Oldtown Folks

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Marvellous to the little girl was the celerity with which Miss Asphyxia washed and cleared up the dinner-dishes. How the dishes rattled, the knives and forks clinked, as she scraped and piled and washed and wiped and put everything in a trice back into such perfect place, that it looked as if nothing had ever been done on the premises!

  After this Miss Asphyxia produced thimble, thread, needle, and scissors, and, drawing out of a closet a bale of coarse blue home-made cloth, proceeded to measure the little girl for a petticoat and short gown of the same. This being done to her mind, she dumped her into a chair beside her, and, putting a brown towel into her hands to be hemmed, she briefly said, "There, keep to work"; while she, with great despatch and resolution, set to work on the little garments aforesaid.

  The child once or twice laid down her work to watch the chickens who came up round the door, or to note a bird which flew by with a little ripple of song. The first time, Miss Asphyxia only frowned, and said, "Tut, tut." The second time, there came three thumps of Miss Asphyxia's thimble down on the little head, with the admonition, "Mind your work." The child now began to cry, but Miss Asphyxia soon put an end to that by displaying a long birch rod, with a threatening movement, and saying succinctly, "Stop that, this minute, or I 'll whip you." And the child was so certain of this that she swallowed her grief and stitched away as fast as her little fingers could go.

  As soon as supper was over that night, Miss Asphyxia seized upon the child, and, taking her to a tub in the sink-room, proceeded to divest her of her garments and subject her to a most thorough ablution.

  "I 'm goin' to give you one good scrubbin' to start with," said Miss Asphyxia; and, truth to say, no word could more thoroughly express the character of the ablution than the term "scrubbing." The poor child was deluged with soap and water, in mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, while the great bony hands rubbed and splashed, twisted her arms, turned her ears wrong side out, and dashed on the water with unsparing vigor. Nobody can tell the torture which can be inflicted on a child in one of these vigorous old New England washings, which used to make Saturday night a terror in good families. But whatever they were, the little martyr was by this time so thoroughly impressed with the awful reality of Miss Asphyxia's power over her, that she endured all with only a few long-drawn and convulsed sighs, and an inaudible "O dear!"

  When well scrubbed and wiped, Miss Asphyxia put on a coarse homespun nightgown, and, pinning a cloth round the child's neck began with her scissors the work of cutting off her hair. Snip, snip, went the fatal shears, and down into the towel fell bright curls, once the pride of a mother's heart, till finally the small head was despoiled completely. Then Miss Asphyxia, shaking up a bottle of camphor, proceeded to rub some vigorously upon the child's head. "There," she said, "that 's to keep ye from catchin' cold."

  She then proceeded to the kitchen, raked open the fire, and shook the golden curls into the bed of embers, and stood grimly over them while they seethed and twisted and writhed, as if they had been living things suffering a fiery torture, meanwhile picking diligently at the cloth that had contained them, that no stray hair might escape.

  "I wonder now," she said to herself, "if any of this will rise and get into the next pudding?" She spoke with a spice of bitterness, poor woman, as if it would be just the way things usually went on, if it did.

  She buried the fire carefully, and then, opening the door of a small bedroom adjoining, which displayed a single bed, she said, "Now get into bed."

  The child immediately obeyed, thankful to hide herself under the protecting folds of a blue checked coverlet, and feeling that at last the dreadful Miss Asphyxia would leave her to herself.

  Miss Asphyxia clapped to the door, and the child drew a long breath. In a moment, however, the door flew open. Miss Asphyxia had forgotten something. "Can you say your prayers?" she demanded.

  "Yes, ma'am," said the child.

  "Say 'em, then," said Miss Asphyxia; and bang went the door again.

  "There, now, if I hain't done up my duty to that child, then I don't know," said Miss Asphyxia.

  CHAPTER IX.

  HARRY'S FIRST DAY'S WORK.

  IT was the fashion of olden times to consider children only as children pure and simple; not as having any special and individual nature which required special and individual adaptation, but as being simply so many little creatures to be washed, dressed, schooled, fed, and whipped, according to certain general and well-understood rules.

  The philosophy of modern society is showing to parents and educators how delicate and how varied is their task; but in the days we speak of nobody had thought of these shadings and variations. It is perhaps true, that in that very primitive and simple state of society there were fewer of those individual peculiarities which are the result of the stimulated brains and nervous systems of modern society.

  Be that as it may, the little parish of Needmore saw nothing the fact that two orphan children had fallen into the hands of Crab Smith and his sister, Miss Asphyxia, which appeared to its moral sense as at all unsuitable. To be sure, there was a suppressed shrug of the shoulders at the idea of the little fair-haired, pleasant-mannered boy being given up to Old Crab. People said to each other, with a knowing grin: "That 'ere boy 'd have to toe the mark pretty handsome; but then, he might do wus. He 'd have enough to eat and drink anyhow, and old Ma'am Smith, she 'd mother him. As to Miss Asphyxia and the girl, why, 't was jest the thing. She was jest the hand raise a smart girl."

  In fact, we are not certain that Miss Asphyxia, with a few modifications and fashionable shadings suitable for our modern society, is not, after all, the ideal personage who would get all votes as just the proper person to take charge of an orphan asylum, - would be recommended to widowers with large families as just the woman to bring up their children.

  Efficiency has always been, in our New England, the golden calf before which we have fallen down and worshipped. The great granite formation of physical needs and wants that underlies life in a country with a hard soil and a severe climate gives an intensity to our valuation of what pertains to the working of the direct and positive force that controls the physical; and that which can keep in constant order the eating, drinking, and wearing of this mortal body is always asserting itself in every department of life as the true wisdom.

  But what, in fact, were the two little children who had been thus seized on and appropriated?

  The boy was, as we have described, of a delicate and highly nervous organization, - sensitive, �sthetic, - evidently fitted by nature more for the poet or scholar than for the rough grind of physical toil. There had been superinduced on this temperament a precocious development from the circumstance of his having been made, during the earliest years of his consciousness, the companion of his mother. Nothing unfolds a child faster than being thus taken into the companionship of older minds in the first years of life. He was naturally one of those manly, good-natured, even-tempered children that are the delight of nurses and the staff and stay of mothers. Early responsibility and sorrow, and the religious teachings of his mother, had awakened the spiritual part of his nature to a higher consciousness than usually exists in childhood. There was about him a steady, uncorrupted goodness and faithfulness of nature, a simple, direct truthfulness, and a loyal habit of prompt obedience to elders, which made him one of those children likely, in every position of child-life, to be favorites, and to run a smooth course.

  The girl, on the contrary, had in her all the elements of a little bundle of womanhood, born to rule and command in a pure womanly way. She was affectionate, gay, pleasure-loving, self-willed, imperious, intensely fond of approbation, with great stores of fancy, imagination, and an under-heat of undeveloped passion that would, in future life, give warmth and color to all her thoughts, as a volcanic soil is said to brighten the hues of flowers and warm the flavor of grapes. She had, too, that capacity of secretiveness which enabled her to carry out the dictates of a strong will, and an intuitive sense of where to throw a tendril or strike a little f
ibre of persuasion or coaxing, which comes early to those fair parasites who are to live by climbing upon others, and to draw their hues and sweetness from the warmth of other hearts. The moral and religious faculties were as undeveloped in her as in a squirrel or a robin. She had lived, in fact, between her sorrowing mother and her thoughtful little brother, as a beautiful pet, whose little gladsome ways and gay pranks were the only solace of their poverty. Even the father, in good-natured hours, had caressed her, played with her, told her stories, and allowed all her little audacities and liberties with an indulgence that her brother could not dare to hope for. No service or self-denial had ever been required of her. She had been served, with a delicate and exact care, by both mother and brother.

  Such were the two little specimens of mortality which the town Needmore thought well provided for when they were consigned to Crab Smith and Miss Asphyxia.

  The first day after the funeral of his mother, the boy had been called up before light in the morning, and been off at sunrise to the fields with the men; but he had gone with a heart of manly enterprise, feeling as if he were beginning life on his own account, and meaning, with straightforward simplicity, to do his best.

  He assented to Old Crab's harsh orders with such obedient submission, and set about the work given him with such a steady, manly patience and good-will, as to win for himself, at the outset, golden opinions from the hired men, and to excite in Old Crab that discontented satisfaction which he felt in an employee in whom he could find nothing to scold. The work of merely picking up the potatoes from the hills which the men opened was so very simple as to give no chance for mistake or failure, and the boy was so cheerful and unintermitting in his work that no fault could be found under that head. He was tired enough, it is true, at night; but, as he rode home in the cart, he solaced himself with the idea that he was beginning to be a man, and that he should work and support his sister, - and he had many things to tell her of the result of his first day's labor. He wondered that she did not come to meet him as the cart drove up to the house, and his first inquiry, when he saw the friendly old woman, was "Where is Tina?"

  "She 's gone to live with his sister," said Mrs. Smith, in an undertone, pointing to her husband in the back yard. "Asphyxia 's took her to raise."

  "To what?" said the boy, timidly.

  "Why, to fetch her up, - teach her to work," said the little old woman. "But come, sonny, go wash your hands to the sink. Dear me! why, you 've fairly took the skin off your fingers."

  "I 'm not much used to work," said the boy, "but I don't mind it." And he washed carefully the little hands, which, sure enough, had the skin somewhat abraded on the finger-ends.

  "Do ye good," said Old Crab. "Must n't mind that. Can't have no lily-fingered boys workin' for me."

  The child had not thought of complaining; but as soon as he was alone with Mrs. Smith, he came to her confidentially and said, "How far is it to where Tina lives?"

  "Well, it 's the best part of two miles, I calculate."

  "Can't I go over there to-night and see her?"

  "Dear heart! no, you can't. Why, your little back must ache now, and he 'll have you routed up by four o'clock in the morning."

  "I 'm not so very tired," said the boy; "but I want to see Tina. If you 'll show me the way, I 'll go."

  "O, well, you see, they won't let you," said the old woman confidentially. "They are a ha'sh pair of 'em, him and Sphyxy are; and they 've settled it that you ain't to see each other no more, for fear you 'd get to playin' and idlin'."

  The blood flushed into the boy's face, and he breathed short. Something stirred within him, such as makes slavery bitter, as he said, "But that is n't right. She 's my only sister, and my mother told me to take care of her; and I ought to see her sometimes."

  "Lordy massy!" said Goody Smith; "when you 're with some folks, it don't make no difference what 's right and what ain't. You 've jest got to do as ye ken. It won't do to rile him, I tell you. He 's awful, once git his back up." And Goody Smith shook her little old head mysteriously, and hushed the boy, as she heard her husband's heavy tread coming in from the barn.

  The supper of cold beef and pork, potatoes, turnips, and hard cider, which was now dispensed at the farm-house, was ample for all purposes of satisfying hunger; and the little Harry, tired as he was, ate with a vigorous relish. But his mind was still dwelling on his sister.

  After supper was over he followed Goody Smith into her milk-room. "Please do ask him to let me go and see Tina," he said, persuasively.

  "Laws a massy, ye poor dear! ye don't know the critter. If I ask him to do a thing, he 's all the more set agin it. I found out that 'ere years ago. He never does nothin' I ask him to. But never mind; some of these days, we 'll try and contrive it. When he 's gone to mill, I 'll speak to the men, and tell 'em to let ye slip off. But then the pester on't is, there 's Sphyxy; she 's allers wide awake, and would n't let a boy come near her house no more than ef he was a bulldog."

  "Why, what harm do boys do?" said the child, to whom this view presented an entirely new idea.

  "O, well, she 's an old maid, and kind o' set in her ways; and it ain't easy gettin' round Sphyxy; but I 'll try and contrive it. Sometimes I can get round 'em, and get something done, when they don't know nothin' about it; but it 's drefful hard gettin' things done."

  The view thus presented to the child's mind of the cowering, deceptive policy in which the poor old woman's whole married life had been spent gave him much to think of after he had gone to his bedroom.

  He sat down on his little, lonely bed, and began trying to comprehend in his own mind the events of the last few days. He recalled his mother's last conversation with him. All had happened just as she had said. She was gone, just as she had told him, and left him and little Tina alone in the world. Then he remembered his promise, and, kneeling down by his bedside, repeated the simple litany - psalm, prayer, and hymn - which his mother had left him as her only parting gift. The words soothed his little lonesome heart; and he thought what his mother said, - he recalled the look of her dying eyes as she said it, - "Never doubt that God loves you, whatever happens, and, if you have any trouble, pray to him." Upon this thought, he added to his prayer these words: "O dear Father! they have taken away Tina; and she 's a very little girl, and cannot work as I can. Please do take care of Tina, and make them let me go and see her."

  CHAPTER X.

  MISS ASPHYXIA'S SYSTEM.

  WHEN Miss Asphyxia shut the door finally on little Tina the child began slowly to gather up her faculties from the stunning, benumbing influence of the change which had come over her life.

  In former days her father had told her stories of little girls that were carried off to giants' houses, and there maltreated and dominated over in very dreadful ways; and Miss Asphyxia presented herself to her as one of these giants. She was so terribly strong, the child felt instinctively, in every limb, that there was no getting away from her. Her eyes were so keen and searching, her voice so sharp, all her movements so full of a vigor that might be felt, that any chance of getting the better of her by indirect ways seemed hopelessly small. If she should try to run away to find Harry, she was quite sure that Miss Asphyxia could make a long arm that would reach her before she had gone far; and then what she would do to her was a matter that she dared not think of. Even when she was not meaning to be cross to her, but merely seized and swung her into a chair, she had such a grip that it almost gave pain; and what would it be if she seized her in wrath? No; there was evidently no escape; and, as the thought came over the child, she began to cry, - first sobbing, and then, as her agitation increased, screaming audibly.

  Miss Asphyxia opened the door. "Stop that!" she said. "What under the canopy ails ye?"

  "I - want - Harry!" said the child.

  "Well, you can't have Harry; and I won't have ye bawling. Now shut up and go to sleep, or I 'll whip you!" And, with that, Miss Asphyxia turned down the bedclothes with a resolute hand.

  "I will be good, - I
will stop," said the child, in mortal terror compressing the sobs that seemed to tear her little frame.

  Miss Asphyxia waited a moment, and then, going out, shut the door, and went on making up the child's stuff gown outside.

  "That 'ere 's goin' to be a regular limb," she said; "but I must begin as I 'm goin' to go on with her, and mebbe she 'll amount to suthin' by and by. A child 's pretty much dead loss the first three or four years; but after that they more 'n pay, if they 're fetched up right."

  "Mebbe that 'ere child 's lonesome," said Sol Peters, Miss Asphyxia's hired man, who sat in the kitchen corner, putting in a new hoe-handle.

  "Lonesome!" said Miss Asphyxia, with a sniff of contempt.

  "All sorts of young critters is," said Sol, undismayed by this sniff "Puppies is. 'member how our Spot yelped when I fust got him? Kept me 'wake the biggest part of one night. And kittens mews when ye take 'em from the cats. Ye see they 's used to other critters; and it 's sort o' cold like, bein' alone is."

  "Well, she 'll have to get used to it, anyhow," said Miss Asphyxia. "I guess 't won't kill her. Ef a child has enough to eat and drink, and plenty of clothes, and somebody to take care of 'em, they ain't very bad off, if they be lonesome."

  Sol, though a big-fisted, hard-handed fellow, had still rather a soft spot under his jacket in favor of all young, defenceless animals, and the sound of the little girl's cry had gone right to this spot. So he still revolved the subject, as he leisurely turned and scraped with a bit of broken glass the hoe-handle that he was elaborating. After a considerable pause, he shut up one eye, looked along his hoe-handle at Miss Asphyxia, as if he were taking aim, and remarked, "That 'ere boy 's a nice, stiddy little chap; and mebbe, if he could come down here once and a while after work-hours, 't would kind o' reconcile her."

  "I tell you what, Solomon Peters," said Miss Asphyxia, "I 'd jest as soon have the great red dragon in the Revelations a comin' down on my house as a boy! Ef I don't work hard enough now, I 'd like to know, without havin' a boy raound raisin' gineral Cain. Don't tell me! I 'll find work enough to keep that 'ere child from bein' lonesome. Lonesome! - there did n't nobody think of no such things when I was little. I was jest put right along, and no remarks made; and was made to mind when I was spoken to, and to take things as they come. O, I 'll find her work enough to keep her mind occupied, I promise ye."