Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The parsonage had also the advantage of three garrets—splendid ground for little people. There was first the garret over the kitchen, the floors of which in the fall were covered with stores of yellow pumpkins, fragrant heaps of quinces, and less fragrant spread of onions. There were bins of shelled corn and of oats, and, as in every other garret in the house, there were also barrels of old sermons and old family papers. But most stimulating to the imagination of all the features of this place was the smoke-house, which was a wide, deep chasm made in the kitchen chimney, where the Parson's hams and dried beef were cured. Its door, which opened into this garret, glistened with condensed creosote, a rumbling sound was heard there, and loud crackling reverberated within. Sometimes Dolly would open the door and peer in fearfully as long as her eyes could bear the smoke, and think with a shudder of a certain passage in John Bunyan, which reads:

"Then I saw in my dream that the shepherds had them to another place, in a bottom, where was a door in the side of a hill; and they opened the door and bid them look in. They looked in, therefore, and saw that within it was dark and smoky; they also thought that they heard a rumbling noise as of fire and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, What means this? The shepherds told them, This is a by-way to Hell, a way that hypocrites go in at, namely, such as sell their birthright with Esau; such as sell their Master with Judas; such as lie and dissemble with Ananias and Sapphira his wife."

Dolly shivered when she thought of this, and was glad when Nabby would come up behind and, with her strong hands, seize and whirl her away, remarking,

"Dolly Cushing, what won't you be into next, I want ter know?" And then she would proceed to demonstrate the mundane and earthly character of the receptacle by drawing from it a very terrestrial and substantial ham.

Garret number two was over the central portion of the original house. There were vast heaps of golden corn on the cob, spread upon sheets. There were piles of bed-quilts and comforters, and chests of blankets. There were rows and ranges of old bonnets and old hats, that seemed to nod mysteriously from their nails. There were old spinning-wheels, an old clock, old armchairs, and old pictures, snuffy and grim, and more barrels of sermons. There also were the boys' cabinets of mineralogical specimens; for the Academy teacher was strong on geology, and took his boys on long tramps with stone-hammers on their shoulders, and they used to discuss with great unction to Dolly of tourmaline, and hornblende, and mica, and quartz, and feldspar, delighted to exhibit before her their scientific superiority.

This garret was a favorite resort of the children, and the laws of the Parsonage requiring everything to be always in order were conveniently mitigated and abridged in favor of this one spot, where it was so convenient to let the whole noisy brood range when their presence disturbed the order below.

There the boys whittled and made windmills and boats, and rabbit-traps, and whistles with which they whistled grievously at unexpected and startling moments, and this always led to their mother telling them that she was "astonished" at them, or to her asking, How many times she must say whistling was not allowed in the house?

Perhaps among other subjects of speculative inquiry it may have occurred to Mrs. Cushing to wonder why nature, having gifted boys in their own proper lungs with such noise-producing power, should also come to their assistance with so many noise-producing instruments. There were all the squash-vines in the garden offering trumpets ready made; there was the elder-bush, growing whistle-wood by the yard; and then the gigantic whistles that could be manufactured from willow, and poplar, and black alder were mysteries distressing to contemplate.

One corner of the garret was reserved safe from the rummaging of the children, and there hung in order the dried herbs, which formed the pharmacopœia of those early days. There were catnip, and boneset, and elder-blow, and hard-hack, and rosemary, and tansy, and pennyroyal, all gathered at the right time of the moon, dried and sorted and tied in bundles, hanging from their different nails—those canonized floral saints, which when living filled the air with odors of health and sweetness, and whose very mortal remains and dry bones were supposed to have healing virtues. Some of Dolly's happiest hours were those long sunny, joyous, Saturday afternoons in which many of these stores were gathered, when she rushed through the lush, long grass, along the borders of mossy old stone fences, and pulled down starry constellations of elder blossoms, and gathered pink spires of hard-hack, till her little arms could scarcely clasp around the bundle. Then she would rush home panting and energetic, with torn dress, her sunbonnet off on her shoulder, and curls all tangled from the wrestles with blackberry bushes which had disputed the way with her. This corner of the garret always filled Dolly's head with visions and longings for the late, slow-coming spring, which seemed far off as the dream of Heaven.