Mantuamakers and milliners came, in their turn, to fit out the female members of the family. There was a similar process as to boots and shoes. We sent the hides of the cattle—cows and calves we had killed—to the tanner, and these came back in assorted leather. Occasionally a little morocco, then wholly a foreign manufacture, was bought at the store, and made up for the ladies' best shoes. Amby Benedict, the travelling shoemaker, came with his bench, lapstone, and awls, and converted some little room into a shop, till the household was duly shod. He was a merry fellow, and threw in lots of singing gratis. He played all the popular airs upon his lapstone—as hurdygurdies and hand-organs do now.
Carpets were then only known in a few families, and were confined to the keeping-room and parlor. They were all home-made: the warp consisting of woollen yarn, and the woof of lists and old woollen cloth, cut into strips, and sewed together at the ends. Coverlids generally consisted of quilts, made of pieces of waste calico, sewed together in octagons, and quilted in rectangles, giving the whole a gay and rich appearance. This process of quilting generally brought together the women of the neighborhood, married and single; and a great time they had of it, what with tea, talk, and stitching. In the evening the men were admitted; so that a quilting was a real festival, not unfrequently leading to love-making and marriage among the young people.
This reminds me of a sort of communism or socialism, which prevailed in our rural districts long before Owen or Fourier was born. At Ridgefield we used to have "stone bees," when all the men of a village or hamlet came together with their draught cattle, and united to clear some patch of earth of stones and rocks. All this labor was gratuitously rendered, save only that the proprietor of the land furnished the grog. Such a meeting was always, of course, a very social and sociable affair.
When the work was done, gymnastic exercises—such as hopping, wrestling, and foot-racing—took place among the athletic young men. My father generally attended these celebrations as a looker-on. It was, indeed, the custom for the clergy of the olden time to mingle with the people, even in their labors and their pastimes. For some reason or other, it seemed that things went better when the parson gave them his countenance. I followed my father's example, and attended these cheerful and beneficial gatherings. Most of the boys of the town did the same. I may add that, if I may trust the traditions of Ridgefield, the cellar of our new house was dug by a "bee" in a single day, and that was Christmas.
House-raising and barn-raising, the framework being always of wood, were done in the same way by a neighborly gathering of the people. I remember an anecdote of a church-raising, which I may as well relate here. In the eastern part of the State, I think at Lyme, or Pautipaug, a meeting-house was destroyed by lightning. After a year or two the society mustered its energies, and raised the frame of another on the site of the old one. It stood about six months, and was then blown over. In due time another frame was prepared, and the neighborhood gathered together to raise it. It was now proposed by Deacon Hart that they should commence the performances by a prayer and hymn, it having been suggested that perhaps the want of these pious preliminaries on former occasions had something to do with the calamitous results which attended them. When all was ready, therefore, a prayer was made, and the chorister of the place gave out two lines of the hymn, thus:—
"If God to build the house deny,
The builders work in vain."
This being sung, the chorister completed the verse thus, adapting the lines to the occasion:—
"Unless the Lord doth shingle it,
It will blow down agin!"
I must not fail to give you a portrait of one of our village homes, of the middle class, at this era. I take as an example that of our neighbor, J. B., who had been a tailor, but having thriven in his affairs, and being now some fifty years old, had become a farmer. It was situated on the road leading to Salem, there being a wide space in front occupied by the wood-pile, which in these days was not only a matter of great importance, but of formidable bulk. The size of the wood-pile was, indeed, in some sort an index to the rank and condition of the proprietor. The house itself was a low edifice, forty feet long, and of two stories in front; the rear being what was called a breakback—that is, sloping down to a height of ten feet; this low part furnishing a shelter for garden tools and various household instruments. The whole was constructed of wood, the outside being of the dun complexion assumed by unpainted wood, exposed to the weather for twenty or thirty years, save only that the roof was tinged of a reddish brown by a fine moss that found sustenance in the chestnut shingles.
To the left was the garden, which in the productive season was a wilderness of onions, squashes, cucumbers, beets, parsnips, and currants, with the never-failing tansy for bitters, horseradish for seasoning, and fennel for keeping old women awake in church time.