Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Well, well, Miss Smith,” said Miss Mehitable, “we can’t any of us enter into those mysteries, but I respect your motives, and would be happy to see you any time you will call, and I ‘m in hopes to teach this little girl to treat you properly,” she said, taking the child’s hand.

  “Likely story,” said Miss Asphyxia, with a short, hard laugh. “She ‘ll get ahead o’ you, you ‘ll see that: but I don’t hold malice, so good morning,” – and Miss Asphyxia suddenly and promptly departed, and was soon seen driving away at a violent pace.

  “Upon my word, that woman is n’t so bad, now,” said Miss Mehitable, looking after her, while she leisurely inhaled a pinch of snuff.

  “O, I ‘m so glad you did n’t let her have me!” said Tina.

  “To think of a creature so dry and dreary, so devoid even of the conception of enjoyment in life,” said Miss Mehitable, “hurrying through life without a moment’s rest, – without even the capacity of resting if she could, – and all for what?”

  “For my part, mother, I think you were down too hard on her,” said Aunt Lois.

  “Not a bit,” said my grandmother, cheerily. “Such folks ought to be talked to; it may set her to thinking, and do her good. I ‘ve had it on my heart to give that woman a piece of my mind ever since the children came here. Come here, my poor little dear,” said she to Tina, with one of her impulsive outgushes of motherliness. “I know you must be hungry by this time; come into the buttery, and see what I ‘ve got for you.”

  Now there was an indiscreet championship of Miss Tina, a backing of her in her treatment of Miss Asphyxia, in this overflow, which Aunt Lois severely disapproved, and which struck Miss Mehitable as not being the very best thing to enforce her own teachings of decorum and propriety.

  The small young lady tilted into the buttery after my grandmother, with the flushed cheeks and triumphant air of a victor and they heard her little tongue running with the full assurances of having a sympathetic listener.

  “Now mother will spoil that child, if you let her,” said Aunt Lois. “She ‘s the greatest hand to spoil children; she always lets ’em have what they ask for. I expect Susy’s boys ‘ll be raising Cain round the house; they would if it was n’t for me. They have only to follow mother into that buttery, and out they come with great slices of bread and butter, any time of day, – yes, and even sugar on it, if you ‘ll believe me.”

  “And does ’em good, too,” said my grandmother, who reappeared from the buttery, with Miss Tina tilting and dancing before her, with a confirmatory slice of bread and butter and sugar in her hand. “Tastes good, don’t it, dear?” said she, giving the child a jovial chuck under her little chin.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Miss Tina; “I ‘d like to have old nasty Sphyxy see me now.”

  “Tut, tut! my dear,” said grandmother; “good little girls don’t call names”; – but at the same time the venerable gentlewoman nodded and winked in the most open manner across the curly head at Miss Mehitable, and her portly shoulders shook with laughter, so that the young culprit was not in the least abashed at the reproof.

  “Mother, I do wonder at you!” said Aunt Lois, indignantly.

  “Never you mind, Lois; I guess I ‘ve brought up more children than ever you did,” said my grandmother, cheerily. “There, my little dear,” she added, “you may run down to your play now, and never fear that anybody ‘s going to get you.

  Miss Tina, upon this hint, gladly ran off to finish an architectural structure of pebbles by the river, which she was busy in building at the time when the awful vision of Miss Asphyxia appeared; and my grandmother returned to her buttery to attend to a few matters which had been left unfinished in the morning’s work.

  “It is a very serious responsibility,” said Miss Mehitable, when she had knit awhile in silence, “at my time of life, to charge one’s self with the education of a child. One treats one’s self to a child as one buys a picture or a flower, but the child will not remain a picture or a flower, and then comes the awful question, what it may grow to be, and what share you may have in determining its future.”

  “Well, old Parson Moore used to preach the best sermons on family government that ever I heard,” said Aunt Lois. “He said you must begin in the very beginning and break a child’s will, – short off, – nothing to be done without that. I remember he whipped little Titus, his first son, off and on, nearly a whole day, to make him pick up a pocket-handkerchief.”

  Here the edifying conversation was interrupted by a loud explosive expletive from the buttery, which showed that my grandmother was listening with anything but approbation.

  “FIDDLESTICKS!” quoth she.

  “And did he succeed in entirely subduing the child’s will in that one effort?” said Miss Mehitable, musingly.

  “Well, no. Mrs. Moore told me he had to have twenty or thirty just such spells before he brought him under; but he persevered, and he broke his will at last, – at least so far that he always minded when his father was round.”

  “FIDDLESTICKS!” quoth my grandmother, in a yet louder and more explosive tone.

  “Mrs. Badger does not appear to sympathize with your views,” said Miss Mehitable.

  “O, mother? Of course she don’t; she has her own ways and doings, and she won’t hear to reason,” said Aunt Lois.

  “Come, come, Lois; I never knew an old maid who didn’t think she knew just how to bring up children,” said my grandmother. “Wish you could have tried yourself with that sort of orthodoxy when you was little. Guess if I ‘d broke your will, I should ha’ had to break you for good an’ all, for your will is about all there is of you! But I tell you, I had too much to do to spend a whole forenoon making you pick up a pocket-handkerchief. When you did n’t mind, I hit you a good clip, and picked it up myself; and when you would n’t go where I wanted you, I picked you up, neck and crop, and put you there. That was my government. I let your will take care of itself. I thought the Lord had given you a pretty strong one, and he knew what ‘t was for, and could take care of it in his own time – which hain’t come yet, as I see.”

  Now this last was one of those personal thrusts with which dear family friends are apt to give arguments a practical application; and Aunt Lois’s spare, thin cheeks flushed up as she said, in an aggrieved tone: “Well, I s’pose I ‘m dreadful, of course. Mother always contrives to turn round on me.”

  “Well, Lois, I hate to hear folks talk nonsense,” said my grandmother, who by this time had got a pot of cream under her arm, which she was stirring with the pudding-stick; and this afforded her an opportunity for emphasizing her sentences with occasional drops of the same.

  “People don’t need to talk to me,” she said, “about Parson Moore’s government. Tite Moore was n’t any great shakes, after all the row they made about him. He was well enough while his father was round, but about the worst boy that ever I saw when his eye was off from him. Good or bad, my children was about the same behind my back that they were before my face, anyway.”

  “Well, now, there was Aunt Sally Morse,” said Aunt Lois, steadily ignoring the point of my grandmother’s discourse. “There was a woman that brought up children exactly to suit me. Everything went like clock-work with her babies; they were nursed just so often, and no more; they were put down to sleep at just such a time, and nobody was allowed to rock ‘em, or sing to ‘em, or fuss with ‘em. If they cried, she just whipped them till they stopped; and when they began to toddle about, she never put things out of their reach, but just slapped their hands whenever they touched them, till they learnt to let things alone.”

  “Slapped their hands!” quoth my grandmother, “and learnt them to let things alone! I ‘d like to ha’ seen that tried on my children. Sally had a set of white, still children, that were all just like dipped candles by natur’, and she laid it all to her management; and look at ’em now they ‘re grown up. They ‘re decent, respectable folks, but noways better than other folks’ children. Lucinda Morse ain’t a bit better than you
are, Lois, if she was whipped and made to lie still when she was a baby, and you were taken up and rocked when you cried. All is, they had hard times when they were little, and cried themselves to sleep nights, and were hectored and worried when they ought to have been taking some comfort. Ain’t the world hard enough, without fighting babies, I want to know? I hate to see a woman that don’t want to rock her own baby, and is contriving ways all the time to shirk the care of it. Why, if all the world was that way, there would be no sense in Scriptur’. ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you,’ the Bible says, taking for granted that mothers were made to comfort children and give them good times when they are little. Sally Morse was always talking about her system. She thought she did wonders, ‘cause she got so much time to piece bedquilts, and work counterpanes, and make pickles, by turning off her children; but I took my comfort in mine, and let them have their comfort as they went along. It ‘s about all the comfort there is in this world, anyway, and they ‘re none the worse for it now, as I see.”

  “Well, in all these cases there is a medium, if we could hit it,” said Miss Mehitable. “There must be authority over these ignorant, helpless little folks in early years, to keep them from ruining themselves.”

  “O yes. Of course there must be government,” said my grandmother. “I always made my children mind me; but I would n’t pick quarrels with ‘em, nor keep up long fights to break their will; if they did n’t mind, I came down on ’em and had it over with at once, and then was done with ‘em. They turned out pretty fair, too,” said my grandmother complacently, giving an emphatic thump with her pudding-stick.

  “I was reading Mr. John Locke’s treatise on education yesterday,” said Miss Mehitable. “It strikes me there are many good ideas in it.”

  “Well, one live child puts all your treatises to rout,” said my grandmother. “There ain’t any two children alike; and what works with one won’t with another. Folks have just got to open their eyes, and look and see what the Lord meant when he put the child together, if they can, and not stand in his way; and after all we must wait for sovereign grace to finish the work; if the Lord don’t keep the house, the watchman waketh but in vain. Children are the heritage of the Lord, – that ‘s all you can make of it.”

  My grandmother, like other warm-tempered, impulsive, dictatorial people, had formed her theories of life to suit her own style of practice. She was, to be sure, autocratic in her own realm, and we youngsters knew that, at certain times when her blood was up, it was but a word and a blow for us, and that the blow was quite likely to come first and the word afterward; but the temporary severities of kindly-natured, generous people never lessen the affection of children or servants, any more than the too hot rays of the benignant sun, or the too driving patter of the needful rain. When my grandmother detected us in a childish piece of mischief, and soundly cuffed our ears, or administered summary justice with immediate polts of her rheumatic crutch, we never felt the least rising of wrath or rebellion, but only made off as fast as possible, generally convinced that the good woman was in the right of it, and that we got no more than we deserved.

  I remember one occasion when Bill had been engaged in making some dressed chickens dance, which she had left trussed up with the liver and lights duly washed and replaced within them. Bill set them up on their pins, and put them through active gymnastics, in course of which these interior treasures were rapidly scattered out upon the table. A howl of indignation from grandmother announced coming wrath, and Bill darted out of the back door, while I was summarily seized and chastised.

  “Grandmother, grandmother! I did n’t do it, – it was Bill.”

  “Well, but I can’t catch Bill, you see,” said my monitor, continuing the infliction.

  “But I did n’t do it.”

  “Well, let it stand for something you did do, then,” said my venerable grandmother, by this time quite pacified: “you do bad things enough that you ain’t whipped for, any day.”

  The whole resulted in a large triangle of pumpkin pie, administered with the cordial warmth of returning friendship, and thus the matter was happily adjusted. Even the prodigal son Bill, when, returning piteously, and standing penitent under the milk-room window, he put in a submissive plea, “Please, grandmother, I won’t do so any more,” was allowed a peaceable slice of the same comfortable portion, and bid to go in peace.

  I remember another funny instance of my grandmother’s discipline. It was when I was a little fellow, seated in the chimney-corner at my grandfather’s side. I had discovered a rising at the end of my shoe-sole, which showed that it was beginning to come off. It struck me as a funny thing to do to tear up the whole sole, which piece of mischief my grandfather perceiving, he raised his hand to chastise.

  “Come here, Horace, quick!” said my grandmother, imperatively, that she might save me from the impending blow.

  I lingered, whereat she made a dart at me, and seized me. Just as my grandfather boxed my ear on one side, she hit me a similar cuff on the other.

  “Why didn’t you come when I called you,” she said; “now you ‘ve got your ears boxed both sides.”

  Somewhat bewildered, I retreated under her gown in disgrace, but I was after a relenting moment lifted into her lap, and allowed to go to sleep upon her ample bosom.

  “Mother, why don’t you send that boy to bed nights?” said Aunt Lois. “You never have any regular rules about anything.”

  “Law, he likes to sit up and see the fire as well as any of us, Lois; and do let him have all the comfort he can as he goes along, poor boy! there ain’t any too much in this world, anyway.”

  “Well, for my part, I think there ought to be system in bringing up children,” said Aunt Lois.

  “Wait till you get ’em of your own, and then try it, Lois,” said my grandmother, laughing with a rich, comfortable laugh which rocked my little sleepy head up and down, as I drowsily opened my eyes with a delicious sense of warmth and security.

  From all these specimens it is to be inferred that the theorists on education will find no improvement in the contemplation of my grandmother’s methods, and will pronounce her a pig-headed, passionate, impulsive, soft-hearted body, as entirely below the notice of a rational, inquiring mind as an old brooding hen, which model of maternity in many respects she resembled. It may be so, but the longer I live, the more faith I have in grandmothers and grandmotherly logic, of which, at some future time, I shall give my views at large.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH THE BOY?

  “WELL,” said my Aunt Lois, as she gave the last sweep to the hearth, after she had finished washing up the supper-dishes; “I ‘ve been up to Ebal Scran’s store this afternoon, to see about soling Horace’s Sunday shoes. Ebal will do ’em as reasonable as any one; and he spoke to me to know whether I knew of any boy that a good family would like to bind out to him for an apprentice, and I told him I ‘d speak to you about Horace. It ‘ll be time pretty soon to think of putting him at something.”

  Among the many unexplained and inexplicable woes of childhood, are its bitter antagonisms, so perfectly powerless, yet often so very decided, against certain of the grown people who control it. Perhaps some of us may remember respectable, well-meaning people, with whom in our mature years we live in perfect amity, but who in our childhood appeared to us bitter enemies. Children are remarkably helpless in this respect, because they cannot choose their company and surroundings as grown people can; and are sometimes entirely in the power of those with whom their natures are so unsympathetic that they may be almost said to have a constitutional aversion to them. Aunt Lois was such a one to me, principally because of her forecasting, untiring, pertinacious, care-taking propensities. She had already looked over my lot in life, and set down in her own mind what was to be done with me, and went at it with a resolute energy that would not wait for the slow development of circumstances.

  That I should want to study, as my father did, – that I should for this c
ause hang as an unpractical, unproductive, dead weight on the family, – was the evil which she saw in prospective, against which my grandfather’s placid, easy temper, and my grandmother’s impulsive bountifulness, gave her no security. A student in the family, and a son in college, she felt to be luxuries to which a poor widow in dependent circumstances had no right to look forward, and therefore she opened the subject with prompt energy, by the proposition above stated.

  My mother, who sat on the other side of the fireplace, looked at me with a fluttering look of apprehension. I flushed up in a sort of rage that somehow Aunt Lois always succeeded in putting me into. “I don’t want to be a shoemaker, and I won’t neither,” I said.

  “Tut, tut,” said my grandfather, placidly, from his corner, “we don’t let little boys say ‘won’t’ here.”

  I now burst out crying, and ran to my grandmother, sobbing as if my heart would break.

  “Lois, can’t you let this boy alone?” said my grandmother vengefully; “I do wonder at you. Poor little fellow! his father ain’t quite cold in his grave yet, and you want to pitch him out into the world,” – and my grandmother seized me in her strong arms, and lulled me against her ample bosom. “There, poor boy, don’t you cry; you sha’ n’t, no, you sha’ n’t; you shall stay and help grandma, so you shall.”

  “Great help he is,” said Aunt Lois, contemptuously; “gets a book in his hand and goes round with his head in a bag; never gives a message right, and is always stumbling over things that are right in his way. There ‘s Harry, now, is as handy as a girl, and if he says he ‘ll do a thing, I know ‘t ‘ll be done,” – and Aunt Lois illustrated her doctrine by calling up Harry, and making him stretch forth his arms for a skein of blue-mixed yarn which she was going to wind. The fire-light shone full on his golden curls and clear blue eyes, as he stood obediently and carefully yielding to Aunt Lois’s quick, positive movements. As she wound, and twitched, and pulled, with certainly twice the energy that the work in hand required, his eyes followed her motions with a sort of quiet drollery; there was a still, inward laugh in them, as if she amused him greatly.