AN INDIAN TALE
“At the age of nine or ten a circumstance occurred which deserves to be written on adamant. In the wars of New England with the aborigines, the Mohegan tribe of Indians early became friends of the English. Their favorite ground was on the banks of the river (now the Thames) between New London and Norwich. A small remnant of the Mohegans still exists, and they are sacredly protected in the possession and enjoyment of their favorite domain on the banks of the Thames. The government of this tribe had become hereditary in the family of the celebrated chief Uncas. During the time of my father’s mercantile prosperity he had employed several Indians of this tribe in hunting animals, whose skins were valuable for their fur. Among these hunters was one named Zachary, of the royal race, an excellent hunter, but as drunken and worthless an Indian as ever lived. When he had somewhat passed the age of fifty, several members of the royal family who stood between Zachary and the throne of his tribe died, and he found himself with only one life between him and empire. In this moment his better genius resumed its sway, and he reflected seriously. ‘How can such a drunken wretch as I am aspire to be the chief of this honorable race—what will my people say—and how will the shades of my noble ancestors look down indignant upon such a base successor? Can I succeed to the great Uncas? I will drink no more!’ He solemnly resolved never again to taste any drink but water, and he kept his resolution.
“I had heard this story, and did not entirely believe it; for young as I was, I already partook in the prevailing contempt for Indians. In the beginning of May, the annual election of the principal officers of the (then) colony was held at Hartford, the capital. My father attended officially, and it was customary for the chief of the Mohegans also to attend.
“Zachary had succeeded to the rule of his tribe. My father’s house was situated about midway on the road between Mohegan and Hartford, and the old chief was in the habit of coming a few days before the election and dining with his brother governor. One day the mischievous thought struck me, to try the sincerity of the old man’s temperance. The family were seated at dinner, and there was excellent home-brewed beer on the table. I addressed the old chief: ‘Zachary, this beer is excellent; will you taste it?’ The old man dropped his knife and fork, leaning forward with a stern intensity of expression; his black eye, sparkling with indignation, was fixed on me. ‘John,’ said he, ‘you do not know what you are doing. You are serving the devil, boy! Do you not know that I am an Indian? I tell you that I am, and that, if I should but taste your beer, I could never stop until I got to rum, and became again the drunken, contemptible wretch your father remembers me to have been. John, while you live never again tempt any man to break a good resolution.’
“Socrates never uttered a more valuable precept; Demosthenes could not have given it in more solemn tones of eloquence. I was thunderstruck. My parents were deeply affected; they looked at each other, at me, and at the venerable old Indian, with deep feelings of awe and respect. They afterward frequently reminded me of the scene, and charged me never to forget it.
“Zachary lived to pass the age of eighty, and sacredly kept his resolution. He lies buried in the royal burial-place of his tribe, near the beautiful falls of the Yantic, the western branch of the Thames, in Norwich, on land now owned by my friend, Calvin Goddard, Esq. I visited the grave of the old chief lately, and there repeated to myself his inestimable lesson.”
Mr. Trumbull, the painter, also thus pictures his own youth, and what a character it presents in the studies he made, and the books he read!
“About this time, when I was nine or ten years old, my father’s mercantile failure took place. He had been for years a successful merchant, and looked forward to an old age of ease and affluence; but in one season almost every vessel, and all the property which he had upon the ocean, was swept away, and he was a poor man at so late a period of life as left no hope of retrieving his affairs.
“My eldest brother was involved in the wreck as a partner, which rendered the condition of the family utterly hopeless. My mother and sisters were deeply afflicted, and although I was too young clearly to comprehend the cause, yet sympathy led me too to droop. My bodily health was frail, for the sufferings of early youth had left their impress on my constitution, and although my mind was clear and the body active, it was never strong. I therefore seldom joined my little schoolfellows in plays or exercises of an athletic kind, for there I was almost sure to be vanquished; and by degrees acquired new fondness for drawing, in which I stood unrivaled. Thus I gradually contracted a solitary habit, and after school hours frequently withdrew to my own room to a close study of my favorite pursuit.
“Such was my character at the time of my father’s failure, and this added gloomy feelings to my love of solitude. I became silent, diffident, bashful, awkward in society, and took refuge in still closer application to my books and my drawing.
“The want of pocket-money prevented me from joining my young companions in any of those little expensive frolics which often lead to future dissipation, and thus became a blessing; and my good master Tisdale had the wisdom so to vary my studies as to render them rather a pleasure than a task. Thus I went forward, without interruption, and at the age of twelve might have been admitted to enter college; for I had then read Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Juvenal in Latin; the Greek Testament and Homer’s Iliad in Greek, and was thoroughly versed in geography, ancient and modern, in studying which I had the advantage (then rare) of a twenty-inch globe. I had also read with care Rollin’s History of Ancient Nations; also his History of the Roman Republic; Mr. Crevier’s continuation of the History of the Emperors, and Rollin’s Arts and Sciences of the Ancient Nations. In arithmetic alone I met an awful stumbling-block. I became puzzled by a sum in division, where the divisor consisted of three figures. I could not comprehend the rule for ascertaining how many times it was contained in the dividend; my mind seemed to come to a dead stand; my master would not assist me, and forbade the boys to do it, so that I well recollect the question stood on my slate unsolved nearly three months, to my extreme mortification.
“At length the solution seemed to flash upon my mind at once, and I went forward without further let or hindrance through the ordinary course of fractions, vulgar and decimal, surveying, trigonometry, geometry, navigation, etc., so that when I had reached the age of fifteen and a half years, it was stated by my good master that he could teach me little more, and that I was fully qualified to enter Harvard College in the middle of the third or junior year. This was approved by my father, and proposed to me. In the meantime my fondness for painting had grown with my growth, and in reading of the arts of antiquity I had become familiar with the names of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Zeuxis and Apelles.”
This son, who began his great career as an historical painter by drawing pictures in sand on the floor, after the manner we have shown, as he grew older and had seen Europe, determined to follow his genius. The young man gives us the following view of his father, a lovely picture in itself:
“My father urged me to study the law as the profession which in a republic leads to all emolument and distinction, and for which my early education had well prepared me. My reply was that, so far as I understood the question, law was rendered necessary by the vices of mankind; that I had already seen too much of them willingly to devote my life to a profession which would keep me perpetually involved either in the defense of innocence against fraud and injustice, or (what was much more revolting to an ingenuous mind) to the protection of guilt against just and merited punishment. In short, I pined for the arts, again entered into an elaborate defense of my predilection, and again dwelt upon the honors paid to artists in the glorious days of Greece and Athens. My father listened patiently, and when I had finished he complimented me upon the able manner in which I had defended what to him still appeared to be a bad cause.
“‘I had confirmed his opinion,’ he said, ‘that with proper study I should make a respectable lawyer; but,’ added he, ‘you must give me leave to say that you appear to have overlooked, or forgotten, one very important point in your case.’ ‘Pray, sir,’ I rejoined, ‘what was that?’ ‘You appear to forget, sir, that Connecticut is not Athens’; and with this pithy remark he bowed and withdrew, and never more opened his lips upon the subject. How often have those few impressive words occurred to my memory—‘Connecticut is not Athens!’ The decision was made in favor of the arts. I closed all other business, and in December, 1783, embarked at Portsmouth, N. H., for London.”
He could begin to make Connecticut like Athens by his own work.
Queer tales they told “grave people” at the ordinaries, and inns, and at the store of the war office.
The New England mind in the colonial period saw no chariots of angels in the air, and heard no rustlings of angels’ wings, like the ancient Hebrews, and looked for no goddesses, like the Greeks and Romans. Ugly hags and witches, “grave people” in winding-sheets, scared folks in a cowardly manner in lonely highways and hidden byways; bad people who died with restless consciences came forth from their “earthly beds” to make startling confessions to the living. It was a time of terror, of people fleeing from persecutions, and of Indian hostilities. Let us have another old-time store story, to picture the social life of those decisive times.
It was the beginning of the days of the “drovers,” when our tale was told, such drovers as used to go wandering over New England in the fall and spring, selling cattle, or trading in cattle, with the farmers by the way.
It was fall. Maples flamed; the grape-leaves turned yellow around the purple clusters that hung over the walls; the fringed gentians lined the brooks; the cranberries reddened; the birds gathered in flocks; the blue jays trumpeted, and the crows cawed. Great stacks of corn filled the corners of the husking-fields.
The drovers came to the valleys of the Connecticut and to the Berkshire Hills, and rested at last with full purses at the Plainfield Inn.
In the inn lived an aunt of the innkeeper, a Quaker woman by the name of Eunice.
There was a young drover named Mordecai, who was all imagination, eyes and ears. He seemed to be so earnest to learn everything that he attracted the notice of Eunice, and she said to him on one of his annual visits:
“Mordecai, and who may thy father be?”
“Gone—gone with the winds. That’s him.”
“And thy mother?”
“Gone—gone after him. That’s her. Where do you suppose they are?”
“Did they leave anything?”
“Left all they had.”
“And how much was that, Mordecai?”
“The earth—all.”
“And thou wert left all alone. I pity thee, Mordecai.”
Now, Quaker Eunice knit. She not only knit stockings and garters, but comforters for the neck, and gallows, as suspenders for trousers were then called. The latter were called galluses. She did not knit these useful and convenient articles for her own people alone, but for those who most needed them.
When serene Aunt Eunice saw how friendless the drover boy Mordecai was, her benevolent heart quickened, and she resolved to knit for him a comforter of many bright colors, a yard long, and a pair of gallows of stout twine, to give him on his return another year, when the cattle traders should come down from Boston. It took time to fabricate these high-art treasures of many kinds and colors. So when Mordecai was leaving the inn this year, she called after him:
“Mordecai, thee halt in thy goings.”
Mordecai looked back.
“Boy, thee has no mother to look after thee now, except from the spirit-world. I am going to knit a comforter for thee that will go around thy neck three times and hang down at that. I will set the dye-pot and dye the wool—the ash-barrel is almost full now. And thee listen. I am going to knit a pair of gallows for thee——”
The boy’s eyes dilated. He had never heard the word used before except for the cords that hung pirates on the green isle in Boston harbor. Did she expect him to be hung?
“I will knit the gallows stout and strong, so that they will hold. But I must not tell thee all about it now—thee shall know all another year, after killing-time, in the Indian summer, when the wich-hazels that bloom in the fall are in flower.”
Mordecai, who had been filled with New England superstitions by the drovers’ tales in the country inns, stood with open mouth, when Aunt Eunice added:
“I am going to put a new invention on those gallows; it will prove a surprise to thee.”
It did.
The boy Mordecai passed a year in wonder at what the zigzag journey to hill towns at the west of the State would bring him in the holiday or rest seasons of the fall. He wandered with the drovers to the towns around Boston, and on the Charles and “Merrimack,” trading and selling cattle, and “putting up” at the inns by the way, he himself sleeping in the barns, under the swallows’ nests.
They were merry merchantmen, the drovers. Whittier describes them in a poem. Their cattle trades had a dialect of its own, and there was an unwritten law that “all was fair in trade,” to which “honorable dishonesty” clear-minded Aunt Eunice made objection, and against which she “delivered exhortations.”
Some of these merry rovers used a boy to help them in tricks of trade—to shorten the age of cattle, and the time when the latter were “broke,” and like matters.
One day in the spring tradings a Quaker on one of the Salem farms said to Mordecai:
“Boy, thee must never let thy tongue slip an untruth, or thee will come to the gallows.”
The next year the drovers and Mordecai took their annual journey from Cambridge to Springfield and eastern Connecticut, and stopped at the Plainfield Inn.
The trees flamed with autumnal splendors again; the sun seemed burning in the air, now with a clear flame, now with a smoky haze; there were great corn harvests everywhere. The twilight and early evening hours were still. The voices on the farms echoed—those of the huskers, and of the boys driving the oxen, with carts loaded with corn. The hunters’ moon that rose over the hills like a night sun lengthened out the day.
They went on slowly, and so allowing their cattle to graze on the succulent grasses by the roadside, and to fatten, and become lazy.
They rested at great farmhouses, bartering and selling as long as the light of the day lasted, and telling awful tales of the Indian wars and old Salem witchcraft days later in the evening.
Some of the drovers’ stories were awful indeed. One of them concerned the “Miller of Durham.” The said miller used to remain in his mill late in the evening alone. One night he was startled by the dripping of water inside of the mill-house. He turned from the hopper, and saw there a woman, with five bloody wounds, and wet garments, and wide eyes.
“Miller of Durham,” she said, “you must avenge me, or I will haunt the mill. You will find my body in the well in the abandoned coal-pit. Mattox killed me—he knows why.”
The miller knew Mattox, and he saw that the woman had a familiar look, and had probably been employed on the farm of the accused man, who was a prosperous farmer. He resolved to conceal the appearance of the accusing ghost. But the apparition followed him, and so made his life a terror that he went perforce to a magistrate and made confession. The woman’s body, with five wounds, was found in the well of the coal-pit, and Mattox was accused of the murder, tried, condemned, and executed. The story was a true one, but it was an old one. The events occurred in England on a moor.
The boy Mordecai listened to these inn tales at first with a clear conscience, and he felt secure, for he had been taught that innocence renders “apparitions” harmless; but after a time his moral condition changed, and his fears were aroused, and they grew into terrors.
For one day, as the lively cattle-owner was driving a bargain with a rich farmer under some great elms that rose like hills of greenery by the roadside, he declared that a certain cow had given fifteen quarts of milk a day during the summer, and had said, “There is the boy that milked her—the boy Mordecai, he of the Old Testament name. Speak up, Mordecai. You milked her, didn’t you, now?”
Mordecai stood silent. The cow had given some eight or ten quarts of milk a day.
“He can’t deny that he milked her,” said the bantering trader.
“And did she give fifteen quarts of milk regularly during the summer, boy?” asked the farmer.
“I did not measure the milk myself,” said the boy. “The boss did that.”
“That was I, or rather my wife,” said the drover.
Mordecai’s conscience began to be disturbed, and disturbed consciences are the stuff out of which ghosts grow.
At the next inn, in the lovely Connecticut valley, a still more terrible story was told. A forest tavern-keeper, after this tale, had trained a huge mastiff to drown his rich guests in a pond in a wood at the back of the tavern. The strong dog had been bought of a drover named Bonny, who had treated him kindly. Years passed, and the same Mr. Bonny visited the inn, and was recognized by the dog, but not by the tavern-keeper. The latter invited Mr. Bonny to go with him to the trout-pond in the wood, and while they were on the margin of the pond he suddenly whistled to his mastiff as a signal. The dog whined and howled and ran around in a circle.
“Why don’t you do as you always do?” exclaimed the tavern-keeper to the dog in anger.
The dog’s eyes blazed; he leaped upon his master and dragged him into the pond. But his master in his struggles drowned the mastiff. Mr. Bonny witnessed the scene in horror, and seeing what it meant—for several rich drovers had disappeared from the inn and had never been heard of again—he determined to conceal the matter, as the crime could not be repeated. But the dead dog howled nights, and so drew people to the pond, and disclosed the crime.
“Life,” said the story-teller, “is self-revealing: everything is found out at last. The stars in their courses fight against a liar!”
The inward eyes of Mordecai now began to expect to see “sights.” The boy’s conscience burned. He had the ghost atmosphere.
The next time that the lusty drover tried to sell the cow that had given “fifteen quarts of milk a day” he declared that she had given sixteen quarts, and called the milker as before to witness the statement.
“You milked her?” he asked.
“Yes; but you measured the milk,” said Mordecai.
“So I did,” said the drover in an absent tone in which was the usual false note, “so I did. I remember now. But you used to milk her.”
“Yes,” faltered the boy, feeling that the heavens were likely to fall or the earth to cave in.
The story at the next inn, near Pittsfield, on the Albany way, outdid all the rest. A man who had robbed his neighbors by deception, after this story, had been followed nights by the clanking of an invisible chain. A neighbor whom he had ruined died, and after that the clankings of the “invisible chain” began to be heard in his bedchamber. If he ran down-stairs they followed him, clank, clank, clank, on the oak steps, and out into the garden.
Mordecai could fancy it all: the man running half-crazed down the oak stairs, with the invisible chain clanking behind him.
When the drover next tried to sell that cow he declared that she had given “eighteen quarts of milk a day,” to which he called Mordecai to witness. The boy gasped “Yes” to the question if he had milked her regularly, but he seemed to hear the clanking of the invisible chain as he acted his part for the last time. The wonderful cow was sold.
In this state of mind Mordecai came to the Plainfield Inn, and again met there the serene and truthful Aunt Eunice.
“I’ve kept my promise that I made to thee a year ago,” said the sympathetic woman, “gallows and all. The dyestuff took, and the colors of the comforter are real pretty. Thee looks troubled.”
Near midnight the foresticks in the fireplace broke and fell, and the men went to their rooms.
“Thee will sleep in the cockloft,” said Aunt Eunice to Mordecai, “but before thee goes up let me sew some buttons on thy trousers for the gallows [galluses]. Stand up by me; I have some stout thread for the purpose.”
Mordecai took off his jacket and loosened his belt, and Aunt Eunice sewed on the buttons as he stood beside her. She then attached the gallows to the back buttons, leaving them otherwise free for him to button on in front in the morning.
“See here, Mordecai,” she said. “These are no common gallows. I’ve put buckles on them—buckles that my grandfather wore in the Indian wars. These are wonderful buckles. If the gallows are too long, thee can h’ist them up, so; if they are then too short, thee can let them out again, so.”
Now, when Mordecai saw that the gallows had no connection with hanging he felt happy, and he went up to the cockloft, candle in hand.
“Be careful and not let the buckles drag upon the floor, Mordecai,” were the good woman’s last words as she saw the boy disappear with the light, holding the wonderful suspenders in his hand.
Mordecai could not sleep. The cockloft did not look right, did not fulfil his moral ideal. The great moon rose over the hills and flooded the valley with white light. He began to think of the three acted lies of which he had been a part. The cow that had given “fifteen,” “sixteen,” “seventeen,” “eighteen” quarts of milk a day had been sold—what if the purchaser should commit suicide?
At midnight he heard a cry out in the field.
“Hello! that steer is out and is at the corn-stack!”
The voice was that of a drover. Mordecai felt that he should get up and go to the corn-stack and help impound the steer.
He forgot the gallows, so they hung down to the floor behind him after he had dressed. He tried to light the candle after the old slow way, for the ladder to the cockloft was “poky,” when he heard something clink behind him. He turned around, when an iron hoof seemed to follow him around, clink, clink, clink. The sound was not alarming or vengeful or in a way terrible, but to his imagination it shook the roof.
He whirled around again.
Clink, clink!
Again.
Clink!
His heart seemed bursting, his brain to be on fire. He rushed toward the ladder and the “thing” followed him. He attempted to go down the ladder, but after some steps the “thing” held him back, when he uttered a cry that shook the whole tavern and made the people leap from their beds.
“Hel-up! Hel-up! Let go! Let go!”
The landlord came running, and saw the situation.
“I never thought that you would come to the gallows,” said he, “but you have!”
“All the powers have mercy on me now!” cried Mordecai. “But I’ll confess. Will you let me go if I confess?”
“Yes, yes,” said the landlord. “What have you on your mind?”
The drovers came running in.
“That cow didn’t give no fifteen quarts. I connived. The drover put me up to it—the Lord of massy, what will become of his soul? I’ll never connive again!”
Then said the landlord:
“I’ll have to let you go.”
He unloosened the “galluses,” which had wound around a rung in the ladder, and Mordecai kept his conscience clear even in cattle trade ever after.
CHAPTER VI
THE DECISIVE DAY OF BROTHER JONATHAN’S LIFE
Before we leave this part of our subject we should study the event that made the great character of the Governor.
All lives have decisive days. Such a day determined the great destiny of Jonathan Trumbull.
The stamp act had been passed in Parliament, by which a stamp duty was imposed upon all American paper that should be used to transact business and upon articles essential to life. Persons were to be appointed to sell stamps for the purpose. This was taxation without representation in Parliament, and was regarded as tyranny in America.
All persons holding office under England were required to make oath that they would support the stamp duty. Among these were the Governor of Connecticut and his ten councilors, and one of these councilors at that time was Jonathan Trumbull.
The day arrived on which the Governor, whose name was Fitch, and his councilors assembled to take the oath or to resign their commissions.
“I am ready to be sworn,” said the then Governor. “The sovereignty of England demands it. Are you all ready?”
There was a grave silence.
Jonathan Trumbull rose.
“The stamp act,” said he, “is a derogation of the chartered rights of the colony. It takes away our freedom. The power that can tax us as it pleases can govern us as it pleases. The stamp act takes away our liberties and robs us of everything. It makes us slaves and can reduce us to poverty. I can not take the oath.”
“But,” said the royal Governor, “the officers of his Majesty must obey his commands or not hold his commissions. For you to refuse to be sworn is contempt of Parliament. The King’s displeasure is fatal. Gentlemen, I am ready for the oath, and I ask that it be now administered to me.”
The Governors of all the provinces except Rhode Island had taken the oath. Even Franklin and Otis and Richard Henry Lee had decided to submit to the act of unrestrained tyranny. They thought it politic to do so.
But Trumbull’s conscience rose supreme over every argument and consideration. In conscience he was strong, as any one may be.
“I can not take the oath,” said Trumbull. “Let Parliament do its worst, and its armies and navies thunder. I will not violate my provincial oath, which I deem to be right. I will be true to Connecticut, and to the liberties of man. You have sworn by the awful name of Almighty God to be true to the rights of this colony. I have so sworn, and that oath will I keep.”
It was near the close of the day. The red sun was setting, casting his glimmering splendors over the pines. The oath was about to be administered by the royal Governor.
Jonathan Trumbull rose up among the councilors. His soul had arisen to a sublime height, and despised all human penalties or martyrs’ fires.
His intense eyes bespoke the thoughts that were burning within him.
He did not speak. He was about to make his conduct more eloquent than words.
He seized his tricornered hat, and gave back a look that said, “I will not disgrace myself by witnessing such a ceremony of degradation.” He moved toward the door.
His every motion betokened his self-command, his soul value, his uncompromising obedience to the law of right. Erect, austere, he retreated from the shadow of the room, into the burning light of the sunset.
He closed the door behind him, and breathed his native air.
Six of the councilors followed him—six patriot seceders.
That was a notable day for liberty: it made Trumbull a power, though he could not see it.
The people upheld Trumbull. At the next election they cast out of office the Governor and those of his councilors who had received the oath, and Connecticut was free.
In a short time the people made Jonathan Trumbull, who risked all by leaving the room at the dusk of that decisive day, their Governor, and they continued him in office until his hair turned white, and he heard the town bells all ringing for the independence and peace of America.
Had his act cost him his life he would have done the same. He would have owned his soul. Honor to him was more than life—
My life and honor both together run;
Take honor from me and my life is done.
When “Brother Jonathan” returned to Lebanon he was greeted by all hearts. The rugged farmers gathered on the green around him with lifted hats. The children hailed him, even the Indian children. The dogs barked, and when the bell rang out, it rang true to his ears; for him forever the bell of life rang true.
But his life was forfeited to the Crown. What of that? His soul was safe in the Almighty, and he slept in peace, lulled to rest by the whispering cedars. So began the great public career of Trumbull. He was chosen Lieutenant-Governor in 1766, and Governor in 1769.
He was made the chairman of the Connecticut Council of Public Safety, which met at his war office, which at first was a protected room in his little store. His biographer, Stuart, thus gives us glimpses of this busy place:
“Within that ‘war office,’ with its old-fashioned ‘hipped’ roof and central chimney-stack, he met his Council of Safety during almost the entire period of the war. Here he received commissaries and sub-commissaries, many in number, to devise and talk over the means of supply for our armies. From hence started, from time to time during the war, besides those teams to which we have just alluded, numerous other long trains of wagons, loaded with provisions for our forces at the East, the West, the North, and the South; and around this spot—from the fields and farmyards of agricultural Lebanon and its vicinity—was begun the collection of many a herd of fat cattle, that were driven even to the far North around Lake George and Lake Champlain, and to the far distant banks of the Delaware and the Schuylkill, as well as to neighboring Massachusetts and the banks of the Hudson.
“Here was the point of arrival and departure for numberless messengers and expresses that shot, in every direction, to and from the scenes of revolutionary strife. Narragansett ponies, of extraordinary fleetness and astonishing endurance—worthy such governmental post-riders as the tireless Jesse Brown, the ‘alert Samuel Hunt,’ and the ‘flying Fessenden,’ as the latter was called—stood hitched, we have heard, at the posts and palings around, or by the Governor’s house, or at the dwelling of his son-in-law Williams, ready, on any emergency of danger, to fly with advices, in any desired direction, on the wings of the wind. The marks of the spurs of the horsemen thus employed were but a few years back visible within the building—all along upon the sides of the counters upon which they sat, waiting to receive the Governor’s orders.
“So we find him during the period now under consideration (1775), executing in person the business of furnishing troops, and of procuring and forwarding supplies—now flour, particularly from Norwich; now, from various quarters, beef and pork; now blankets; now arms; but especially, at all times, whenever and wherever he could procure it, powder, the manufacture of which vital commodity he stimulated through committees appointed to collect saltpeter in every part of the State. ‘The necessities of the army are so great’ for this article, wrote Washington to him almost constantly at this time, ‘that all that can be spared should be forwarded with the utmost expedition.’—‘Soon as your expected supply of powder arrives,’ wrote his son-in-law, Colonel Huntington, from Cambridge, August 14th, ‘I imagine General Putnam will kick up a dust. He has got one floating battery launched, and another on the stocks.’ The powder was sent—at one time six large wagon-loads, and at the same time two more for New York, on account of an expected attack in that direction. ‘Our medicine-chests will soon be exhausted,’ wrote Huntington at the same time. The medicine-chests were replenished. And before September Trumbull had so completely drained his own State of the materials for war that he was obliged to write to Washington and inform him that he could not then afford any more.”
In these thrilling days the people awaited the news upon the village green.
The village green of Lebanon! Across it the old war Governor walked a thousand times to attend meetings at the office in the interests of the State and the welfare of man. A monument to him should arise there.
The village greens of New England were fields of the highest patriotism, and their history would be a glorious record. The church spires rose over them; the schoolhouse bells; and on them or in a hall near them the folkmotes were held. These town meetings were the suggestions of republican government and the patterns of the great republic.
How the words “Brother Jonathan,” that became the characteristic name of the nation, reached the ears of Washington at Cambridge we do not know. It became the nickname—the name that bespoke character to the army through Washington. It will always live.
How did the people of Lebanon among the cedars come to give that name to the great judge, assistant, and governor that rose among them? In his official life he was so dignified and used such strong Latin-derived words to express his thoughts that one could hardly have suspected a Roger de Coverley behind the courtly dressed man and his well-weighed speech. He was an American knight.
But in his private life he was as delightful as a veritable Roger de Coverley, even if he did not fall asleep in church. The true character of an old New Englander was in him. He loved his neighbors as his own self with a most generous and sympathetic love. No tale of knight-errantry could be more charming than that of the life he led among his own folk in Lebanon.
He probably studied medicine that he might doctor the poor. Were any poor man sick, he sent another in haste to consult Brother Jonathan; and Brother Jonathan, in gig, and possibly in wig, with his greatcoat in winter, and vials, and probably snuff-box, and all, hurried to the sick-bed.
He carried the medicine of medicine with him in his heart, which was that of hope and cheer. Whatever other doctors might say, he often said: “I have seen sicker men than you recover; you may get well if you only look up; it is the spiritual that heals, and the Lord is good to all.”
He always asserted that the unspiritual perishes; that that truth was not only the Bible and the sermon, but that it was law. He had charity for all men, and he made it the first condition of healing that one should repent of his sins. So he prayed with the sick, and the sick people whom he visited often found a new nature rising up within them. The sick poor always remembered the prescriptions of Brother Jonathan.
He was an astronomer and made his own almanacs. If any one was in doubt as to what the weather was likely to be, he went to Brother Jonathan.
The cattlemen and sheep-raisers came to him for advice. Did a poor cow fall sick, she too found a friend in Brother Jonathan.
He would have given away his hat off his head had it not been a cocked one, had he found a poor man with his head uncovered.
He gave his fire to those who needed it on cold days.
There had been established a school in Lebanon for the education of Indian children for missionaries. His heart went into it; of course it did. When he was yet rich—a merchant worth nearly $100,000 (£18,000)—he made a subscription to schools; but when ship after ship was lost by the stress of war and other causes, and he became poor, he hardly knew how to pay his school subscriptions, so he mortgaged two of his farms.
“I will pay my debts,” he said, “if it takes a lifetime.” And none doubted the word of Brother Jonathan.
The people all pitied him when he lost his property, and came to say that they were sorry for him when he partly failed, and their hearts showed him a new world, and made him love every one more than before.
Great thanksgivings they used to have in his perpendicular house among the green cedars, and the stories that were told by Madam Trumbull and her friends expressed the very heart of old New England days.
What people may have been there that afterward came to tower aloft, and some of them to move the world! Samuel Occum may have been there, the Indian who moved London; Brant may have been there, whose name became a terror in the Connecticut Colony in the Wyoming Valley, and whom the poet Campbell falsely associates with the tragedies of Wyoming.
The old church stood by the green; it stands there now. In it Governor Trumbull’s stately proclamations were read; there probably the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed.
Thanksgiving—what stories like Christmas tales of to-day used to be told by long log fires after the church and the dinner, which latter exhibited all the products of the fields and woods! A favorite story concerned people who were frightened by ghosts that were not ghosts.
Let us give one of these stories that pictures the heart and superstition of old New England and also one of Connecticut’s handicrafts. For the clock-cleaner was a notable story-teller in those old days. He cleaned family clocks and oiled them, sometimes with walnut oil. He usually remained overnight at a farmhouse or inn, and related stories of clocks wherever he found a clock to clean.
These Connecticut clock stories in Brother Jonathan’s day were peculiar, for clocks were supposed to be family oracles—to stop to give warning of danger, and to stop, as arrested by an invisible hand, on the approach of death.
Curious people would gather at the war office when the wandering clock-cleaner appeared upon the green. The time-regulator was sure to tell stories at the Alden Tavern or at the war office, and usually at the latter. Men with spurs would sit along the counter, and dig their spurs into the wood, under excitement, as the clock tale was unfolded: how that the family clock stopped and the Nestor of the family died, and the oldest son went out and told the bees in their straw hives.
Peter the outcast had an ear for these many tales while about his work, and Dennis O’Hay was often found on the top of a barrel at these gatherings.
Dennis heard these New England tales with increasing terror. There were supposed to be fairies in the land from which he came—fairy shoemakers, who brought good to people and eluded their hand-grasp. He became so filled with the “signs” and superstitions of the people that once, when he met a white rabbit, he thought it was a rabbit turned into a ghost, and he ran back from the woods to the tavern to ask what the “sign” meant, when one saw the ghost of “bunny.” A nimble little rabbit once turned its white cotton-like tail to him, and darted into a burrow. He ran home to ask what meant the sign, and the good taverner said that was a sign that he had lost the rabbit, which was usually the case when a white tail so vanished from sight.
There was one story of the clock that was associated with early revolutionary days that pictures the times as well as superstitions vividly, and we will tell it and place it in the war office on a long evening when the Governor was busy with his council in the back room.
The clock-cleaner has come, the farmers sit on boxes and barrels, some “cavalry” men hang over the “counter,” and swing their feet and spurs. The candles sputter and the light is dim, and the Connecticut clock-cleaner, amid increasing stillness and darkness, relates his tale slowly, which was like this: