"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

Samuel Wilson, having been trained from his earliest years to that plainness of speech in which the Discipline requires that Friends bring up those under their care, not only discarded in speaking the simple titles in use in common conversation, but did not himself desire to be addressed as Mr. Wilson.

A colored woman, the wife of one of his tenants, said that he refused to answer her when she thus spoke to him.

A pleasant euphemism was generally employed by these people in addressing him. He and his wife were “Uncle Samuel” and “Aunt Anna” to their numerous dependents.

The apparel of Samuel and Anna was of the strict pattern of their own religious sect. To employ a figure of speech, it was the “wedding-garment,” without which, at that time and place, they would not have become elders in their society, and thus been entitled to sit with ministers, etc., upon the rising seats that faced the rest of the meeting.

But the plainness of Uncle Samuel was not limited to the fashion of his own garments. When Aunt Anna had made for her son a suit of domestic cloth, dyed brown with the hulls of the black walnut, and had arrayed him in his new clothes, of which the trousers were made roomy behind,—or, as the humorist says, “baggy in the reverse,”—she looked upon him with maternal pride and fondness, and exclaimed, “There’s my son!”

For this ejaculation she was not only reproved at the time by her husband, but in after-years, whenever he heard her, as he thought, thus fostering in the mind of their dear and only child pride in external appearance, he repeated the expression, “There’s my son!” which saying conveyed a volume of reproof.

From this and other circumstances of the kind, it may be supposed that Friend Wilson was a cold or bitter ascetic. But he possessed a vein of humor, and could be gently and pleasantly rallied when he seemed to run into extremes. But, though his intellect was good, the moral sentiments predominated in his character. His head was lofty and arched. His wants were very few; he possessed an ample competence, and he had no ambition to enter upon the fatiguing chase after riches. He disliked acquisitive men as much as the latter despised him. “I want so little for myself,” he said, “I think that I might be allowed to give something away.”

Sometimes—but rarely—a little abruptness was seen in his behavior. He had the manners of a gentleman by birth,—tender and true, open to melting charity, thinking humbly of himself, and respecting others.

The vein of humor to which I have alluded prompted the reply which he made on a certain occasion to a mechanic or laboring man employed in his own family. In this section of Lancaster County the farming population is composed principally of a laborious and in some respects a humble-minded people, who sit at table and eat with their hired people of both sexes.

The same custom was pursued by Samuel and Anna; but, as their hired people were mostly colored, they sometimes offended the prejudices or tastes of many who were not accustomed to this equality of treatment, which was maintained by several families of Friends. The white hired man to whom I have alluded, when he perceived who were seated at the table, hesitated or refused to sit down among them. As soon as Samuel was conscious of the difficulty, for which indeed his mind was not unprepared, he thus spoke aloud to his wife: “Anna, will thee set a plate at that other table for this stranger? He does not want to sit down with us.” And his request was quietly obeyed. The man who was thus set apart probably became tired of this peculiar seclusion, for he did not stay long at the Quaker homestead.