CHILDREN'S DILIGENCE
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
—Divine Songs for Children. Isaac Watts, 1720.
Colonial children did not spend much time in play. "The old deluder Sathan" was not permitted to find many idle hands ready for his mischievous work. It was ordered by the magistrates that children tending sheep or cattle in the field should be "set to some other employment withal, such as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape," etc. These were all simple industries requiring slight paraphernalia. The rock was the hand distaff. It was simple of manipulation, but required a certain knack of dexterity to produce even well-twisted thread. Good spinners could spin on the rock as they walked. Tape-weaving was done on a simple appliance, the heddle-frame of primitive weavers, known as a tape-loom, garter-loom, belt-loom, or "gallus-frame." On these small looms girls wove scores of braids and tapes for use as glove-ties, shoe-strings, hair-laces, stay-laces, garters, hatbands, belts, etc., and boys wove garters and breeches-suspenders.
There was plenty of work on a farm even for little children; they sowed various seeds in early spring; they weeded flax fields, walking barefoot among the tender plants; they hetchelled flax and combed wool.
All the work on the flax after the breaking was done in olden times by women and children. It is said there are in all twenty different occupations in flax manufacture, of which half can be easily done by children. Much of the work in domestic wool spinning and weaving was done by little girls. They could spin on "the great wheel" when they were so small that they had to stand on a foot-stool to reach up. They skeined the yarn on a clock-reel. They easily filled the "quills" with the woollen yarn used in weaving bedspreads and set the quills in the middle of the great pointed wooden shuttles. They wound the white warp on the spools, and set the spools on the scarne. They might, if very deft and attentive, help "set the piece," that is, wind the warp threads on the great yarn-beam, pass them through the eyes of the heddles or harness, and the spans of the reed. Girls of six could spin flax. Anna Green Winslow, when twelve years old, speaks often in her diary of spinning; and when disabled from sewing by a painful whitlow on her finger, wrote that "it is a nice opportunity if I do but improve it, to perfect myself in learning to spin flax."
The Good Girl and her Wheel
In the Memoirs of the missionaries, David and John Brainerd, a boy's busy life on a Connecticut farm is thus described:—
"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do "chores" at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."
This constant employment of a farm boy's time lasted till our own day; but now conditions have changed in Eastern farm life. The work still is hard and incessant, but not so varied as of yore. Many crops are obsolete; no flax is raised, and but little wool, and that sold as soon as sheared. Little grain is raised and no threshing is done by the flail. Vast itinerant threshing machines go from farm to farm. Few farmers make cider, which gave so much work to the boys in autumn. There is no potash or soap boiling. One of the most delightful chronicles of obsolete farm industry is written by Hon. George Sheldon and entitled The Passing of the Stall-Fed Ox and the Farmer's Boy.
9. THE LITTLE SEMPSTRESS
This pretty sempstress who can see
And not admire her industry
As thus upright she sits to sew,
Not stooping as some children do.
Illustration from Plain Things for Little Folks
The sawing and chopping of wood was a never diminishing incubus; this outdoor work on wood was continued within doors in the series of articles fashioned for farm and domestic use by the boy's jack-knife and the few heavy carpenter's tools at his command; some gave to the farm boy the rare pennies of his spending money. The making of birch splinter brooms was the best paying work. For these the boy got six cents apiece. The splitting of shoe-pegs was another. Setting card-teeth was for many years the universal income furnisher for New England children. Gathering nuts was a scantily paid-for harvest; tying onions a less pleasing one, and chiefly followed in the Connecticut Valley. The crop of wild cherries known as chokecherries was one of the most lucrative of the boy's resources. They were much desired for making cherry-rum or cherry-bounce, and would fetch readily a dollar a bushel. A good-sized tree would yield about six bushels. J. T. Buckingham tells of his first spending money being ninepence received from a brush-maker for hog-bristles saved from slaughtered swine.
The story of various silk fevers which raged in America cannot be given here, romantic as they are. From the first venture the care of silkworms was held to be a specially suitable work for children. It was said two boys, "if their hands be not sleeping in their pockets," could care for six ounces of seed from hatching till within fourteen days of spinning, when "three or four more helps, women and children being as proper as men," had to assist in feeding, cleansing, airing, drying, and perfuming them.
The Reformed Virginia Silk Worm asserted:—
"For the Labour of a man and boy
They gain you Sixty pounds which is no toy."
Mulberry trees were planted everywhere and kept low like a hedge, so children could pick the leaves. All the books of instruction of the day reiterate that a child ten years of age could easily gather seventy-five pounds of mulberry leaves a day, and make great wages. But an old lady, now eighty years old, who made much sewing silk in Connecticut in her youth, writes thus to me: "Girls picked most of the leaves. It was very hard work and very small pay. They had ten cents a bushel for picking. Some could pick three bushels a day."
The first thought of spring brought to the men of the New England household a hard work—maple-sugar making—which meant vast labor in preparation and in execution—all of which was cheerfully hailed, for it gave men and boys a chance to be as Charles Kingsley said, "a savage for a while." It meant several nights spent in the sugar-camp in the woods, a-gypsying. Think of the delight of that scene: the air clear but mild enough to make the sap run; patches of snow still shining pure in the moonlight and starlight; all the mystery of the voices of the night, when a startled rabbit or squirrel made a crackling sound in its stealthy retreat; the distant hoot of a wakeful owl; the snapping of pendent icicles and crackling of blazing brush, yet over all a great stillness, "all silence and all glisten." An exaltation of the spirit and senses came to the country boy which was transformed at midnight into keen thrills of imaginative fright at recollection of the stories told by his elders with rude acting and vivid wording during the early evening round the fire; of hunting and trapping, of Indians and bears, and those delights of country story-tellers in New England, catamounts, wolverines, and cats—this latter ever meaning in hunter's phrasing wild-cats. Think of "a wolverine with eyes like blazing coals, and every hair whistling like a bell," as he sprung with outspread claws from a high tree on the passing hunter—do you think the boy sat by the fire throughout the night without looking a score of times for the blazing eyeballs, and listening for the whistling fur, and hearing steps like that of the lion in Pilgrim s Progress, "a great soft padding paw."
What forest lore the boys learned, too: that more and sweeter sap came from a maple which stood alone than from any in a grove; that the shallow gouge flowed more freely, but the deep gouge was richest in sweet; and that many other forest trees besides the maple ran a sweet sap.
I believe that in earliest colonial days boys also took part in a joyful outing, a public custom known as perambulating or beating the bounds. The memory of boundaries and division lines, of commons, public highways, etc., was kept fresh in the minds of the inhabitants by an old-time Aryan custom,—the walking around them once a year, noting lines of boundary, and impressing these on the notice and memory of young people. To induce English boys to accompany these perambulations, it was customary to distribute some little gratuity; this was usually a willow wand, tied at the end with a bunch of points, which were bits of string about eight inches long, consisting of strands of cotton or woollen yarn braided or twisted together, ended by a tag of a bit of metal or wood. These points were used to tie the hose to the knees of the breeches; the waistband of the breeches to the jacket, etc. Long after points were abandoned as a portion of dress the wands with their little knot of points were given. Pepys wrote in 1661 that he heard that at certain boundaries the boys were smartly whipped to impress the bounds upon their memories.
Anne Lennod's Sampler
"Beating the bounds" was a specially important duty in the colonies where land surveys were imperfect, land grants irregular, and the boundaries of each man's farm or plantation at first very uncertain. In Virginia this beating the bounds was called "processioning." Landmarks were renewed that were becoming obliterated; blazes on a tree would be somewhat grown over—they were deeply recut; piles of great stones containing a certain number for designation were sometimes scattered—the original number would be restored. Special trees would be found fallen or cut down; new marking trees would be planted, usually pear trees, as they were long-lived. Disputed boundaries were decided upon and announced to all the persons present, some of whom at the next "processioning" would be living and be able to testify as to the correct line. This processioning took place between Easter and Whitsuntide, that lovely season of the year in Virginia; and must have proved a pleasant reunion of neighbors, a May-party. In New England this was called "perambulating the bounds," and the surveyors who took charge were called "perambulators" or "boundsgoers."
To either man or boy of to-day or any day it would seem an absurdity to name hunting and fishing in a chapter dealing with boys' diligence; for in the sports of the woods and waters colonial boys doubtless found one of their greatest amusements. But these sports were also hard work and were engaged in for profit as well as for pleasure. The scattered sheepfolds and grazing pastures at first had to be zealously guarded from wild animals; wolves were everywhere the most hated and most destructive beasts. They were caught in many ways; in wolf-pits, in log-pens, in log-traps. Heavy mackerel hooks were tied together, dipped in melted tallow which hardened in a bunch and concealed the hooks, and tied to a strong chain. If the wolf swallowed the hooks without any chain attached, it would kill him; but he might die in the depths of the forest and his head could not be brought in to secure the bounty. In old town lists are the names of many boys with "wolf-money set to their credit." A wolf-rout or wolf-drive, which was like the old English "drift of the forest," was a ring of men and boys armed with guns surrounding a large tract of forest. The wary wolves scented their enemies afar and retreated before them to the centre of a circle, and many were killed. Squirrels and hares were hunted in the same way. Once a year in many places they had shooting matches in which every living wild creature was prey, and a prize was given to the one bringing in the most birds' heads and animals' tails. This cruel wholesale destruction of singing birds as well as game birds was carried on almost till our own day.
Foxes were destructive in the hen yards. On a bright moonlight night the hunters placed a load of codfish heads on the bright side of a stone wall. The fish could be smelt afar, and when the keen foxes approached they were shot by the hunters, hiding in the shadow. Bears lingered long even in the vicinity of cities and were hunted with dogs. The History of Roxbury states that in the year 1725, in one week in September, twenty bears were killed within two miles of Boston.
In Virginia deer-hunting was a constant sport. They were "burnt out," and in imitation of the Indian way of hunting under the blind of a "stalking head," the English taught their horses to walk slowly by the huntsman's side, hiding him as he approached the deer, who were not afraid of horses. A diverting sport was what was called "vermin-hunting." It was done on foot with small dogs, by moon or starlight. Raccoons, foxes, and opossums were the chief animals sought. Bounties were paid for the destruction of squirrels and rattlesnakes. It is appalling to see the bounty lists of some New England towns for snake rattles. Yet the loss of life was small from snake bites. The boys profited by all these bounties, and worked eagerly to secure them.
Colonel Wadsworth and his Son
Wild turkeys were caught in turkey pens, enclosures made of poles about twenty feet long, laid one above another, forming a solid wall ten feet high. This was covered with a close pole and brush roof. A ditch was dug beginning about fifteen feet away from the pen; sloping down and carried under one side of the pen and opening up into it through a board in which a hole was cut just large enough for a turkey to pass through. Corn was strewn the whole length of the ditch. The turkeys followed the ditch and the corn up through the hole into the pen; and held their heads too high ever to find their way out again. Often fifty captives would be found in the morning.
Boys learned "to prate" for pigeons, that is, to imitate their call. This was useful in luring them within gun-shot. A successful method of pigeon-shooting was learned from the Indians. A covert was made of green branches with an opening in the back by which the hunter could enter. In front of this covert, at firing distance, a long pole was raised up on two crotched sticks eight or ten feet from the ground, set so that a shot from the booth would rake the entire length of the pole; hence the crotch nearest the booth was a trifle lower than the other, at the same angle that the gun barrel would take. To lure pigeons from a flock to settle on this pole live pigeons were used as decoys. They were temporarily blinded in a cruel manner. A hole was pierced in the lower eyelid, a thread inserted, and the eyelid drawn up and tied over the eye. A soft kid boot or loop was put over one leg and a fine cord tied to it. The pigeon called the long flyer had a long cord, and by his fluttering attracted pigeons from a flock. The short flyer with shorter cord lured pigeons flying low. The hoverer was tied close to the end of a small pole set on an upright post. This pole was worked by a string, and by moving the pigeon up and down it appeared to be hovering as if to alight. The hunter, loudly prating, sat hidden behind his three blind, fluttering, terrified decoys. Then came a beautiful flash and gleam of color and life and graceful motion, as with a swish of reversed wings a row of gentle creatures lighted on the fatal pole. In a second came the report of the gun, and the ground was covered with the fluttering, maimed, and dead bodies. Fifty-two at one shot, a Lexington man named William Locke killed. Other methods of pigeon-killing were by snaring them in "twitch-ups"; also in a pigeon-bed, baited, over which a net was thrown on the feeding birds.
By the seashore whole communities turned to the teeming ocean for the means of life. Every fishing vessel that left the towns of Cape Ann and Cape Cod carried, with its crew of grown men, a boy of ten or twelve to learn "the art and mystery" of fishing. He had a name—a "cut-tail." He cut a wedge-shaped bit from the tail of every fish he caught, and in the sorting-out and counting-up at the close of the trip his share of the profits was thus plainly indicated. Long before these fishing industries were thoroughly organized the early chroniclers told of the share of boys in fishing. Even John Smith stirred up English stay-at-homes, saying:—
"Young boyes, girles, salvages or any others, bee they never such idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame, or either greate paine: hee is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so much; and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
It was natural that boys born in seashore towns should turn to the sea. They found in the incoming ships their sole connecting link with the outside world. Romance, sentiment, mystery, deviltry, haloed the sailor. He was ever welcome to the public, and ever a source of interest whether in tarry working garb, or gay shore togs of flapping trousers, crimson sash, eelskin and cutlasses, or perhaps garbed like Captain Creedon, who appeared in Boston in the year 1662 dressed, so says the letter of a Boston minister, "in a strange habitt with a 4 Cornered Capp instead of a hatt and his Breeches hung with Ribbons from the Wast downward a great depth one over the other like the Shingles of a house." Naturally enough "the boys made an outcry and wondered."
Can it be wondered that two centuries of New England boys, stirred in their quiet round of life by similar gay comets and tales of adventure, have had a passionate ichor in their veins of longing for "the magic and the mystery of the sea," that they have eagerly gone before the mast, and rounded the Horn, and come home master seamen when in their teens. I know a New England family of dignity and wealth in which six successive generations of sons have gone to sea in their boyhood, some of later years running away from home to do so. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1787,—so tells a newspaper of that date,—were living a man and wife who had been married about twenty years, and had eighteen sons, of whom ten were then at sea.