IV.
THE SEWING-CIRCLE.—HOW IT WAS STARTED.
THE sewing-circle is in session in the adjoining room. It counts thirty-two members in all,—a goodly number for a population of only twenty-five or thirty families. The gathering to-day is not large; a thunder-storm, and a circus at Elmbridge, conspiring to keep many away.
Mrs. Fennel has been telling me about this sewing-circle, and what it is trying, or rather is determined, to do. The people of Tweenit village never had a meeting-house, but have held religious services in the schoolhouse. Now the women want to change all this. They want to build a chapel; and for that purpose they mean to raise eight hundred dollars.
“Eight hundred dollars!” I exclaimed when Mrs. Fennel named the sum. “Why, there’s hardly as much money in the place!”
“That’s just what the men told us,” she answered; “but we have faith.”
“I should think so,” said I, “and works too.”
The men, it seems, threw cold water at the very beginning.
“Where’s all that money coming from?” “Lumber high!” “Labor high!” “Saddle the place with debt!” “All nonsense! The old schoolhouse is good enough!”
And the idea might have been quenched entirely, but for the burning zeal of two unmarried women,—“Nanny Joe” and “Nanny Moses,” the daughters respectively of Mr. Joseph Payne and Mr. Moses Payne. They believed in a chapel. They preached this belief; and many women were converted. The first convert was Miss Janet (Mr. William Melendy’s wife, called “Miss Janet,” to distinguish her from four other Mrs. Melendys). A meeting was called at her house. Before its close, the wildest enthusiasm prevailed. The men’s objections first were shown up to be scarecrows, then pelted down with ridicule. A sewing-circle was formed, which met once a week to sew “slop-work,” and knit toes of stockings,—heels, too, I think. Oh, yes! “heeled and toed:” that’s the very expression. In other respects, the stockings were woven. The circle meant business. Some members met early in the morning, and worked all day. Ellinor Payne, who is employed in a tailor’s shop at Piper’s Mills, gave fifteen dollars of her own earnings. The enthusiasm increased. Did any waver in the faith, influenced by doubting men, Nanny Joe and Nanny Moses were ready to encourage and sustain. Nanny Joe and Nanny Moses were eloquent to persuade, ingenious to devise, skilful to contrive, and untiring in their labors. They fired the ambition of every woman in the place. They took that chapel (the chapel that was to be), and resolved it into its constituent parts,—its doors, windows, timbers, boards, nails even, and induced different individuals to be responsible for, say, a bundle of shingles, a window, a door, a stick of timber. Young and old caught the fever. Little girls vied with each other in earning panes of glass. Blooming maidens took upon their shoulders clapboards, laths, and kegs of nails. Matrons bore bravely their respective burdens of beams, rafters, and flooring; and one cheerful old grandame, a steadfast knitter, smiled under the weight of the desk.
The little girls earned their money by running of errands, and picking huckleberries, and making patchwork cradle-quilts to sell. The older ones also picked huckleberries. When the season was at its height, the circle met in the pastures, and picked its pecks and its bushels. The berries were sent to Piper’s Mills to be sold. If there were no other way of sending them, Nanny Joe and Nanny Moses would take Mr. David’s old red horse and go themselves. Mr. David Melendy committed himself at the very beginning, by a promise, which, though made in jest, was claimed in terrible earnest, as the old man found to his cost.