Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The fire that illuminated the great kitchen of the farm-house was a splendid sight to behold. It is, alas, with us only a vision and memory of the past; for who in our days can afford to keep up the great fire-place, where the back-logs were cut from the giants of the forest and the fore-stick was as much as a modern man could lift? And then the glowing fire-place built thereon! That architectural pile of split and seasoned wood, over which the flames leaped and danced and crackled like rejoicing genii—what a glory it was! The hearty, bright, warm hearth in those days stood instead of fine furniture and handsome pictures. The plainest room becomes beautiful and attractive by fire-light, and when men think of a country and home to be fought for and defended they think of the fireside.

Mr. Timothy Hawkins was a thrifty farmer and prided himself on always having the best, and the fire that was crackling and roaring up the chimney that night was, to use a hackneyed modern expression, a "work of art." The great oak back-log had required the strength of four men to heave it into its place; and above that lay another log scarcely less in size; while the fore-stick was no mean bough of the same tree. A bed of bright solid coals lay stretched beneath, and the lighter blaze of the wood above was constantly sending down contributions to this glowing reservoir.

Of course, on an occasion like this, the "best room" of the house was open, with a bright fire lighting up the tall brass andirons, and revealing the neatly-fitted striped carpet of domestic manufacture, and the braided rugs, immortal monuments of the never-tiring industry of the housewife. Here first the minister and his wife and Dolly were inducted with some ceremony, but all declared their immediate preference of the big kitchen, where the tubs of rosy apples and golden quinces were standing round, and young men, maids, and matrons were taking their places to assist in the apple-bee.

If the Doctor was a welcome guest in the stately circles of Poganuc Center, he was far more at home in these hearty rural gatherings. There was never the smallest room for jealousy, on the part of his plainer people, that he cared more for certain conventional classes of society than for them, because all instinctively felt that in heart he was one of themselves. Like many of the educated men of New England, he had been a farmer's boy in early days, and all his pleasantest early recollections were connected with that simple, wholesome, healthful, rural life. Like many of the New England clergy, too, he was still to some extent a practical farmer, finding respite from brain labor in wholesome out-door work. His best sermons were often thought out at the plow or in the corn-field, and his illustrations and enforcements of truth were those of a man acquainted with real life and able to interpret the significance of common things. His people felt a property in him as their ideal man—the man who every Sunday expressed for them, better than they could, the thoughts and inquiries and aspirations which rose dimly in their own minds.

"I could ha' said all that myself ef I'd only hed the eddication; he puts it so one can see it can't be no other way," was the comment once made on a sermon of the Doctor's by a rough but thoughtful listener; and the Doctor felt more pleased with such applause than even the more cultured approval of Judge Belcher.

In the wide, busy kitchen there was room enough for all sorts of goings on. The Doctor was soon comfortably seated, knee to knee, in a corner with two or three controversial-looking old farmers, who were attacking some of the conclusions of his last Sunday's sermon. Of the two results, the Doctor always preferred a somewhat combative resistance to a sleepy assent to his preaching, and nothing delighted him more than a fair and square argumentative tilt, showing that the points he made had been taken.

But while the Doctor in his corner discussed theology, the young people around the tubs of apples were having the very best of times.

The apple, from the days of Mother Eve and the times of Paris and Helen, has been a fruit full of suggestion and omen in the meetings of young men and maidens; and it was not less fruitful this evening. Our friend Hiel came to the gathering with a full consciousness of a difficult and delicate part to be sustained. It is easy to carry on four or five distinct flirtations when one is a handsome young stage-driver and the fair objects of attention live at convenient distances along the route. But when Almiry Ann, and Lucindy Jane, and Lucretia, and Nabby are all to be encountered at one time, what is a discreet young man to do?

Hiel had come to the scene with an armor of proof in the shape of a new patent apple-peeler and corer, warranted to take the skin from an apple with a quickness and completeness hitherto unimaginable. This immediately gave him a central position and drew an admiring throng about him. The process of naming an apple for each girl, and giving her the long ribbon of peel to be thrown over her head and form fateful initial letters on the floor, was one that was soon in vigorous operation, with much shrieking and laughing and opposing of claims among the young men, all of whom were forward to claim their own initials when the peeling was thrown by the girl of their choice. And Hiel was loud in his professions of jealousy when by this mode of divination Almira Smith was claimed to be secretly favoring Seth Parmelee, and Nabby's apple-peeling thrown over her head formed a cabalistic character which was vigorously contended for both by Jim Sawin and Ike Peters. As the distinction between an I and a J is of a very shadowy nature, the question apparently was likely to remain an open one; and Hiel declared that it was plain that nobody cared for him, and that he was evidently destined to be an old bachelor.

It may be imagined that this sprightly circle of young folks were not the ones most particularly efficient in the supposed practical labors of the evening. They did, probably, the usual amount of work done by youths and maids together at sewing societies, church fairs and other like occasions, where by a figure of speech they are supposed to be assisting each other. The real work of the occasion was done by groups of matrons who sat with their bright tin pans in lap, soberly chatting and peeling and cutting, as they compared notes about pies and puddings and custards, and gave each other recipes for certain Eleusinian mysteries of domestic cookery.