My uncle’s influence.—The influence of the tavern.—State of society forty years ago.—Liquor opposed to education.—The church and the tavern.—The country schoolhouse.—Books used in the school.—A few words about myself.
I pass over a space of several years in my history, and come to the period when I was about fifteen. Up to this time, I had made little progress in education, compared with what is done at the present day. I could indeed read and write, and I knew something of arithmetic, but my advance beyond this was inconsiderable. A brief detail of certain circumstances will show the reason of this.
In the first place, my uncle had no very high estimation of what he called larnin; he was himself a man of action, and believed that books render people dull and stupid, rather than efficient in the business of life. He was therefore opposed to education in general, and particularly so in my case; and not only was his opinion equivalent to law with respect to me, but it was of great force in the village, on account of his character and position.
He kept the village tavern, which in those days of rum and punch was an institution of great power and authority. It was common, at the period of which I speak, for the church or meeting-house and tavern to stand side by side; but if one day in the week, sobriety and temperance were preached in the former, hard drinking and licentiousness were deeply practised in the latter during the other six. The tavern, therefore, not only counteracted the good effect of the preacher, but it went farther, and in many cases corrupted the whole mass of society. The members of the church thought it no scandal to make regular visits to the bar-room at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and at four P. M.; the deacon always kept his jugs well filled, and the minister took his toddy or his tansy bitters, in open day, and without reproach.
In such a state of society as this, the tavern-keeper was usually the most influential man in the village, and if he kept good liquors, he was irresistible. Now my uncle was a prince of a tavern-keeper for these jolly days. He was, in fact, what we call a whole-souled fellow: generous, honest, and frank-hearted. His full, ruddy countenance bespoke all this; and his cheerful, hearty voice carried conviction of it to every listener. Beside, his tavern was freely and generously kept: it was liberally supplied with good beds, and every other luxury or comfort common to those days. As I have said before, it was situated upon the great road, then travelled by the mail stages between Boston and New York. The establishment was of ample extent, consisting of a pile of wooden buildings of various and irregular architecture—all painted a deep red. There was near it a large barn with extensive cow-houses, a corn-crib, a smoke-house, and a pig-sty, arranged solely with a view to ease of communication with the house, and consequently all drawn closely around it. The general effect, when viewed at a distance, was that of two large jugs surrounded with several smaller ones.
Before this heap of edifices swung the tavern sign, with a picture of a barn-yard cock on one side, and a bull upon the other, as I have told you before: and though the artist that painted it was only a common house-dauber, and though the pictures were of humble pretensions when compared with the productions of Raphael, still, few specimens of the fine arts have ever had more admirers than the cock and bull of my uncle’s sign. How many a toper has looked upon it when approaching the tavern with his feverish lip, as the emblem and assurance of the rum that was soon to feed the fire kindled in his throat; how many a jolly fellow, staggering from the inn, has seen that sign reeling against the sky, and mixing grotesquely with the dreamy images of his fancy!
If we add to this description, that in the street, and nearly in front of the tavern, was a wood-pile about ten feet high, and covering three or four square rods of ground; that on one side was a litter of harrows, carts and ploughs, and on the other a general assortment of wagons, old sleighs, broken stages, and a rickety vehicle resembling a modern chaise without a top; and if we sprinkle between all these articles a good supply of geese and pigs, we shall have a pretty fair account of the famous Cock and Bull tavern that flourished in Salem nearly forty years ago.
The proprietor of such an establishment could not, in those days, but be a man of influence; and the free manners and habits of my uncle tended to increase the power that his position gave him. He drank liberally himself, and vindicated his practice by saying that good liquor was one of the gifts of providence, and it was no sin—indeed it was rather a duty—to indulge in providential gifts freely. All this made him a favorite, particularly with a set of hard drinkers who thronged the bar-room, especially of a wet day and on winter evenings.
As I have said, my uncle was opposed to education, and as he grew older and drank deeper, his prejudice against it seemed to increase; and though I cannot easily account for the fact, still every drunkard in the place was an enemy to all improvements in the school. When a town-meeting took place, these persons were invaribly in opposition to every scheme, the design of which was to promote the cause of education, and this party was usually headed by my uncle. And it is not a little curious that the tavern party also had its influence in the church, for my uncle was a member of it, and many of his bar-room cronies also. They were so numerous as to cast a heavy vote, and therefore they exercised a good deal of power here. As in respect to the school, so in the house of worship, they were for spending as little money as possible, and for reducing its power and influence in society to the lowest possible scale. They even held the minister in check, and though he saw the evil tendency of intemperance in the village, he had not nerve enough to attack it, except in a very soft and mild way, which probably served to increase the vice at which he aimed; for vice always thrives when holy men condemn it gently.
Now I have said that my uncle was a kind-hearted, generous man, by nature; how then could he be so narrow-minded in respect to education and religion? The answer to this question is easy. He was addicted to the free use of liquors, which not only tends to destroy the body, but to ruin all the nobler parts of the mind. As he came more and more under the influence of ardent spirits, he grew narrow-minded, sottish and selfish. And this is one of the great evils of taking ardent spirits. The use of them always tends to break down the mind; to take away from us those noble feelings and lofty thoughts, which are the glory of man; in short, to sink us lower and lower toward the brute creation. A determined drunkard is usually a great part of the time but little elevated above a beast.