Comparing the life of Father's boyhood with our life here at Riverby in those days and again comparing that with the life to-day, one cannot but wonder what will be the final outcome. In a primitive society every individual knows everything about everything that he has in life; as civilization becomes more complex we become more and more specialists, more and more the thing that the economists call the "division of labour" becomes operative, and individuals go through life to-day knowing how to do but a very few of the things necessary to their existence. The early or primitive civilization produced an independent race, and individuals picturesque and unique in character. Father noticed this. He loved the old-fashioned man or woman who was so strongly individual and picturesque. I remember one such character, "Old blind Jimmy" he was called, who went about the country with a staff, and when Father saw him coming, one day "out home," he asked me to run with my camera and station myself down the road and get a picture of old blind Jimmy as he came along. I did so, and I knew at once that Jimmy knew I was there. He must have heard me in some way, and surely must have heard the purr of the focal plane shutter as I took his picture. One day in the market place in Jamaica, West Indies, there was a savage-looking man who looked the way you would imagine a pirate of the Spanish Main would look, and Father was much interested in him and asked me to get his picture—it took considerable manoeuvring, but I did get him at last.
Much of the old order clung to us here at Riverby—Mother always made buckwheat cakes, we got a sack of flour from "out home" and she set the cakes to rise; I can hear the sound of the wooden spoon as she mixed them up in the evening and then set them behind the stove. Now we get the flour all ready to mix with water. No more running for buttermilk to use in them, no more having them rise over the batter pitcher during the night. Father always ate them, five or six. No day was begun in cold weather without "pancakes." And "out home" they made their own soap, but here Mother got a box of soap and carefully piled it up to dry and harden. There was a pail in the cellar for "soap grease," into which was put every scrap of fat or grease and saved until the day when the "soap man" came around and bought it. Those were the days when potatoes were less than fifty cents a bushel, eggs a dollar a hundred, and the very finest roe shad could be had for twenty-five cents. And shad nets were knit by hand. I can remember Father telling how the Manning family, who lived below the hill, knit shad nets all winter. Now one can buy the net already knit practically as cheaply as one can buy the twine. Sail boats dotted the Hudson—sloops and schooners loitering up and down the river or tacking noisily back and forth. I know they used to get becalmed and tide-bound out here and the sailors would come ashore and raid fruit orchards. Once some of them stole a sheep and took it out to the schooner. The owner of the sheep came after the sailors with a search warrant but the mischievous sailors pulled the anchor chain up taut and tied the sheep to the chain and lowered away until the sheep, which they had butchered, was under water and the search warrant even could not find it.
"The little boat" referred to in the letter of July 24, 1893, and on which Father shipped his peaches, was a small steamer that ran from Rondout to Poughkeepsie and was more or less of a family institution when the river was open. It landed when we hailed it, at the dock at the bottom of our vineyard, and Father mostly went to town to do his shopping on "the little boat." Once he went to get his garden seeds and, coming back, a violent squall blew his basket with all his purchases overboard. I can still remember how disgusted and ruffled he appeared over it. At another time he was on this little boat when it landed at Hyde Park and a team of horses, hitched to a big wagon loaded with brick, were standing on the dock. They became frightened and began to back, in spite of the efforts of the driver to stop them. In a moment the rear wheels went over the edge of the dock and then when they felt the terrible backward pull of the wagon they sprang ahead in a desperate and vain effort to save themselves. Their hoofs beat frantically upon the plank, throwing up a shower of splinters, and though they strained every fibre of their bodies, they were drawn over to their death. Father was much upset over it. It made a vivid impression on him. "But," he said, "there was a priest who sat near me and who hardly saw it; he paid no more attention than if nothing had happened," and I feel that all priests suffered on that account in Father's estimation!
One of the ceremonies here at Riverby was the bringing in of the door mat at night. Mother did this or told me to do it—I doubt that Father would. It was brought in for fear of dampness or rain during the night, which would wet the mat and shorten its usefulness. How different from housekeeping nowadays!
Father always wore flannel shirts, of a dark gray, and these had the unfortunate habit of shrinking about the neck, so in washing them they were stretched and then dried over a milk pail—I can see them now, hanging on the line with the pail protruding from the neck. I played a cruel joke on Father one night; I was going out to the hired man's house to play cards and asked Father to leave the door open for me, which he did. It was very late when I returned, half-past nine or ten o'clock, and as I did not want to disturb any one I crept in in my most stealthy way and up to bed. In the morning Father asked me excitedly when I got in. "You must have been mighty sly about it," he said, half in admiration, half in reproach, when I told him, "for I lay awake listening for you to come in and when it got to be after ten I got up to come down and see what had become of you and I found you had come in."
It is ever true that many of the things that a man regards as important a woman does not; and conversely, many things a woman takes seriously are to a man a joke. The following gives a picture of the life here then and sums up the difference between the point of view of Father and Mother:
Thursday, May 17 {1900}
MY DEAR BOY,
I meant to have written you before this but I have been very much occupied and your mother has been wrestling with her house. She has gotten down to the kitchen with her cleaning. She has hired a woman who is to come next week and she wants to get the house in order for her. I have had company. On Friday afternoon "Teddy Roosevelt Jr" came and stayed until Monday morning. He is his father in miniature. He kept me on the stretch all the time. On Saturday we went up the Shataca and cooked our dinner on the little island where you and I did. We had a good time. He climbed trees and rocks like a squirrel. He was all the time looking for something difficult to do.
May 19. I was choked off here and now I am in a pickle. We began to fix the cistern yesterday and got it half finished when the rain came—an inch and a half of water and your mother is furious—cried all night and is crying and storming yet this morning. Of course the blame is all mine. I wanted to fix it ten days ago but she said no, she wanted the water to clean house. If I and you had both died she could not have shed more tears than she has over this petty matter. I shall take to Slabsides to escape this tearful deluge. It has been very dry, no rain and no tears for six weeks. I was glad to see it come, cistern or no cistern. It has saved the hay crop and the strawberries.