Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Between the South Family and the Church Family were two wayside monuments that always won my admiration and homage. One was a vast apple-tree, whose trunk was some three feet through, and whose towering top was heavy, even in an off-year for apples, with a mass of young fruit; apparently this veteran, after supplying cider and “sass” for at least a century, was resolute to continue its benefactions for another hundred years to come. The other reverend monument on this road was the horse-trough: not one of the perishable horse-troughs that our civilization, conscious of its own evanescence, scoops from a log, and leaves to soak and rot year by year, but a great, generous bowl, four feet across, and nearly as many deep, which some forgotten Shaker brother had patiently hollowed out of a mass of granite. A spring, led in pipes from the hill-side, fills it to the brim, with a continual soft bubble in the centre and silent drip of the moisture over the edges to keep fresh the cool, sober green with which in many passing years it has painted the gray stone. Our horse was hired from the Shakers, and was, if one may say it without disrespect, so bigoted a brother himself that he could scarcely be got to drink any water at our farm, but kept his thirst for this fount, which, even when he was not thirsty, he would fondly stop to kiss and loll his great head over. The brother to whom he belonged by courtesy (for of course he was owned in common, like everything else Shaker) had let him form the habit of snatching birch leaves and bushy tops of all sorts along the woodland roads, and we learned to indulge and even cherish this eccentricity. He was called Skip; apparently because he never skipped.

  We stopped at the office of the Church Family, which is a large brick house, scrupulously plain, like all the rest, and appointed for the transaction of business and the entertainment of visitors. Here three sisters and one brother are in charge, and here are chambers for visitors staying overnight. The Shakers do not keep a public-house, and are far from inviting custom, but their theory of Christianity forbids them to turn any one unhoused or unfed from their doors; the rich pay a moderate charge, and the poor nothing — as that large and flourishing order of fellow-citizens, the tramps, very well know. These overripe fruits of our labor system lurk about in the woods and by-ways, and turn up at the Shakers’ doors after dark, where they are secure of being fed and sheltered in the little dormitory set apart for them. “And some of them,” said Elder Fraser, “really look as if the Pit had vomited them up.”

  In the parlor of the office we found our friends the office-sisters, and a number of Shakers and Shakeresses from Harvard, including two of the Harvard elders, who had come to the funeral, and who presently repaired to the plain, white-painted, hip-roofed church-building. Besides ourselves there were but few of the world-outside there, and these few were nearly all tenants from the South Family farm, so that the whole ceremony was unrestricted by reference to spectators, though I am bound to add that no Shaker ceremony that I have seen was embarrassed by the world’s observation, however great the attendance of lookers-on. We were separated, the men from the women, as were the brethren and sisters, who sat facing each other on rows of long settees opposite the spectators. The sisters came in wearing their stiff gauze caps; the brothers with their broad straw-hats, which they took off and hung up on the wooden pegs set round the whole room.

  There was silence for a little while, in which the Shakers took from their pockets and laid across their knees white handkerchiefs as great and thick as napkins, and then placed their hands palm down on the handkerchiefs, and waited till some one began to sing, when they all joined in the hymn. There was none of their characteristic dancing — or marching, rather — that day, but as they sang they all softly beat time with their hands upon their knees, and they sang with a fervent rapture that the self-possessed worship of our world’s congregations no longer knows. Their hymns were now wild and sad, and now jubilant, but the music was always strong and sweet, as it came from lips on which it had been breathed by angelic inspiration. There seemed to be no leader, but after each silence some brother or sister began to sing, and the rest followed, except in one case, when it was announced that the hymn was Sister Julia’s favorite and would be sung in compliance with her request. There was no prayer, or any set discourse, but the elders and eldresses and many others spoke in commemoration of Sister Julia’s duteous and faithful life, and in expression of their love for her. Their voices trembled, and the younger sisters, who had been most about her at the last, freely gave way to their tears. Each one who spoke had some special tribute to pay to her faithfulness, or some tender little testimony to bear to her goodness of heart; several read verses which they had written in memory of her, and amongst these was the elder of the Church Family, who conducted the ceremonies. What was most observable in it all was the familiar character; it was as if these were brothers and sisters by the ties of nature, who spoke of the dead. The faces of nearly all but our old friend Elder Fraser were strange to us, but they were none the less interesting, from the many-wrinkled front of the nonagenarian who has spent half his century in Shirley, to the dimpled visage of the small boy or girl last adopted into the family. They were peaceful faces, the older ones with the stamp of a strong discipline which sustained while it subdued. The women were in far the greater number, as they are in the world’s assemblies in this quarter, and a good half were children or young girls who had not come to close question with themselves, and of whom it could not yet be finally affirmed that they were Shakeresses. The history which was not written could not be read, but it was not easy to believe of those who had passed their prime that they had devoted themselves to their ideal without regrets, or misgivings, nor was it true of any. “We are women,” one of them afterwards said, “and we have had our thoughts of homes and children of our own.”

  During our six weeks’ stay near them we saw our Shaker friends nearly every day. Some of their fruit was now coming into season, and we were asked down to the village to see the first harvest of their new Wachusett blackberry, a recent discovery by Brother Leander, who noticed a vine one day by the wayside on which the berries hung ripe, while those on neighboring bushes were yet two weeks from their maturity. He observed also that the cane was almost free from thorns; he marked the vine, and when the leaves fell, transplanted it. In the garden we found a dozen brothers and sisters busy on either side of the rows of bushes which bowed beneath their weight of ripe berries in those first days of August.

  In the afternoon we found the office-sisters in the basement of their dwelling, putting up the berries in boxes, which they did with Shaker scrupulosity as to ripeness and justness of measure. The Shakers are very diligent people, and yet seem always to have any desired leisure, as one may notice in large, old-fashioned families where people do their own work. The industries at Shirley are broom-making (at which the minister, Elder John Whiteley, and several of the brothers work), raising blackberries, drying sweet corn, and making apple-sauce and jellies. In former times, before the wickedness of fermented drinks was clearly established, one brother made wine from the bacchanal grape as well as the self-righteous elderberry, and some bottles of his vintage yet linger in the office-cellar. But no wine has been made for many years, now; for the Shakers are very strictly abstemious. Yet if a brother’s natural man insist upon a draught now and then, they consider all the circumstances, and do not forbid, while they deplore. A similar tolerance they use toward tobacco, and I have seen a snuffing as well as a chewing brother. They generally avoid also tea and coffee, shortened biscuit, doughnuts, and the whole unwholesome line of country cookery, while they accept and practise the new gospel of oatmeal porridge and brown-bread gems in its fulness. Many of the younger people are averse from meat, following the example and precept of our good Elder Fraser, who for the last thirty-five years has kept his tough Scotch bloom fresh upon a diet that involves harm to no living creature, and at seventy looks as ruddy as few Americans at any time of life.

  But after this testimony to their healthful regimen, shall I confess that the Shakers did not seem to me especi
ally healthful-looking? They do not look so fresh nor so strong as the same number of well-to-do city people; and they are not, as a community, exempt in notable degree from the ills we are all heir to. Is it possibly true that our climate is healthful only in proportion as it is shut out by brick walls and plate-glass, and battened down under cobble and flag stones; that the less fresh air we have the better, and that Nature here is at best only a step-mother to our race? But perhaps it is too much to expect a single generation, gathered from the common stock of an unwisely-feeding ancestry, to show the good effects of a more reasonable regimen. The Shakers labor under the disadvantage of not being able to transmit a cumulative force of good example in their descendants; they must always be dealing, even in their own body, with the sons of pie and the daughters of doughnut; and Elder Fraser, who one Sunday spoke outright against these abominations, addressing the strangers present, will have to preach long and often the better culinary faith, which the Shakers received from the spirits (as they claim), before he can reach the stomachs, at once poor and proud, of the dyspeptical world-outside.

  We went regularly to the Shaker meeting, which in summer is held every Sunday in the church-building I have mentioned; in winter the meetings are privately held in the large room kept for that purpose in every Shaker dwelling, and used throughout the year for family gatherings, social and devotional. The seats for spectators in the church were filled, and sometimes to overflowing, by people from the country and the villages round about, as well as by summer boarders from the neighboring town of Lancaster, whose modish silks and millinery distinguished them from the rural congregation; but all were respectful and attentive to the worship which they had come to look at, and which, in its most fantastic phase, I should think could move only a silly person to laughter. The meetings opened with singing, and then Elder Wetherbee, of the Church Family, briefly addressed the brethren and sisters in terms which were commonly a grateful recognition of the beauty of their “gospel relation” to each other, and of their safety from sin in a world of evil. The words were not always ready, but the sincere affection and conviction which breathed from them were characteristic of all the addresses which followed. After the elder sat down, they sang again, and then the minister, John Whiteley, read a chapter of the Bible, and made a few remarks; then, with alternate singing and speaking (the speaking was mostly from the men, though now and then a sister rose and bore her testimony to her heartfelt happiness in Shakerism, or declared her intention to take up a cross against such or such a tendency of her nature), the services proceeded till the time for the marching came. Till this time the brothers and sisters had sat confronting each other on settees, which they now lifted and set out of the way against the wall. A group formed in an ellipse in the middle, with two lines of marchers out side of them, headed by Elder Wetherbee. Some one struck into one of their stirring march tunes, and those in the ellipse began to rock back and forth on their feet, and to sway their bodies to the music, while the marchers with a sort of rising motion began their round, all beat ing time with a quick outward gesture of the arms and an upward gesture of the open palms. It was always a thrilling sight, fantastic, as I said, but not ludicrous, and it never failed to tempt the nerves to so much Shakerism at least as lay in the march. To the worshippers this part of their rite was evidently that sort of joy which if physical, is next to spiritual transport. Their faces were enraptured, they rose and rose in their march with a glad exultation; suddenly the singing ceased, the march instantly ended, and the arms of each sank slowly down to the side. Some brother now spoke again, and when he closed, another song was raised, and the march resumed, till in the course of the singing and speaking those forming the central ellipse had been relieved and enabled to join the march. When it ended, the settees were drawn up again, and the brethren and sisters sat down as before. Generally, one or two of the younger sisters would at this point read some article or poem from “The Shaker and Shakeress,” — the organ of the sect published at Mt. Lebanon, New York, and made up of contributions by members of the different families throughout the country. If the extract was particularly to the minds of the listeners, one of them pronounced it “good,” and there was a general testimony to this effect. When these were finished, Elder Fraser, of the North Family, came forward between the rows of Shakers, and addressed the world in the principal discourse of the day. I always liked his speaking, for, if I did not accept his Shakerism, I felt bound to accept his good sense; and besides, it is pleasant, after the generalizing of the pulpits, to have the sins of one’s fellow-men frankly named and fully rebuked; in this sort of satisfaction I sometimes almost felt myself without reproach. I suppose that what Elder Fraser and Elder Wetherbee and Elder John Whiteley preached is what is called morality by those who make a distinction between that and religion; but there was constant reference to Christ in their praise of the virtues they wished us to practise. Elder Fraser’s discourses took a wide range at times, and he enforced his faith in language which, while it was always simple, was seldom wanting in strength, clearness, and literary excellence. He and Minister Whiteley are readers of most of the late books of religious and scientific controversy, from the most hopeless of which they come back confirmed and refreshed in their Shaker belief.

  It was very pleasant to hear Elder Fraser, not only in the church, but also among his raspberries and grape-vines, to the culture of which he brought a spirit by no means bowed to the clod. He was fond of drawing illustrations from nature in his most daring theories of the universe, and the sucker that his hoe lopped away, or the vine bud that his thumb and forefinger sacrificed to the prosperity of the clusters, furnished him argument as he worked and talked. He is lately from Mt. Lebanon, where his years and services had justly retired him from all labors but those he chose to add to his literary pursuits; yet he came back to active life in Shirley at the intimation that his presence there would be to the advantage of the North Family, and he bears his little cross (as the Shakers call any trouble they would make light of) with the cheerfulest content. The boys, the sweet corn, the tomatoes, the grapes, the pears, flourish equally in his care at the North Family, and I do not know where else one should find such clumps of cockscomb and prince’s feather and beds of balsam as grow under his kindly smile and diligent hand.

  I am not sure whether the different faces in the march had a greater or less fascination to us after we came to know their different owners personally. Each showed his or her transport in a different way, and each had some peculiarity of step or movement that took our idle minds and made us curious about their history and character. Among them, none was more striking than the nonagenarian, whose bent frame kept its place in the round, but whose nerveless hands beat time after a very fugitive and erratic fashion. Father Abraham is very deaf, and in the singing some final bit of belated melody always stuck in his throat, and came scratching and scrambling up after the others had ceased in a manner that was rather hard to bear. But it was wonderful that he should know what tunes they sang when they sang without book. He is the author of a system of musical notation which the Shakers used exclusively until very lately, and which many of them still prefer. At his great age he still works every day at basket-making, in which he is very skilful and conscientious. But it is superfluous to say this; Shaker work is always the best of its kind. He is rarely sick, and he takes part in all the details of the worship, as he did when he came, sixty years ago. He was then a young man, and it is said that he visited the community from idle curiosity, with his betrothed. Its life and faith made an instant impression upon him, and he proposed to the young girl that they should both become Shakers; but after due thought she refused. She said that she would not be a hindrance to his wish in the matter; if he was called to this belief, she gave him back his promise. To the Shakers it seems right that he should have accepted her sacrifice; to some of the world-outside it will seem tragic. Who knows? He has never regretted his course; she took another mate, saw her children about her knee, and died l
ong ago, after a life that was no doubt as happy as most. But perhaps in an affair like that, a girl’s heart had supreme claims. Perhaps there are some things that one ought not to do even with the hope of winning heaven.

  After this old man, some of the little ones, left by death or their parents’ poverty or worthlessness to the care of the Shakers, were the most interesting figures in the march, through which they moved with such a pretty pleasure. The meeting must have been a delight to them, though their faces kept a soberness which was an edifying proof of their discipline. This is the effect of vigilance and moral suasion; I believe the Shakers never strike their little wards, or employ any harsh measures with them.

  One has somehow the impression that the young people of the Shakers are held in compulsory allegiance; but of course this is not at all the fact. As soon as they are old enough to take care of themselves they are entirely free to go or to stay. Undoubtedly they are constantly taught the advantages of the community over the world, and the superior merit of the virgin life over the married state, which they may be inclined to think of as they grow to be men and women. Marriage is not held to be sinful or dishonorable. “Few things,” said one of the elders, “are more pleasing to us than the sight of a happy young couple, living rightly in their order,” but marriage is earthly and human, and celibacy is divine; as the thoughts are turned to higher things, they forsake husband or wife. Nevertheless, if their young women will marry, the Shakers claim the satisfaction of thinking that they have received in the community the best possible training for wives and mothers, — that they have been taught diligence, economy and all branches of domestic knowledge. More than once there have been secessions of young people, which are nearly always stealthy, not because there could be any constraint, but because they dreaded to face the disappointed hopes of their elders. In after years, these delinquents from the angelic condition sometimes return to thank their benefactors, and to declare that they owe most of their worldly prosperity to their unworldly precepts. The proportion of those reared in Shakerism whom the Shakers expect to keep is small; they count quite as much for their increase upon accessions of mature men and women from outside, whom the Shaker life and doctrine persuade. These they invite now, as always, very cordially to join them, and they look forward to a time when their dwindling communities shall be restored to more than their old numbers.