Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island

by Elijah Kellogg

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHARLIE’S HOME LIFE AND EMPLOYMENTS.

  Though every boy, almost, in America knows that baskets are made ofash and oak, it was an entirely new thing to Charles. However, bythe instruction of Ben, and the practice of making his sail, he hadacquired a knowledge of its properties, and how to pound and prepare itfor making baskets. By pounding an ash or oak log the layers of woodmay be made to separate, and then the end being started with a knife,they may be run into long, thin strips, suitable for the purpose.

  In stormy days he pounded and prepared his material, and in the longwinter evenings that were now approaching, he wove it into baskets, ashe sat and chatted with the rest before the blazing fire. He made thembeautifully, too; some of them open, and others with covers.

  “Well, Charlie,” said Joe, as he sat watching him, “you are a workmanat basket-making, any how.”

  “I ought to be,” said he, “for I have worked enough at it; but in ourcountry they don’t make them of such stuff as this.”

  “What do they make them of?”

  “Sallies,” replied Charles.

  “Sallys! they must be a barbarous people to cut women up to makebaskets of. What makes them take Sallys? why don’t they take Mollys andBettys, too; it ain’t fair to take all of one name.”

  “It is not women,” said Charlie, laughing, “but a kind of wood.”

  “Is it a tree?”

  “It will grow into a small tree; but they cut it every year, and takethe sprouts. It grows in rows, just as you raise corn, and just asstraight and smooth as a bulrush, without any limbs, only leaves. Theypeel it, and the leaves all come off with the bark, and leave a smooth,white rod--some of them eight feet long. If they become ever so dry,and you throw them into water, they will become tough as before. If Ionly had sallies, I could make a basket that would hold water, and thehandsomest work-baskets for mother that ever was, and color them if Icould get the dye-stuffs. When we make farm-baskets and hampers, weleave the bark on; but when we make nice baskets, we peel it off. Wecall this whitening them.

  “We also strip it into stuff as thin as a shaving, to wind round thehandles of nice baskets and fancy things, and call it skein work,because this thin stuff is made up into skeins, for use like yarn.”

  “What does it look like?” said Ben.

  “It has a long, narrow leaf of bluish green; and in the spring, beforeanything else starts, it has a white stuff on it like cotton-wool; wecall it palm; and on Palm Sunday the people carry it to church; and ifyou put a piece of it on the ground, in a wet place, it will take root.”

  “I know what it is. It’s what we call pussy-willow and dog-willow, butI never thought it was tough enough to make baskets; besides, it growscrooked and scrubby.”

  “Perhaps it is not like ours; but ours would not grow straight exceptthey were cut off. A sprout is different from a branch. Does thewillow, as you call it, grow on the island?”

  “Yes; down by the brook and the swamp.”

  “Tell us something about the folks in the old country,” said Joe. “Whatelse did your father do besides make baskets? Did he own any land?”

  “Nobody owns any land in England but the quality and therich esquires. Poor people don’t own anything; not even theirsouls,--leastways, that is what my grandfather used to say,--for theyhad to ask some great man what they ought to think. My father was atenant of the Earl of Bedford. My grandfather once lived by the coalmines at Dudley, in Staffordshire. It was named after Lord Dudley Ward,who owned extensive iron mines. Occasionally he came to visit hisproperty, with carriages, and servants, and livery, and a great parade.On holidays he sometimes gave them beef and ale. These poor, simpleminers thought he was more than a man. One day when he was riding by,the horses prancing, the people cheering, and the footmen in their redsuits, a little boy was looking on with amazement. At length he saidto his father, ‘Fayther, if God Almighty dies, who’ll be God Almightythen?’ ‘Why, Lord Dudley Ward, you foo’.’”

  “Jerusalem!” said Joe Griffin; “I did not think there were any peoplein this world so ignorant as that. They don’t know so much as a yellowdog. Were the people where you lived so ignorant?”

  “No; they were Wesleyan Methodists, and their children were taught toread and write. It is in the mines where the greatest ignorance is. Welived in the fens.”

  “What is the fens?”

  “What we call the fens is the greater part of it low, flat land, whichhas some time been under water; but the water has been drained off bycanals and ditches, and pumped out with windmills, and now the most ofit bears the greatest crops of any land in England. But there are someplaces so low that they could not be drained.

  “Such was the place where we lived, which was so wet that nothing couldgrow but sallies and alders. No cattle could be kept; so the peoplekeep geese and ducks instead. The geese and ducks are their cattle.”

  “But geese and ducks won’t give milk,” said Joe.

  “Well, some of them make out to keep a cow, and others a goat or two;and the others get their milk where they can, or go without.”

  “What do these people do for a living?”

  “They are basket-makers and coopers. Alders grow taller and straighterthere than they do here; and they make baskets of the sallies, andhoops both of the sallies and alders.

  “The fens are full of frogs, and bugs, and worms, and the fowl gettheir living. We had hundreds of geese and ducks, and picked themthree or four times a year. But the folks are poor there--them that arepoor. We hardly ever saw any meat from year’s end to year’s end.”

  “Couldn’t you eat your geese?”

  “Eat our geese! No, indeed; they had to be sold to pay the rent.”

  “Rent for living in a quagmire! I should think you ought to be paid forliving there.”

  “Rent! yes; and high rent, too. Why, there’s tallow enough in thatcandle on the table to last a fen cottager three weeks.”

  “I don’t see why a candle shouldn’t burn out as fast in England ashere.”

  “They would make that candle into ever so many rush-lights.”

  “What’s a rush-light?”

  “They take a bulrush, and take the skin off from each side down to thewhite pith, leaving a little strip of skin on the edge to stiffen it,and make it stand up,--that is for a wick; then they dip it a few timesin melted tallow, and make a light of it; but it’s a little, miserablelight.”

  “I shouldn’t think they could see to read by it.”

  “There’s but very few of them can read. They don’t have schools, asthey do here: and the poor people can’t send their children, for sosoon as a child is big enough to open a gate, or turn a wheel, or mindanother child, run of errands, hold a horse, or scare the rooks and thebirds from the grain, they are obliged to put that child to work, inorder to live and pay rent.

  “Women in England spin twine and make lines with a large wheel, which alittle boy turns; and when the little boy gets tired, the woman singsto him, to cheer him up,--

  ‘Twelve o’clock by the weaver’s watch, The setting of the sun; Heave away, my little boy, And you’ll leave off when you’re done.’

  And the little boy will brighten up, and make the wheel fly,because he’s going to leave off when he’s done.“

  “You are a little boy, Charlie,” said Sally, who was listening withgreat attention, “to know so much about the affairs of older people.”

  “Ah, mother, misery makes boys sharp to learn. If you was a little boy,and your mother had but one cow, and she churned, and you asked herfor a little piece of butter, and she said, with the tear in her eye,‘No, my child, it must go to pay the rent;’ if you brought in a wholehat full of eggs, and had not eaten an egg for a year, and should longfor one, O, so much, and cry, and say, ‘O, mother, do give me just oneegg!’ and she said, ‘No, my child, they must all be sold, for we arebehindhand with the rent;’ you would know what paying rent means.”

  “Well, Charlie, you shall h
ave all the butter you want every time Ichurn; and I’ll spread your bread both sides, and on the edges.”

  “I shouldn’t think,” said Joe, “a man could get a living bybasket-making. It can’t be much of a trade. Anybody can make a basketthat has got any Indian suet. I can make as good a basket as anybody.”

  “You can make a corn-basket or a clam-basket; but the basket-makersmake chairs, and cradles, and carriages, and fishing-creels, andwork-stands. It is as much of a trade as a joiner’s or a shoemaker’s.There is more call for basket-work in England than here. Timber is veryscarce there. They would no more think of cutting down such a young,thrifty ash as that I am making this basket of, than they would ofcutting a man’s head off; and, when they cut down a tree, they dig upevery bit of the root and use it for something, and then plant anotherone. They don’t have boxes, and barrels, and troughs to keep and carrythings in, as they do here; but it is all crates, and hampers, andbaskets, and sacks. If a man should cut a tree as big as a hoe-handleon the Earl of Bedford’s estates, he would be transported or hung.”

  “It wouldn’t be a very safe place for me to go,” said Joe, “for I’vethe blood of a great many trees on my conscience.”

  “They raise trees there from the seed, and plant and set out thousandsof acres. O, I wish you could only be in the fens in picking-time, Iguess you would laugh.”

  “Why so, Charlie?”

  “You see the women and children take care of the fowl. When they wantto pick them, they put on the awfulest-looking old gowns, and tiecloths round their heads, and shut the geese and ducks up in a room,and then take ’em in their arms and go to pulling the feathers out.The old ganders will bite, and thrash with their wings; they will beplastered from head to foot with feathers.

  “An old woman, with her black face all tanned up (for the women work inthe fields there), looks so funny peeping out of a great heap of whitefeathers and down! and then such an awful squawking as so many fowlmake! Don’t you have any lords and dukes here, father?”

  “No; we are all lords and dukes. We have presidents, and governors, andfolks to do our thinking for us; and if they don’t think and govern tosuit us, we pay them off, turn them out, and hire better ones.”

  “Who is your landlord, father?”

  “Mr. Welch, in Boston, till I pay him for this island.”

  “Who is Uncle Isaac’s, and Captain Rhines’s, and the rest of the folksround here?”

  “They are their own landlords.” He then explained to the wondering boyhow it was that people in America got along, and governed themselveswithout any nobility or landlords, and owned their land; that he wasnow paying for his, that he might own it, and that was the reason hecame on to the island. He also told him, that in some parts of thecountry land was given to people for settling on it.

  “What! is it their ointy-dointy, forever and ever?”

  “Yes; as long as they live; and then they can sell it or leave it totheir children, or give it to whom they have a mind to.”

  “O,” cried Charlie, jumping up, and reddening with excitement, “how mypoor father and mother would have worked, if they could have thoughtthey could ever have come to own land for themselves! According tothat, all that the people here do on the land they do for themselves,and they are their own landlords.”

  “To be sure they are.”

  “Only think, to own your land, and have no rent to pay! I should thinkit was just the country for poor people to live in.”

  “We think it is.”

  “I’m glad you told me all these things, father. I mean to do all I canto help you and mother pay for the land, and by and by, perhaps, when Iget to be a man, I can have a piece of land.”

  “I’ll tell you what you can do, Charles. Make baskets in the eveningsand rainy days, and sell them. I will let you have all you get forthem.”

  “I thank you, father. I could make the house full before spring.”

  “I,” said Joe, “when I am not too tired, will pound some of thebasket-stuff for you. It is hard work for a boy like you.”

  “So will I,” said Ben. “I can pound enough in one evening to last you amonth.”

  “Yes,” said Joe; “you and John might form a company, and go into thebasket business--Rhines & Bell. No; the Rhines Brothers; John and youare brothers. John could pound the basket-stuff at home, and bring itover here; you could make them, and he could sell them to the fishermenin the summer. They use lots of baskets. If you sell them to the storeyou won’t get any money, only goods; but the fishermen will pay thecash.”

  “Won’t that be nice! I tell you the very first thing I mean to have;I’ll swap some baskets at the store, and get some cloth to make a sailfor my boat.”

  “I’ll cut it for you,” said Joe.

  “I’ll sew it,” said Sally.

  “And I,” said Ben, “will rope it for you (sew a piece of rope aroundthe edge), and show you how to make the grummet-holes.”

  “Then the next thing I’ll do, will be to get some powder, and, when thebirds come in the spring, I will learn to shoot and kill them, and havefeathers to sell, to help pay for the island.”

  “If,” said Joe, “you don’t learn to shoot till the birds come, by thetime you get learned the thickest of them will all be gone. You oughtto fire at a mark this winter, and practise, and then when the birdscome you will not have so much to do.”

  “I can’t get any powder till I sell my baskets; powder and shot cost agood deal.”

  “I’ll advance you the money, so that you can get a little powder andshot. You can use peas and little stones part of the time: they willgo wild, but it will help you to get used to hearing a gun go off, andlearning to take sight, and hold her steady. Our folks will want somebaskets in the spring, and when I get through I will take them; but Iwill let you have the money now.”

  “Thank you a thousand times! What a good country this is, and how goodeverybody is!” said the happy boy. “Everybody seems to want to help me;it ain’t so in England.”

  “That is because you are a good boy, and try to help yourself andothers.”

  “There’s one other thing I must have, because I want it to makebaskets--that is a knife.”

  “To be sure; a boy without a knife is no boy at all; he’s like a womanwithout a tongue.”

  “Then I’ll have some bits, and a bit-stock, and a fine-toothed saw. O,if I only had the tools, wouldn’t I make things for mother! I’d makea front door, and ceil up the kitchen, and cover up the chimney, andmake a closet, and a mantelpiece, and finish off a bedroom for fatherand mother, and shingle the roof.”

  At this they all burst into peals of laughter.

  “Well, Charlie,” said Ben, “you’ve laid out work enough for five or sixyears. You had better go to bed now, and all the rest of us, for it ispast ten o’clock. I am sure I don’t know where this evening has goneto.”