How our hearts swelled as we neared the grounds and saw the high board fence enclosing the sacred woods! Going nearer, we heard the singing as the sound rose through the trees. The preacher’s stand, and the tents, were down a steep hill from the road along which we came. Jumping from the wagon, we would go in at the little gate, for the team had to go a long way farther to enter the big gate. Wild with delight we bounded down the hill, shouting a greeting to the lame gatekeeper and taking care not to trip on the long roots extending into the path. Our exuberance was always checked, partly by admonitions from our elders, partly by the spirit of the place—there was something in the sight of those white tents among the trees and the voices of song and prayer floating up to us that in themselves held us in check—but ah, the smell of the woods, and the realization that we were to dwell there for ten blissful days! Did ever children have a more beautiful experience?
Then the hunting for our tent-site, the scrutiny of its surroundings—its relation to the various places of interest; the fun of getting settled; of seeing the stove put up; the tent raised on its wooden platform; Mrs. Van Aiken’s queer little cord-bedstead set up; and the funny makeshifts of housekeeping that Mother and her tent-mate would devise. The mere sight of a familiar kettle or a “spider” hung on a tree at the back door, the improvised wash-bench with leaves from the beech trees falling on the soap-dish and into the water as we washed—these simple things provoked the most delightful sensations and made us so happy, so happy! It is a delight just to stop and think how happy we were.
In the morning there were the walks after milk to a neighbouring farmhouse, and the smell of the breakfast cooking under the trees as we returned. Mrs. Van Aiken’s fried pork and warmed-up potatoes made our mouths water; we liked her best when she was doing these things. As the day wore on she got absorbed in sermons and religious experiences, and became “teary” and lugubrious, making us feel our unregeneracy at the bubbling of our spirits; it was bad enough at dinner time, but at supper—Whew!!! At breakfast, however, she was livable and human. Mother was sufficiently zealous, often uncomfortably so, but not unbearably so, as was Mrs. Van Aiken when the religious leaven leavened the whole lump (and she weighed near two hundred). But she did make good fat cookies, bless her heart! She scowled if we lingered on the way with the milk, and there was so much to make us linger, even with breakfast at the end! Ah! the smell of the woods in the early morning! There were the places deep in the woods where we were not supposed to wander, but where we did sometimes wander later in the day in quest of mandrakes (they made us sick, but we never ceased to seek them, the sickish yellow things!). There were the yellow-jackets’ nests, our especial bane—one year a troop of us, Sister in the lead, while exploring forbidden territory, suddenly plunged into one of those miniature hells and were beset by those flying fiends. Such howling as arose from our savage breasts—the Methodist shouting was for once in the shade! Six tortured little beings ran screaming to their tents, half-blinded from swelling faces. Pandemonium reigned. Sister and the Presiding Elder’s boy were stung the worst; her eyes were swollen shut; her face was unrecognizable; she was frightful to behold, and her hands looked like Mrs. Van Aiken’s fattest cookies. I was stung only a little, but enough to know why the others howled so.
We liked to jump from bench to bench in the large circle in front of the preachers’ stand, when it was not sermon time, but some pious brother or sister would usually come along and tell us to stop. Sometimes Willie Ives, the Presiding Elder’s son, would creep up to the pulpit and exhort us eloquently, but such pleasures were quickly curtailed, and we were made to feel the meaning of the formidable word “sacrilege.”
It was the custom of some to sing the blessing at breakfast. Hurrying along with our milk-pail past the tents, we would hear men’s, women’s, and children’s voices mingled as the family gathered around their tables singing to the tune of “Doxology”:
We thank thee, Lord, for this our food,
But more because of Jesus’ blood;
Let manna to our souls be given—
The Bread of Life sent down from heaven.