It was an anxious time in the cedars. In the evenings the people gathered about the war office and at the Alden Inn. A stage-driver, who was a natural story-teller, used to relate curious stories at the latter place, on the red settle there, and in these silent days of moment the people hugged the fire to hear him: it was their only amusement.
One evening a country elder, who had done a noble work in his day, stopped at the tavern. This event brought the Governor over to the place, and the elder was asked to relate a story of his parish on the red settle. He had a sense of humor as keen as Peters, who was still telling strange tales in England of the people that he had found in the “new parts.”
Let us give you one of the parson’s queer stories: it pictures the times.
THE COURTING STICK
Asenath Short—I seem to see her now (said the elder). One day she said to her husband:
“Kalub, now look here; we’ve got near upon everything so far as this world’s goods go—spinnin’ wheels and hatchels, and looms and a mahogany table, and even a board to be used to lay us out on when the final time shall come. The last thing that you bought was a dinner-horn, and then I put away the conch shell from the Indies along with the cradle and the baby chair. But, Kalub, there’s one thing more that we will have to have. The families down at Longmeadow have all got them; they save fire and fuel, and they enable the young folks and their elders all to talk together at the same time, respectfully in the same room, and when the young folks have a word to say to each other in private it encourages them. Now I’m kind o’ sociable-like myself, and I like to encourage young people; that’s why I wanted you to buy a spinet for Mandy. I don’t like to see young folks go apart by themselves, especially in winter; there is no need of extra lights or fires, if one only has one of them things.”
“One of them things? Massy sakes alive, what is it, Asenath?”
“Why, haven’t you never seen one, Kalub? It is a courtin’ stick. They didn’t used to have such things when we were young. A courtin’ stick is like Aaron’s rod that budded.”
“A courtin’ stick! Conquiddles! Do I hear my ears? There don’t need to be any machinery for courtin’ in this world no more than there does to make the avens bloom, or the corn cockles to come up in the corn. What is a courtin’ stick, Asenath?”
“Well, Kalub, a courtin’ stick is a long, hollow wooden tube, with a funnel at each end—one funnel to cover the mouth of the one that speaks, and one to cover the ear of the one that listens. By that stick—it is all so proper and handy when it works well and steady—young people can talk in the same room, and not disturb the old people or set the work folks and the boys to titterin’ as they used to do when we were young. It was discovered here in the Connecticut Valley, which has always been a place of providences. Just as I said, it is a savin’ of fire and lights in the winter-time, and it suggests the right relations among families of property. It is a sort of guide-post to life.