CHAPTER VII—THE EASTMAN HILL CROSS-ROAD
The cross-road under the great leafy ridge of Eastman Hill has pretty farms along it, and half-way across there is a country burying ground, where wild plums blossom, and the grave-stones are half hidden all summer in a green thicket.
One name in the graveyard we all hold in special honor, that of Serena Eastman. I never knew her myself, and it is only from her granddaughter and from the neighbors that I learned of her beautiful life.
She was a mother in Israel; one of
“All-Saints—the unknown good that rest
In God’s still memory folded deep.”
She brought up eleven children to upright manhood and womanhood, and beside this a whole neighborhood was nourished from the wells of her deep nature. She lived and died before the days of trained nurses, and in addition to her own cares she was the principal nurse of her countryside. Those were the days when nursing was not and could not be paid for, but was a priceless gift from neighbor to neighbor. She stood ready to be up all night, and night after night, to ease pain by her ministering, or to help to bring a new life into the world; her faith lifted the spirits of the dying, and of those about to be bereaved, as if on strong pinions.
Small-pox was still a terrible scourge in those times, and she was the only woman in the district who would nurse it. Her granddaughter has told me how she kept a change of clothes in an out-house, and how she bathed and dressed there (the only precautions against infection known to the times), whether in winter or summer, before rejoining her family. She always drove to and from such cases at night, to run as little danger as possible of coming in contact with people. Her husband took the same risks that she did. He drove back and forth, and lent his strength in lifting and carrying patients.
They had a large farm, which meant cooking for hired men in the busy seasons, and beside Serena’s eleven children there were older relations to do for, her husband’s father and mother, and one or two unmarried sisters. She was active in Dorcas society and in meeting. Her granddaughter feels that only the completeness of her religious life could have carried her through the fatigues which she underwent. She lived in that conscious obedience to duty which eliminates friction, and her view of duty was one taken through wide-opened windows. She walked with God daily.
The house of this dear woman burned, not long after she and her husband died, and only the blossoming lilacs mark its empty cellar-hole, but the next farm, which belonged to Mr. Eastman’s brother, and is now his nephew’s, is a fine one. You drive on to a wide green, as smoothly kept as a lawn, where three huge trees, a willow and two elms, overhang the house. There are big comfortable barns and outhouses, a corn-crib and well-sweep, and the house is square and ample, with two big chimneys.