In nearly all scattered townships in New England the custom prevails to-day just as it did a century and more ago even in large towns, and a description of the present "breaking out" is that of the past also. The work is now usually done in charge of road-surveyors or the road-masters, who are often appointed from the remote points of the township. There is, therefore, much friendly rivalry to see which surveyor will first reach the centre of the town—and the tavern. Beginning at sunrise with his own yoke of oxen hitched to a snow-plough, each road-master breaks through the drift to the nearest neighbor, who adds his yoke to the other, and so from neighbor to neighbor till sometimes fifteen or twenty yoke of oxen are hitched in a long line to the plough. Sometimes a pair of wild young steers are hitched, plunging and kicking, with the sober elders. By this time the first yoke often begins to show signs of distress by lolling out the tongue, a sure symptom of overwork in oxen, and they are left at some farmer's barn to cool down.
Whittier thus describes the scene of breaking out the winter roads in his Snow-Bound:—
"Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider mug, their jokes
From lip to lip."
Thus are the white snow-waste and the drifted roads turned by cheerful coöperation into a midwinter visiting where every neighbor can exchange greetings with the other, young and old. For of course school does not keep, and the boys crowd on the snow-plough or try their new snowshoes, and the men of the various families who do not go with the oxen hitch up the sleighs, pods, and pungs and follow the snow-plough, and the young men send a volley of snowballs against every house where any fair maid lives. And at the tavern in the afternoon is a great sight, greater in ante-temperance days than now: scores of yoke of oxen at the door, the horse-sheds full of horses and sleighs, all the lads and men of the township within. There is rivalry in the method of breaking. One road-master always used a snow-plough; another lashed an ordinary plough on either side of a narrow ox-sled; a third used a coarse harrow weighted down with a group of standing boys. This broke up the drifts in a wonderful manner. The deeper drifts often have to be shovelled out partly by hand. After the road to the tavern is broken, the road to the school-house, the doctor's house, and the meeting-house come next.
The roads thus made were not permitted in former days to be cut up idly by careless use; many townships forbade by law the use of narrow sleds and sleighs. The roads were narrow at best; often when two sleighs met the horses had to be unharnessed, and the sleighs lifted past over each other. On lonely hill-roads or straight turnpikes, where teamsters could see some distance ahead, turnouts were made where one sleigh could wait for another to pass.
After there had been a heavy fall of snow and the roads were well broken, the time was always chosen where any logging was done to haul logs to the sawmill on ox-sleds. An interesting sled was used which had an interesting name,—chebobbin. One writer called it a cross between a tree and a bobsled. It was made by a close and ingenious adaptation of natural forms of wood, which made excellent runners, cross-bars, etc.; they were fastened together so loosely that they readily adjusted themselves to the inequalities of the wood-roads. The word and article are now almost obsolete. In some localities chebobbin became tebobbin and tarboggin, all three being adaptations in nomenclature, as they were in form, of the Indian toboggan or moose-sled,—a sledge with runners or flat bottom of wood or bark, upon which the red men drew heavy loads over the snow. This sledge has become familiar to us in the light and strong Canadian form now used for the delightful winter sport of tobogganing.
On these chebobbins great logs were hitched together by chains, and dragged down from the upland wood-lots. Under these mighty loads the snow-tracks got an almost icy polish, prime sledding for country sleighing parties. Sometimes a logging-bee was made to clear a special lot for a neighbor, and a band of wood-choppers worked all day together. It was cheerful work, though the men had to stand all day in the snow, and the thermometer was below zero. But there was no cutting wind in the forest, and the exercise kept the blood warm. Many a time a hearty man would drop his axe to wipe the sweat from his brow. Loose woollen frocks, or long-shorts, two or three over each other, were warm as are the overlapping feathers of a bird; a few had buckskin or sheepskin waistcoats; their hands were warmly covered with home-knit mittens. In later days all had heavy well-greased boots, but in the early years of such pioneer settlements, as the towns of New Hampshire and Vermont, all could not afford to wear boots. Their place was well supplied by heavy woollen stockings, shoes, and an over-covering of old stockings, or cloth soaked in neat's-foot oil; this was deemed a positive preventive of frozen feet.
It was the custom both among men and women to join forces on a smaller scale and have a little neighborly visiting by what was called "change-work." For instance, if two neighbors both were to make soap, or both to make apple-butter, or both to make up a rag carpet, instead of each woman sitting at home alone sewing and fitting the carpet, one would take her thimble and go to spend the day, and the two would sew all day long, finish and lay the carpet at one house. In a few days the visit would be returned, and the second carpet be finished. Sometimes the work was easier when two worked together. One man could load logs and sled them down to the sawmill alone, but two by "change-work" could accomplish the task much more rapidly and with less strain.
Even those evil days of New England households, the annual house-cleaning, were robbed of some of their dismal terrors by what was known as a "whang," a gathering of a few friendly women neighbors to assist one another in that dire time, and thus speed and shorten the hours of misery.
For any details of domestic life of colonial days the reader has ever to turn to the diary of Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston, just as the student of English life of the same date turns to the diary of Samuel Pepys. Sewall was a Puritan of the narrow type of the later days of Puritanism; and there is little of warmth or beauty in his pages, save that throughout them there shines with gentle radiance the unconscious record of a pure and never-dying neighborliness, the neighborliness of an upright and reserved but deeply tender Christian. No thoughtful person can read the simple and meagre, but wholly self-forgetful entries which reveal this trait of character without a feeling of profound respect and even affection for Sewall. He was the richest man in town, and one of the most dignified of citizens, a busy man full of many cares and plans. But he watched by the bedside of his sick and dying neighbors, those of humble station as well as his friends and kinsfolk, nursing them with tender care, praying with them, bringing appetizing gifts, and also giving pecuniary aid to the household. He afforded even more homely examples of neighborly feeling; he sent "tastes of his dinner" many times to friends and neighbors. This pleasant custom lingered till the present day in New England; I saw last summer, several times, covered treasures of housewifery being carried in petty amounts, literally "a taste," to tempt tired appetites or lonely diners. The gift of a portion of the over-bountiful supply for the supper of a wedding, a reception, etc., went by the expressive name of "cold party."