The Old Abbey, Bloomingdale Road, New York.
I spent one night a few summers ago in a tavern haunted by the ghost of a dead past. A sudden halt in our leisurely progress from town to town, caused by a small but unsurmountable accident to our road-wagon, found us in a little Massachusetts village of few houses. The blacksmith had gone to a neighboring village to spend the night. It was twilight, and we decided not to attempt to reach our intended place for sojourning, six miles distant. We asked of a passer-by which house was the tavern. “There isn’t any,” was the cheerful answer; “if you stay here over night you’ll have to stay at the poorhouse.” Now this was rather an unalluring alternative to any self-respecting citizen, but the night was coming on, and, after vainly searching for some resident who had ever had summer boarders, we determined to investigate the poorhouse. We found it the best house in the village. It was the almshouse, but it had been for half a century a tavern in reality, when the post-road lay through the town and travellers were more frequent than to-day. There was evidence of its tavern days in the old taproom, which had been converted into a store-room. The house with twenty acres of land had been bequeathed to the town by one of the old Bourne family that had lived in it so long. This last Bourne owner was a childless widower, a St. Louis man, who had been away from the home of his youth since early childhood and had little love of it from old associations.
Tavern Pitcher. Apotheosis of Washington.
The poormaster and his wife we found to be tidy, respectable folk, even folk of a certain dignity, who owned the adjoining farm. Their own house had burned down. So for ten years they had run the poorhouse. It had not proved a very difficult task. Often there were no occupants; one year there were two Portuguese cranberry pickers, stricken with rheumatism from exposure in the cranberry bogs. Now both are married to American wives and own prosperous cranberry bogs of their own. The poorhouse had its usual quota on the night of our sojourn; we found two paupers living there.
After the Shower.
There was not time to prepare an extra meal of extra quality for the travellers who came so suddenly for a night’s shelter, but the good tea, plentiful milk, fine bread and butter, honey, hot griddle-cakes, and fried bacon bore testimony of ample fare and good housewifery. The two paupers sat at the table and ate with us—a silver-haired old man of exquisite cleanliness, and a grotesque little humpback. We noted that the old man was ever addressed by all who spoke to him as Mr. Bourne, and during his short absence from the room after supper the poor-mistress told us that the almshouse had been the home and this the farm of his grandfather. The supper was served in the great kitchen, and here we sat till a curfew bell rang from the little church belfry at nine o’clock.
Considerable jealousy was shown by both paupers in their eager desire to talk with us, and we learned that the dwarf was regarded as a genius; he composed wonderful epitaphs, and had written poetry for the county newspaper. He could set type, and could thus earn his living, but was temporarily more feeble than usual, on account of a weight falling on his back; after a few months he would go to work again. He represented the brilliant and intellectual element of communal life, but was hopelessly plebeian; while Mr. Bourne stood for blood and breeding. This the dwarf Peter scorned, being a Socialist in his creed. A curious and touching atmosphere of simplicity and confidence filled the old kitchen. The farmer and his wife were deeply solicitous for the comfort and health of their two charges; and as I sat there, tired by my long drive, a little lonely from the strangeness of the surroundings, there was nevertheless a profound sense that this poorhouse was truly a home.