like a Beef
Trust chorus girl. But the old self-assertive
smile was missing. . . And well it might. For
when Sullivan let out a terrific right, Ryan went
to the mat in just nine seconds. And, though
the fight lasted nine rounds poor Paddy was
badly beaten.

The Strong Boy's return to Boston was a
triumphal march. Hosannas were shouted as
his train stopped at all stations. And when
he reached home, the town went mad. Thou
sands milled around the curbs on Washington
Street, to see him pass in an open barouche.
Buntings hung from the buildings. Bands
blared. And mounted police surrounded the
hero.

At the Dudley Street Opera House he was
presented with "a splendid gold time-piece of
the finest workmanship and a chain to match."

The poets of Boston chanted:

"Thy bards, henceforth, oh Boston

Of his triumph of Triumphs shall sing
For a muscular stroke has added a spoke

To the Hub which will strengthen the ring."

On the wings of Song (and of Bacchus) the
Strong Boy floated rosily along, until he

266 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

met the Englishman Charlie Mitchell, on
March 14th, 1883.

It was during this fight that the incredible
happened. John L. slipped-fell or was pushed
and was off his feet in the first round. It was
only for a moment, and Sullivan arose again to
triumph but the fall rankled for years after
wards.

It was still there tingling in the ends of
those impatient maulees when he met Mitchell
on French soil a year later.

John landed at first in Liverpool Novem
ber 1887 and it was a signal for floral horse
shoes, and blankets of rose-buds. But the Eng
lish did not exactly open their arms to him.
. . They insisted on f 600 duty for the glitter
ing diamond belt that the Police Gazette had
given him, and John resentfully sent it back
home.

His Irish sense of humor, such an asset with
his own country men, did not go so big with
the icy English. On arriving at one of London's
smart hotels, he was conducted upstairs in what
they called a "rising room. . ."

The "rising room" was a creaking elevator
which functioned at a speed of five feet a min
ute, its chains clanking horribly. It ran by
water power.

John L., who was in formal dress, with his

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 267

tall hat in his hand, turned to the other pas
sengerswho stood with frozen faces. He put
a sovereign in the crown of his hat, and passed
it around.

"Let's buy 'em a little more water/' he said.
. . "So we can get up faster/' he timidly ex
plained. But the icy group was not amused.

He fared better in his meeting with Albert
Edward, the Prince of Wales. A credit to Bos
ton, John dressed himself in black, like a parson.

The conversation ran as follows:

His Royal Highness: "I feel as if I had known
you for years, Mr. Sullivan/'

John L.: "I have often heard of you, too.
"Do you often put up the dukes now?"

H.R.H.: "No, I never spar now not with
gloves, or even with bare knuckles. My boy
down at York with the Lancers punches the
bag every morning. And my George, who is
a middy on the Dreadnought, is a regular slug
ger. You see, I am bringing up my boys in
the way they should go."

John L. afterwards reported that the Prince
was "a nice fellow with splendid manners. . .
And when you think of all he has to put up with
in the form of family and education, I would
say he is a splendid all-round sport. You would
be glad to meet him any time, and introduce
him to your family."

268 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The poor Prince was held up to public con
tumely afterwards for associating with prize
fighters. And Queen Victoria is said to have
reproved him by penny post-card.

But John L., in fine spirits, felt so high-
falutin' that he went to visit Amiens Cathedral,
when he reached French soil. He looked up at
the sculptured saints and crusaders, and said:

"Who did you say these plug uglies are?"

"Why John/' replied the on-lookers, "they
are the Crusaders that the people of France
and all Christendom hold in proud remem
brance/'

"Ah no/' said John. "No-I guess they are
the great bruisers of long ago men who fought
their way up with their fists/'

But he was not the one to remain marooned
long in a historic backwater and he turned to
his plans for the fight. "Ill let him have it-
then I'll put him to sleep, and well be back in
Paree an' you boys will be sittin' in my box
at the Follies Begum, or whatever you call
them."

But alas the Mitchell fight was not so easy
as that. Even John's star-spangled tights could
not dispel the drizzling rain and sleet.

"Knock Charlie's head off flatten his pug
nose!" yelled the spectators. . . But as the
rounds went on and on, the badinage ceased

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 269

and it seemed almost as though the fighters were
becoming friends.

"If they were only in our shoes/ 7 gasped
Mitchell, of the yelling spectators and John L.
nodded sympathetically.

Finally, after interminable rounds, a draw
was called and the fighters shook hands. Poor
Mitchell was sobbing. And John L/s hair
looked as though it had turned grey during
the course of the battle whether with the snow
or anguish, the reporters were not sure.

After the fight, as though the weather were
not bad enough the principals were arrested,
and locked up a few hours.

Sullivan was about finished in Europe, after
this fight. But in the United States his star
was riding high.

Listen to the words with which our returning
Atlas is greeted at a banquet in his honor in
New York:

"Our guest tonight has subdued the haugh
tiest King, the champions of two continents.
And carried our star-spangled banner in tri
umph through every conflict."

For John's bout with Jake Kilrain in New
Orleans on July yth, 1889, he is reputed to have
breakfasted as follows:

270 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

A 7 pound sea bass

5 soft boiled eggs

a half loaf of graham bread

6 tomatoes
tea

"It was the last fight that really meant
FIGHT," says a biographer. "Our cellophaned
modern professionals are simply a travesty on
the good Anglo-Saxon word. They are topped
off by cushioned gloves, rubber mouth protec
tors, elastic bands, cold creams and lubricants/'

The fight, with bare knuckles, lasted 75
rounds, and Sullivan was again victor, carrying
off the $20,000 winner-take-all stake, and the
gaudy belt that represented the world's cham
pionship.

Yes, they DID things in those days. And on
the evening of this great and lengthy battle,
Sullivan is reputed to have staged one of the
most glorious drunks of a Bacchanalian career.

But though Sullivan was no cellophaned
modern like Gene Tunney, famed for his
Shakespearean readings he still dabbled in
literature. And if you can scarcely believe it,
hear this tale:

After he was vanquished by Corbett he
opened a saloon, and here, one winter evening,
two college boys found him bending over a
small leather-bound book.

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 271

"So far/' he said, "this book is a piece of
cheese, but every once in a while the boy throws
a crack I myself made years ago. It's by a
lobster called Marcus Aurelius sounds like a
joke to me. I know a Marcus Meyer he lost
$8000 on me at New Orleansbut I never heard
of his writin' a book. But listen he says:

"Fame after life is no better than oblivion."
I said: Get it now or never. Which is snap
piest?"

He turned to another page. "And pipe this.
He said, 'Let nothing be done rashly or at
random but all according to the rules of
art/ . . What the poor slob really meant was
'Straight Marquis of Queensbury Come out
fighting, and no hitting in the clinches/ . .

"And here he is talkin' about a sport named
Sock-rates. That's a good monicker for a prize
fighter Wouldn't the newspaper boys eat that
up?"

Besides turning to literature as a solace after
his Corbett defeat, John chose the stage for a
short time. He played in such fantasies as
A True American, in which he was the hero
who rescued the girl from the wiles of a dastardly
villain. But the audience still longed to see
him "put up the dukes" and such refinements
as he now portrayed did not, somehow, go
with his character.

272 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Then in his final years, he turned to still
another role and one more becoming a Bos-
toman that o Temperance lecturer. . .

In 1905, after taking his final drink, John L.
went on tour to say: "I hit the bottle some heavy
jolts for more than a half a century. But old
John Barleycorn licked me"

His next pious act was to look for a wife
and he found one in Kate Harkins a child
hood sweetheart, who was a devoted companion
and most important an excellent cook. (John
had been duped in his youth into marrying a
chorus girl, Annie Bates, which experience he
described as "a scrap for life, London rules, and
every round a knockdown.")

But his second wife brought contentment
with domesticity, and they settled down in a
farm-house in West Abington. Here he pro
claimed to the press that he was as happy as
J. Pierpont Morgan. , . "J. P. and me we're
both fat, and we can only wear one suit of
clothes at a time, and eat one meal so what's
he got that I ain't?"

And indeed, Katie and John, rambling about
the country-side in a broken-down buggy, were
the picture of bucolic content. What if the
money had mostly leaked away, and the trinkets
of yester-year were pawned? . . . John had
friends by the legion; and neighbors came, to

THE BOSTON STRONG BOY 273

hoe his garden, and leave gifts of chickens and
fresh-laid eggs.

With that high pride that marked him in
money matters, John hid his troubles, so that
his friends were put to some pains to find ways
to help him. But grocers' bills had a way of
being always smaller than the Sullivans feared.
And friends bought at stiff prices, stipulated by
themselves, trinkets from his past that helped
John pay for coal and wood, and the interest on
the mortgage.

The fires of his youth had left a handful of
ashes but John and Katie were as happy as
children. Until, one summer's day, poor Kate-ee
died. And left her broken-hearted John to
linger a little while.

He was sixty when he went. The most color
ful character of his time and he died in loneli
ness and poverty. And when he had gone, men
recalled with lumps in their throats that gal
lant farewell, after Corbett.

"Gentlemen I got one thing to say. . . I remain
your warm and personal friend, John L. Sullivan."

It was the end of an epoch.
"Good old John!" they said.

XII
A PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON

THERE was a girl from Vermont named
Lucinda who wrote a theme about George
Washington for the Boston Sunday Advertiser,
and won first prize in a Washington Birthday
contest. The prize was a hundred dollars, and
five days in Boston, with her mother for chap
eronand me for hostess! I had been at work
about a month, writing obits and club notes,
and I guess they wanted to get rid of me for a
while. Mr. Reardon, the Sunday editor, sug
gested a couple of shows, and the glass flowers
at Harvard.

"Give Lucinda a good time/' he said, and
okayed an expense account. Being a reporter
looked like a bed of roses.

Now Lucinda had never been anywhere, and
neither had her mother. And Mr. Reardon's
little cub had not been anywhere either. "If
the blind lead the blind," sayeth the Bible, "all
shall fall into the ditch." But we didn't. We
fell into the Copley Plaza, with a room apiece
and baths for all, and roses and violets all over

274

His face had New England written all over it

276 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

the place. And we had pie for breakfast, and
chicken a la king for luncheon, and baked
Alaska for dinner. We saw every show in town,
and sat in Peacock Alley until there was no
body left but the bellboys.

To be New England is to get up early and
to make the most of the day. Every morning,
Luanda's mother made the beds and tidied our
rooms. And when the fifth day came, and I
asked her what she wanted most to do, she
said she would like to meet the Governor.

"He comes from up our way/' she said, "and
I'd like that Lucinda should shake his hand/'

I telephoned the paper, and Mr. Reardon said
our State House man would fix it up.

"I'll send a photographer," he said.

The Governor led us to the Hall of Flags.
"We'll have the pictures taken here/' he said.
"Nice background for a patriotic contest girl"

We told him that Lucinda and her mother
were from Vermont.

"Good people Vermonters," he said. "Live
within their income."

When Dick Sears, the photographer, set up
his camera, the Governor gave instructions.
"Talk to me now, Lucinda. Makes a better
picture. More natural."

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 277

"Yes, sir/' said Lucinda. "It's a nice day,
Governor."

"We Vermonters don't talk easily, do we,
Luanda?" he said.

I giggled, and he turned to me. "Come now,
young lady let's hear how you can talk about
nothing. Come get your picture taken."

We shook hands in front of the camera, while
I tried to talk and smile like Mary Pickford.
When Dick printed the pictures, I looked pretty
silly, and the Governor had on his Plymouth
Rock smile.

Dick was the photographer who called Queen
Marie of Roumania Qiieenie. When the Queen
visited Boston, there was a parade, and Dick
was on a scaffolding. "Hi, Queenie!" he yelled.
And when she looked up, he got what he
wanted.

When the Coolidges left Washington to spend
their summer holiday in Vermont, Dick rented
a room across the street, to take pictures for
International News. Dick says that the Presi
dent enjoyed having his photograph taken, and
liked putting on a farmer's smock and haying
hat, for the movies. He frequently smoked a
cigar, but always put it aside for a picture.

"Some cigar-maker might use it for an ad,"
he said.

278 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

When I saw Mr. Coolidge again he was Vice
President. He had come to Plymouth, Mass.,
with President and Mrs. Harding, and he had
on a silk hat and a coat with tails. Beside him
was an aide with glittering epaulets and gleam
ing brass buttons. I stood in the throng before
them, and the Vice President saw me, and sent
his beautiful, shining aide to take me to the
platform.

"I thought you would like to talk with Mrs.
Harding/' he said.

"You are very kind/' I stammered.

"Remembered you liked to talk/' he said.

They used to tell in Washington about the
lady who went to a White House dinner, and
sat at the President's right.

"I've made a bet about you, Mr. President/'
she announced.

"Humph!" grunted the President.

'Tve bet I can make you talk," she declared.

"You lose/' he said.

Then there was the other one about the
social leader who leaned earnestly across the
table.

"And what is your hobby, Mr. President?"
she demanded.

"Holding office/' he muttered.

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 279

Alice Longworth denied that she said the
President was weaned on a dill pickle, but it
was a good line anyhow. Gamaliel Bradford
thought that an Indian ancestry might par
tially account for lack of ready speech among
the Coolidges.

I know a newspaper man who came from
New York after the police strike to get an
interview for his paper. It was late, and Cool-
idge was tired.

"What can I do for you?'' he asked.

"Well, Governor/' said the newspaper man,
"I came for a story, but (palavering a bit) Sir,
I should like to shake the hand of a great
American."

Coolidge extended his hand. "Shake/' he
said. "Goodnight."

His clasp was firm and brief. His eyes were
keen, and he kept his thin-lipped mouth tight
shut. His face had New England written all
over it.

An Associated Press man went to Nor
thampton for a story.

"Is it true, Sir," he asked, "that you pay only
a month rent?"

"Don't print that," snapped Coolidge. "It's

? and they might raise it on me."

When Coolidge was Governor, he lived at
the Parker House, but before that he had a

28o A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

room in the old Adams House, for which he
paid a dollar a day. This was when he was in
the Massachusetts Legislature. The Adams
House was dingy and grim, and a little on the
sinister side. When he got to be Lieutenant
Governor, a friend persuaded him that he
should move into fancier realms. Coolidge
thought it over, and rented a sitting room.
"Cost me another dollar," he grumbled.

Calvin Coolidge was born in a cottage that
was attached to his father's general store and
postoffice. His family on both sides struck its
roots right down into the heart of New England.
They had New England ways of thrift and
self-denial, and worked as hard as their an
cestors. The President's father was a farmer
and a notary public, as well as a store-keeper.
The annual rent of his store and farm was
$40. He made about $100 a month, and saved
most of it. When he retired, he had about
$25,000. The old man talked with a nasal
twang, like his son. And the Coolidge twang
was a Puritan twang.

Lord Macaulay, a hundred years ago, de
clared that: "The Puritan was known by his
gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity
of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 281

nasal twang with which he spoke, and by his
peculiar dialect."

Almost everyone remembers how the Presi
dent announced his decision not to run. It was
in the summer of 1927, in the Black Hills of
Dakota.

"I do not choose to run/' he said. And there
was a great deal of speculation about the word
choose. Yet Governor Winthrop used it in the
same way; and Samuel Sewall, and all the other
Puritans who kept Journals. And so did Sarah
Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book.
Mrs. Hale "did not choose" in practically every
editorial she wrote. It was as much of a Yankee-
ism as the twang the Puritans used.

Senator Capper was a guest at the Summer
White House when the President told news
paper men that he did not choose to run.

Later, the Senator remarked to Mrs. Cool-
idge, "That was quite a surprise the President
gave us this morning/'

Mrs. Coolidge did not know what he was
talking about. The President, by all accounts,
seldom confided in her. She says he did not
think much of her education.

28* A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

When Mrs. Coolidge was Grace Goodhue,
she taught in a school for the deaf and dumb,
on the outskirts of Northampton, where young
Calvin practiced law. They boated and went on
pic-nics, and played whist on Wednesday eve
nings. They became engaged in the summer of
1905, and were married in the fall, and went to
Montreal for a honeymoon.

They had planned to stay a fortnight, but in
a week they were back again. Calvin said they
might as well save a week's spending. They
moved into the old Norwood Hotel, which
was more of a boarding house than a hotel, and
there they stayed until John was born.

Mrs. Coolidge says that her husband pre
sented her with an old brown bag when they
returned from their wedding trip. In it were
fifty-two pairs of socks with holes in them.

"Calvin Coolidge I" she explained. "Did you
marry me to get your socks darned?"

"Nobut I find it mighty handy," he said.

When the hotel closed, the Coolidges bought
some used sheets and pillows cases, and plated
silver-ware that said Norwood Hotel; and they
did the family for years.

When they moved to a place of their own,
Mrs. Coolidge bought a book called Our Home
Doctor. It would be a good thing, she thought,
to have around, with a new baby in the house.

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 283

But she knew that she might be reproved for
her extravagance, so she left it on the table in
the sitting room, and waited for her husband
to say something. A few days later she noticed
a paper in it:

''Don't see any receipt here for curing suck
ers/' she read. "C. C."

There are a hundred anecdotes that news
paper people tell about Coolidge and his mean
ways. There is one about two reporters who
went to his room in the Parker House, and
found Tom W. there. Coolidge unlocked a
bureau drawer, and produced a pint of Rye,
and poured them each a drink. Tom sat on
the side of the bed, and didn't get one.

"You forgot Tom," said one of them.

"Tom's had his," said the Governor, and put
the bottle back where it came from. . . So,
with much retelling, the legends live. But few
tell the truth about the man, and all his grim
and ancient virtues.

When Calvin Coolidge was a small boy, his
mother died, and there was a hired girl to care
for him and his little sister until their Aunt
Sarah came " to live with them. Aunt Sarah
lived in the small white house across the street
that is now a tea room and gift shop.

284 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

When Calvin was six years old, he read the
Bible out loud to his grandfather. When he
was twelve, he worked on Saturday in a Lud-
low toy factory, and opened a savings account.
When he was thirteen, he took the town teach
er's examination, and passed.

Plymouth, Vermont was always bleak, and in
those days it looked very much as it does today,
Calvin was born in the tiny downstairs bed
room of the house that has become a tourist
mecca. After he became President, he had the
house made larger. There is a six-room addi
tion now, a bay window, and a porch. It would
be a simple matter to remove these, and preserve
the house as it was in the beginning the birth
place of the goth President of the United States
the home of five generations of Puritans.

There is an unlovely austerity about the vil
lage of Plymouth. The people are uncom
municative. And there is a great deal of rain
in the valley. But Coolidge loved Plymouth.

When he was in the White House, he wrote,
"Vermont is my birthright. People there are
happy and content. They belong to themselves,
live within their income, and fear no man/'

When Coolidge was Vice President, he came
to New England to visit his father. There was

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 285

no room in Plymouth for the newspaper people
who covered the Coolidge vacation, and most
of them stayed in Ludlow, twelve miles
away.

It was after midnight on a hot Thursday
(August 2, 1923) that an automobile tore
through the sepulchral quiet of sleeping Plym
outh, and stopped at the house where the
Coolidges lived.

The President's father came to an upstairs
window, and called, "What's wanted?"

"President Harding is dead," cried the driver,
"and I have a telegram for the Vice President."

Then there were voices through the house,
and lamps were lighted. Colonel Coolidge came
to the door, and took the message, and the Vice
President came downstairs. The driver of the
car followed the family into the dining room,
and watched the Vice President take a stubby
pencil from the workbasket, and scribble on
a piece of yellow paper.

Then they went into the sitting room. And
the Colonel took the paper, and read it aloud.
It was the oath by which Calvin Coolidge be
came President of the United States. As the
father read, the son repeated, phrase by phrase.
When it was finished, he stooped and kissed the
Bible.

"So help me God," he said.

286 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

It was 2:47 by the clock on the mantle. At
three o'clock the new President blew out the
lamps, and the family went back to bed.

When they got up three hours later, the
street before the house was filled with reporters
and townspeople. After breakfast, the Presi
dent crossed the field where golden-rod and
purple asters bloomed to the little cemetery
where his mother lay buried,

At seven o'clock, he kissed his father goodby,
and left for Washington. There was a deep af
fection between the President and his father.
John Holmes has said:

To be New England is to love so fiercely

That the hand trembles, that the deep eyes ache,

Yet speak of love infrequently, and tersely . . .

The Coolidges were like that, I think.

The next day I went to Washington, and to
the New Willard where the President and his
wife were staying. I was to wire a story every
day 750 words a woman's story. That meant
something about Mrs. Coolidge what she did,
and what she wore, what she had for breakfast,

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 287

and the way she did her hair, how she felt
about being First Lady, and what were her
plans for the winter?

The Coolidges, with all official Washington,
were in mourning. Mrs. Coolidge seldom left
their suite, and when she did she wore black
like a widow. The President had forbidden
her to talk with anyone. Secret service men and
hotel employees got no more than nods out of
her, and I got less than that.

I used to send notes by the chambermaid.
And her secretary would come out, and explain
all over again that Mrs. Coolidge was in mourn
ing, and had nothing to say.

Then I started cultivating the servants-
waiters and maids, and the boys who shined the
President's shoes. And I learned that Mrs.
Coolidge was knitting stockings for her sons,
and darning her husband's socks. I found out
what she read, and what she ate, and what
flowers she liked best, and how many dresses
she had. And every day I wrote my little story.
And when my stint was over, my editor said it
was a fine and lucky thing, the way I knew Mrs.
Coolidge.

The day after Harding died, and the Cool
idges left Plymouth for Washington, young

288 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Calvin, who was fifteen, was working in a
tobacco field in Connecticut.

"If my father was President, I wouldn't be
picking tobacco/' one of the kids said.

"Well, if your father was my father, you
would/' retorted young Calvin.

The next summer the boy was permitted to
spend part of his vacation at the White House.
He got a blister on his toe, playing tennis, and
it became infected. Very shortly he was dan
gerously ill. In his delirium, he imagined that
he was fighting a battle against great odds.

"I surrender/' he cried. "I surrender"
and he turned to his nurse. "Now you say it/'
he whispered. "Say you surrender."

"All right, Calvin," she soothed. "I sur
render."

He caught her hand and smiled. In a little
while he had gone.

About that time I met a girl named Marion
Pollard who was the President's cousin. She
had visited in the White House during the
Christmas holidays before young Calvin died.
And when she told me about it, I wrote a double-
page story for the Newspaper Enterprise Asso
ciation, and split the check with Marion.

Mrs. Coolidge had a birthday around New
Year's, and Marion wanted to give her a present.

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 289

She went in a White House car, with a secret
service man, to a smart shop and asked to see
some lingerie. The manager, who had seen the
official car, suggested sending a selection.

"You can choose at your leisure/' he said,
"and return anything you may not want."

Later that day, a truck drove up to the
service entrance, and delivered a great number
of boxes. The shop had sent a thousand dol
lars' worth of lingerie!

Marion put aside her train fare home, and
counted what was left. Then she chose a $3.95
slip, and wrapped it up for Cousin Grace.

The Coolidges had breakfast at quarter of
eight. The family rooms in the White House
are on the second floor, and it was the custom
to gather in the hall, and go down for breakfast
together.

"Cousin Calvin, watch in hand, was the first
one out/' said Marion. "Cousin Grace would
come a moment later, always smiling. Then the
boys. I was last. Cousin Calvin would look at
his watch.

"Humph!" he'd say. "Quarter of eight,
Marion/'

Sunday morning they had fish cakes and
Boston baked beans.

Everybody had to be there for every meal.

sgo A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Once John wanted to go to a tea dance. He
told his father he would be a little late for
dinner, and might not have time to change.

"You will remember/' said the President,
"that you are dining at the table of the Presi
dent of the United States, and you will present
yourself promptly, and in proper attire." . .
John passed up the dance.

Secretary and Mrs. Hughes came for lunch
eon, and there were oysters. A kitten came trot
ting in from the kitchen, and the President, who
was fond of cats, put his plate on the floor.
Marion says that Mrs. Hughes watched with a
pained expression.

Yankee humor is sometimes dubious. Some
of the President's favorite jokes were with the
servants.

"When the butler passed a dish, Cousin
Calvin would always ask some absurd question/'
recounts Marion. "If he was passed chicken,
he would say, 'What's this ham? 7 And if it
was ice cream, he would ask, 'What's this
tapioca?' And the butler very gravely would
say, Ice cream, Mr. President/ It was a daily
ritual, and Cousin Grace always laughed."

There was a Charity Ball one night, and
Mrs. Coolidge and Grace spent most of the day

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 291

getting ready. The President said that he did
not wish to have them dance. But when Secre
tary Mellon asked Marion for a dance, she
begged, "Oh, please, Cousin Calvin!"

"Nobetter not," said the President.

A few minutes later, he said, "Time to
go/'. . And out they trooped.

John and Calvin junior were waiting when
they returned.

"Time to go to bed/' said the President. . .
And off they went.

Once, at a Vermont rummage sale, Marion
heard Cousin Grace tell about the first time she
heard the President make a speech. Mrs. Cool-
idge imitated him as he said, "We mount the
ladder, rung by rung/'

"His voice was very twangy in those days/*
she said. "Lots worse than it is now. . . I al
ways felt/' she added, "that there was something
prophetic about that speech/'

The salary of the President of the United
States is $75,000 a year, with $55,000 more for
expenses. When Coolidge retiredand his for
tune was estimated at $400,000 he bought from

292 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

the Government a used Lincoln limousine.
This might seem mean to a New Yorker, or
a Westerner, but to most New Englanders it
was plain common sense.

For fourteen years, Coolidge commuted in a
day coach from Northampton to Boston, which
is about a hundred miles. On Saturday nights
when the Governor went home for supper,
they had baked beans and brown bread, and
Mrs. Coolidge often cooked a ham for Sun
day.

Years later, Coolidge exclaimed, ' 'Those
White House hams! They worried me. A big
one would be brought to the table. Mummer
would have a slice, and I'd have a slice. Then
the butler would take it away, and what hap
pened to it after that, I never found out."

One night there was a State dinner at the
White House, and the President went to the
kitchen for a look around.

"Don't see why we have to have six hams/'
he said.

"But, Mr. President, there will be sixty
people," explained the housekeeper. "And
Virginia hams are so small! We can't serve
more than ten people with one ham/'

"Seems an awful lot of ham to me/' muttered
the President.

Shortly after this, the housekeeper departed.

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 293

And the Coolidges sent to Boston for Ellen
Riley a New Englander.

"Wilful waste/' said Miss Riley, "makes woe
ful want" and she made a nice pea soup on a
ham bone.

When Coolidge was in the White House, he
wrote to his law partner in Northampton, ask
ing for interest of $2.12 on two $50 Liberty
Bonds.

When he returned to Northampton, and the
local bank had closed, he came upon his part
ner with his face buried in his arms. Then
Coolidge tiptoed from the room and tiptoed
back again. Over his partner's shoulder he
dropped a check for $5,000.

"Plenty more where that came from," he
said.

The Coolidges bought a house outside Nor
thampton, and called it The Beeches. Then the
President could poke around the kitchen all
he wanted. He loved it and he loved the
garden, and the big rooms to wander through.

One day he ripped the labels from several old
suits and an overcoat, and gave ftiem to his
secretary to sell.

"Take them out of town/' he said, "and don't
let on they're mine/ 1

The secretary got $20 for the lot.

294 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

The ex-President was beset by editors, and
by representatives of advertising firms and finan
cial houses who offered him vast sums of money
for the use of his name. Mr. and Mrs. James
Derieux, representing the Crowell Publishing
Co., went to see him. And Coolidge said to
them:

I should like to go into some kind of business,
but I cannot do it with propriety. A man who has
been President is not free-not for a time anyway.
Whatever influence I might have, came to me be
cause of the position I have held. And to use that
influence in any competitive field would be unfair.
The offers that come to me would never have come
if I had not been President. That means people
are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a
former President of the United States. I cannot
make that kind of use of the office. I cannot do
anything that might take away from the Presidency
any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have
in it.

On the fifth of January, 1933, Mrs. Coolidge
went shopping in the morning. When she came
home, she left her purchases in the kitchen,
and went upstairs with her wraps. The Presi
dent had gone in the bathroom to shave, and
died suddenly while she was out.

PURITAN GOES TO WASHINGTON 295

The funeral was on Saturday. It was a cold,
rainy day. President Hoover was there, and
most of the Judges of the Supreme Court. After
services in the church, the funeral party drove
to Plymouth. It was afternoon when they
reached the burying ground.

There is a little gully in the cemetery and
the press huddled on one side of the gully
while the minister and the mourners stood
about the grave. The minister was a young
man with a beautiful voice, who repeated these
lines because Mrs. Coolidge had asked him to:

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here;
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Goodnight, dear heart,
Goodnight, goodnight.

From across the gully, a photographer set off
a flashlight. There was a plane that had come
down on the ice, to take the plates to Boston
and New York. We wondered how it was
going to lift, to clear the hills. . . Suddenly the
heart-breakingly sad, clear notes of a bugle came
sweetly through the rain. And the plane rose.
And the sun came through the clouds. Mrs.

296 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Coolidge turned from the grave, and put her
hand on John's shoulder. The wind whipped
her black veil from her face. And we remem
bered what her husband had written of her:
"She has borne with my infirmities, and I
have rejoiced in her graces/'

XIII
SNUFF AND HERBS

\ A THEN people nowadays buy snuff, they go
* ^ to a store where the clerk knows what
they want, and lean against the counter, in
back. Then they put their money down, and
wait. And when no one is looking, the clerk
slips them a box.

Taking snuff was fashionable once, and a
universal habit.

"Prince and peasant, lord and lackey,
All in some form took their Baccy."

And most of them took it up the nose.

But now the people who take snuff won't
admit it, and the Pearsons, who own the only
snuff factory in New England, say it doesn't
pay to advertise. The snuff factory has been
in the Pearson family since the days of bomba
zine and bonnets, when dandies bought Red
Top for their ladies and snuff-taking was an
art.

297

298 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Men and women carried little pocket boxes
as elaborate and costly as they could afford.
There were big boxes on drawing-room mantles,
for callers to refresh themselves. And the cus
tom was as social as a cup of tea.

"When tittle and tattle fail,
What helps old ladies in their tale,
And adds fresh canvas to their sail?
A pinch of snuff!"

In taverns and public places guests took a
pinch on the house. Snuff boxes were passed
around like cigarettes. And our great-grand
mothers carried them the way we carry lip
sticks. Nearly everyone took snuff, from the
President of the United States, to paupers in
poor-houses (who got it in rations, and had to
make it last) .

For rich and poor, in peace and strife,
It smooths the rugged path of life.*

In the hills of Byfield, the Snuff Dynasty
flourishes like a green bay tree. And the snuff
factoryin the hands now of the seventh gen
erationis one of the most profitable concerns
of its size in the country.

In the beginning, the Pearsons made cloth
(1640) . Later the cloth mill was turned into

* Newport Mercury.

astounding rage

300 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

a saw mill. When Colonial New England be
came snuff-conscious, the saw mill became a
snuff factory . . . and then the Pearsons made
a fortune.

Sales are furtive today, but brisk in strange
places. Sailors, mountaineers, poor white trash
and old country people buy snuff unashamed,
and buy it by the ton. City people buy it
guiltily. Many persons who cannot smoke in
public (night watchmen, policemen even
judges) take snuff. So do thousands of indus
trial workers. But most of them had rather you
didn't know. And the Pearson promotion
policy is Least said soonest sold.

For three hundred years, snuff played a dra
matic role in the social life of the world. And
now it can't stand up in polite society.

The story that Raleigh brought tobacco to
Queen Elizabeth and so introduced it to Eng
landis just another school book legend (like
the one about the cloak) . The Indians were
using tobacco when Columbus discovered Amer
ica. And Rodrigo de Jerez, the first European
to set foot on Cuban soil, learned to snuff and
smoke like a veteran. When he returned to
Spain, Rodrigo stepped off the boat, with smoke
pouring from his nose and mouth. And the

SNUFF AND HERBS 301

people thought he was minion of the Devil,
and seized him for the Inquisition.

Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, brought
tobacco seeds to Charles V, in 1518. And with
relations as intimate as they were between
England and Spain, Elizabeth must surely have
known the celebrated weed before Sir Walter
arrived with his offering.

It was King James, I think, who gave Sir
Walter the tobacco publicity. James hated Sir
Walter, and he hated tobacco and the King was
a terribly good hater. In his Counterblast, he
called tobacco "a vile, barbarous weed brought
in by a father so generally hated" the father
being Raleigh. A few years later, James took
the opportunity to please both Spain and him
self by executing Sir Walter. Then when James
was dead, men sung a song like this:

Sir Walter Raleigh! name of worth,
How sweet for thee to know,
King James who never smoked on earth,
Is smoking down below.

In 1559 (twenty-seven years before Raleigh
brought tobacco to London) Henry II of
France sent his private secretary, M. Nicot,
to Portugal to see if he could negotiate a mar
riage for Henry's daughter, Marguerite, with
Sebastian, King of Portugal. M. Nicot had no

go* A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

luck, and had to tell Henry that Sebastian was
not interested. To temper the King's dis
pleasure, he brought back a great number of
tobacco plants from the gardens of Portugal
and this is how tobacco came to be called
nicotine.

The French QueenCatherine de Medici-
got M. Nicot to tell her all he knew about the
plant, and she became so fond of it that for a
time, it was called Herbe de la Reine. And
Catherine was known as the Queen of Snuffers.

M. Nicot said that tobacco would cure every
thing from "old Soares to the Kinge's evill, also
Dropsie, Short Breathes, and Ulcers/'

When the Pilgrims came to New England,
the Indians made equally extravagant claims.
The Indians used tobacco (according to the Pil
grims) "for lockjaw, asthma, stomach-ache,
poisoning from arrows, diseases of the heart,
consumption, and carbuncles." And they
smoked, as well as snuffed it.

The Indians could trek for two or three days
with only tobacco to quench their thirst and
hunger. The Pilgrims marveled, but mostly,
refrained and smoked the Pipe of Peace, with
their tongues in their cheeks.

In Russia, Rome and London, snuff was in
very bad repute. The Czar, in 1634, decreed
that for the first offense, smokers should be

SNUFF AND HERBS 303

whipped and for the second, executed, and
all Russian snuff-takers had their noses ampu
tated. . . The Pope (Innocent X) threatened
to excommunicate anyone who took snuff in
Saint Peter's. . . And Charles I, inheriting his
father's prejudices, declared that tobacco was
"a custom lothsome to the eye, hateful to the
nose, harmful to the braine, dangerous to the
lungs, and in the black stinking fumes thereof,
neerest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke
of the pit that is bottomlesse."

The Pilgrims taught their children a verse
and hoped that Charles would hear about it:

Tobacco is an Indian weed,

From the Devil it doth proceed,

It picks your pockets, burns your clothes,

And makes a chimney of your nose.

But before long, the Pilgrim fathers were smok
ing behind the murmering pines and the hem
locks. And the little boys were sneaking puffs
behind the palisades.

Then from England came news of a horrible
discovery. London physicians examining the
brains of dead tobacco smokers had found them
"dried to a sort of dirty membrance, and
clogged with soot"! . . . After that, snuff
seemed safer.

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

New England Puritans, thereafter, took to
carrying what they called nutmeg graters, with
which to grind nutmegs, (they said) to season
food while traveling. Snuff at this time was
pressed into a solid substance, and sold with a
pocket grater. The Reverend George White-
field, the famous revivalist, came from England
to preach during Jonathan Edwards' Great
Awakening. And Mr. Whitefield bought him
self a so-called "nutmeg grater." But on his
death bed, he confessed that it was to grate
snuff with.

Snuff was in ill repute in England until 1702,
when the English fleet seized a Spanish ship
carrying fifty tons of snuff from Havana to
Cadiz. And every sailor got as much as he could
carry. They sold the loot in English ports
for three and four pence a pound, and almost
everybody in the country had a sniff.

Then, suddenly snuff became an astounding
rage and everyone took it, rich and poor. It
was a distressingly dirty habit, until properly
learned. And untidy people went around with
their clothes stained, and their finger nails
dirty. While the elegant beaux and ladies went
to school!

Advertisements in the Spectator tell us that
smart schools introduced courses in snuff cur-

SNUFF AND HERBS 305

riculum, to supplement time-honored instruc
tion in proper use of the fan:

The exercise of the Snuff Box, according to the
most fashionable Airs and Notionsin conjunc
tion with the exercise of the Fan will be taught
with the best plain or perfumed Snuff, at Charles
Lillis's 8c C.

And Pope wrote:

Snuff or the fan supply each pause of chat
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.

Beau Brummel and Prince George endorsed
their favorite brands, and ordered be-jeweled
snuff boxes from their goldsmith. . . And
boxes became the craze of the fashionable world.

Merchant ships from China brought ex
quisite snuff boxes to the ladies of New Eng
landof jade and lapis-lazuli, of jasper, and of
alabaster. And with them were little gold, and
silver, and turquoise spoons, like the Chinese
women used.

The editor of the New England Courant
surveyed such goings-on with horror, and wrote
a poem on the ladies' folly:

To such a height with some is fashion grown
They feed their very nostrils with a spoon!

3 o6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Miniature painters decorated snuff boxes
with portraits. John Hancock had one of his
wife, the lovely Dorothy Quincy and Napo
leon had a dozen of Josephine. Before Na
poleonwho owned hundreds of boxes Pom
padour was said to have more than anyone in
the world and, of course, they were the love
liest. Pompadour never carried the same snuff
box twice. Louis XV had a gold box, for
which Mr. J. P. Morgan, not so long ago, paid
$32,000.

New Englanders were fond of ivory and
tortoise shell boxes from China, and there are
a number of these, with exquisite snuff bottles
(also from China) in the museums in Salem.
Mr. Morgan's collection of snuff boxes in the
Metropolitan Museum is the most valuable col
lection in the world.

There were no matches in the days when
snuff flourished. And smokers had to depend
upon the tinderbox, with its steel, flint and
punk or a candle or ember, to scotch their
noses. When matches were invented, snuff be
came less popular. And it was the old ladies who
hung on longest.

Mrs. Margaret Thompson was an English
woman, but the story of her Snuff Funeral was

SNUFF AND HERBS 307

printed in half the papers of New England,
and probably sold more snuff than ever.

Mrs. Thompson died as she had wished to
live, sneezing like mad. She left a letter, which
she had said was to be read immediately she
breathed her last.

In it she commanded that the six greatest
snufi-takers in the parish be her bearers, wear
ing, each, a snuff-colored beaver hat. Six young
girls were to bear her pall . . . "each to carry
a box of the best Scotch snuff, to take for their
refreshment as they go along. . . And Sarah
Stuart to walk before the corpse, distributing
every twenty yards, a large handful of Snuff,
on to the ground and before the crowd/'

Mrs. Thompson asked that Sarah Stuart (an
"old and trusted servant") cover her body
with the best Scotch snuff ("in which she
knoweth I had always the greatest delight") .
There were to be no flowers, for nothing was so
sweet to Mrs. Thompson as the moldy fragrance
of her precious powder. She was to be buried
completely in it. And Sarah (just to be on the
safe side) was to put half a dozen handkerchiefs
under her pillow.

Snuff is a blend of various pulverized tobac
cos, sweetly scented, and flavored with a num-

3 o8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

ber of things. Old recipes call for powdered
rose petals, cognacs and sherry, extracts of
vanilla, wintergreen, tamarind, and lemon
verbena, grated prunes, port wine lees and stale
old ale, cheese and rose scented vinegar, salt
and soda and cream of tartar.

The Pearsons use the formula of their an
cestors, and buy their flavorings by the hogs
head. And the factory smells like a dusty pot
pourri of musty old ladies and moldy mission
aries. You smell it as you draw near the list
less fragrance of dead roses, and a breath like
fetid toadstools. . . Doughty old ancestors!

O! wasn't it whacky
The way you loved Baccy 1
And weren't you tough
The way you took snuff!

Snuff-users (when they were not snuffing)
chewed roots and seeds. And went to Cheney's
(in pre-Listerine days) for Lovage and Cara
way, to make their breaths sweet.

Cheney's near Faneuil Hall, in Boston is
the oldest herb shop in the country. It was
founded a hundred years ago by an old man
whose grandmother learned herbal lore from

SNUFF AND HERBS 309

the Indians. The ocean came up to Dock Square
then, and clippers tied to the wharf, while the
ships were loaded with New England herbs
for the Old Countries, and slaves unloaded
spices and tea for the carriage trade that pa
tronized the district.

In the herb shop there was a sail loft where
the old man made medicines from the common
weeds of New England. His slogan was: "Na
ture did and always will provide an herb for
every ill." And he sold his concoctions as cure-
alls.

The Indians had told his grandmother about
a tea made from the roots of Lady Slippers that
was a wonderful sedative, and calmed warriors
when they got the jitters; of an infusion brewed
from the roots of Blue Cohosh (which the In
dians called Papoose Root] that made child
birth painless, of bear's fat to make hair grow
on bald heads; and of a decoction of Cowbane
(called Musquash Root) that would make a
woman forever sterile.

And I guess the Indians had something. For
the Herb Shop soon became famous and is still
brewing herbs at the same old stand.

Boston dowagers buy Spring Tonic to purify
their blood; henna to dye their hair; pomander
balls for their closets; potpourri for the parlor,
and spices that smell to heaven. And they buy

3 10 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

them at Cheney's, as their mothers did before
them.

Sachets of heliotrope and violet. Perfumes
distilled from old-fashioned flowers. Job's Tears
and Orris Fingers, for grandchildren to cut their
teeth on. Sage and Thyme and Sweet Marjoram
from New England gardens. Home-made ex
tracts of Vanilla, Almond, and Peppermint.
And Nutmegs garnished with Mace. . . These
our grandmothers bought in days of old. And
we can buy today.

Every spring, Cheney's advertise a tonic made
from the roots of Sarsaparilla, Yellow Dock and
Dandelion; the leaves of Wintergreen; and the
bark of Prickly Ash and Sassafras. The recipe
has been popular with Cheney customers for a
hundred years. It is good, they say, "for what
ails you/'

Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was
(and still is) made from herbs the Indians
usedLife Root, Pleurisy and Licorice Roots,
True and False Unicorn, Black Cohosh, Cam
omile, Gentian, and Dandelion (a corrup
tion of Dent de LionLion's tooth because
French people thought its leaves looked like the
teeth of a lion) . . . Gentian grows on the
mountains of southern Europe; but all the

SNUFF AND HERBS 311

other herbs the Squaws used when they were
carrying babies, or wanted to.

Unicorn was also called Devil's Bite, because
an Indian legend said that the Evil Spirit,
angered that it should cure all disorders, bit
off a piece of the root, and so curtailed its use
fulness. But pregnant women went on chew
ing it, to prevent miscarriages. And since most
of them had babies, it is probable that the Devil
never bit it at all. Ancients called the herb
Unicorn, because of a fancied resemblance in
the root to the horn of the mythical beast. But
in New England we call it Blazing Star.
. Prospective Indian mothers drank a tea made
from the roots of Slippery Elm ("which made
the insides of a woman slippery ") so the pa
pooses had no difficulty putting in an appear
ance. White women who had babies nearly
every year, brewed the roots prayerfullyand
hoped for the best.

Camomile (an herb of the aster family) was
a dear favorite in the Old World, and the Pil
grims were delighted to find it in New England.

To comfort the braine (advised an English phy
sician in 1606) smell Camomile, eat Sage, Wash
measurable, Sleep reasonably, and delight to hear
Melodie and Musick.

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

We hope the Pilgrims slept well. As for Wash
ing, but little can and best be said.*

Nor were they much for Melodic and Musick.
But they set about cultivating Camomile and
Sage. And, to this day, New England sage is
the best in the world although you probably
buy the imported kind, and find it musty.

Sage tea is a pleasant beverage, and was
thought to quicken the senses and memory.
People used to say, "How can a man die in whose
garden Sage grows?"

During plagues in London, the King's pre
ventive dose was Sage with White Wine, Ginger
and Treacle. There was also a perfume of

* I am afraid that someone is going to think I don't care what
I say about the Pilgrims, because my ancestors did not come over
on the Mayflower (and that is why I say such things) The
Captain of the Mayflower was a pirate, by the wayso I shall
quote Charles Francis Adams, descendant of the Puritans. Mr.
Adams says: "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed that
which ranks next to godliness, then judged by nineteenth cen
tury standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth
century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what
they lacked of the former." He adds there was not a bathroom in
Quincy prior to 1820 Quincy was where Mr. Adams's father and
grandfather lived first and sixth Presidents of the United
States. . .

And Alice Morse Earle, authority on early New England,
writes that she must say "In truththough with deep mortifica
tion" that she cannot find, in Revolutionary times, "the slightest
indication of the presence of balneary appurtenances in the
homes of early Americans."

"This conspicuous absence" (laments Mrs. Earle) "speaks
with a persistent and exceedingly disagreeable voice of the un
washed condition of our ancestors/'

SNUFF AND HERBS 313

Angelica roots and White Wine, that "if taken
fasting, your Breath would kill the Plague/'

For a cold stomach, people wore a greene turfe
of grasse> with the green side not the dirt side
next their skin. Like going to bed with a hot
water bag, for they could hardly have worn it
while they were up and about.

For the Megrums and Griefs there were
remedies to Cheare the Hart and Drive Melan*-
choly. Matters ill for the heart were "beans,
peas, sadness, onions, anger, evil tidings, and
loss of friends." Melancholy was a disease that
caused "worms in the Braine and Dross in the
Stomack."

For Passions of the Hart there was an amorous
cup, denounced by the clergy, and made of
damask Rose Petals and Gill-Creep-by-Ground,
an herb of Venus.

Wonderful tales had our fathers of old,

Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars

The sun was the Lord of the Marigold,

Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.

Pat as a sum in division it goes

Every herb had a planet bespoke.

Who but Venus should govern the Rose,

Who but Jupiter own the Oak?

Simply and gravely the facts are told

In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.*

* Rudyard Kipling.

314 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

American Indians used eleven hundred
plants and herbs for medicines and foods. And
the Colonists brought dozens more Saffron
and Rue, Hyssop, Tansy, Wormwood, Sage and
Yarrow, the Mallows, Mayweed, Fennel, Dill
and the Mints. And they are all flaunting
weeds now in every wayside meadow in New
England.

Governor Winthrop brought along a Receipt
Book, to doctor the fold. And for "Ye Plague,
Small-Pox, Poyson or Feavers," the Governor
had a recipe of which the principal ingredient
was toads:

In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many
as you will, alive; put them into an Earthen pott,
so it be halfe full. Cover with a Iron plate, then
overturn the pott, so the bottom may be upper
most. Put charcoals around about it and over it
and in the open ayre, not in a house. Set it on the
fire and let it burne out and extinguish of itself.
When it is cold take out the toades; and in an iron
morter pound them very well ... Of this you
may give a dragme; and let them sweat upon it in
their bedds; but let them not cover their heads;
especially in the Small-Pox.

To cure Deafness the Governor's book said to:

Take Garden Dasie roots and make juyce thereof,
and lay the worst side of the head low upon the

SNUFF AND HERBS 315

Bolster & drop 3 or 4 drops thereof into the Bet
ter ear; this do 3 or 4 days together.

The Indians had better medication than
that. And it is probable that they knew more
than most white doctors, for country physicians
two and three hundred years ago studied
less than the Medicine Men.

A doctor's training consisted in riding around
with an old, established physician caring for
his horse, sweeping his office, and running his
errands. Gathering, drying and grinding his
herbs, and mixing his plasters. By and by, the
helper applied for a license. And then he was
a doctor too! In Northampton, in Jonathan
Edwards' day, physicians were paid six pence
a visit, and eight pence in Revolutionary times.
To let blood, or pull a tooth (and split the
jaw) cost the sufferer eight pence extra and
no wonder the doctors bled when they dared.

Colonial women did considerable doctoring.
But they did it quietly, for the Puritan fathers
didn't trust them. And only midwives were
permitted to practice in a big way. In the old
Burying Ground in Charlestown, Mass., there
is the tomb of a midwife who:

"By ye blessing of God has brought into this world
above 30,000 children."

3 i6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

We hope she gave their mothers Slippery Elm.

Anne Hutchinson had an English herb
garden, and prescribed for the neighbors. But
Margaret Jones (also of Boston) used Indian
herbs. . . And Mrs. Jones accomplished such
cures, that she was hanged for a witch!

The records of her trial and hanging have
been destroyed, but we know that Governor
Winthrop presided. And the charge against
her was that, with simple medicines, she worked
miraculous cures. This was considered proof
of her diabolical power. And she was hanged
on the Common.

Governor Winthrop tells us (in his Journal)
that on that day there was "a very great tempest
in Connecticut which blew down many trees/'
Also her husband (having buried his wife,
poor soul) went aboard a ship for Barbados
and there was another storm!

Naturally, Mr. Jones was arrested. But I
cannot tell you what happened to him, because
the Governor doesn't say.

Whether it is true or not, New Englanders
love the story of Joe Pye, the Indian medicine
man, who cured the Pilgrims with Boneset.
When we pass purpled fields, we see Joe Pye
coming through the tall grass and the golden-

SNUFF AND HERBS 317

rod, with the purple flowers in his arms. Some
People call the flowers Queen-of-the-Meadow,
but Joe Pyeweed is the name we like best.

Children gather Joe Pyeweed, and take great
bunches to village store keepers to barter for
candy. When the plants are dried, the store
keepers send them to town to sell to Cheney's,
where the blossoms are powdered and the roots
macerated. Blossoms and roots are then steeped
and the resulting infusion is Boneset Tea
guaranteed (practically) to cure any fever
(almost) .

Another remarkable weed is Echinacea
(Indian Head-root or Nigger-head) , a power
ful drug, and an American cure-all for nearly
three hundred years, Indians scraped the root,
and used it as treatment for hydrophobia, insect
and snake bites. And the colonists did the same.

The fame of Echinacea spread West. And,
after many years, Dr. Meyer of Pawnee City,
Nebraska, concocted a mixture of Echinacea,
Wormwood, and Hops that he called Meyer's
Blood Purifier.

After experimenting for some time, the
Doctor let a rattlesnake bite him, bathed the
bite with his tincture, swallowed a spoonful of
it, and went to bed. When he awoke, the

gi8 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

swelling had disappeared, and he sat down and
wrote a letter to Professor John King.

The Professor (compiler of King's American
Dispensary] says:

Dr. Meyer offered to send me a rattler eight
feet long that the antidotal influence of his Puri
fier upon dogs, rabbits, etc., bitten by the serpent
might be tested. But having no friendship for the
reptile, and being unaccustomed to handling rat
tlers, I courteously declined the generous offer.

The drug, as was customary in those days,
promptly developed into another cure-all. And
physicians up to 1 909 substantiated, to a large
degree, the dramatic claims of its high pressure
salesmanwho died a very rich man.

Mints perfume the air at Cheney's. There
is the lovely smell of dry herbs. And sweet
syrups tinct with cinnamon. Sandalwood and
spices and Persian roses. Lavendar and helio
trope and catnip and spearmint. . . And the
clerks fill three hundred prescriptions a day of
everything you can thing of from Spanish flies
to cods' livers. (Cods' livers are the old-fash
ioned way of taking cod-liver oil and "will re
store them that has melted their Grease/')

At Cheney's they believe in herbs as the

SNUFF AND HERBS 319

Indians did. And everybody who works in the
store drinks infusions, nibbles Meetin' Seed,
and experiments (on the side) with bear grease
for his bald spot.

In old New England herb gardens there grew
three plants called Meetiri Seed Fennel, Dill,
and Caraway. And every summer Sunday,
nearly everyone carried bunches of the seeds
to Meeting to nibble through the long prayers
and sermon.

The good people imagined that the herbs
would help them stay awake. And they also
thought they would keep them from hiccough
ing. Hiccoughs must have been a common
malady in those days, because I have found so
many old formulas for curing them. Cotton
Mather suggested dried spiders.

When you know that Judge Sewall preached
for two and a half hours once, you wonder why
everybody didn't throw their seeds away, and
take a nap because the Judge wasn't a minister
at all, but only a guest conductor and when he
got through, the minister started!

XIV

NEWPORT AND THE FOUR
HUNDRED

TA7HEN Ward McAllister was helping Mrs.
* * William Astor with the invitation list for
her mid-summer ball at Newport in 1891, he
pared the list to four hundred, because the
Astor ballroom was not a particularly large one
(as Newport ballrooms go) . And four hun
dred was about all it could comfortably hold.
His stint accomplished, Mr. McAllister took a
Pullman Palace car to New York, and had
dinner at the Union Club. And there he told
a reporter the story of the list.

''Now there are only four hundred people
in society," boasted Mr. McAllister.

The phrase appeared next day in the World,,
was caught up by the newspapers, and passed
into the idiom of the language.

This chapter is going to be about the Four
Hundred and the most Scandalous of their

320

God smiled on the evil livers

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Goings-On. And it is also going to be about
the Founders and Merchants and pre-Revolu-
tionary Tourists. But I shall go into reverse,
and start with the Four Hundred, because I
think the Belmonts and Harry Lehr are more
interesting than Governor Coddington and
Nicholas Easton or even Cuffy Cockroach.

Playboy Harry Lehr was a penniless climber
from Baltimore who had good social con
nections, though his father was in trade (Mr.
Lehr imported snuff) . And Harry adored
luxury and ease, and would rather be a lily than
a snuff merchant. He attracted attention by
his performances in the Paint and Powder
Theatricals, in which he was always the Lovely
Princess. And he was invited to a Newport
house party, where his amiability and beautiful
manners so charmed the ladies, that his future
was assured.

The story of Newport is the Success Story of
the Four Hundred, and the Sad Story of the
Also Rans. To be in Society may be merely a
bore. But to be out of it (if you want to be in
it) is simply a tragedy.

Harry (King) Lehr's advice to the socially
ambitious (from whom he sometimes accepted
fees) was extremely valuable. For Harry had
made Society his glittering bride, and aspiring
new-comers hung on his golden words.

THE FOUR HUNDRED 323

"Avoid Newport like the Plague until you
are certain that you will be acceptable/'
counseled King Lehr. "If you don't, it will be
your Waterloo. Above all, don't t^ke a house
and launch out giving parties. Try to get in
vited for a week or two on someone's yacht,
as an experiment to see whether you are a success
or not. In this way, you will leave a retreat open.
And you can always pretend that the climate
does not suit you and go back to New York,
without everyone witnessing your defeat.."

The cruelty meted out to unsuccessful
crashers is set forth in the autobiography of
King Lehr's wife (Elizabeth Drexel) , whom
the Playboy married for her money.*

Dire indeed (says Mrs. Lehr) was the fate of
those who were not * 'acceptable/' for in so small
a community there was no escape. Every week
their humiliation increased, as one after another
the all-powerful Queens of Newport ignored their
existence. Balls and dinners every night but
not for them. Bathing parties on Bailey's Beach,
yachting at Hazard's and both these sacred places
closed to them. Their men were not permitted to
join the Reading Room or the Casino Club. Their
women had not the entree to a single drawing-
room. They might play an admirable game of ten
nis, their thoroughbreds might carry off the best

* King Lehr and the Gilded Age, by Elizabeth Drexel Lehr.

324 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

prizes at the horse show. . . In other places these
distinctions would have availed them something,
but never in Newport. They could only sit in the
palatial villa they had so rashly acquired, and accept
their defeat. They seldom had the temerity to
last out the season. A month of ostracism would
send them over to the less aristocratic but more
hospitable pastures of Narragansett.

The wedding of the multi-millionaire Miss
Drexel and Newport's Beau Brummel was the
sensation of the summer of 1901. But until
Beau Brummel died and his widow told the
story of their marriage, Society did not guess
that King Lehr hated the beautiful girl he
married.

On their wedding night he told her brutally
that he had married her for her money. And
that he did not intend to keep up any farce of
love or sentiment. He had given the servants
instructions that he would have supper that
night in his own roomand there was to be no
misunderstanding about future nights.

"I can never love any woman," he said.
"Women are repulsive to me/'

His mother, he declared, was the only per
son for whom he had ever cared. Now the
Drexel fortune would keep her in comfort, and

THE FOUR HUNDRED 325

provide luxuries for himself. In exchange for
it he would be in publiceverything a de
voted husband should be.

"I can school myself to be polite and attentive
to you, and that is all/' he said. "The less we
see of one another except in the presence of
others the better."

The bride drenched her lonely pillow with
tears (she says) . . . And then swallowed her
pride, and spent the rest of her life writing
checks. And Harry beaued her around for
twenty-eight years, and was Society's Golden
Boy to the day he died.

He went shopping with all the great ladies
of Newport, and wrote in his Diary:

Oh, if only I could wear ladies' clothes; all silk
and dainty petticoats and laces! How I should love
to choose them! ... I love shopping even for my
wife.

Harry loved shopping. And Oliver Belmont
loved horses. And old, mad Mr. Garret loved
make-believe.

Mr. Garret, President of the Baltimore and
Ohio, had a curious delusion that he was the
Prince of Wales. The Four Hundred thought
he should be put away, and said so plainly.

A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

But Mrs. Garret said he had worked all his life
to earn a fortune and why shouldn't he spend
it as he pleased?

So she had their house turned into a little
Court of England. She hired an expert from
London to give her pointers. And rented a
staff of actors to impersonate gentlemen-in-
waiting, Cabinet Ministers, and foreign Am
bassadorsand the expert passed on their
costumes. She had copies made of each medal
and decoration worn by the Prince of Wales,
and uniforms made of the principal regiments
of every power in the world. So that Mr. Garret
could don the proper scenery to meet his visiting
Ambassadors.

Every day Mrs. Garret dressed herself up
like the Princess of Wales, and spent the morn
ing discussing affairs of state, or anything else
the Prince felt like discussing. When guests
came, they were announced as courtiers, or
visiting Americans with letters of introduction
from the Ambassador.

The poor old make-believe Prince dispensed
a thousand royal courtesies and died with his
Crown on the bedside table.

There are many splendid stables in Newport,
but the most magnificent was Belcourtthe

THE FOUR HUNDRED 327

stable-palace of Oliver Belmont. Where the
horses lived on the first floor and the family
lived over the stable!

In the great salon on the second floor Mrs.
Belmont, Society's Rights-For-Women cham
pion, entertained suffragists from all over the
country. And, if they hadn't heard about the
Belmont penchant for stables, the suffragists
must have been pretty surprised to see two
stuffed horses in the drawing-room. They were
Mr. Belmont's favorites, and when they died,
he could not bear to have them made into
mucilageor buried like humans. So he had
them stuffed instead. And on each of them he
placed the figure of a man in armor. . . At
the other end of the drawing-room was a hand
some organ the finest in Newport.

Once Mr. Belmont went to a ball, wearing
one of his suits of mail. And it was so heavy,
he collapsed, and had to be carried back to
the stable.

His horses had morning clothes, afternoon
clothes, and evening clothes. And their most
elaborate outfits were of fine white linen, with
the Belmont crest embroidered in threads of
gold.

The Belmont servants wore red plush
breeches, silk stockings, and powdered wigs,
After dinner coffee was served by a giant

328 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

African in Oriental costume, glittering with
gems. And all the footmen were six feet tall,
and handsome as the Pope's Swiss Guards.

Belcourt is of gleaming white marble and
more like a palace, of course, than a stable. It
has a marvelous staircase that is a copy of the
one in the Musee de Cluny, and naturally the
Belmonts were pretty proud of it. Once, when
Mrs. Belmont was entertaining at luncheon, a
sight-seeing bus stopped in front of the Palace,
and she told her guests to listen to what the man
with the megaphone was going to say.

"The dreadful creature always talks about
our staircase/' she said.

So the ladies put down their forks and stopped
their talkingand this is what they heard:

"Here Ladies and Gents, you see before you
the new home of a lady who is much in the
public eye a society lady who has just been
through the divorce courts. She used to dwell
in marble halls with Mr. Vanderbilt. Now she
lives over the stables with Mr. Belmont."

Above the ocean, and along the famous Ten
Mile Drive are the estates of the millionaires-
mansions as big as hotels, turreted castles and
gardens that rival Versailles. Here the solid
Mrs. Astor ruled, and the ambitious Mrs. Fish,

THE FOUR HUNDRED 329

and Mrs. Ogden Goelet, who entertained the
Grand Duke Boris. Vanderbilts and Morgans,
Drexels, Whitneys, and Goulds. . .

George Gould, incidentally, who was one of
America's richest men, married a chorus girl,
who was the only chorus girl, I think, who ever
made Newport Society, even though she didn't
live there.

Mr. Gould had a marriage bed made for his
bride with knots and lover's hearts on the
headboard, and eight cupids on the footboard.
After a while, they put it in the guest room, and
Mrs. Gould used to say, "I'll never forget my
feelings the first time I saw that bed. I just
knew I'd have eight children if I slept in it!"
And so she did.

Schoolrooms occupied a whole wing of
Gould's Georgian Court, and there were no
better educated children in the world than the
chorus girl's brood. At seventeen, Vivien (who
became Lady Decies) wrote Greek poetry, and
spoke five languages like five natives. Mrs.
Gould brought an exchampion boxer over from
England to teach the boys to box. She imported
a ballet instructor for Vivien. And built a house
on the estate for Jack Forrester, the English
tennis champion, who came from London to
coach the children in tennis.

S3 o A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Newport has always loved sport. Back in the
eighties, ladies played croquet in picture hats,
with trains and ruffled petticoats. When croquet
went out, riding came in, and the girls all had
two saddles one for the right, and one for the
left of the horseso they wouldn't get lop-sided.

Men played polo on roller skates, and rode
bicycles with enormous wheels in front, and
little ones behind. In 1873 the first lawn tennis
court in America was built in Newport. And
men in blazers and knickerbockers, with long
woolen stockings and gay cravats, played for
the National Championship. In the eighties
there was a Bicycle Meet the first in America.
And in 1899 there was an Auto Meet. Each
horseless carriage had a name, and several
daring dowagers drove their own. A nice little
number with silver carriage lanterns, called
Puff-Puff, rattled off with first prize. Then
there was golf. The first Amateur National
Championship in America was held in Newport.
And so was the first Automobile Race.

The Automobile Race was on Second Beach.
Timid ladies sought refuge in the sand dunes,
as the monsters tore by at fifteen and twenty
miles an hour. Racers wore dusters and huge
goggles and the ladies swathed themselves in
colored chiffon veils.

International Yacht Races are held off New-

THE FOUR HUNDRED 331

port. And Newport's yachts are the grandest
in the world.

Society bathes itself on Bailey's Beach, and
always has. For grande dames do not fancy rub
bing elbows or knees with townies and tourists.
Debutantes wear practically nothing these days.
But their grandmamas bathed in corsets and
stockings, and carried their parasols in the
surf. And Mr. Van Alen always wore his
monocle and a stiff straw hat.

There are three sets in Newport and three
parts to the town. The old city with its crooked,
narrow streets belongs to the townies, who
haven't much use for the summer people. The
military and naval sets keep to themselves, and
won't play with the civies. Society, aloof for
years, is pretty democratic now. But Society is
not what it used to be and probably never will
be again.

Newport became Society's Holy of Holies
in provincial times, when planters came from
the Indies to spend their summers in a moderate
climate. Sailing vessels took weeks to reach the
Indies. And now we can fly, between breakfast
and tea. But the islanders felt close to the people

332 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

of Newport, and they visited back and forth
like neighbors.

In Saint Croix there was (and still is) a
Jewish family named Lopez. And there were
Lopezes in Newport. The Newport Lopezes
were also Jews, who had fled from the inquisi
tion in Spain, and established the spermaceti
business in Newport. Soon they owned ships,
and before long they were very rich. Then
Moses Lopez of Saint Croix married Maria
Lopez of Newport.

There was no newspaper on Saint Croix, but
on Saint Kitts there was an enterprising sheet,
for which Alexander Hamilton wrote. * And in
an ancient copy, yellow with age and fallen
half to pieces, I found this verse, commemorat
ing the Lopez wedding:

Her Beauty, Innocence and Truth
United to bless the happy Youth.
And in return, she too shall find
Sound Judgment, Reason, Sense Refined
In him are happily Combined;
Which with 5,000 pounds a Year
Are well bestowed upon the Fair.

Jews, Catholics and Quakersexcluded from
other New England colonies were made wel
come in Rhode Island. The Newport settle-

* Ports of the Sun Houghton Mifflin Co.

THE FOUR HUNDRED 333

ment was founded by exiles who were de
termined to be broad-minded, for they them
selves were refugees from the wrath of the Bay
Colony Puritans.

When Roger Williams preached in Plymouth
that every man had a right to worship as he
pleased, the ministers ordered Mr. Williams
back to England. Instead, he fled to his friends,
the Narragansett Indians. And after a while,
with five companions, he founded a settlement
named Providence, in Rhode Island.

Two years later, Anne Hutchinson, exiled
from Boston, reached Rhode Island, accompa
nied by her family, and pretty dependent on
Mr. Williams.

At about the same time a little group of
Antinomians, also from Massachusetts, begged
his hospitality. Antinomians believed that
faith was enough to warrant salvation, re
gardless of adherence to the Laws of God, as
set forth in the Ten Commandments. Massa
chusetts ministers, intent on enforcing their
own interpretation of God's will, longed to
destroy the defiant Antinomians, who decided
that it would be healthier to move. When they
reached Providence, Roger Williams negotiated
for them the purchase of the little island of
Aquidneck (Isle of Peace) for twenty-three
broadcloth coats, thirteen hoes, and two torkpes

334 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

(but nobody knows what torkpes were) . The
Indians obligingly moved out, and the refugees
moved in f Their first settlement was at the in
land village of Pocasset, which they rechristened
Portsmouth.

A few months later Nicholas Easton, with his
sons Peter and John, decided to take up fishing,
and move nearer the sea. They sailed around
the island, and into what is now called Newport
Harbor. There they climbed the steep hill
that sheltered the landlocked bay.

And it was so beautiful, they all cried,
"Zounds! " (which signified great approval) .

Then Nicholas said, "Sons, I think this is
pretty swell" (or words to that effect) . . . And
the Eastons moved to Newport.

More exiles came and then emigrants from
over-seas. Governor Coddington sent to Eng
land for horses and sheep to breed. Farms were
planted. And ship building begun. They sent
their wool to France, for linen. And their fine
horses they sent to Barbados. They shipped fish
and beef and pork. And their exported dairy
products were the best in the New World.

Commerce with the West Indies flourished.
And triangular trade was established between
Newport, Barbados and Africa rum from New
port, for slaves in Africa, for sugar and molasses
in Barbados, for more rum in Newport.

THE FOUR HUNDRED 335

Things were going so well with Rhode Island
that the other Colonies were pretty sore. And
the governor of Connecticut, sailing for Eng
land, carried a tattling letter from the people
of Plymouth to the Lords of Trade:

Rhode Island is (pardon necessity's word of
truth) a rodde to those who love to live in order.
. . They make the Indians scorn religion by
working and drinking on the Lord's Day; on which
they made some of them a great Canoe; and called
it Sunday by the name of the day on which they
made it. . . Rhode Island is a refuge also for
evil Livers. . .

The Lords of Trade read the complaint and
laughed, I think for wicked Rhode Island was
shipping choice slaves to London, and some
very good rum.

Our old friend Cotton Mather called New
port a "receptacle for the convicts of Jerusalem
and the outcasts of the lands." John Winthrop
wrote in his Journal: "Concerning the Islanders,
we have no conversing with them, nor desire
to have/' And after Mrs. Hutchinson went to
Newport, the ministers referred pleasantly to
the town as "that sewer/'. . Still Newport
was doing all right. And God smiled on the
evil livers.

Merchants and masters held that by rum and

33 6 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

slave traffic they were serving the Lord, since
negroes had souls to save and God knew there
was no salvation in Africa.

On Sundays following the arrival of a slaver,
ministers thanked God for His finger in the
pie. And their pious prayers were wafted on
high:

Oh God, we thank Thee that an over-ruling
Providence has been pleased to bring to this land
of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to
enjoy the blessings of Gospel dispensation.

There were pews for the slaves in the back of
every Church, boarded up securely with only
peep-holes, to look on God.

But Newport was good to its blacks. And
when Emancipation came, the freed slaves
begged to stay with their masters, for a roof in
their old age, and a corner in the family bury
ing ground when they should die. And one of
them Cuffy Cockroach, renowned for his turtle
soup became a famous caterer.

Newport was one of the first fashionable
watering places in America. Packets ran from
Newport to Charleston and Savannah. Southern
planters brought their families to meet the
merchant families of Newport. And on the

THE FOUR HUNDRED 33?

Promenade, as if it were in Europe, men took
off their hats to one another.

Planters from the Indies came to escape the
summer heat of their tropical islands. Some
times they left their children, to go to school
with the sons and daughters of the merchant
princes whose ships set sail from Newport's
strange little wharves for all the world.

It was said that Newport was the healthiest
place in the world. Oldtimers boasted that
they were "preserved in Newport salt/' The
air was a positive cure for insomnia. And
doctors declared that no teething infant ever
died in Newport.

People talked of the "amusement cures/' It
was possible, the ladies said, to do more in a
day in Newport than one could do in three days
in Jamaica or jour in Barbados! They danced
all night, and bathed in the morning. And
every afternoon they drank tea. It was what
they used to call "a nice wholesome kind of a
time/'

George Washington visited Newport twice,
and found it salubrious and delightful. After
which he sent his nephew with this note to the
Governor:

Sir, my nephew who will have the honor of pre
senting this letter to you, has been in bad health
for more than twelve months, and is advised to

338 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

try the climate of Rhode Island by his physicians.
Any courtesy which you will be kind enough to
show him will be thankfully acknowledged by
Sr, yr Most Obe. Serv't.,

Go. WASHINGTON

An Englishman visiting Newport published
a Travel Diary in which he declared that "The
town is as remarkable for pretty women as
Albany is for plain ones/'

Timothy Williams, a Harvard boy who came
to see his chamber-mate, admired the "fair
complexion of the females" but noticed "a
particular Rhode Island air in manner and de
portment/' In other words, I guess Timothy
found the girls a little stiff.

* # * * # * *

Between slaves, rum and privateering, many
fortunes were made. And then Newport was
gayer. The Jews, who knew how to get more
oil out of a whale than had ever been got before,
became enormously rich, and prodigal with
their wealth. Beautiful churches were built,
and the first Synagogue in America. The evil
livers continued to prosper, Newport became a
greater harbor than New York, and the Bay
Colony Puritans found it difficult to understand.

Then came the Revolution and all scores
were evened The British occupied Newport

THE FOUR HUNDRED 339

harbor, and commerce nearly perished. Sir
James Wallace demanded supplies for the fleet.
And when they were refused, he threatened to
burn the town. Then the people fled to
Tiverton.

The French fleet came into the harbor, to
help the poor little fleet of Newport. And be
tween one fleet and another, trade was killed
and could never be revived.

Five hundred buildings were destroyed.
Churches became stables and barracks. And
trees were cut for fuel. . . It took Newport a
long time to get over the Revolution.

But by 1850 the summer people were drifting
back. If the boarding houses were filled
when they arrived, they bought a piece of
land, and had a cottage built within a fort
night. Then they were known as the Cottage
Colony.

Life was appallingly simple. There was one
livery stable, and in the morning mothers drove
with their children on Easton's Beach or the
West Road. They had an enormous dinner at
two, and after tea at six, the ladies played a
quiet game of whist without stakes. And they
went to bed at nine-thirty.

Beginning in 1854, there was a mid-summer
ball at the Ocean House. People lived simply
in their cheap little cottages. . . And it wasn't

340 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

until Mrs. August Belmont came to town, that
things began to hum.

The Belmonts closed their great place on
Staten Island, and built By-the-Sea on Bellevue
Avenue the first show place in town. Other
New Yorkers followed suit. And then along
came Ward McAllister, with his clam chowders
and his champagne picnics.

The ladies wore their white kid gloves to the
chowder parties, and afternoon frocks of lace
and sprigged muslin, with velvet sashes, and
picture hats.

When the picnics palled, Mr. McAllister in
augurated cotillions, and barn dances. "Tea
houses" became popular, and afternoon "danc
ing receptions/'

The sensation of Newport's first smart season
was M. Michele Corne, an Italian painter who
ate love apples! The vines had been cultivated
as hot house plants, and used for decoration.
But they were thought to be deadly poison, and
lots of people were afraid to have them in the
house (especially if there were children
around) .

But M. Corne sprinkled a little salt on one,
one day and took a chance. He lived there
after to an extremely old age. And when he

THE FOUR HUNDRED 341

died, they put a monument over his grave in
the Newport cemetery that says:

"The First Man to Eat a Tomato Michele
F. Corne."

When Ward (Oracle) McAllister got too old
to dance, he wrote a book called Society as I
Have Found It, in which he answered various
questions that perplexed the Smart Set.

As for the proper way of introducing a young
girl "not well supported by an old family con
nection" (I hate to tell you this -I'm afraid your
girl won't have a pony to her name) . Mr. Ward
says:

"She must have a pair of ponies (a pair,
mind you!) , a pretty trap, a well-gotten-up
groom, and Worth to dress her." Personally,
Mr. McAllister would not vouch for a girl with
less.

After Ward McAllister came Harry Lehr
and in Harry's day there were such affairs as
never were before. . . Why, even the Grand
Duke Boris said the Czar would get the surprise
of his life if he knew what was going on in
Newport.

342 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

"In Imperial Russia we have never seen such
luxury/' said the Prince (who was staying with
Mrs. Ogden (Widow) Goelet at Ochre Court] .
"It is like walking on gold."

A hundred carpenters would work for weeks
building a pavilion or a miniature theatre for
one night's entertainment. Whole companies
traveled from New York and theatres were
closed that Newport might see a musical
comedy, or the Ballet Russe, in its own back
yard.

A single ball cost $100,000 and some of them
cost more. Mrs. Pembroke Jones, interviewed
by a society reporter, declared she set aside
$300,000 out of her house-keeping allowance
for Newport's two month social season. (Mrs.
Jones had to budget madly poor thing.) And
all the neighbors tried to keep up with the
Joneses!

Hostesses, assisted by Harry Lehr, gave
Monkey Parties and Servant Parties and Dog
Parties and a party where Harry Lehr im
personated the Czar of Russia.

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish was a socially ambitious
woman who ran around in circles. She was a
successful hostess, and extremely popular. But
she wore herself out trying. And when she died,
her husband had these lines engraved on her
tomb:

THE FOUR HUNDRED 343

Her life was turning, turning,

In mazes of heat and sound,

But for peace her soul was yearning,

And now peace laps her round.

After the World War, peace lapped Newport
round. . . Some of the Four Hundred went
to work John Jacob Astor's father-in-law drove
a taxicab. Some rented their estates, some sold
them. . . And now there is a general flavor of
mild decay along the Avenues. God rest the
Four Hundred!

XV

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT-GOOD
GOD, LET'S EAT!

I suppose none of us recognize the great part
that is played in life by eating. . . Probably the
table has more devotees than love; and I am sure
that food is much more generally entertaining than
scenery.

ROBERT Louis STEVENSON

]V[EW ENGLAND food is homely and
-*"^ hearty plain and plenty. Baked Beans
and Brown Bread and Fish Cakes. Clam
Chowder, Red Flannel Hash, and Johnny Cake.
Indian Pudding and Pork Apple Pies.

Pies for breakfast, and fish for supper. Beans
on Saturday, out of the pot. Beans warmed-
over, to make them hot with fish cakes for
breakfast, and cold meat for supper.

I had my first baked beans on the end of
a toothpick tid-bits from my grandfather, be
fore I could talk. Mother tried to retrieve

344

'7n Holland, Prussia, Russia, France and England. . "

346 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

them, but she pounced too late. I am reported
to have swallowed hastily, smiled seraphically,
and emitted my first greedy word.

"More!" I said.

Hostesses (with plenty of food on hand) say
it is a pleasure to watch me eat and that makes
it unanimous. Pleasuring hostesses gets a girl
a lot of invitations, and ruins her figure.

In the interests of pure research, I baked a
pot of beans yesterday (let the pounds fall
where they may!) , three loaves of brown bread,
and an Indian Pudding just brushing up. Be
cause I am going to give you some recipes in a
minute, and I don't want anyone saying I copied
them out of a book.

When I was so small I had to stand on a chair
to reach, I blew on the beans every Saturday
morning, to see if they were done. My bean
training, you see, goes back a long way. It is
true that nowadays I usually open a can, doll
the beans up, and let them go. But I learned
the hard wayand our veteran bean pot is an
heirloom now.

In Colonial New England, the Sabbath began
at sundown Saturday, and ended at sundown
Sunday, In Boston there was a law that no
woman could cook, clean house, or make beds on

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 347

Sunday (oh untidy Bostonians!) . On Saturdays
then, housewives had to cook enough to last
thirty-six hours. This was when they thought
up Indian Pudding which was also called Hasty
Pudding, because they ate it in a hurry, between
sermons. By and by, they thought up Baked
Beans and Brown Bread. And they all stayed
hot for two days.

Fish was an e very-day dish; and in the last
three hundred years we have learned a number
of very grand ways of cooking it. Some people
don't think much of fish Ogden Nash, for in
stance.

Mr. Nash says:

"The pallid cod and the finnan haddie
Merely irk this carnivorous laddie."

Mother had an old beau who sent her finnan
haddie, which we children thought a very in
delicate attention. And we called it fin and
handy., because we thought that was its name.

"How oft I think I do not wish
Ever again to feed on fish/' sighs Mr. Nash.

I bet he never had a New England Clam
Chowder.

"Fish are relished by other fish,
Seagulls thinks them a savory dish,

348 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

But I will take them if taken at all,
Mounted and hung on a barroom wall." *

Not a lobster, you won't, you carnivorous
laddie!

We tear lobsters in New England, in rearing
stations, and we are not going to have any fish-
haters making bric-a-brac of them.

The lobster industry in New England is on
the way to oblivion, and the only way it can be
saved is by doing a horrid thing to lady lobsters.
Last year the State of Maine bought thousands
of seed lobsters, and punched them. The punch
released the eggs, and didn't hurt the prospective
mothers. A lobster lays thousands of eggs a
year, but only a few survive. In the rearing
station, the seeds are coddled along, and eventu
ally planted to grow, and be caught.

Cape Cod used to furnish lobsters pretty
exclusively. And the Pilgrims ate them by the
ton. In 1740 lobsters were selling in the Boston
market for three pence and some of them are
said to have weighed twenty-five pounds. By
the middle of the eighteenth century, the sup
ply began to give out. Then virgin beds were
tapped off the northern coast. And now we
get our best lobsters from Maine.

*7'm a Stranger Here Myself, by Ogden Nash, Little,
Brown & Co,

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 349

Clams come from our five sea-side states.
And the best oysters come from Cotuit, on Cape
Cod.

Clamming is sport in New England. But
telephoning the market is easier. Clammers
walk along the sand-flats, walloping the wet
sand with a rake like a maniac, and looking for
holes. Up shoots a geyser! and that is the clam
who is quite a spitter -spitting. Then the
clammer digs like a terrier.

Clammers get back-aches, and terrible ap
petites. They usually have steamed clams for
dinner, because it is easier to steam armored
clams than to open the shells. But if you buy
them, the market man opens them, and you get
them in the nude, which is the best way for
a chowder.

There is a terrible pink mixture (with
tomatoes in it, and herbs) called Manhattan
Clam Chowder, that is only a vegetable soup,
and not to be confused with New England Clam
Chowder, nor spoken of in the same breath.
Tomatoes and clams have no more affinity than
ice cream and horse radish. It is sacrilege to
wed bivalves with bay leaves, and only a de
graded cook would do such a thing.

Representative Cleveland Sleeper of Maine
recently introduced a bill in the State legis
lature, to make it an illegal as well as a culinary

350 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

offense to introduce tomatoes to clam chowder.
And immediately a chowder battle ensued
with high-class chefs asserting that a tomato
and clam should never meet, and the low maes-
tros of Manhattan advocating their unholy
union.

Anyone who wants tomato soup can have it;
but Manhattan Clam Chowder is a kind of thin
minestrone, or dish water, and fit only for for
eigners. In Boston we like our chowders rich
and creamy, and this is how we make them:

NEW ENGLAND CLAM CHOWDER
First you must have:

A quart of clams (from Duxbury, if possible)
A quarter of a pound of salt pork
Four potatoes
Two onions
A quart of milk
A quarter of a pound of butter
Plenty of Common Crackers
Salt and Pepper

A kernel of garlic (if you like garlic)
And a jar of cream (if you want a very rich chow
der)

Cut the pork up in small pieces and try it out.
Strain the fat, and saut6 the chopped onions gently,
until they are golden-yellow. Fried onions won't
give people indigestion, unless they (the onions)

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 351

are brown or black. Heat the clams in their own
juice until the edges turn up (this will take only
a couple of minutes) . Dice and parboil the pota
toes. When the clams are cool enough to handle,
some people squeeze the dark part from their lit
tle bellies. This is done with the thumb and fore
finger, and is not as surgical as it sounds. The
necks are of no value except to the clam, and
might as well be removed. Personally, I eat clams
as is. But for company, I pinch their bellies and
cut off their necks.

Pour everything together and add the milk and
butter. Split half a dozen Common Crackers and
float on the top, with a spot of butter on each.
Spear the garlic on a toothpick, and let that float
too. The toothpick will locate it, when you want
to take it out.

I had a cooking school teacher once who said
it was vulger to say toothpicks.

"Say wooden skewers," she said. . . But I
call a toothpick a toothpick, and find them
handy for rescuing garlic.

A proper chowder should marinate on the
back of the stove for an hour or more while the
ingredients become thoroughly familiar with
one another. The cream should be added at the
last.

Now that we are talking about fish, I will tell
you about fish balls, that we make from salted

352 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

cod. Codfish is the oldest American food, and
the Pilgrims practically lived on it. They dried
the fish in the summer salted it in the fall
and had it for a pewter plate special all winter.

Later it was shipped to Virginia and the
Indies. In the middle of the eighteenth century,
cod fisheries were the chief business of New
England ship merchants, and many a fortune
was made from the humble cod.

Colonel Benjamin Pickman had a codfish,
carved and gilded, on every riser of his grand
mahogany stairs. And there is one in the Massa
chusetts State House on Beacon Hill a big
wooden one in the House of Representatives.
In 1784 Mr. John Rowe (who came from the
Cape) suggested that a cod be mounted and
hung on the State House wall. But after a while
the moths or something got into it. And when
the new State House was built, the legislators
ordered a new codfish made of pine, and nicely
painted.

Cod was the staff of life three hundred years
ago. And now we have it Sunday mornings
with our beans. The best boughten fish balls in
New England are served at the Ritz in Boston,
and cooked to order any time, with a dropped
egg on top. I asked the chef for the recipe,
and will give it to you in a minute. But first I
want to tell you about shredded New England

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 353

cod that comes in a package, and can be cooked
in a hurry.

All you do is soak half a box of it in water, and
squeeze it dry. Mash three potatoes, add an egg,
the cod, a few tablespoons of melted butter, and a
dash of pepper, and beat until fluffy. If you do
this Saturday night, you heat the beans in a spider
Sunday morning, and shape the balls and fry them
while the beans are heating.

*&

They do it more elaborately at the Ritz.

RITZ FISH BALLS

One and a half pounds of potatoes

A pound (or a little more) of salted codfish

(soaked overnight)
Three egg yolks
Two tablespoons of butter
A dash of Worcestershire
A pinch of dry mustard
And a bit of pepper

Boil the potatoes. Put them through a fine
sieve, and place *in a warm bowl. Cut the codfish
in biggish cubes, and boil about fifteen minutes.
Dry quickly with a napkin, and add the hot pota
toesand don't let it get cool and soggy! Add but
ter, Worcestershire, mustard (salt, if you need it) ,
and the egg yolks, one by one. Stir briskly. Shape
into balls or cakes, roll in flour, and fry in deep fat.

354 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Serve at once with quartered lemons, on a linen
serviette (ah, the good old Ritz!) , with fried pars
ley and tomato sauce, on the side. A bottle o
Chablis goes well with fish balls; and the waiter
won't think you are mad if you order it, because
he knows it,

Schrod (a juvenile cod, I believe) is another
New England specialty. . . And then there
are oysters.

When James Russell Lowell lectured in
Boston, it was the thing to buy your girl an
oyster stew (instead of a highball) , on the way
home from the lecture, A season ticket for the
fifteen lectures cost two dollars and the stews
were a dime. Fashionable folk flocked to the
Union Oyster House (still doing business at
the same old stand) and everybody had a stew
before he went to bed. But on Saturday nights,
they had baked beans at home, and for a bed
time snack, they had some more beans.

If you never smelled beans baking, you may
think we over-rate them. They have a tantaliz
ing odor that whets the meanest appetite. And
if you don't believe it, I wish you could see the
people who sit around the Women's Educational
and Industrial Union on a Saturday, waiting
for the beans to come out of the oven, (The
Union is on Boylston Street in Boston, if you
want to check up on me.)

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 355

I am going to tell you how we bake beans in
my family. And how the Union makes its
famous brown bread.

BOSTON BAKED BEANS

First, of course, you must have a brown, earthen
ware bean pot. On Friday get a quart of dry pea
beans, and half a pound of salt pork and be sure
you have molasses on hand.

Soak the beans over night in cold water; and in
the morning, pour the water off. Cover with fresh
water, and bring slowly to a boil. Simmer until
you can blow off the skins. Then drain.

Put a medium-sized whole onion in the bottom
of the bean pot. And pour the beans over it. Score
the pork and force it down until it just shows at the
top of the pot. Add half a cup of molasses, a table
spoon of salt, a teaspoon of mustard, and enough
hot water to fill the pot. The pork should stick
up a little above the water line, so that it can brown
fragrantly. Cook about eight hours in a moderate
oven. The juice should bubble at the top of the
pot all day. When it boils away, add hot water.
One of the nice things about beans is that you
can't over-cook them unless you forget to add
water, and let them dry up. Serve from the pot,
with brown bread.

Miss Daisy Treen of the Union thought up
something to make brown bread slice more
easily and that's bread crumbs. She just mixes

356 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

them right in. . . And this is the way they
make the Union's famous

BROWN BREAD

Soak for a few hours a cup of bread crumbs in
three and one-half cups of milk. Then rub the
crumbs through a sieve, and save the milk.

Sift together two cups of corn meal, one and one-
fourth cups of rye flour, one and one-half cups of
graham flour, and two and one-fourth teaspoons of
salt.

Add the crumbs, and a cup and two tablespoons
of molasses, into which you have mixed three and
one-half teaspoons of soda. Then stir in a half a
cup of raisins, and the milk in which the crumbs
were soaked.

Now butter some large baking powder tins. Fill
them three-quarters full, and put on the covers.
(If you haven't baking-powder tins, you'll have to
buy some steamers.) Put the tins in a pot of boil
ing water, and steam for three hours.

I got five loaves out of this recipe; but the
number will depend upon the size of your tins.

Eat it up is a New England slogan, and I
guess that is how hash originated. In some
places hash is considered a low-down dish. But
not in New England. Red Flannel Hash, topped

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 357

by a poached egg, sitting in a pool of butter,
exuding a faint fragrance of onions, and fried
a lovely brown, is an aristocrat among hashes
a gastronomical ecstacy, thriftily evolved.

The secret of a good hash is an old-fashioned
wooden chopping bowl and chopper. New
fangled grinders make a mash. For a memorable
hash, try

RED FLANNEL

Mix together equal parts of chopped, cooked
corned beef, cold boiled potatoes, and cold beets
(a cup or two of each) . Add a minced onion, a
teaspoon or so of Worcestershire, and seasoning.
Bind with cream, or the top of the bottle. Melt
plenty of butter in an iron frying pan, and spread
hash smoothly in the pan. Brown slowly, and when
crust forms, turn as an omelet.

Hash was Monday mid-day dinner, when Blue
Monday was Wash Day in New England. And
in that day an Englishman visited our shores.
And when he went home, he wrote his Im
pressions, with malice toward some.

"The inhabitants of New England/' he told
the world, "have drawers in their dining room
tables, in which to thrust the dishes, in the un
welcome event of a stranger's visit."

Now at that time there was a gentleman
named Joseph Felt who lived in Salem, and

358 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

kept a Diary. And Mr. Felt took his pen in
hand, to slay that Englishman.

If ever (stormed Mr. Felt) there was the mere
semblance of fact for such a fabrication, we dare
warrant that it was on one of our Wash Days, when
commendable economy induces us to gather up our
cold fragments, so that time need not be taken
from our cleansing operations, and set them before
our families as a sufficient meal for them, but which
custom would consider as uncivil for strangers. Un
der such circumstances, some good dame of our
community, on the point of congratulating herself
that all would go on smoothly, the repast soon be
ended and washing recommenced, when some one
with the form and dress of a man, but with little
manliness of heart and conduct, called at an un
seasonable hour, to be refreshed, and thus keep his
purse undiminished by the charges of the inn.
That she might save her establishment from the
appearance of being poor supplied, she might have
put part of her least palatable fare into the drawer,
intending, that if the visitor remained, she would
make exertion for some better food. Now, so far
from construing this as parsimony, it should be
construed as proper economy for the family, and
a suitable regard for strangers.

For this gem if for nothing more Mr. Felt
deserves heaven.

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 359

Indian Pudding was another Wash Day dish,
made with meal from Indian corn (called corn
meal now) .

An old-fashioned Indian Pudding baked in
terminably, and stayed in the oven for days on
end. Grandmother kept hers for a week, and
thinned it occasionally with milk.

Ruth Wakefield, who has the most popular
eating places in New England (in Whitman,
Mass.) , has a modern recipe that she evolved
from an old one and here it is:

TOLL HOUSE INDIAN PUDDING

Scald three cups of milk. Mix together three
tablespoons of Indian meal and a third of a cup
of molasses. Stir into the hot milk, and cook until
thick, stirring constantly. Remove from the fire,
and add half a cup of sugar, a beaten egg, and but
ter the size of a walnut, one-fourth of a teaspoon
of salt, and half a teaspoon each of ginger and cin
namon.

Mix thoroughly. Pour into a buttered baking
dish, and put in a 300 oven. In half an hour, add
a cup of milk, and continue baking for two hours.

Indian Pudding should be served warm. The
old-fashioned accompaniment was heavy cream;
but with a spoonful of ice cream in its golden
middle, it is meltingly delicious.

560 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Another good New England desert is Pork
Apple Pie. New Englanders are very fond o
pork.

'In the fall," the old folks say, "you put down
a barrel of pork; and in the spring, there you
be/'

It is said that an old fisherman made the
first pork apple pie, and then it was known as
Sea Pie. He made it with dried apples, and
salt pork and molasses. It wasn't dessert. It
was food. His wife improved upon it, and now
it is

PORK APPLE PIE

Fill a deep fire-proof dish with tart, peeled ap
ples, cored and sliced. Sprinkle with three-fourths
of a cup of grated maple sugar, half a teaspoon of
cinnamon, half as much nutmeg, and a sprinkle of
salt. Dot with twenty pieces of fat salt pork, no
bigger than little peas. Cover with a rich pie crust,
perforated with a fork. And bake in a moderate
oven for about forty-five minutes.

To appreciate the proper porky flavor of
a deep-dish pie is (as R. L. S. said) no less a
piece of human perfection than to find beauty
in the colors of a sunset.

* * *****

There was a heavenly smell in our kitchen on
Saturday, when the beans and apple pies were

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 361

baking, and the brown bread steamed on top
of the stove, and sugar cookies cooled on the
kitchen table. . . Coming home from a high
school football game, in the gray, blue dusk of
Novemberscuffing leaves along the way we
lingered at the gate, and said goodnight in the
dark.

The world was very sad about six o'clock on
Saturday. I wouldn't see Billy until Algebra,
second period, Monday and Billy and I were
going to elope! When Billy said goodnight, I'd
run lonely up the drive, being very heart
broken. . . And as soon as I opened the front
door, I'd smell things cooking. It was as if
the beans and the brown bread put out their
arms, and the cookies chorused a welcome.
Everything was warm and bright, and smelled
nice. . . It was lovely coming home . . . and
I knew that I could never run away. . . Smells
mean a lot to a kid. It's too bad so many things
come in cans these days.

If you are a W.C.T.U., STOP! Because here
is where I go on about RUM!

Mother was a W.C.T.U. She had a white
ribbon badge that she kept in her top bureau
drawer. And when the W.C.T.U. had its an-

362 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

nual luncheon, Mother dusted the badge off
and pinned it on her shoulder.

There was Prohibition then; and we children
"took the pledge/' because she made us. But
it was only a temporary pledge (until we were
twenty-one) . And in the interests of experi
mentation, I did not see fit to renew it.

Rum is a good old New England drink, and
I like rum. I learned to like it in the West
Indies, where it was twenty-five cents a quart
and smelled lovely. The distillery in Roseau
scented the village with a warm fragrance that
was deep and richer than the jasmine that
climbed its old walls.

Rum is good with the juice of fresh pine
apples and green limes, slightly sweetened and
very cold. Kenneth (Buttered Rum) Roberts
likes it hot with cinammon. And I like it hot
with spices but I think that cinnamon spoils
it. Here is my own idea, and I wish Mr. Roberts
would try it some night.

NEW ENGLAND SPICED RUM

One jigger of rum (an ounce and a half at least)
One heaping teaspoon of brown sugar
One half teaspoon of allspice
And the same of cloves.

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 363

Put sugar and spice in a glass, add rum and
stir. Fill the glass with boiling water, and add
butter. . . Sweet dreams, Mr. Roberts.

There is a piratical sound about rum:

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

The first rum was made in the West Indies,
and it was so strong it made men scuttle ships.
Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands was the
pirate strong-hold, and Virgin Island rum was
famous wherever ships sailed. Ships in West
Indies trade brought the rum to New England,
and thrifty Yankees saw its possibilities.

In 1735, Andrew Hall, a Bostonian, had busi
ness in Medford. While he was there, Mr.
Andrews had a drink of spring water that was
cold as ice and had no taste at all! And right
away Mr. Andrews said:

"This is the place for a still!"

He bought the property, erected a shed, and
sent for some molasses. And presently Mr. Hall
was making rum.

Stills were in good repute in New England,
and no novelty. Nearly every prosperous family
distilled its own alcoholfor medicinal uses,
and to make cordials.

364 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

One Hezekiah Blanchard had set up a public
distillery, and was making out pretty well with
annis seed and snake root. But Andrew Hall's
rum put Hezekiah out of business, and started
a run on molasses. The singular properties of
the spring guaranteed its success. And Mr. Hall
had a gold mine.

Medford ships built on the shores of the
Mystic River brought molasses from the Indies
to Medford molasses and a few slaves. And,
before long, the same ships brought rum to the
Indies!

Old Medford Rum was different from Jamaica
Rum, that was good enough for traders and
not at all like the rum of Saint Croix, that the
pirates fancied. The rich planters liked Old
Medford, and Mr. Hall got more orders than
he could fill.

There was a barrel of rum outside the Med
ford shipyard on Ship Street, with a dipper be
side it. The shipwrights going to work stopped
for a drink and stopped again, when work was
done.

The smell of the rum was sweet and heavy
along the waterfront. And the Indians liked
it even better than the shipwrights. But the
Indians had to pay for it. They exchanged
skins and land with Mr. Hall. And sometimes
they brought in some fine, French scalps.

During the French War, the Indians bribed

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 365

with rum were with the Colonists. If they
hadn't been, the War might never have been
won. Demon Rum thenin an indirect way-
saved Canada for England and Old Medford's
fame was spreading.

In the early nineteenth century, before there
were revenue taxes, rum was twenty-five cents
a gallon, and people bought it by the barrel.
They called it Rumbullion and Kill Devil. And
they drank it on cold winter nights, to warm
their bones,

They made Kill Devil Flip by mixing rum
with beer in a pewter tankard, and thrusting a
red-hot poker in, to make it hiss and sizzle. I
have tried this, and thought the poker an over
rated touch and the drink terrible. Rum
Booze was another Puritan bomb-shell. . . If
you want to fool with a hot poker, you might
Abbott's Flip.

(Famous at Abbott's old Tavern, Holden, Mass.)

Break three eggs in a quart flip mug, and add a
teaspoon of sugar for each egg. Stir the eggs and
sugar together, and add a jigger of rum and a jig
ger of brandy. Beat the eggs briskly while pouring
in the liquor. Now fill the mug with beer. The
poker should be red hot, and when the mug is
filled, it is thrust into the liquid. The foaming,
hissing result is Abbott's Flip,*

* The Wine Book, by The Browns, Little, Brown & Co.

366 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

There was a meeting-house built in Medford
in the summer of 1796 and the church record
tells us that the builders consumed "five barrels
of Medford Rum, one barrel of brown sugar, a
case of lemons, and two loaves of white sugar/'

Brown sugar blends better with rum, I think,
than white sugar. And honey, which is said to
be an aphrodisiac, does a lot for drink. With
this in mind a company keeper (circa 1940)
concocted a cocktail and called it: Bundling

A jigger of rum

A teaspoon of brown sugar

A teaspoon of honey

A grain of salt

And a jigger of lime juice

Dissolve sugar and honey in lime juice add rum
last. And shake until very cold.

New England rum played an important part
in buying African slaves. And even George
Washington did some funny bartering. From
Mount Vernon the President wrote:

With this letter comes a negro (Tom) which I
beg the favor of you to sell in any of the Islands
you may go to, for whatever he will fetch, and
bring me in return for him:

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 367

i hhd. best molasses

i ditto best rum

i barrel Lymes if good

i pot Tamarind containing about 10 Ibs.

It looks as if the Father of our Country traded
a bad nigger for the makings of a punch. But
it was the custom of the times, and Tom was
probably a nuisance.

Rum grew up with the Thirteen Colonies,
and the taxes the Mother Country put on
molasses infuriated New Englanders as much as
the taxes on tea. The Gaspee, an English man-
o'-war, came over to chase ships carrying contra
band molasses, and went aground off the New
England Coast. And the people went out in
boats and captured her and burnt her to the
water's edge. Then the minister publicly
thanked God that He had seen fit to ground
her when He did. ("There's naught, no doubt,
the spirit calms so much as rum and true re
ligion/')

New England rum was always a straight rum;
and aged, from the beginning, in charred casks
that made it a beautiful amber color. Today
it falls somewhere between the light-bodied
Puerto Rican rums and the heavy-bodied
Jamaica rums. It is not, I think, to be com-

368 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

pared with Bacardi, or a good Haitian rum
but then it is a good deal cheaper.

Rum lends a mellow flavor and aroma to food.
The Hotel Statler in Boston, conducting
culinary research, turned up a number o
ancient recipes that call for generous portions,
and the chef, experimenting on his own, created
a grand pie.

HOTEL STATLER RUM CHIFFON PIE

2 egg yolks

3 ounces of granulated sugar
3 teaspoons of rum

2 teaspoons of granulated gelatine
i^ cup of cold water

3 egg whites

2 ounces of granulated sugar (additional)

Beat egg yolks, add sugar and rum. Make a soft
custard and cool. Soak gelatine and heat until dis
solved. Beat egg whites and fold in sugar. When
they begin to hold shape, pour gelatine in very
slowly. When light and fluffy, fold in the rum
custard and pour into a baked pie shell.

Rum was formerly used in fruit cakes, plum
puddings, and pumpkin pies. A teaspoon was
refreshing in a cup of tea, with sugar and a slice
of lemon stuck with clovesand it still is.

When John Adams learned what the ladies
were up to putting rum in everything! he

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 369

decided it was time to call a halt. Mr. Adams
was stiff and starchy, and he made Temperance
speeches at the drop of a tricorn.

'In the taverns," cried Mr. Adams, "diseases,
vicious habits, bastards and legislators are fre
quently begotten 1"

John Adams was a man who found fault
with everything and everybody even the ir
reproachable Abigail. Once on a Sabbath, his
coach horses got out of hand, and caused a most
indecorous disturbance. Mrs. Adams could
hardly have been to blame, but her husband,
who kept one of the inevitable Diaries, wrote
in wrath:

I scolded the coachman first, and afterwards, his
mistress, and I will scold again and again. It is my
duty.

The Adamses father and son, were exceed
ingly virtuous. But they did not have much
tact, nor social charm. They bristled with ego
tism, and needed Abigail's influence to gentle
them.

When John Quincy Adams, the old, old
statesman, knelt beside his bed he said each
night the prayer his mother taught him "Now
I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my

370 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

soul to keep. . ." ... in Holland, Prussia,
Russia, France, and England, he said it.

"I say it out loud, and I don't mumble it
either/' he told his biographer.

Mr. Adams got behind the prohibition move
ment in 1840, and persuaded many New Eng-
landers to renounce the rum they loved:

So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate.

Old Medford had fallen by then into the
hands of the fabulous Lawrence family. There
were two sons Daniel and Samuel. Samuel
became a General in the Civil War, and built a
mansion on Rural Avenue. He had the biggest
private library in New England, and a yacht
two hundred feet long. He was the most im
portant Mason in America, and the first Mayor
of Medford. . . And Lawrence's Old Medford
was the best in the world.

Liquor had become a profitable industry in
America, and distillers imitated Old Medford's
bottles, forged its labels, and prostituted its
ancient name.

Legend has it that General Lawrence "got re
ligion" closed the factory, and destroyed the
formula. But the truth is that he wouldn't cut
prices, and couldn't meet competition.

In 1905 he went out of business. Then Old

GOOD DRINK-GOOD MEAT 371

Medford was worth more than vintage cham
pagne, and rarer than rubies.

My father had some of what he called the
real old stuff, and kept it in the sideboard. But
Mother must have gone on a W.C.T.U.
rampage, because, after Papa died, we found
it in the dog house.

Early in the eighties, Louis Ober ran a tavern
on Winter Place, in Boston. Some years later,
Frank Locke opened a place next door. It was
soon the custom to drop in at Locke's for a
Medford Rum, and go on to Ober's for dinner.
The places becoming essential one to the other,
the owners got together and tore down the wall
between. Then it was and still is Locke-
Ober's.

There was a famous bar-tender at Locke-
Ober's, not so long ago, named Billy Kane, who
has gone now to his eternal reward. But the
legacy Mr. Kane left has given him immortality
Ward Eight, he called it. It is a sort of whisky
sour made with the best Bourbon and served
in a cocktail glass and this is it:

WARD EIGHT

One jigger of Bourbon

One teaspoon of powdered sugar

372 A NEW ENGLAND SAMPLER

Juice of half a lemon
A dash of Curasao
Grenadine to color
A slice of orange
And a berry for garnish.

Shake well and think of Billy-

Billy's dead and laid in grave, and all his bones

are rotten,
But his Ward Eight will pick you up when Billy's

long forgotten.

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