CORNER OF MOSQUE, IN CAIRO STREET.
The island was Aquidneck when George Fox came there, “a voice crying in the wilderness of the world,” and when Bishop Berkeley became prophetic at Newport, and voiced his inspiration in the immortal line, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.”
There are few spots on the earth more serene and lovely than Quaker Hill. There is an ethereal beauty over the blue waterways and bountiful farms, a “Gulf Stream influence” it is called, that seems almost spiritual, and we do not wonder that the good old Quaker spirit should have found its sympathetic atmosphere here. After the long past, the Gospel of the Inner Light and universal Love is still preached on the self-same serene hill of Portsmouth looking over to Mount Hope,—the ancient burying-ground of the Indian race,—the Narragansett Bay, and the sinking sails of the far sea. It is worth a pilgrimage to spend a Sabbath on Quaker Hill.
The old-time Newport Quakers did not keep holidays, but Thanksgiving was always a benevolent day on the thrifty Quaker farms around the transfigured hill. The mention of the day recalls tables of luxuries that, unhappily, are no more seen. Those were the days of apple dumplings made of Rhode Island greenings, which Rhode Island mythology claims to have come from the original Garden of Eden; of pandowdy in comparison with which the modern apple pie merits little commendation; of No Cake, rightly named, for it consisted of parched corn so deftly cooked that it floated white on milk; of plum porridge, hot and cold; of hasty puddings with toothsome sauces; of bannocks; of whit-pot; of all kinds of game,—wild geese, teal, partridges, and quail; of pound-cake that induced pipes and fireside slumbers and dreams such as never haunted the self-denying soul of George Fox. The old Quakers of Portsmouth were good livers, but they shared all they had with every one.
Blessed are the graves with their mossy stones around the queer church on old Quaker Hill! The precisianers here lived quiet lives, but their principles of soul-liberty emancipated the world. The little square panes in the gray meeting-house windows, to a student of life, are more than all the rose hues of the lights of Cologne Cathedral. It is the soul of things that is great,—and great souls held their visions here.
I vividly recall the whortleberry and blackberry pastures of Portsmouth, where “Miraculous Susan” used to spend the greater part of her time in July and August, gathering berries for the Newport market. I can see the old woman now as she used to pass with her baskets and tin pails, and her bottle of cold coffee for lunch.
I used sometimes to go with her, and when she had filled her baskets with berries she would help me fill mine. “It is what we do for other folks that makes life pleasant,” she often said.
The children used to start back with awe into the roadside alders and witch-hazels as they saw her, and one of the school-group would be likely to say:
“That’s her,—the ’ooman over whose head the miracle-ring appeared, right in the church, hanging in the air on nothing. And some said it was made of silver, and some said it was made of gold, and some of pearls. But they found her out. She didn’t mean it. I’ll tell you what it was—won’t you never, never tell?”
The mystery of the simple history of Susan had been so often told in confidence that when one put one’s finger on one’s lip in speaking of it, it was a sign; there are some things that it is reverent not to tell publicly,—this was one of them.
There was a poem of some unknown author that she used to repeat to me when whortleberrying, which to my simple mind surpassed in lyric beauty anything that Wordsworth ever wrote. It began:
“Why, Phœbe, have you come so soon?
Where are your berries, child?”
The unfortunate Phœbe was to my eyes a never-failing source of tears. The earthquake of Lisbon never affected me like that.
I shall never forget the tempests that sometimes followed the long August days when we went whortleberrying. If we had an uneventful tour, we yet had eventful skies. The hot forenoon; the ospreys wheeling in the fiery meridian heaven; the fevered air; the pearl-white clouds that rose in the north like mountains, peak rising above peak as in the Alps or Andes; the universal singing of birds in joyous expectation of showers; the hurrying hay-wagons; the rapid motions of the rakes and forks; the scent of new-mown hay; the carrying of water to the haymakers by the farmers’ wives and daughters; the shadow of the cloud; the half-sun and half-shadow on the fields; the muttering of the thunder; the few terrific peals; the thunderbolt that smote some tall tree in the near woodland pasture; the deluge of rain; the dripping leaves; the breaking cloud; the rainbow; the broken sunset; the singing of birds again; the flying of night-hawks, and the cool, starry night that followed,—I can still see that country dog-day, as such a day was called. I still can feel in my imagination as I felt in the changing air from a fevered heat to refreshing cool, as we sheltered ourselves under the thick savin-trees, waiting for the shower to pass.
DETAIL OF THE GOLDEN DOOR.
Miraculous Susan, over whose head the silver ring appeared in the old Orthodox church on the Heights, lived in a small cottage near Quaker Hill. Across a narrow waterway was Tiverton Heights. The water is spanned by a stone bridge now; it was a ferry in Susan’s day.
A strange event had happened to Susan. We never knew of her telling the story but once, and that was at a husking at Tiverton, after her feelings had been a little touched by certain jokes about her that had fallen upon her ears at a husking-party.
“No,” she said, shaking her calash, “I fear sometimes that there’s no miracle ever happened in my poor life—I can’t say; but I’ve had a hard time. I never encouraged any man to marry me—how could I? only Malachi, he just took hold of one end of my apron-string one evening, and opened his mouth, and I said ‘Stop!’ and looked at him just like that. Malachi was a likely man, but I wouldn’t be a burden to him. The doctor said that Mother would be a cripple for life, and he had no sooner said that than my mind was made right up. I knew my duty. If a thing is right, it is right, and there need be nothing more said about it; and if a thing is wrong, it is wrong, and there need be nothing more said about that. I’ve had some blessin’s and a pretty even life, take it all in all,—only that miracle that happened to me in church, and nobody was to blame for that! I did think that the ‘angel of the Lord had come down,’ as the choir used to sing, but I fear I was mistaken.”
Miraculous Susan arose and bent over the corn-heap and pulled down a large husking of corn. It was a bright, clear, still November day, with a woody odor in the air that came from the falling leaves of the flaming maples and walnut-trees where the river made an ox-bow. There had been a gusty storm the night before, leaving leaf-wet woods. The crows were cawing in the far tree-tops, and the pilfering jays were swinging in the wild grape-vines. Hither and thither a nimble squirrel, called the “chipmunk,” might have been seen running along the gray stone walls.
The Parson sat next to Miraculous Susan by the husk-heap.
“You never gave Malachi any yarn to wind?” said he, good-naturedly, to lead up to the neighborhood story.
“No, I never encouraged him as much as that. I only treated him so well that he came a second time. La, Parson, if I’d only said the word I needn’t ha’ been huskin’ here for one bushel in ten. But my folks, they were all ought-to-be people, and I had to be just what I ought to be. It was born in me. I know that I got spiritually proud, and actually thought that the Lord had appeared to me and set a halo of glory around my head. Think of it, a poor lone woman like me! But the world has been good to me, and it will be a great deal better on the day that I go out of it than it was on the day when I came into it, and none the worse for my being in it—don’t you think so, Parson?”
“Yes, Sister Susan, that is just my own opinion.”
“I can make mince pies equal to Dorothy Hancock’s, though I can’t pull a string as that woman did on the French fleet one day, and have a whole frigate go bang, banging around me. There’s a difference between some folks and others.”
“You are right, Susan,—you can make mince pies.”
“And pandowdy!”
“Yes, I never ate any Thanksgiving pandowdy equal to yours.”
“That’s because I let the crust candy, and then breaks it all up, and kneads it into the apple.—This is a beautiful world!”
It surely was on that day and in that thrifty meadow. The sky was as blue as in April. The hills in their late autumn hues shimmered afar like dreamlands. The long meadows were restful and bright with cool green aftermath. Between the hills ran the way down to the cranberry meadows, the salt marshes, and the purple sea.
The farm lay upon a stretch of land now known as Tiverton Heights, which was already famous in Indian history, but is now also associated with stirring events of the Revolutionary War. There is no place in America that commands more romantic scenes and waterways. At a distance lay the town of Little Compton, the residence of Captain Benjamin Church the Indian-fighter, and the rich hunting-grounds of the Awasonks. In the lowlands at the sea-levels was the island of Rhode Island, where had lived Bishop Berkeley, of prophetic memory. In the town now called Middleton, near Newport, the Aquidians had met their fate; and the same town now is famous as the place where Barton captured General Prescott:—
“’Twas on that dark and stormy night,
The winds and waves did roar,
Bold Barton then with twenty men
Went down upon the shore.”
The old inhabitants still love to tell how Tuck Sisson on that memorable July night broke open the British General’s door by butting against it with his head.
To the west, where now the great stone bridge, costing a quarter of a million, connects the island of Newport the Beautiful with the mainland, was the pleasant ferry. And beyond lay the Narragansett, one of the beautiful inland seas of the world. Here also were the Highlands of the Pocassetts, and thence Queen Wetamoe and her warriors used to cross Mount Hope Bay to unite in the war-dances of King Philip at night. To-day every town on the Heights has its wonderful tales and romantic legends.
THE BOAT LANDING AND THE LAKE, FROM THE LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING.
The “husk-heap,” as the unharvested corn was called, was many hundred feet long, and covered on the top with thatch and swale meadow-hay. Behind it rose a number of “husk-stacks,” as the heaped husked cornstalks were termed, while in front were two huge ox-carts, with high sides, which were brimming with yellow Indian corn. Over the corn-heaps where the husking had already been done was a long row of pumpkins, “pig corn” and “smutty corn,” on the ground. The crickets were singing cheerily everywhere, as they always did on bright days about the corn-heaps.
The huskers were a merry company. In the middle of the long row of these busy people sat Deacon White, the owner of the seashore farm, and next to him Sally Bannocks, his widowed sister. At his other side sat Parson Brown, who had come over from the parsonage under the great elbowing elm-trees to “lend a hand;” and beside the good Parson sat Miraculous Susan, the woman-of-all-work of the town. An old Indian woman, named Maria, took a place apart from the others at the end of the heap. Miraculous Susan and Indian Maria husked for the Deacon on shares, receiving one bushel in ten of the corn that they basketed for their labor. A dozen or more boys and girls made up a happy party, such as could have been seen in November a hundred years ago on almost any large New England farm.
In these merry days of plenty the young people had a droll song that they used to sing. It was evidently written in derision of the unthrifty farmer, who had no such bounteous corn-heaps as these. It was sung in doleful minor, and the refrain words “Over there” had the most melancholy cadence of anything that I ever heard except the hymn-tune “Windham.” It ran as follows:—
O potatoes they grow small,
Over there.
O potatoes they grow small,
For they plants ’em in the fall,
And they eats ’em skins and all,
Over there!
O they had a clam pie,
Over there.
O they had a clam pie,
Over there.
O they had a clam pie,
And its crust was made of rye,
You must eat it or must die,
Over there!
The fiddling tune of “Old Rosin the Beau,” and the lively strains of “Money Musk,” the “Virginia Reel,” and “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” were often heard at the husking-parties, played by the village fiddlers, of whom every town had one. For more serious music, the huskers sang the old plaintive Scotch airs.
Miraculous Susan? She was the servant of everybody in distress; the good woman of the town. She heard the first wail of the infant, and stood last by the trembling widow when the sod fell hollow upon the coffin. Did a child have a bad case of measles or throat-ail, she was there; was there a case of typhus fever, her faithful hand fanned that brow. She did not shrink even from a case of smallpox. Did a farm-wife fall sick in haying-time, thither went Miraculous Susan. Did a woman with a great family of children need special help on washing-day, baking-day, or at “killing-time,” there she was found. She used to say that the Lord created her “fists full of days’ work for everybody,” and that that was her mission in life; and always added the reflection of doubtful comfort, “And I shall get through by and by.”
Her name—“Miraculous Susan”—how did she come by that?
Therein is our story, as we have intimated. Other people told it many times; it was a wonder-tale of the old farms. I never knew her to tell the story but once, and that was on this particular day, at the corn-heap.
“Parson Brown,” said she, pulling down a large armful of cornstalks and corn, “do you really think that there are such persons as ghost-seers, or that all such things are only just like the ‘House that Jack built,’ just one thing leadin’ into another?”
“Susan,” said the good Parson, “I haven’t believed much in those things since what happened to you, according to Elder Almy’s view of the matter. Don’t be offended, Susan. There are mostly mysterious causes for mysterious things. You are an honest woman, Susan, and it is much good that you have done in the world. As for that miracle, Susan, that was a very peculiar case. It’s husking-time, and we are all your friends; just tell us your side of that story which makes the people—the Lord forgive ’em!—all call you Miraculous Susan.”
Susan drew her Rob-Roy shawl around her, and gave the Parson the same kind of a look that she had given Malachi when he just took hold of her apron-string to get courage to ask the question. Then her face relaxed, and there came into it a kindly look, and she said, “Parson Brown, I will. You have all been proper good to me, and have always meant well, if you do say ‘Ichabod’ to me now; you mean well.”
