"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

When meeting was over, as I did not see my escort to the public-house, and as I had been told that I could stay here, I followed those who went above-stairs, and received a bolster made of a grain-bag filled with hay or straw. I shared it with Mrs. Murphy. Our bed was composed of straw laid upon the floor, and covered, or nearly so, with pieces of domestic carpet. We had a coverlet to lay over us. I talked with some of the other women who lay beside us, and could not get to sleep immediately; but at last I slept so sweetly that it was not agreeable to be disturbed at four o’clock, when, by my reckoning, the sisters began to rise. When some of these had gone down, I should perhaps have slept again, had it not been for a continued talking upon the men’s side of the partition, quite audible, as the partition only ran up to a distance of some feet, not nearly so high as the lofty ridge of the building. The voices appeared to be those of a young man and one or two boys, talking in the dialect. A woman near me laughed.

“What is it?” said I.

“It’s too mean to tell,” she answered.

I surmise that the Dunker brethren had gone down and left these youths. Although a baby was crying, I lay still until two girls in Dunker caps—one ten years old, the other twelve—came with a candle, looking at us, smiling, and making remarks, perhaps thinking that it was time for us to be up.

I asked the eldest what o’clock it was.

She did not know.

“What made you get up, then?”

“I got up when the others did.”

Then some one explained that there were a good many dishes left unwashed the evening before.

I was surprised to see such young persons members of the meeting, for I supposed that the Dunkers, like the Mennonites, are opposed to infant baptism. The former explained to me, however, that they thought such persons as these old enough to distinguish right from wrong. I was told, too, of one girl, still younger, who had insisted on wearing the cap. The Mennonites baptize persons as young as fifteen. Both sects seem to hold peculiar views upon original sin.