THE CRUSOES OF THE NOON-HOUSE
In a grass-grown graveyard by the side of an old Presbyterian church in Narragansett, the warm, midday sun shone brightly down one spring Sabbath in the year 1760 upon two boys twelve years of age, two cousins, named Elam Noyes and Cotton Fayerweather. They stood by the side of their grandfather’s grave, which bore a new blue slate headstone, inscribed with his name and age, and the verses:
“You children of ye name of Noyes
Make Jesus Christ yo’r oleny choyse.”
The boys had gone into the church-yard with the apparent design of examining this fine, though misspelled, token of the stone-cutter’s art, but were really speaking and thinking of a very different subject. They would never have been allowed to wander in the church-yard to indulge in idle talk, and even now could spend but a few minutes in conversation together. It was their only meeting-time during the week, for they lived at extreme ends of the town, and Elam recited his lessons to the Baptist minister, who lived near him, while Cotton attended the village school. They were two well-built, healthy boys, both dressed in clumsy, homespun suits of clothes, with full knee-breeches, long-flapped coats and waistcoats, coarse yarn stockings and buckled shoes, and great gray beaver hats several sizes too large for them. Elam was as solemn and serious in his appearance as was his father, but in his brain was a current of keen romance rarely found in the head of any elderly colonist. As he left the church-yard with his cousin he said, with much impressiveness, “Remember, Cotton, if you are not here by candle-light I shall tarry no longer, but shall go home.”
For several Sundays, as the boys had walked among the graves, and while they had been busy with the care of their fathers’ horses, Elam had occupied every moment in telling to Cotton all that he could remember of a wonderful story he had read in New Haven. Two months previously he had ridden with his father to that town, and in the tap-room of the “ordinary” at which they had “put up” during their stay there had lain a pile of about forty books, which a sea-captain had left to be sold to any chance traveller, or to townspeople who might be inclined to purchase them. There were several copies of Tate and Brady’s new Psalms, which some of the New England Puritans wished to use instead of the loved old Bay Psalm-book, two or three Bibles, half a dozen volumes of sermons, a Dutch Psalm-book, which was not Dutch at all, but a collection of English songs and ballads, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” a few prayer-books, and then there was a wonderful book which Elam did not have time to finish, though he had not wasted a moment. It thrilled and filled him with adventurous longings, and was called “Robinson Crusoe.” This was the first and only story-book he had ever seen, and as he retold the wonderful tale to Cotton, the desire to run away out into the great world, to cross the ocean and see some strange sights and lead a different life from that on a Narragansett farm, grew strong in both boys’ breasts.
At last Elam, having a fertile though unexercised imagination, developed a plan of action. They would leave home and meet at the old meeting-house, where they would spend several weeks of idleness, roaming the woods by day and sleeping in the noon-house by night, and when everyone in town was tired of searching for them, then they would make their way to the sea-shore without fear of capture, and get on board a ship and sail off somewhere. They could hide in the wood on the Sabbath days, and as the meeting-house stood on a lonely road in a great wood on the top of a high hill, there would be but few passers-by on week-days, and hence few chances of discovery. And now I must explain about the noon-house, which was to be their sleeping-place, for none of those queer old buildings now exist in New England.
By the side of the barn-like church were three long, low, mean, stable-like log buildings, which could hardly be stables, since at one end of each hut was a rough stone chimney. These were noon-houses, or “Sabba-day houses.” One had been built by Elam and Cotton’s grandfather, and was used by the families of his children. Until the early years of this century, only two or three meeting-houses throughout New England contained stoves. All through the long, bleak, winter weeks, through fierce “nor’-westers” and piercing frosts, the lonely churches stood, growing colder and colder, until when they were opened upon the Sabbath the chill and damp seemed almost unbearable. The women brought to church little iron foot-stoves filled with hot coals. Upon these stoves they placed their feet, and around them the shivering children sat at their mothers’ feet and warmed their chilled hands. But by the time the long service was over—for often the minister preached two hours and prayed an hour, and some of the Psalms took half an hour to sing—you can easily see that the warmth would all have died out of the little foot-stove, and the mothers and children would be as cold as the fathers, which is saying a great deal.
Now these half-frozen Baptists and Puritans and Episcopalians could hardly have remained to attend an afternoon service and lived through it, so they built houses with chimneys and fireplaces near the church where they could go and make a fire and get warm and eat their lunch, and when they asked permission to put up such a building they said it was to “keep their duds and horses in.”
And, surely enough, at one end of the noon-house were usually several stalls for the horses, who doubtless also enjoyed the warmth that came from the fireplace at the end of the room. The “duds” were the saddles and pillions on which the church attendants had been seated on their ride to church, and the saddle-bags which were full of good things to eat. Sometimes a few cooking-utensils to warm the noonday food were kept in the noon-house, and often hay for the horses and a great load of logs to burn in the fireplace, and sometimes a barrel of “cyder,” to drink at the nooning.
Frequently a large noon-house was built by several farmers in company, and I am afraid the children did not then enjoy their Sunday noontimes, for some old deacon or elder usually read a sermon to them between the morning and afternoon services, and they had to sit still and listen.
So you see that Elam and Cotton had very comfortable quarters to sleep in when they ran away to the noon-house on the Monday following the opening of my story. Each arrived about an hour before sunset, laden with all the food that he had been able to capture before leaving home. Cotton had a great piece of salt-pork and a dozen eggs, some of which had had a rather disastrous journey in his coat-pockets. Elam had a great crushed mass of dough-nuts and brown bread. This was not all of their provisions for their sojourn, for on each successive Sunday for five weeks previously both boys had crowded their great pockets with russet apples and their saddle-bags with cold corn-bread and brown bread, and they had starved themselves at each nooning in order to save their food and thus provide for the coming day of need; and they had concealed their treasures in an empty corn-bin at the horses’ end of the house. Cotton felt sure that they had food enough to last them for three weeks—rather dry and conglomerated, to be sure, but still good enough for boys of healthy appetites and simple Puritan tastes. Elam also had brought a flint and tinder-box with him, and with their aid and that of some light “candle-wood” he soon had a blazing fire upon the hearth, the coals of which he carefully covered up to save till morning, and then the two Robinson Crusoes climbed upon the hay and fell asleep.
The story of the first day spent by the runaways in their retreat would be the story of all the days, which were not as pleasure-filled as they had hoped. They had no hut to build, no goats to tame, no savages to fight and dread. They rose early in the morning, for the habits of their daily life were strong, and they did not dare have a fire much after daybreak, lest the smoke from the chimney should be discovered by some rare passer-by. They ate their breakfast of brown bread and cheese and apples and drank a little of the hard cider. As the weather was fortunately warm, they lolled on the stones behind the noon-house while Elam told over and over again the story of Robinson Crusoe and tales of the Indians that he had heard from his grandfather. They fished, with some success, in a little brook which ran through the woods, and one day they caught a rabbit in a trap which Cotton had set, and which he had learned how to make from old Showacum, a “praying Indian” who lived in the village. These trophies of their skill they of course skinned and cleaned and cooked, and though they were hungry—for they were hungry all the time—the unsalted fish and game did not seem very appetizing to them. They found a treasure one day in the woods—a store of nuts which had been forgotten or neglected or reserved until spring by some kindly squirrels—and with a few cakes of toothsome maple-sugar they had some variety of diet.
But alas, they also had healthy young appetites, and on Saturday night Cotton awakened to a fact whose approach had been plainly looming up before Elam for some time—that their three weeks’ supply of food was all gone. A half-decayed apple was their sole supper. A drink of the sour cider seemed only to make their hunger harder to bear, but at last they fell asleep. Perhaps the pangs of his gnawing stomach made Elam sleep more lightly than on previous nights, perhaps the equally keen pangs of his awakened conscience may have made him restless, but at midnight he suddenly sprang to his feet with an exclamation of horror at a sound which he recognized at once as the howl of a wolf. He jumped to the fire, wakening Cotton, who tumbled out of his nest of hay with a bewildered and wretched expression and an impatient cry of, “Oh, why did you wake me up when I am so hungry; pray let me sleep if you do or not,” when nearer and louder still rose the mournful howl of the wolf. With trembling hand Cotton heaped the light wood on the blaze which Elam had started with the old leather bellows, and then threw log after log on the hearth until the blaze roared up the chimney. Of course, the wolves—for they could hear more than one—could not get into the noon-house, as window and shutter were fast, but the boys were so wretched with hunger, so homesick, so lonesome, that they hardly stopped to reason, and, trembling with fear, Cotton seized an iron “loggerhead” which his father kept in the noon-house, and thrust it into the coals to heat to a red-hot pitch, when it could be used as a weapon. A “loggerhead” was a bar of iron which was used as a stirring-stick in making “flip.” Deacon Fayerweather always brought to church each winter Sunday in his saddle-bags three or four bottles of home-brewed beer and a bottle of Jamaica rum, from which, with the aid of the loggerhead, he made a famous jug of flip for the minister and deacons at the nooning.
And now the peaceful loggerhead was the only weapon the two wretched boys possessed, and, indeed, all they needed, for in a short time the howls of the wolves grew fainter and fainter and at last were no longer heard. All thought or power of sleep had, however, vanished from the brains of the terrified young Crusoes at this experience of the pleasures of adventure. All wish for final escape to the sea-shore had also disappeared, and now their only longing was to return home. All the remaining hours of the night they sat by the fire, while Elam, romantic in spite of hunger, fright, and disappointment, made known his plans for the following day. Toward morning they let the fire die down and expire, and when the sun was fully risen they left their sheltering noon-house and hid in the woods not far from the meeting-house, trembling, however, at every sound as they thought of their dread night-visitors.
As nine o’clock drew near there approached the church on every side, on foot and on horseback, the members of the congregation. All knew of the mysterious disappearance of Cotton and Elam, for the country had been widely and quickly scoured for them. Among the worshippers came Deacon and Mistress Fayerweather and Goodman Noyes and his wife, for all felt it a godly duty, even in time of deep affliction, not to neglect the public worship of God on the Sabbath. Despairingly did the sad parents hope to hear some news of their lost boys, who had apparently vanished from the face of the earth, for neither in farm-house nor in field, neither on the road nor at the toll-gate, neither by traveller nor by hunter, had they been seen. The very simplicity of their plan had been its safety. Forty years previously the whisper of kidnapping by the Indians would have added terror to the parents’ grief, but those days were happily over.
After sad greetings had been exchanged and the minister had entered the pulpit, the congregation seated itself for its usual Sunday-morning service. The opening half-hour prayer was ended, the church attendants had let down their slamming pew-seats (for the seats in those old New England meeting-houses always turned up on hinges to allow the pew occupants to lean against the walls of the pew during the long prayer), the minister had read with trembling voice a note which had been sent to him, “desiring the prayers of the congregation for two families in great inconveniency and distress,” when a door on the leeward side of the church slowly opened and two pale, dishevelled, and most wretched-looking youngsters crept slowly and shamefacedly in. The habit of constant self-repression and self-control, characteristic of the times, was all-powerful, even in this intense moment of crisis for the families of Fayerweather and Noyes. The deacon flushed scarlet, but did not move from his raised seat in front of the congregation. A faint murmur swept over the entire assembly at the appearance of Cotton and Elam, but was at once repressed. The boys walked calmly on to their accustomed seats on the gallery stairs, under the supervision of the tithingman. That zealous officer rapped sharply on the head with his long staff two or three of the occupants of one of the “boys’ pews,” who had turned around and stared, and whispered noisily at the appearance of the runaways. The old minister, being slightly deaf, had heard no ripple of commotion, and, not having glanced at the late comers, proceeded to offer a pathetic prayer for the lost ones, “whom God held in the hollow of his hand,” a prayer that brought to Elam and Cotton a realizing sense of their selfishness and wickedness, and which worked a lesson that influenced them through life. The parson then gave out his text: “He will have charge over thee concerning thee,” and worked his way on in his accustomed and somewhat monotonous fashion, though with many allusions to the two wanderers, until at fourteenthly came the long-deferred end. Nor was there any murmur of feeling heard (though the mothers’ eyes were filled with tears), when Deacon Fayerweather, in a slightly trembling voice, lined out the Psalm:
O give yee thanks unto the Lord
because that good is hee,
Because his loving-kindness lasts
in perpetuitee.
I’th’ desart in a desart way
they wandered: no towne finde
to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty
their Soul within them pinde.
Then did they to Jehovah cry
when they were in distresse
Who did them set at liberty
out of their anguishes.
In such a way as was most right
he led them forth also
That to a citty which they might
inhabit they might go.
I wish I could say that the boys’ parents, being so glad to get the wanderers home, permitted them to go unpunished, but alas! early New Englanders believed firmly that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child,” and never spared the rod; and, as “sloathefulnes” and disobedience to parents were specially abominated, such high-handed rebellion as this of Elam and Cotton could hardly be allowed to pass by without being made a public example. Then, too, unfortunately for the boys, the warmth of joy at recovering the lost ones had time through the two hours of sermon to cool down and change into indignation. So at the close of the service Deacon Fayerweather, after rather coldly greeting his son and nephew, asked the advice of the minister upon so important a subject, who gave as his opinion that the gravity of the offence, the necessity of the lesson to other youths in the congregation, and the conveniency of circumstances seemed to point out plainly, and was furthermore upheld by Scripture, that public chastisement should be given upon the spot, and that Elder Rogers was best fitted, both by age, dignity, and strength, to administer both rebuke and punishment. And with promptness and despatch and thoroughness the decree was carried out; both boys were “whipped with birchen rods” while standing upon the horse-block before the church.
But though the colonial fathers were stern and righteously disciplinarian, the colonial mothers were loving and tender, as are mothers everywhere and in all times, and Mistress Fayerweather and Mistress Noyes each bore off her weeping boy to the noon-house and filled his empty stomach well with dough-nuts and pork and peas and pumpkin-bread, until, with comfort and plenty within, external woes and past terrors were forgotten.