But who shall do justice to the dinner? Who shall describe the turkey, the chicken, with the confusing series of vegetables, the plum puddings and the endless variety of pies? After dinner the father of the house conformed to the old Puritan custom by recounting the mercies of God in his dealings with the family. He recited a sort of family history, closing with the time-honored text that expressed the hope that as years went by every member of the house circle might so number his days as to apply his heart unto wisdom. Then with the national hymn of the Puritans,
Let children hear the mighty deeds
Which God performed of old,
sung to the venerable tune of St. Martin’s, the ceremonies closed.
So it was in the noble old New England days! Amid scenes like this a child was growing up in whose character love of home and love of country were to be corner stones.
CHAPTER III
HARRIET BEECHER’S SCHOOLING
Away down West Street in the village of Litchfield was a square pine building standing at the edge of the highway where no tree gave shade and no bush or fence took off the cold hard look. In this Dame School, kept by Ma’am Kilbourne, Harriet Beecher’s school education began. Before the door in winter was a pile of wood for fuel, and in summer all the chips of the winter’s wood still lay there outspread upon the ground. Inside the appearance was even less attractive than without. The benches were simple slabs with legs. The desks were slabs set up at an angle; they were cut, hacked, and scratched; each year’s edition of jack-knife literature overlay its predecessor’s, until in the days of the Beecher children the desks already possessed carvings two or three inches deep. But if a child cut a morsel, or stuck in a pin, or pinched off a splinter, the sharp-eyed little mistress was on hand, and one look from her eyes was worse than a sliver in the foot, and one nip from her fingers was equal to the jab of a pin; each boy knew, for every one of them had tried both. The teacher in this school for children was a sharp, precise person possessed of many ingenious ways for fretting little ones. At any rate this was the way one little boy remembered her, and we may suppose that a little girl would realize some of her disagreeableness, even so obedient a child as Harriet.
Every morning, then, during both summer and winter little Harriet and her brother two years younger than herself, reinforced by a hearty breakfast and a more hearty session of morning prayers at home, and bearing the precious splint basket that contained their mid-day lunch of brown bread and apples, trudged down to the place of all-day work and perhaps of discipline.
Harriet and her brother Henry were inseparable companions. Together they were hurried off from the house, together they went down the village street, together they entered the dismal school, subdued for the moment into quiet. Together they endured the long day and envied the flies and the birds that could go about so freely. The windows were so high that they could not see the grassy meadows—only the tantalizing tops of the trees came above the window ledges, and above that the far, deep, bounteous, blue sky. There flew the bluebirds; there went the robins, and there followed the longing thoughts of the children. Long before they knew what was written in Scripture they cried out, O that we had the wings of a bird! As for learning, it was Henry’s opinion in his mature life, that the sum of all they got at the village school would scarcely cover the first ten letters of the alphabet. One good, kind, story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt at home with apples and gingerbread premiums was worth all the school ma’ams that ever stood to see poor little fellows roast in those boy-traps called district schools! Such an aunt the Beecher children had at home, and beloved she was!
But that was a boy’s view; and boys’ views of teachers are well known to be entirely unreliable. Ma’am Kilbourne was highly respected in the community and her curriculum, though not wide, is known to have gone very deep. In fact we may say that in her school the character and influence of the teacher, together with the “New England Primer,” formed the main body of the instruction.