Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

“But, mamma, I don’t care about being clean. I am sure it’s a great deal nicer to be dirty and play about this nice pond, than to be dressed up to go out and walk with Mrs. Harris, and Janey, and Maria, and the baby.”

“Yes, my dear, but you wont have Mrs. Harris and Janey to dress you, and keep you clean, and take you to walk any more.”

“Wont I? Oh, I’m so glad! Then I can run out here and get as dirty as I please – can’t I mamma?”

“I hope you will not – for you have nobody else now to wash you and keep you clean but mamma; and you don’t want to give her so much trouble, do you?”

“No, mamma; but I’m so glad you’re going to wash me, for you wont scrub so hard as Mrs. Harris did – she used to hurt so, sometimes.”

“I am afraid, my dear, I shall have to scrub a great deal harder than Mrs. Harris did, if you play out here and get so dirty.”

“Well, mamma, I’ll try not to; but say, mamma, I may come out and play here sometimes; it’s so nice.”

“I will see about it some other time; but come in with me and get ready for supper.”

—

CHAPTER IV

The next few days were those of considerable physical toil to our friends. The care of the younger children had to be resigned to a young girl who had been taken to assist her maid of all work; and Harry found himself straying occasionally to his favorite puddle, which, much to his regret, became gradually smaller, until at last it entirely disappeared.

Those few days had, however, wrought a wonderful change in the appearance of things within the house; and it is astonishing what marvels a few dollars will effect in producing these results when directed by taste. A little paint, some neat but low priced wall-paper, a little white dimity, chintz, and a few yards of white muslin, with some matting on the floor, had effected true wonders. The family portraits and engravings relieved the nakedness of the walls; curtains of thin white muslin, tied up with some tasteful ribbon, gave an air of refinement to the otherwise decidedly vulgar windows, whilst the chintz and dimity covered with graceful folds many an otherwise plain and homely deal plank.

“I declare,” mused Maria to herself, “we are becoming quite presentable, almost ready to receive company. Yet something seems wanting – I have it; there’s enough of that blue and fawn-colored chintz still left; I will get Henry to saw me off a couple of boxes of the right size – Sam shall bring me some wool to stuff them with, and I will have a pair of ottomans.”

No sooner thought than done. The boxes were hunted up, and found to suit exactly, except that they were a few inches too high.

“Henry, dear,” she said to her husband, when they had finished dinner, “wont you just take a saw and come and saw me off a piece from each of these boxes that are lying out there?”

“Yes – but what on earth do you want to do with them, Maria?”

“Never you mind, sir; you shall know all in good time. There now, dear – there – just saw six inches off from the length of each of them. Had not you better take a rule to measure them carefully? for I want them just of a heighth, and sawed off very smoothly.”

He did as he was required – placed the boxes in the designated place, and went out to superintend his men, and continue his lessons in the practical details of his new employment. As soon as he was gone, she brought her chintz, and was soon deep in all the mysteries of measuring and fitting. The side pieces were soon cut off to the desired sizes – the ready needle prepared them for fastening on; but she could do nothing with the seat until she had procured the wool. That was done by the farm-hand that evening; and as soon as her husband had gone out after breakfast, she was busily engaged in fitting the top and stuffing it. The upholstery work was completed to her entire satisfaction, and when her husband came in to tea, she said quietly to him,

“I want you to come into the parlor and listen to my music for a little time.”

This was always irresistible – he followed her in and prepared for his treat, when she said to him, “I have a great notion not to play a note for you, as you have not taken the slightest notice of my new ottomans.”

He looked his surprise, but following the direction of her eye, the new articles of furniture met his view.

“I suppose I am now enlightened as to what you wanted with those boxes, and to be sawed so carefully yesterday. But when, in Heaven’s name, Maria, do you find time to do all you do! Here are you, a delicately nurtured woman, attending to most of the details of the dairy – arranging chambers and sitting-rooms – nursing, making beds, sweeping, dusting, sewing, and what not; and now, to crown all, you must needs take to upholstering, as if you had not enough already to do.”

“I am sure,” she said, looking up at her curtaining “that latter is no new business. Learn, Henry, in regard to the time, the truth of the old adage, ‘when there’s a will, there’s a way.’ I thought the room did not look quite furnished, and so I determined on them. They certainly are a great improvement to the room – and aren’t they sweet, dear?”

“They certainly are very creditable to your taste and handiwork. But,” stooping over, and pressing a kiss on her rich rosy lips, “you must take more care of yourself, dearest, or you will overdo the matter.”

“Don’t I look like a tender, delicate creature, that requires careful nursing? Oh, fie on you! I am afraid you have lost all your gallantry. I am very certain Maria Davidson’s cheek was never half so blooming when you used to pay it so many compliments. I am certainly at least five pounds heavier than I was when I came up here. The sun, too, is giving my complexion that darker hue you so much admire.”

“I admire brown complexions! When did you ever hear me say so?”

“I don’t know that I ever did. But then, you know, dear, Laura Bridgeman was a decided brunette.”

“Pshaw!” said Dawson, laughing; “not jealous, I trust, Maria, of the remembrance of my old flirtation with Laura.”

“Not very, sir,” she added, looking down demurely, “for, you know, when it happened I was a little girl that had not yet come out.”

“What a fortunate escape Laura, and her mamma would think she had made, if they could only see me now busily engaged in my shirt-sleeves, planting, digging, weeding, raking, learning to mow, in fine, learning to earn my own bread and that of those dearer to me than life.”

“I don’t feel at all sentimental in connection with Laura Bridgeman; and so,” she added, turning to the piano and striking up a gallope, “here’s something that lady would prefer at any time to sentiment.”

The piece finished, she at once changed the measure, and in a few moments her rich, full voice was heard in a song which was a peculiar favorite of her husband’s. The sound of the music attracted the children, who now came in, the youngest in his young nurse’s arms, to kiss papa good-night, whilst Maria prepared her baby for bed.

Whilst our heroine was thus active within doors, it must not be supposed that her husband was supine without. He was industriously learning the practical parts of his new vocation. He was engaged, the dandy of the pavé, the saloons and the clubs, learning, in his shirt-sleeves, to plough, to harrow, to mow, to dig, and, in fine, to do all that a hard-working farmer is compelled to do. He was aware that the head as well as the hand is necessary to direct aright the art of tillage, as any other art, and that a man may learn every thing concerning the rotation of crops, and all the rest of the art, and yet be deficient in the skill of an ordinary hand in the manual operations; but he thought it best to learn all, in order that in future he might direct all; and so he worked away under the tuition of one of his hired men, and was rapidly becoming a proficient. The hands had lost the softness and whiteness of the city dandy, and had put on that covering of brown which he condemned on the cheek of his wife, only that the shade was darker, and the hardening process had been so gone through with that blisters no longer troubled him.

There was much to do, too, to the exterior of the place, in order to make it harmonize with the now refined interior; so the garden was enlarged, and fruit of various kinds set out at the proper time, and in another year or so they had reason to calculate upon a great improvement in every thing. Time never flew more rapidly with the subjects of our story, not even during the ever-memorable first summer after their wedding. It is true they had but little society, but the active discharge of their duties required the greater portion of their time, and the few occasional half hours of idleness in the day-time, were moments which required no foreign assistance to render them pleasant. After the children were dispatched for the night, and the supper things washed up, and the breakfast-table all set out to be ready for the morning, they would indulge themselves in some music, and then Dawson would read aloud, whilst Maria’s nimble fingers repaired some rent which the clothes of the children might have suffered, or prepared some necessary habiliment.

The neighborhood was thickly settled with a class of comfortable well-to-do farmers, almost exclusively the owners of the farms they occupied, whilst the village of Euston was only a little more than a mile distant. The good people had not, however, called much upon them. Some were restrained by one cause or another, although since rumors of their former position in life having got afloat, curiosity was largely on the tiptoe to see how they could bear their change and get along. The men formed a good opinion of him, when they saw him take off his coat and go to work, as they said, “like a man who wasn’t ashamed of his business;” and they prophesied he would get along. What the females thought may be judged by the following conversation.

“Well, I do declare this is very nice, comfortable,” said Miss Maggie Chatterton, as she undid her bonnet-strings and threw off her shawl amidst a female group of neighbors who were assembled in the best parlor of a certain Mrs. Holmes.

“Oh, Miss Maggie,” shouted two or three juveniles, starting from their various posts about the room, “do tell us that story you promised us last week.”

“Presently, dears, but I want to have a little chat with your mothers first. Seen the newcomers yet, any of you? I mean those city people the Dawsons.”

“Yes,” said Miss Susan Bitterly, a staid single lady of no particular age. “I saw them both as I passed by their place yesterday, and can’t say I saw any thing particularly desirable about either of them. They say she has a piano. I wonder what she expects to do with it here?”

“Well, for my part,” said Mrs. Hardmoney, the portly wife of a well-to-do farmer in the neighborhood, “I don’t see what farmers’ wives have to do with them there sort of things. When I was a girl, we were taught another guess matter than to sit thumping pianys all day.”

“I think you’re rather hard on the poor young thing,” said kind, motherly Mrs. Holmes, as she smoothed down carefully her best dress, which she wore in honor of the occasion; “it must certainly be a hard thing for her to come to such a change, after having had every thing so comfortable about her all her life.”

“Well, for my part,” said Miss Chatterton, “I quite pity her. And they say she’s such a dear, sweet little thing – yes, children, I’ll be with you presently – and all the fault of her husband. Not that I ever heard she complained of him. By the way, Mrs. Holmes, how’s your husband’s rheumatism to-day? I’ve heard of a new remedy for it. Ah! my dear Mrs. Brown,” she added, turning to another of the party, “I saw Henry Cole only yesterday, and he told me they were all well at his father’s. But, as I was saying, they say it was all his fault – ”

“Maggie, are you never going to tell us that story?”

“Yes, dears, presently, when I’ve done here. Yes, she is quite a dear little thing, and Sally Irish, who lives with them, you know, says she’s so good and so gentle, and goes about every thing so nicely and so pleasantly, that she has quite won Sally’s heart already, and that, you know, is not very easy to do. It was only a day or two after they moved up, before they had got all fixed to rights, that she came up to Sally, who was washing out some things, and said to her, as she held out a bundle of nice muslins – ‘Do, Sally, please wash these out for me this time, and I will stand by whilst you do it and learn how, and then, you know, another time I can do it myself, and perhaps, in time, I may learn to do it almost as well as you, Sally.’”

“Well, I am glad to hear she’s not so set up with her piany and such nicknakeries as to be above being willing to help herself some. When I heard what a heap of help they had down there, I thought sure as how they were going to bring all their city notions as well as their piany down here into the country.”

“Why, what harm can there be in a piano,” said the oldest of the Holmes girls, before whose eyes visions of a boarding-school, and a piano, and such like things had been for some time dancing; “I can’t see what harm there can be in having a piano. For my part I think it must be very nice, and I mean to go over and see that dear, pretty Mrs. Dawson, and perhaps she will play on hers for me.”

“No doubt she will, my dear,” said Miss Susan Bitterly; “accomplished ladies like her when they’re settled down among such barbarians as we, are glad to find some one as accomplished as yourself with whom to associate.”

A tart reply arose to Susan Holmes’ tongue, but an opportune look from her mother arrested it.

“I should think,” resumed Mrs. Hardmoney, “that their help would eat up all they make at any time. The Gilbert farm was never a very profitable one, and this man, Dawson, they say, knows nothing about farming. He’s hired Sara Bromley and Jim Clodpole to work on the place. Sam told my old man he was to have a kind of management of things, for Dawson hardly knew the tines of the fork from the handle. We all know that Sam is a managing fellow, and if he don’t contrive to get more out of the place than Dawson, I’m mistaken.”

“I think you do Sam injustice,” said Mrs. Holmes. “Mr. Holmes told me that Mr. Dawson came to see him about hiring Sam, and that he took him on his recommendation. Dawson is to pay him high wages, but Sam is a smart hand, and if Dawson will only keep his eyes open, he may learn a good deal from him.”