My own Life and Adventures.
(Continued from page 71.)
CHAPTER VII.
My uncle’s influence.—The influence of the tavern.—State of society forty years ago.—Liquor opposed to education.—The church and the tavern.—The country schoolhouse.—Books used in the school.—A few words about myself.
I pass over a space of several years in my history, and come to the period when I was about fifteen. Up to this time, I had made little progress in education, compared with what is done at the present day. I could indeed read and write, and I knew something of arithmetic, but my advance beyond this was inconsiderable. A brief detail of certain circumstances will show the reason of this.
In the first place, my uncle had no very high estimation of what he called larnin; he was himself a man of action, and believed that books render people dull and stupid, rather than efficient in the business of life. He was therefore opposed to education in general, and particularly so in my case; and not only was his opinion equivalent to law with respect to me, but it was of great force in the village, on account of his character and position.
He kept the village tavern, which in those days of rum and punch was an institution of great power and authority. It was common, at the period of which I speak, for the church or meeting-house and tavern to stand side by side; but if one day in the week, sobriety and temperance were preached in the former, hard drinking and licentiousness were deeply practised in the latter during the other six. The tavern, therefore, not only counteracted the good effect of the preacher, but it went farther, and in many cases corrupted the whole mass of society. The members of the church thought it no scandal to make regular visits to the bar-room at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and at four P. M.; the deacon always kept his jugs well filled, and the minister took his toddy or his tansy bitters, in open day, and without reproach.
In such a state of society as this, the tavern-keeper was usually the most influential man in the village, and if he kept good liquors, he was irresistible. Now my uncle was a prince of a tavern-keeper for these jolly days. He was, in fact, what we call a whole-souled fellow: generous, honest, and frank-hearted. His full, ruddy countenance bespoke all this; and his cheerful, hearty voice carried conviction of it to every listener. Beside, his tavern was freely and generously kept: it was liberally supplied with good beds, and every other luxury or comfort common to those days. As I have said before, it was situated upon the great road, then travelled by the mail stages between Boston and New York. The establishment was of ample extent, consisting of a pile of wooden buildings of various and irregular architecture—all painted a deep red. There was near it a large barn with extensive cow-houses, a corn-crib, a smoke-house, and a pig-sty, arranged solely with a view to ease of communication with the house, and consequently all drawn closely around it. The general effect, when viewed at a distance, was that of two large jugs surrounded with several smaller ones.
Before this heap of edifices swung the tavern sign, with a picture of a barn-yard cock on one side, and a bull upon the other, as I have told you before: and though the artist that painted it was only a common house-dauber, and though the pictures were of humble pretensions when compared with the productions of Raphael, still, few specimens of the fine arts have ever had more admirers than the cock and bull of my uncle’s sign. How many a toper has looked upon it when approaching the tavern with his feverish lip, as the emblem and assurance of the rum that was soon to feed the fire kindled in his throat; how many a jolly fellow, staggering from the inn, has seen that sign reeling against the sky, and mixing grotesquely with the dreamy images of his fancy!
If we add to this description, that in the street, and nearly in front of the tavern, was a wood-pile about ten feet high, and covering three or four square rods of ground; that on one side was a litter of harrows, carts and ploughs, and on the other a general assortment of wagons, old sleighs, broken stages, and a rickety vehicle resembling a modern chaise without a top; and if we sprinkle between all these articles a good supply of geese and pigs, we shall have a pretty fair account of the famous Cock and Bull tavern that flourished in Salem nearly forty years ago.
The proprietor of such an establishment could not, in those days, but be a man of influence; and the free manners and habits of my uncle tended to increase the power that his position gave him. He drank liberally himself, and vindicated his practice by saying that good liquor was one of the gifts of providence, and it was no sin—indeed it was rather a duty—to indulge in providential gifts freely. All this made him a favorite, particularly with a set of hard drinkers who thronged the bar-room, especially of a wet day and on winter evenings.
As I have said, my uncle was opposed to education, and as he grew older and drank deeper, his prejudice against it seemed to increase; and though I cannot easily account for the fact, still every drunkard in the place was an enemy to all improvements in the school. When a town-meeting took place, these persons were invaribly in opposition to every scheme, the design of which was to promote the cause of education, and this party was usually headed by my uncle. And it is not a little curious that the tavern party also had its influence in the church, for my uncle was a member of it, and many of his bar-room cronies also. They were so numerous as to cast a heavy vote, and therefore they exercised a good deal of power here. As in respect to the school, so in the house of worship, they were for spending as little money as possible, and for reducing its power and influence in society to the lowest possible scale. They even held the minister in check, and though he saw the evil tendency of intemperance in the village, he had not nerve enough to attack it, except in a very soft and mild way, which probably served to increase the vice at which he aimed; for vice always thrives when holy men condemn it gently.
Now I have said that my uncle was a kind-hearted, generous man, by nature; how then could he be so narrow-minded in respect to education and religion? The answer to this question is easy. He was addicted to the free use of liquors, which not only tends to destroy the body, but to ruin all the nobler parts of the mind. As he came more and more under the influence of ardent spirits, he grew narrow-minded, sottish and selfish. And this is one of the great evils of taking ardent spirits. The use of them always tends to break down the mind; to take away from us those noble feelings and lofty thoughts, which are the glory of man; in short, to sink us lower and lower toward the brute creation. A determined drunkard is usually a great part of the time but little elevated above a beast.
Now I have been particular about this part of my story, for I wished to show you the natural influence of the habits of my uncle, and their operation upon my own fortunes. I have yet a sadder story to tell, as to the effect of the village tavern, not only upon myself, but upon my uncle, and several others. That must be reserved for some of the sad pages through which my tale will lead you. For the present, I only point out the fact, that a man who encourages the sale of liquors is usually unfriendly to the education and improvement of mankind; that his position tends to make him fear the effect of light and wish for darkness; that hard drinking will ruin even a generous and noble mind and heart; and that the habit of dealing in liquor is one to be feared, as it induces a man to take narrow, selfish, and low views of human nature and human society. It appears to me that a trade which thrives when men turn drunkards, and which fails when men grow temperate, is a trade which is apt to injure the mind and soul of one who follows it. Even my noble-hearted and generous uncle fell under such sinister influences.
But to return to the school. I have already described the situation of the house. The building itself was of wood, about fifteen feet square, plastered within, and covered with benches without backs, which were constructed by thrusting sticks, for legs, through auger holes in a plank. On one side, against the wall, was a long table, serving as a desk for the writers.
The chimney was of rough stone, and the fire-place was of the same material. But what it lacked in grace of finish, was made up in size. I believe that it was at least ten feet wide, and five in depth, and the flue was so perpendicular and ample, that the rain and snow fell down to the bottom, without the risk of striking the sides. In summer, the school was kept by a woman, who charged the town a dollar a week, boarding herself; in winter it was kept by a man, who was paid five dollars a month and found. Here about seventy children, of all sizes, were assembled during this latter portion of the year; the place and manner of treatment being arranged as much as possible on the principle that a schoolhouse is a penitentiary, where the more suffering, the more improvement.
I have read of despots and seen prisons, but there are few of the former more tyrannical than the birch-despot of former days, or of the latter, more gloomy than the old-fashioned schoolhouse, under the tyrant to which it was usually committed.
I must enter into a few details. The fuel for the school consisted of wood, and was brought in winter, load by load, as it was wanted; though it occasionally happened that we got entirely out, and the school was kept without fire if the master could endure the cold, or dismissed if the weather chanced to be too severe to be borne. The wood was green oak, hickory, or maple, and when the fire could be induced to blaze between the sticks, there was a most notable hissing and frying, and a plentiful exudation of sap at each end of them.
The wood was cut into lengths of about five feet, by the scholars, each of the larger boys taking his turn at this, and at making the fire in the morning. This latter was a task that demanded great strength and patience; for, in the first place, there must be a back-log, five feet in length, and at least fifteen inches in diameter; then a top-stick about two-thirds as big; and then a forestick of similar dimensions. It required some strength to move these logs to their places; and after the frame of the work was built, the gathering of chips, and the blowing, the wooing, the courting that were necessary to make the revolting flame take hold of the wet fuel, demanded a degree of exertion, and an endurance of patience, well calculated to ripen and harden youth for the stern endurances of manhood.
The school began at nine in the morning, and it was rare that the fire gave out any heat so early as this; nor could it have been of much consequence had it done so, for the school-room was almost as open as a sieve, letting in the bitter blast at every window and door, and through a thousand cracks in the thin plastering of the walls. Never have I seen such a miserable set of blue-nosed, chattering, suffering creatures as were these children, for the first hour after the opening of school, on a cold winter morning. Under such circumstances, what could they do? Nothing, and they were expected to do nothing.
The books in use were Webster’s Spelling Book, Dilworth’s Arithmetic, Webster’s Second and Third Part, the New Testament, and Dwight’s Geography. These were all, and the best scholars of the seminary never penetrated more than half through this mass of science. There was no such thing as a history, a grammar, or a map in the school. These are mysteries reserved for more modern days.
Such was the state of things—such the condition of the school, where I received my education, the only education that I ever enjoyed, except such as I have since found in study by myself, and amid the active pursuits of life. But let me not blame the schoolhouse alone; I was myself in fault, for even the poor advantages afforded me there, I wilfully neglected; partly because I was fond of amusing myself and impatient of application; partly because I thought myself worth ten thousand dollars, and fancied that I was above the necessity of instruction; and partly because my uncle and his bar-room friends were always sneering at men of education, and praising men of spirit and action—those who could drive a stage skilfully, or beat in pitching cents, or bear off the palm in a wrestling-match, or perchance carry the largest quantity of liquor under the waistcoat.
Such being the course of circumstances that surrounded me at the age of fifteen, it will not be surprising if my story should at last lead to some painful facts; but my succeeding chapters will show.
(To be continued.)