PAMELIA TEWKSBURY’S COURTSHIP.
In a certain section of Central New York the contour of the hills forms a remarkable resemblance to a huge pitcher, and by this name the region has long been known.
A few years since my husband and I, with a young son, took a delightful outing through that locality. Having our own horses and carriage, we made a very leisurely journey, aiming always for a comfortable resting place at night, and bearing away with us each morning a hamper containing luncheon for ourselves and a bag of oats for the ponies. Thus equipped, we traversed the distance to our next lodging according to our daily whim; picnicking at noon, in true gypsy fashion, beneath some pine trees, or beside a rippling stream; turning from coffee and sandwiches to a delicious course of “Humorous Sketches,” or a siesta upon pine boughs.
Many comical adventures had we. It was difficult to convince the country people, who often stopped to chat with us, that this was recreation. They invariably demanded a legitimate reason for such unusual proceedings, and more than one inquiring visitor searched the light vehicle for some wares that he had “made sure” we were peddling.
Genuine offers of hospitality were not wanting, and many a pedestrian found a seat in the comfortable little carriage.
It so happened one morning that my husband was somewhat bewildered by the conjunction of several roads, and seeing in advance of us a sturdy figure moving forward at a good pace we hurried to overtake it. At the sound of approaching wheels, and the words “My friend, can thee tell me just where Pitcher lies?” a genial countenance was turned toward us.
“Wal, I reckon, this here,” indicating the abrupt hills just before us, “is the handle. What part be ye looking fer?”
He had a ruddy face, very grizzly as to beard, and when he removed his weather-worn hat his smooth, bald crown, with a fringe of white curls, seemed an unfit accompaniment for the twinkling eyes of deep blue—such eyes as one sometimes sees in babies, wholly undimmed by care or tears.
“Why, I really don’t know,” laughed my husband; “I was directed to Hosmer’s Inn.”
“Oh, ho! that’s atwixt the nose and the swell. Now ye are smiling, and well ye may; but just step out here and ye can see that God A’mighty shaped a perfecter pitcher out of them hills than most men can turn on a wheel—no, ye can’t drive nigh to this stump, and that’s whar yer woman wants to stand.”
He helped us all to alight, gave me his hand as I climbed to the top of the stump, and pointed with his thumb to a rise of ground far in the rear.
“That thar’s the rim, being what the pitcher ought to rest on if the Lord had sot it on end.” There was no possible irreverence in his tone. “Hereabouts,” a rolling section nearer us, “is the swell. Just across Bub’s left shoulder lies the nose, and here right for’ard is the beginning of the handle. Foller it—see it curves jest so.”
It was very plain, and we all expressed our complete understanding of the “lay of the land.”
“There is jest four p’ints where you can see the whole figger to onct. Here, by this hick’ry stump; yander, north of the nose; south of them pines ye see, and kinder back of the rim. Them’s all, but it’s worth a journey—and I take it ye are travelers—to see how darned perfect the thing is. Looked to right, it couldn’t be beat; and I reckon, somehow, it’s about so with the most of God A’mighty’s doin’s—ef we look to ’em right they’re about perfect, that’s all there is of it.”
My husband thanked the old man cordially and invited him to ride with us if his route lay that way.
“Wal, now, I don’t care ef I do, squire. Ye hev the speech of the Quakers and them’s mighty good folk, and it haint often nowadays that I get behind two such spankin’ roans as them be. Nor,” as he clambered into the front seat, “nor nigh so sensible a looking woman—yer wife, maybe?”
“Yes; this is my wife and son.”
“It’s a darned good thing to hev yer wife with ye, along in life. I haint never had one yit,” he added evasively.
We all smiled, but the old man didn’t notice it. My husband spoke of the crops, of the fine air and good water. Our visitor answered in monosyllables. At last, pointing to a white gleam in the distance, he said, almost gleefully:
“Now, thar’s a woman livin’ in that house, that I cal’late to call my wife one o’ these days; but time an’t come yet.”
“How so?” asked I, rather hastily, I fear, for I scented a romance.
“Wal, it’s a long story, but ef ye an’t amiss I’d jest as lief tell it. We’re mor’n six miles from Hosmer’s.” And with this little introduction the story proceeded.
“It was in 1846 that I first come to the nose. Our farm lay afar off to the rim—a little mite further. But our deestric wa’n’t a-goin’ to keep no school that winter; so I up and asked father ef I dassent go off somewheres and get a job o’ chores fer my board, and so git one more term of schoolin’. He hadn’t no objections, and kinder thought it over, and spoke about Deacon Hinman at the nose being laid up with teesick and reckoned how he might want me. So I packed my big red han’kercher full o’ traps and socks and shirts, and away I come. I can see myself now a-bobbin’ up and down this very lane. It wa’n’t worked by team then, and it was full o’ yaller-rod and spikenet, for it had been an awful pretty fall. So I, like a boy—and I love to pick ’em yit—hung a posy bed around my neck, and clean forgot it when I knocked at the deacon’s side door. And what do ye think? The durndest prettiest gal up and opened it. I never was so took back. I allers knowed Deacon Hinman hadn’t no darters; and there she stood and me a-meachin’, till all at once she said:
“‘A-peddlin’ posies?’
“Then my feelin’ came back, and I answered her quick: ‘Do you like ’em?’
“And she took ’em, and was a-turnin’ away as red as a piny herself when I recollected the deacon’s teesick. So I stepped in the room and sot down on the settee, and says I: ‘How’s the deacon?’
“‘He’s abed,’ says she.
“‘Got a man around?’
“‘Ef we haint it’s none o’ your business. I’m man enough to tell ye that, and if ye haint got nothin’ better to do than to sass folks and string posies ’round yer neck, I’d thank ye to git up and go.’
“I do not know as I ever heard Pamely Tewksbury say so much to onct in all my days since, fer she a’nt no talker; but, land’s sake, didn’t she skeer me, and didn’t she look purty! I kinder shook all over, so I scarce got tongue to tell her who I was and what fetched me. She was ashamed enough then; I see it in her eyes, but she didn’t never tell me. No, sir. That a’nt her way.
“The deacon’s wife came in jest then, half a-cryin’, for the cow had kicked her, and it didn’t take long afore we struck a bargain, and in the evenin’s she told me all about the deacon’s teesick and her rheumatiz; but the only thing I could remember was that the gal was the deacon’s niece come to live with them, and her name was Pamely.
“My! how that winter flew by. I don’t reckon I l’arned a great deal to school, but I knew jest how many sticks of wood het the stove up right to bake, and how to plan to git time fer the churning Saturdays, and to turn out the wash-water Monday nights fer a gal who never said tire—but I couldn’t a-bear to see them little arms a-liftin’ so.
“Summer time come, and the deacon wa’n’t no better, and father said how I’d better stay and hire out for hayin’. I was a powerful worker then—I can mow my swath pretty reg’lar now—and I was a powerful big eater, too; but there wa’n’t no lack of vittles. The deacon was allers a good provider, and Pamely was a rare cook.”
Here he paused, and turning toward the white speck, now grown into a distinct homestead, he said gravely:
“Ef ye was to put up there this very day, and no one a-knowin’ of yer comin’, she’d set ye afore as good a meal at an hour’s notice as ever Hosmer sot for two dollars and a half a day.” Then the story went on.
“At first I used to talk to Pamely some, but after a while every time I tried to speak somethin’ crammed in my throat, and it got to be so that I dassent try to talk. Evenin’s I jest sot and whittled mush-sticks out of white pine, till she bu’st out one night, and says she: “S’pose you think I’m goin’ to spile my mush every time with a new tastin’ stirrer.” And she laughed till she had to go out the room; but what did I care ef she used them stirrers fer kindlin’? I’d had my luck lookin’ at her fingers fly a-sewin’ or a-knittin’, and I’ve got a pair of double blue and white streaked mittens now that she made that winter. It went along so fer ’bout three year and more. I don’t think I keered much fer time. I jest wanted to be a-earnin’, winter and summer, and that was what it had come to, fer the deacon didn’t git much better, and the wimmen folks couldn’t git along without me very well. They do say now I’m dreffle handy; and so long’s Pamely set store by me, I was all right. I declare to goodness, I clean forgot there was another young man in Pitcher but me! But I had to wake up to it, arter all, and I’ve wished a thousand times I had waked up sooner.
“Pamely went off on a visit to her folks, and when she come back, onexpected like, a feller fetched her. When I see him a-liftin’ her outen the sleigh I felt like a-heavin’ a claw-hammer at him; but when he turned round, and I saw what a putty-face he was, says I to myself, ‘Pshaw!’ Several times that winter he come, and set and set, and onct I got up and was a-goin’ up the kitchen stairs when I felt somethin’ in my heel. I sot down on the top step and pulled my stockin’ off, a-lookin’ fer a tack or perhaps a broke-off needle, when all of a sudden the door was ajar and they hadn’t spoke a word afore I heard Jim Whiffles say: ‘I knowed a feller as went a-courtin’ one gal fer a whole year.’
“‘P’r’aps,’ said Pamely.
“‘And she didn’t chuck him off neither.’
“‘S’pose not.’
“I tell you I listened close after that, but there was not a sound until Jim shove his chair and got up to go and she took the candle to the outside door, and then she come in and went right off to bed.
“Next mornin’ I looked at her sharper’n ever but I couldn’t see a shadder on her cheek. She was jest as bloomin’ and as quiet as ever, and I knowed she cared more fer my leetle finger than fer the whole of Jim Whiffles’ body.
“Next time he came it was near New Year’s and he sot a big red apple plump in her lap; but she did not so much as say ‘thankee.’ I thought she kinder of turned toward me, as much as to say, ‘Ef ye had done it, all right.’
“‘But I didn’t know, and I reckoned I needn’t begrudge Jim an evenin’s lookin’ at her. So I off to bed ag’in. I was thinkin’ how mean I had been about listenin’ on the stairs, when up through the big stovepipe hole come these words, jerked out as usual: ‘I think sometime there’s goin’ to be a weddin’ up to our meetin’-house.’
“‘Like as not.’
“‘And I reckon Jim Whiffles is goin’ to pay the dominee.’
“‘Likely.’
“That was all. My heart beat so I thought they must hear it, so I covered my head with the bed clothes, and in five minutes more he went away, callin’ out as he drove off, ‘Good-night!’
“I did not sleep much, but I kep’ up a thinkin’; and at last I made out that nobody’d be such a fool as to ask a woman to have him that way; and it must be Jim felt kinder sneakin’, arter visitin’ of her, and let her know he was a-goin to marry Ary Edwards that I had heard tell he went with. So I was comforted ag’in.
“It wa’n’t more’n two weeks afore I was took down with a fever. Pamely nursed me night and day, and every time I see her I said to myself, ‘Jest the first time I’ve got strength to walk to the dominee’s house we’ll be made happy.’ Dear little soul! What a good supper she laid on the table the night I was so tired out with doin’ of the milkin’, havin’ done nothin’ fer so long.
“‘Ezra,’ she says, and her face flushed up; ‘Ezra eat. I’ve cooked it fer you.’
“I wanted to blurt right out then that I loved her, but I didn’t.
“I had to tuck myself up mighty early, for I was clean beat out, and I declare fer it, but I was jest fallin’ into a doze like when I heard Jim Whiffles come. Pamely wa’n’t done the dishes, so she clattered away, and at last sot down to knittin’. Nary one spoke much, only to tell a word or two about the snow storm that was a-brewin’. And I was comforted ag’in, but it was short measure. When the clock had struck nine Jim got up, and while he was puttin’ on his top coat I heard him say:
“‘Pamely, I was a-tellin’ ye last time I was here about Jim Whiffles paying the preacher?’
“‘Jest so.’
“‘And you was the gal that the dominee told to love and obey her man.’
“‘Jest so.’
“I was breathless! Was there nothin’ more to come? I had almost made up my mind that Jim was gone, when I caught the sound of a very decided smack. Good Lord forgive me, but I fought with the devil that night!
“Pamely and Jim Whiffles was made one April 6, 1850. He fell heir to some property, and she got a thousand dollars when her uncle died, and a couple thousand more—in land—when Mrs. Hinman went off. So things prospered with them. He was hardworkin’ kind of a putterer, but she was a master hand to save, and them children all was like her—smart as a steel trap.
“Eight years come next Tuesday Jim Whiffles died. I didn’t need a second lesson—Lord A’mighty knows how hard it come to me onct! and I had loved Pamely right straight through. So, jest six months arter Jim was laid away I made a kind of an errant up to her house, and the very minnit I see her, it all came over me so I couldn’t help it, and I screeched right out:
“‘Pamely, hev me; do, fer goodness sake, say yes! Don’t you know I allers wanted ye?’
“She turned ’round, and her eyes was a-flashin’ when she answered:
“‘Allers? And lived in the same house nigh onto four years? You had first chance, and now you come whinin’ afore Jim’s cold.’
“I sneaked off. I thought the Lord was ag’in me this time, but I jest couldn’t give her up. I kep’ right on goin’. All the children one arter another, has married and done well, and she boosted ’em all.
“Last Sunday I was over there ag’in, and, somehow, I thought she kind o’ squeezed my hand at meetin’; so I swelled up, and says I, ‘Pamely, is Jim cold?’
“And she answered back, ‘Yes.’”