MY AUNT FABBINS’S OLD GARRET.
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BY C. P. CRANCH.
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I have often wondered whether there ever was in our whole blessed United States, such a queer place as my Aunt Fabbins’s garret. In all my migrations from city to city, from house to house, from room to room, where I was the guest of people who were quite differently constituted by nature and education from my good aunt, I have thought to myself as I observed somewhat of the family economy in these various hospitable abodes, that there could not possibly be in a single one of them a room whose internal arrangement or disarrangement bore the faintest resemblance to that queer old garret at my Aunt Fabbins’s. Oh, it was the queerest of all queer places that the sun ever peeped into or did not peep into. Language utterly fails to tell how queer it was. I have sometimes thought I would seriously sit down and describe it at length; that I would take an inventory of all the queer things it contained, one by one, with scientific patience and accuracy, and give to the herein unenlightened world the results of my researches and labors, in the shape of an article for some antiquarian society, or, perhaps, some national academy of arts and sciences. Catacombs and tombs, and Egyptian pyramids, have been thrown open to the gaze of mankind, and the dim religious light of old cloisters and cathedrals has been invaded by the prying spirit of utilitarian curiosity and reform; and that which was hidden and mysterious, hath been everywhere brought into the atmosphere of vulgar daylight, and Penny Magazines, and Lyceum Lectures—and science every where is laying his cold clutch upon the shrinking form of poetic truth; then why should not the secrets of my Aunt Fabbins’s queer old musty fusty garret be disclosed, and the world be one little wrinkle the wiser?
Now I do not propose to treat this old garret and its contents scientifically or chronologically—perhaps I shall treat it hardly reverentially; and though there was many a monument therein of past years, and many a hieroglyphic of deep significance were the key only known, yet I shall modestly decline entering the lists with Champollion or Mr. Gliddon. Other spirits more peculiarly gifted with powers of investigation than myself, may, at some future time, visit my aunt’s house, and if they should be favored by chance, or by friendship, to enter that dim upper receptacle of the shadows of the past, they may more fully explore a field which I have scarcely had the courage or patience to do with completeness and accuracy.
But before I enlighten my readers upon the subject of this old garret and its arcana, it will be necessary for me to give a glance at one feature in the domestic economy of my Aunt and Uncle Fabbins.
A worthier and more warm-hearted old couple never lived. For forty years they had shared the joys and sorrows of life together; they had known many trials, but these had only bound them more closely to each other, and to Heaven. They had married early, and brought up a large family, like good parents and good Christians as they were. In the earlier period of their wedded state, they had both, through habit and necessity, managed all their domestic affairs with the strictest economy. They were perfect patterns of housekeeping and management to their neighbors. With the extravagant Southerners, among whom they lived (for my uncle and aunt emigrated from the land of steady habits, old Massachusetts, soon after their marriage, into a more southern latitude, for the same reasons, I suppose, which carry so many of our young couples, nowadays, off to the west); among these Southerners, I say, my Uncle and Aunt Fabbins were absolute wonders, so different were their habits from those about them. There was no end, no bound to the wonder of these people. They could not comprehend how, with their limited income, they contrived to live so snugly and genteelly. The richest families among them could not keep their household arrangements from going “out in the elbows.” In the winter time they never could keep their parlors warm, or their doors shut. Their windows would rattle; the wind would blow in, bringing influenza and consumption on its wings; they could not keep their closets supplied with medicines, or even always with the necessary eatables of life, but were somehow or other obliged to borrow of the Fabbins’s. And in summer, they would leave their windows open to every rain, or their chimneys would tumble down, or their garden-tools would get lost or broken, or their children catch the ague and fever, from running about in puddles, or eating green fruit; and then the whole family establishment and family counsel and assistance of the Fabbins’s were taxed for the ill-management of these extravagant and improvident neighbors. If a pump-handle were loose, or needed oiling, no one could put it to rights like Uncle Fabbins. If a wheelbarrow or rake were broken, they invariably borrowed of neighbor Fabbins. If a baby had the croup, the whole family came in a committee of the whole to wait on the Fabbins’s; Uncle Fabbins must prescribe the physic, and weigh it out, and Aunt Fabbins must leave her sewing, or her pickling, or her ironing, and run in to put the child into a warm bath. If a neighboring housewife wanted a quart of meal, or a loaf of bread, or a pound of butter, she would not scruple to send at all hours of the day, or night to draw upon Mrs. Fabbins’s exhaustless store-house. Everybody knew just where to go when any sudden want or emergency overtook them. I remember hearing of a man who sent out his servant to one of his neighbors’ houses, when a thunder storm was coming up, to give his master’s compliments, and “please wouldn’t he lend him his lightning-rod for a little while.” I have never heard that my uncle’s neighbors ever went quite so far in their neighborly feelings as this, but I do remember hearing my aunt relate one circumstance nearly as amusing as this. A storm was coming up, and all the windows and doors were closed—not a sign of any living creature was seen abroad, save a few lazy cows, who began to think it best to retire to their apartments in their respective cow-yards. The sky was growing darker and darker; the wind swept by over trees and dusty roads in fearful gusts; a few large rain-drops were beginning to fall, and one or two vivid flashes of lightning had cleft the dark clouds, followed by tremendous claps of thunder; when a small boy was seen running violently toward my uncle’s house—a loud knocking was heard—the summons was answered—and the embassy was not exactly to borrow a lightning-rod, for there were none in those days, I believe, but, “mother says, please lend her”—“What, child, is anybody dying?” “No, marm, but mother says, please lend her—a nutmeg!”
“Parturiunt Montes!” I said to myself, when I heard it, (it was in my college days, when I was fond of Latin quotations,) “et nascitur ridiculus mus.”