It was several years ago that we of the Eldred family, both
old and young, were invited to spend Thanksgiving Day at the
old homestead, away up in the lake region of Western Maine.
The
invitation was accepted promptly, and with pleasant anticipations,
that were heightened by the fact that we were not only bidden
to the festivities of Thanksgiving, but also to celebrate Grandma
Eldred’s seventy-fifth birthday, which happened to fall
that year upon the annual holiday.
Grandmother’s room was one with which we grandchildren
always had pleasant associations. There, in the bleak winter
time, the sun lay longest and warmest, turning all day upon
the bright yellow floor, the polished hearth, the “dresser”
of old china; casting long shadows of spindle-legged chairs,
or lingering caressingly upon the white hair and withered yet
pleasant face of the dear old lady, jogging placidly in her
“rocker,” as if to impart some of its brightness and
fervor to the dim cold days of age.
In
grandmother’s room there was always an unfailing reserve
of such things as appeal to a child’s heart through the
appetite, and in the dear old lady herself an inexhaustible
store of sympathy, which could be relied upon in times of childish
trouble.
To
grandmother’s room, then, we young folks all turned upon
our arrival, sitting there dozing and dreaming before the great
fireplace, under the drowsy influence of our long, cold ride.
The
sharp tap of grandma’s cane, and the soft tread of her
list shoes as she trudged across the floor, soon aroused us
from our reveries.
“Grandma,
why are you so choice of that blue wool quilt?” asked Netty
Fuller, as the old lady carefully spread a large newspaper over
a portion of the bed on which the afternoon sun was shining
brightly.
“Because,
child, it was once my wedding-gown,” said grandma, smiling
cheerily. “It was homespun, yet I thought it was very fine-looking
at the time, though it was not quite so attractive to my girlish
eyes as the one I had first made for the occasion.”
But
what became of the first one?” inquired Susie Garland.
“Tell
us about it, grandma!” cried cousin Katy. “Was it
silk or satin, and did any guilty, unprincipled rival; any unlucky
maiden overcome by envy, steal it out of spite?”
“It
was neither silk nor satin, and it wasn’t stolen--at least,
not in that way; and I got it afterwards, and wore it out.”
“Do
tell us what happened to it, grandma!” we all urged.
“Well,
it was nearly sixty years ago, my dears, that I was married
to your grandpa,--it was 1816, the year when we had no summer.
Some people thought the cold weather was a bad sign, and tried
to have us put off the wedding; but I did not have faith in
signs, neither did your grandfather. So we very frankly told
them that we did not believe our 'intentions' had upset the
weather, and we should therefore be married at the time set.”
“But
wasn’t there any summer that year?” asked Susie.
“It
could scarcely be called summer, for there was frost and ice
every month in the year. May came in with snowstorms, and there
was ice an inch thick. The planting was put off till the last
of May. Then about the middle of June snow came to the depth
of seven inches, and killed all the corn that had sprouted,
and nearly everything else that had been planted. Such cold
weather had never been known in any summer before. Some folks
were afraid that the sun was cooling off. There was a good deal
of anxiety felt among the fearsome ones on that account. Winter
clothes were worn through the summer, and so late as the first
of July there were days when the men and boys went about their
work with overcoats and mittens on.
Father
sheared his sheep as usual, and turned them out to pasture;
but during the month of June nearly half of them died, and scarcely
a lamb was raised. All the fruit was killed, and it seemed a
time of general destruction.
July
and August were both cold months, and those farmers who had
replanted their corn after the big snowstorm, saw it destroyed
by the frosts. In fact, nearly all the corn planted that year
was unfit for use except for fodder.
Squire
Hobson, our nearest neighbor, who had several acres of burnt
land planted in corn, set large fires about it on the edge of
the woods every cold night, and the heat and smoke seemed to
keep off the frost in a measure. Many a night we young folks
in the neighborhood gathered about that clearing in the woods,
to watch the fires and eat roasted ears. The squire had the
only corn that was raised in the whole town, and the next spring
farmers for miles around came to him for seed, and paid him
at the rate of five dollars a bushel for it. You can be sure
there weren’t many Johnnycakes that year.
Well,
on account of this failure of the crops, father felt poor, and
I saw that if I had a wedding-gown, I must earn it. Squire Hobson’s
wife always hired help in the summer, and I went to work for
her at four-and-six pence a week. That was seventy-five cents,
and you can tell us well as I what girls would think of such
wages now!
“Why,
grandma, they could scarcely get their neckties with that!”
laughed Kate.
“But
it was considered good pay in those times,” said grandma.
“Mother had provided me with wool and flax, and I had spun
and wove all the linen I needed for household purposes, and
wool cloth for blankets. So I wanted only my dress, and when
father went to Wilton, late in October, with his poultry and
butter, I sent and got the material for it, and what do you
think it was? A bright blue bombazine!
Now
suppose, girls, you think that pretty poor material for a wedding-dress;
but I had been used to nothing better than coarse, homemade
garments, and bombazine seemed to me the handsomest material
that could be desired; good enough for a queen. It had cost
so much, and seemed such a piece of extravagance for poor folks,
that I couldn’t hire the village dressmaker to fit the
dress; so the squire’s wife, who had been a tailoress in
her younger days, helped me make it.
I
used to sew on it after I had got my day’s work done, by
the light of the big fire and one tallow candle. Those were
very happy, hopeful hours that I spent in the old kitchen, stitching
slowly at its seams, long after the family were all in bed.
Well, the last stitch was set at length, and the dress was hung
carefully away, with its dainty linen lace ruffles that I had
spun and knitted myself. It lacked only one week to Thanksgiving,
the time set to wear the blue bombazine, and I was to go home
the next day.
I
ought to have said that the squire was one of the overseers
of the poor in our town, and as there was no almshouse. Once
a year the town’s poor were set up and bid off to board
by the people at town-meeting. Those who would board them cheapest
got the paupers.
Well,
there was one boy--Davy Whitney--that no one would bid for.
Everybody knew him, and nobody would have him at any price.
So Squire Hobson was obliged to take him into his own family.
He was a poor, sly, mischievous, and a revengeful boy.
From
the first he seemed to have a spite against me, and would watch
me at work, from behind a door, with eyes that had mischief
in them. Once, he waited his opportunity and shut me down cellar,
when the whole family were away, and wouldn’t let me up,
with all my coaxings and entreaties. Then he began to fill the
great fireplace with wood and brush,--he always had a great
passion for fires,--and I was nearly distracted, down there
in the dark, from hearing him dancing and whooping over my head,
and the fire crackling and roaring in the chimney. I was sure
he would burn the house down. He did come pretty near it, too,
for when the squire’s folks got home, a heap of brush which
Davy had brought into the kitchen and thrown down near the hearth,
had caught fire and was all in a blaze.
“O
Grandma, I should have died of fright!” cried Kate.
“He
tormented the squire’s wife, too, beyond all endurance,
robbing the hens’ eggs, eating the cream off the crocks
of milk, and digging great holes into her cheeses.
Well
Davy kept his eyes on my bombazine dress, whenever he saw me
working on it, and would sit in the chimney-corner near me,
smoothing his hands over its soft, shining folds and talking
to it in his broken way, as he had a habit of doing to anything
that pleased him greatly. It did not occur to me that he meant
mischief; but when I went to get the dress the next day, when
I was going home, it was gone.
Well,
girls, I can never tell you how disappointed I was. It makes
me feel sad even now, after all these years. It came into my
mind at once that Davy had had a hand in its disappearance.
However, when he was called up before the squire he seemed to
know nothing about it. The house was searched, high and low,
and even the barn and granary, but not a thread of the bombazine
could be found.
Nothing
more could be done, and I went home dreadfully downhearted,
you may be sure. To think that I had drudged nearly all summer
for this one gown, to have it snatched from me at the very last
moment, was too much, and I am afraid I hated the poor simple-minded
boy with a bitterness that took me many a month to get over.
Some of the superstitious folks looked upon this as a second
warming against my marrying your grandpa that year, telling
me that ill-luck would be sure to follow us; and others thought
it was the work of Providence, humbling my giddy vanity in trying
to outshine the neighbors’ girls. However, there was nothing
else to do but to swallow my pride, as best I could, and get
out the old hand-cards and wheel and go to work.”
“What!
Did you give it up, after all?” cried Susie.
“Give
up!” said grandma. “Bless you, no, child! Your grandma
had a good deal of spirit in those days. I had no time to waste
mourning over the loss of my gown, but went to work to make
another. And I had to being with the wool as it was shorn, too.
First it has to be carded, then spun, and then colored, before
it could be woven. It was discouraging work, and I will own
that a good many tears fell into the warp and woof of that homespun
dress. But you must understand that it did not take so much
to make gowns then as now, for they were very plain and straight.
If it had, my task would have been a hopeless one indeed. So,
by means of hard work and sitting up nights, mother and I finished
making the gown. It was pressed off, shining and smooth, with
the squire’s wife’s big goose, the night before Thanksgiving.”
“Bravo,
grandma!” cried her auditors, in chorus, cheering the old
lady hilariously. “And the wedding came off?”
“Certainly,
my dears.”
“But
where was the unfortunate bombazine all this time?” inquired
Kate.
“Well,
nothing was seen of it that winter, nor the next summer. In
the fall Squire Hobson’s boys were out one night in the
woods, about the clearing, hunting for ’coons that were
doing a good deal of damage to the corn that fall. The boys
chased a big one into a dead beech and saw him pop into a hole
up among the limbs. Hurrying for an axe, they felled the tree,
and there, stored snugly away with the ‘coon was my bombazine
gown!”
“But
the ’coon didn’t carry it up there?” cried Hetty,
in astonishment.
“Oh
dear no,” said grandma. “We supposed that Davy stole
into my chamber and carried it off while I was getting breakfast
that last morning, and afterwards forgot where he had hid it.
It was nearly spoiled with mildew, and was covered with dirt
from the trampings of the ‘coon’s feet; but it had
cost too much to be thrown away, so I washed and pressed it,
and it really did me considerable service.
But
after all, my dears, it didn’t matter so much, for your
grandpa used to say that he never could have thought half so
much of the bombazine as he did of the homespun dress I was
married in. He always liked a plain dress--neat and tidy, you
know, but without any of the flounces and extra trimmings they
put on nowadays.
And
I guess that’s about the way with men in general--at least
with the sensible ones--they look more to the one that wears
the dress than they do at the dress itself. It won’t make
so very much difference, my dears, what your dresses are, if
you only have pleasant ways and kind hearts.”
