“You can make a corn-basket or a clam-basket; but the basket-makers make chairs, and cradles, and carriages, and fishing-creels, and work-stands. It is as much of a trade as a joiner’s or a shoemaker’s. There is more call for basket-work in England than here. Timber is very scarce there. They would no more think of cutting down such a young, thrifty ash as that I am making this basket of, than they would of cutting a man’s head off; and, when they cut down a tree, they dig up every bit of the root and use it for something, and then plant another one. They don’t have boxes, and barrels, and troughs to keep and carry things in, as they do here; but it is all crates, and hampers, and baskets, and sacks. If a man should cut a tree as big as a hoe-handle on the Earl of Bedford’s estates, he would be transported or hung.”
“It wouldn’t be a very safe place for me to go,” said Joe, “for I’ve the blood of a great many trees on my conscience.”
“They raise trees there from the seed, and plant and set out thousands of acres. O, I wish you could only be in the fens in picking-time, I guess you would laugh.”
“Why so, Charlie?”
“You see the women and children take care of the fowl. When they want to pick them, they put on the awfulest-looking old gowns, and tie cloths round their heads, and shut the geese and ducks up in a room, and then take ’em in their arms and go to pulling the feathers out. The old ganders will bite, and thrash with their wings; they will be plastered from head to foot with feathers.
“An old woman, with her black face all tanned up (for the women work in the fields there), looks so funny peeping out of a great heap of white feathers and down! and then such an awful squawking as so many fowl make! Don’t you have any lords and dukes here, father?”
“No; we are all lords and dukes. We have presidents, and governors, and folks to do our thinking for us; and if they don’t think and govern to suit us, we pay them off, turn them out, and hire better ones.”
“Who is your landlord, father?”
“Mr. Welch, in Boston, till I pay him for this island.”
“Who is Uncle Isaac’s, and Captain Rhines’s, and the rest of the folks round here?”