Turkeys, little girl and apple-tree lived in Pennsylvania, a hundred years ago. The turkeys—eleven of them—went to bed in the apple-tree, one night in December.
After it was dark, the little girl stood under the tree and peered up through the boughs and began to count. She numbered them from one up to eleven. Addressing the turkeys, she said: “You’re all up there, I see, and if you only knew enough; if you weren’t the dear, old, wise, stupid things that you are, I’ll tell you what you would do. After I’m gone in the house, and the door is shut, and nobody here to see, you’d get right down, and you’d fly off in a hurry to the deepest part of the wood to spent your Thanksgiving, you would. The cold of the woods isn’t half as bad for you as the fire of the oven will be.”
Becca finished her speech; the turkeys rustled in their feathers and doubtless wondered what it all meant, while she stood thinking. One poor fellow lost his balance and came fluttering down to the ground, just as she had decided what to do. As soon as he was safely reset on his perch, 160 Becca made a second little speech to her audience, in which she declared that “they, the dear turkeys, were her own; that she had a right to do with them just as she pleased, and that it was her good pleasure that not one single one of the eleven should make a part of anybody’s Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Heigh-ho,” whistles Jack, Becca’s ten-year-old brother: “that you, Bec? High time you were in the house.”
“S’pose I frightened you,” said Becca. “Where have you been gone all the afternoon, I’d like to know? stealin’ home too, across lots.”
“I’ll tell, if you won’t let on a mite.”
“Do I ever, Jack?” reproachfully.
He did not deign to answer, but in confidential whispers breathed it into her ears that “he had been down to the Forge. Down to the Valley Forge, where General Washington was going to fetch down lots and lots of soldiers, and build log huts, and stay all Winter.” He ended his breathless narration with an allusion that made Becca jump as though she had seen a snake. He said: “It will be bad for your turkeys.”
“Why, Jack? General Washington won’t steal them.”
“Soldiers eat turkey whenever they can get it; and, Bec, this apple-tree isn’t above three miles from the Forge. You’d better have ’em all killed for Thanksgiving. Come, I’m hungry as a bear.”
“But,” said Becca, grasping his jacket sleeve as they went, “I’ve just promised ’em that they shall not be touched.”
Jack’s laugh set every turkey into motion, until the tree was all in a flutter of excitement. He laughed again and again, before he could say “What a little goose you are! Just as if turkeys understood a word you said.”
“But I understood if they didn’t, and I should be telling my own self a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good Thanksgiving once in their lives.”
Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.
The next day General Washington’s eleven thousand men marched into Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways of warlike men.
Becca staid at home with her mother, but secretly wished to see what the great army looked like.
At last the final load of chestnut and walnut and oaken logs went up to the hills from Mr. Blackstone’s farm, and a great white snow fell down over all Pennsylvania, covering the mountains and hills, the soldiers’ log huts, and the turkeys in the apple-tree. January came and went, and every day affairs at the camp grew worse. Men were dying of hunger and cold and disease. Stories of the sufferings of the men grew strangely familiar to the inhabitants. Affairs that Winter would not have been quite so hard at Valley Forge if the neighbors for miles around had not been Tories. Now Becca Blackstone’s mother was a New England women, and in secret she bestowed many a comfort upon one after another of her countrymen at the encampment. Her husband was willing to sell logs and slabs and clay from his pits, but not a farthing or a splinter of wood had he to bestow on the rebels.
At last, one January day, when Mr. Blackstone had gone to Philadelphia, permission was given to Becca to accompany her mother and Jack to the village. Into the rear of the sleigh a big basket was packed. Becca was told that she must not ask any questions nor peep, so she neither questioned nor looked in, but found out, after all, for when they were come to the camp, she saw her mother take out loaves of rye bread and a jug, into which she knew nothing but milk ever was put, and carry them into a hut which had the sign of a hospital over it. Every third cabin was 163 a hospital, and each and every one held within it men that were always hungry and in suffering.
In all her life Becca had never seen so much to make her feel sorry, as she saw when she followed her mother to the door of the log-hospital, into which she was forbidden to enter.
There large-eyed, hungry men lay on the cold ground, with only poor, wretched blankets to cover them. She caught a glimpse of a youth—he did not seem much older than her own Jack—with light, fair hair, such big blue eyes, and the thinnest, whitest hands, reaching up for the mug of milk her mother was offering to him.
Then, when Jack came to her, he was wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. He said “If I was a soldier, and my country didn’t care any more for me than Congress does, I’d go home and leave the Red Coats to carry off Congress. It’s too bad, and he’s a jolly good fellow. Wish we could take him home and get him well.”
“Who is he, Jack?”
“O, a soldier-boy from one of the New England colonies. He’s got a brother with him—that’s good.”
The drive home, over the crisp snow, was a very silent one. More than one tear froze on Mrs. Blackstone’s cheek, as she remembered the misery her eyes had beheld, and her hands could do so little to lighten.
The next day Mr. Blackstone reached home from Philadelphia. He had seen the Britons in 164 all the glory and pomp of plenty and red regimentals in a prosperous city. He returned a confirmed Tory, and wished—never mind what he did wish, since his unkind wish never came to pass—but this is that which he did, he forbade Mrs. Blackstone to give anything that belonged to him to a soldier of General Washington’s army.
“What will you do now, mamma, with all the stockings and mittens you are knitting?” questioned Becca.
“Don’t ask me, child,” was the tearful answer that mother made, for her whole heart was with her countrymen in their brave struggle.
Three nights after that time Mr. Blackstone entered his house, saying:
“I caught a ragged, bare-footed tatterdemalion hanging around, and I warned him off; told him he’d better go home, if he’d got one anywhere, and if not to join the army, of his king at Philadelphia.”
“What did he say, pa?” asked Jack.
“O some tomfoolery or other about the man having nothing to eat but hay for two days, and his brother dying over at the Forge. I didn’t stop to listen to the fellow, but sent him flying.”
Jack touched his mother’s toe in passing, and gave Becca a mysterious nod of the head, as much as to say:
“He’s the soldier from our hospital over there,” but nobody made answer to Mr. Blackstone.
Becca’s eyes filled with tears as she sat down at the tea-table, and sturdy Jack staid away until the last minute, taking all the time he could at washing his hands, that he might get as many looks as possible through the window in the hope that the bare-footed soldier might be lingering about, but he gained no glimpse of him.
Farmer Blackstone had the rheumatism sometimes, and that night he had it worse than ever, so that an hour after tea-time he was quite ready to go to bed, and his wife was quite ready to have him go, also to give him the soothing, quieting remedies he called for.
Becca was to sit up that night until eight-of-the-clock, if she made no noise to disturb her father.
While her mother was busied in getting her father comfortable, she thought, as it was such bright moonlight, she would go out to give her turkeys a count, it having been two or three nights since she had counted them.
Slipping a shawl of her mother’s over her head, she opened softly the kitchen door to steal out. The lowest possible whistle from Jack accosted her at the house corner. That lad intercepted her course, drew her back into the shadow, and bade her “Look!”
She looked across the snow, over the garden wall, into the orchard, and there, beneath her apple-tree, stood something between a man and a scarecrow, and it appeared to be looking up at the sleeping turkeys. Both arms were uplifted.
“O dear! what shall we do?” whispered Becca, all in a shiver of cold and excitement.
“Let’s go and speak to him. Maybe it is our hospital man,” said Jack, with a great appearance of courage.
The two children started, hand in hand, and approached the soldier so quietly that he did not hear the sound of their coming.
As they went, Becca squeezed her brother’s fingers and pointing to the snow over which they walked, whispered the word “Blood!”
“From his feet,” responded Jack, shutting his teeth tightly together.
Yes, there it lay in bright drops on the glistening snow, showing where the feet of the patriot had trod. The children stood still when they were come near to the tree. At the instant their mother appeared in the kitchen doorway and called “Jack!”
The ragged soldier of the United American States lost his courage at the instant and began to retire in confusion; but Becca summoned him to “Wait a minute!” He waited.
“Did you want one of my turkeys?” she asked.
“I was going to steal one, to save my brother’s life,” he answered.
“Is he only a boy, and has he light hair and blue eyes, and does he lie on the wet ground?”
“That’s Joseph,” he groaned.
“Then take a good, big, fat turkey—that one there, if you can get him,” said Becca. “They are all mine.”
The turkey was quietly secured.
“Now take one for yourself,” said Becca.
Number two came down from the perch.
“How many men are there in your hospital?” asked Jack, who had responded to his mother’s summons, and was holding a pair of warm stockings in his hand.
“Twelve.”
“Give him another, Bec—there’s a good girl; three turkeys ain’t a bone too many for twelve hungry men,” prompted Jack.
“Take three!” said Becca. “My pa never counts my turkeys.”
The third turkey joined his fellows.
“Better put these stockings on before you start, or father will track you to the camp,” said Jack. “And pa told ma never to give you anything of his any more.”
Never was weighty burden more cheerfully borne than the bag Jack helped to hoist over the soldier’s shoulder as soon as the stockings had been drawn over the bleeding feet.
“Now I’m going. Thank you, and good night. If you, little girl, would give me a kiss, I’d take it—as from my little Bessy in Connecticut.”
“That’s for Bessy in Connecticut,” said the little girl, giving him one kiss, “and now I’ll give you one for Becca in Pennsylvania. Hurry home and roast the turkeys quick.”
They watched him go over the hill.
“Jack,” said Becca, “if I’d told a lie to the turkeys where would they have been to-night, and Joseph? There are eight more. I wish I’d told him to come again. Pa’s rheumatism came just right to-night, didn’t it?”
“I reckon next year you won’t have all the turkeys to give away to the soldiers,” said Jack, adding quite loftily, “I shall go to raising turkeys in the Spring myself, and when Winter comes we shall see.”
“Now, Jacky,” said Becca, half-crying, “there are eight left, and you take half.”
“No, I won’t,” rejoined Jack. “I’d just like to walk over to Valley Forge and see the soldiers enjoy turkey. Won’t they have a feast! I shouldn’t wonder if they’d eat one raw.”
“O, Jack!”
“Soldiers do eat dreadful things sometimes,” he assured her with a lofty air. And then they went into the house, and the door was shut.
The next year there was not a soldier left above the sod at Valley Forge.
Now the soldiers are gone, the camp is not, the little girl has passed away, the apple-tree is dead, and only the hills at Valley Forge are left to tell the story, bitter with suffering, eloquent with praise, of the men who had a hundred years ago toiled for Freedom there, and are gone home to God.
“A story, children; so soon after Christmas, too! Let me think, what shall it be?”
“O yes, mamma,” uttered three children in chorus.
Mrs. Livingston sat looking into the fire that flamed on the broad hearth so long, that Carl said, by way of reminder that time was passing: “An uncommon story.”
Then up spoke Bessie: “Mamma, something, please, out of the real old time before much of anybody ’round here was born.”
“As long off as the Indians,” assisted young Dot.
“Ah yes; that will do, children. I will tell you a story that happened in this very house almost a hundred years ago. It was told to me by my grandmother when she was very old.”
There was a grand old lady, Mrs. Livingston, at the head of this house then. She loved her country very much indeed, and was willing to do anything she could to help it, in the time of great trouble, during the war for independence. My 170 grandmother was a little girl, not so old as you, Bessie. Her name was Lorinda Grey, and her home was in Boston. The year before, when British soldiers kept close watch to see that nothing to eat, or wear, or burn, was carried into Boston, Mr. Grey contrived to get his family out of the city, and Lorinda, with her brother Otis, was sent here. Afterward, when Boston was free again, the two children were left because the father was too busy to make the long journey after them.
Altogether, more than a dozen children belonging in some way to the Livingstons had been sent to the old house. The family friends and relatives gave the place the name “Fort Safety,” because it lay far away from the enemy’s ships, and quite out of the line where the soldiers of either army marched or camped.
The year had been very full of sorrow and care and trouble and hard work; but when the time for Christmas drew near, this grand old Mrs. Livingston said it should be the happiest Christmas that the old house had ever known. She would make the children happy once, whatever might come afterward, and so she set about it quite early in the fall. One day the children (there were more than a dozen of them in the house at the time) found out that the great room at the end of the hall was locked. They asked Mrs. Livingston many times when it meant, and at last she told them that one night after they were in 171 bed and asleep, Santa Claus appeared at her door and asked if he might occupy that room until the night before Christmas. She told him he might, and he had locked the door himself, and said “if any child so much as looked through a crack in the door that child would find nothing but chestnut burs in his stocking.” Well, the children knew that Santa Claus meant what he said, always, so they used to run past the door every day as fast as they could go and keep their eyes the other way, lest something should be seen that ought not to. Before the day came every wide chimney in the house was swept bright and clean for Santa Claus.
Aunt Elise, a sweet young lady, lived here then. She was old Mrs. Livingston’s daughter, and she told the children that she had seen Santa Claus with her own eyes when he locked the door, and he said that every room must be made as fine as fine could be.
After that Tom and Richard and Will and Philip worked away as hard as they could. They gathered bushels and bushels of ivy, and a mile or two of ground-pine, and eight or ten pecks of bitter-sweet, and stored them all in the corn granary, and waited for the day. Then, when Aunt Elise set to work to adorn the house, she had twenty-four willing hands to help, beside her own two.
When all was made ready, and it was getting near to night in the afternoon before Christmas, 172 Mrs. Livingston sent a messenger for three men from the farm. When they were come, she called in three African servants, and she said to the six men, “Saddle horses and ride away, each one of you in a different direction, and go to every house within five miles of here, and ask: ‘Are any children in this habitation?’ Then say that you are sent to fetch the children’s stockings, that Santa Claus wants them, and take special care to bring me two stockings from each child, whose father or brother is away fighting for his country.”
So the six men set forth on their queer errand, after stockings, and they rode up hill and down, and to the great river’s bank, and wherever the message was given at a house door, if a child was within hearing, off flew a stocking, and sometimes two, as the case might be about father and brother.
Now, in a deep little dell, about five miles away, there was a small, old brown house, and in it lived Mixie Brownson with her mother and brother, but this night Mixie was all alone. When one of the six horsemen rode up to the door, and without getting down from his horse, thumped away on it with his riding-whip handle, Mixie thought, “Like as not it is an Indian,” but she straightway lifted the wooden latch and opened the door.
“There’s one child here, I see,” said the black man. “Any more?”
“I’m all alone,” trembled forth poor Mixie.
“More’s the pity,” said the man. “I want one of your stockings; two of ’em, if you’re a soldier’s little girl. I’m taking stockings to Santa Claus.”
“O take both mine, then, please,” said Mixie with delight, and she drew off two warm woolen stockings and made them into a little bundle, which he thrust into a bag, and off he rode. Mixie’s father was a Royalist, fighting with the Indians for the British, but then Mrs. Livingston knew nothing about that.
It was nearly midnight when the stockings reached Fort Safety. It was in this very room that Mrs. Livingston and Aunt Elise received them. Some were sweet and clean, and some were not; some were new and some were old. So they looked them over, and made two little piles, the one to be filled, the other to be washed.
About this time Santa Claus came down from his locked-up room, with pack after pack, and began to fill stockings. There were ninety-seven of them, beside sixteen more that were hung on a line stretched across the fire-place by the children before they went to bed, so as to be very handy for Santa Claus when he should enter by the chimney.
“What an awful rich lady my fine old Grandmother Livingston must have been, to have goodies enough to fill 113 stockings!” said Carl, his red hair fairly glistening with interest and pride; while Bessie and Dot looked eagerly at 174 the fire-place and around the room, to see if any fragment of a stocking might, by any chance, be about anywhere.
Well, at last the stockings were full. I cannot tell you exactly what was in them. I remember that my grandmother said, that in every stocking went, first of all, a nice, pretty pair of new ones, just the size of the old ones; and next, a pair of mittens to fit hands belonging with feet that could wear the stockings. I know there were oranges and some kind of candy, too.
At last the stockings were all hung on a line extending along two sides of the room, and Mrs. Livingston and Aunt Elise locked the room, and being very tired, went to bed. The next morning, bright and early, there was a great pattering of bare feet and a flitting of night-gowns down the staircase, past the evergreen trees in the hall, and a little host of twelve children stood at that door, trying to get in; but it was all of no use, and they had to march back to bed again.
As for Otis Grey, he was a real Boston boy, full of the spirit of a Liberty Rebel. He dressed himself slyly, slipped down on the great stair-rail, so as to make no noise, opened softly the hall-door, went outside, climbed up, and looked into the room. When he peeped, he was so frightened at the long line of fat stockings that he made haste down, and never said a word to anybody, except my grandmother (Lorinda Grey, his sister); and they two kept the secret.
Breakfast time came, and not a child of the dozen had heard a word from Santa Claus that morning.
Mrs. Livingston said a very long grace, and after that she said to the children: “I have disappointed you this morning, but you will all have your stockings as soon as a little company I have invited to spend the day with you, is come.”
“Bless me!” whispered Otis Grey to his sister, “are all them stockings a-coming?”
“Otis,” said Mrs. Livingston, “you may leave the table.”
Otis obeyed silently, and lost his Christmas breakfast for the time. Mrs. Livingston had strict laws in her house, and punishment always followed disobedience.
The morning was long to the children, but it was a busy time in the winter kitchen, and even the summer kitchen was alive with cookery; and at just mid-day Philip cried out “Company’s come, grandma!”
A dozen or more of the stocking-owners were at the door. In they trooped, bright and laughing and happy. Before they were fairly inside, more came, and more, and still more, until full sixty boys and girls were gathered up and down the great hall and parlors. Mixie Brownson came on the last sled-load. Now Mrs. Livingston did not know, even by name, more than one-half of the young folks she had undertaken to make happy that day; but that made no manner 176 of difference, and the children had not the least idea that Santa Claus had their stockings all hung up in this room, until suddenly the doors were opened, and there was the great hickory-wood fire, and the sunlight streaming in, and the stockings, fat and bulging, hanging in rows. Some were red, and some were blue, and some were white, and some were mixed. Grand old Mrs. Livingston stood within the room, her white curls shining and her stiff brocade trailing.
“Come in, children,” she said, and in they trooped, silent with awe and wonder at the sight they saw. The lady arranged them side by side, in lines, on the two sides of the room where the stockings were not, and then she said:
“Santa Claus, come forth!”
In yonder corner there began a motion in the branches of the evergreen tree, and such a Santa Claus as crept forth was never seen before. He was bulgy with furs from crown to foot, but he made a low curve over toward Mrs. Livingston, and then nodded his head about the lines of children.
“Good day to you, this Christmas,” he said.
“Wish you Merry Christmas, Santa Claus,” said Philip, with a bow.
“Here’s business,” said Santa Claus. “Stockings, let me see. Whoever owns the stocking that I take down from the line, will step forward and take it.”
Every single one of the children knew his or her own property, at a glance. Santa Claus had 177 a busy time of it handing down stockings, and a few minutes later he escaped without notice, and was seen no more that year, in Fort Safety.
After the stockings came dinner, and such a dinner as it was! Whatever there was not, I remember that it was told to me that there was great abundance of English plum-pudding. After dinner came games and more happiness, and after the last game, came time to go home. The sweet clear afternoon suddenly became dark with clouds, and it began to snow soon after the first load set off. One or two followed, and by the time the last one was ready to start, Mrs. Livingston looked forth and said “not another child should leave her roof that night in such a blinding storm.”
Eight little hands clapped their new mittens together in token of joy, but poor little Mixie Brownson began to cry. She had never in her life been away from the brown house.
Tea was served, and Mixie was comforted for a short time. After that came games again, until all were weary with play; and Otis Grey begged Mrs. Livingston for a story.
Mixie was tearful still, and she crept shyly to the lady’s side and sobbed forth: “I wish you was my grandma and would take me in your lap.”
Mrs. Livingston stooped and kissed Mixie’s cheek, then lifted her on her knees and began to tell the children a story. It must have been a very pretty picture that the old, blowing snowstorm 178 looked in upon that night, in this very room: twenty or more children seated around the fire-circle, with stately Mrs. Livingston and pretty Aunt Elise in their midst.
Whilst all this was going on within, outside a band of Indians, led by a white man, was approaching Fort Safety to burn it down.
Step by step, the savages crept nearer and nearer, until they were standing in the very light that streamed out from the Christmas windows.
The white man who led them was in the service of the English, and knew every step of the way, and just who lived in the great house.
He ordered them to stand back while he looked in. Creeping closer and closer, he climbed, as Otis Grey had done, and put his face to the window-pane. He saw Mrs. Livingston and Miss Elise, and the great circle of eager, interested faces, all looking at the story-teller, and he wiped his eyes in order to get one more good look, for he could not believe the story they told to him: that his own poor little Mixie was in there, sitting in proud Mrs. Livingston’s lap, looking happier than he had ever seen her. He stayed so long, peering in, that the savages grew impatient. One or two of their chief men crept up and put their swarthy faces beside his own.
It so happened that at that moment Aunt Elise glanced toward the window. She did not scream, she uttered no word; but she fell from her chair to the floor.
Mixie’s father, for it was he who led the savages, saw what was happening within, and ordered the Indians to march away and leave the big house unhurt. They grunted and grumbled, and refused to go until they had been told that the little girl on the lady’s knee was his little girl.
“He not going to burn his own papoose,” explained the Indian chief to his red men; and then the evil band went groping away through the storm.
The story to the children was not finished that night, for on the floor lay pretty Aunt Elise, as white as white could be; and it was a long time before she was able to speak. As soon as she could sit up, she wished to get out into the open air.
Mrs. Livingston went with her, and when she was told what had been seen at the window, they together examined the freshly fallen snow and found traces of moccasined feet.
With fear and trembling, the two ladies entered the house. Not a word of what had been seen was spoken to servant or child. Aunt Elise from an upper window kept watch during the time that Mrs. Livingston returned thanks to God for the happy day the children had passed, and asked His love and protecting care during the silent hours of sleep.
Then the sleepy, happy throng climbed the wide staircase to the rooms above, went to bed and slept until morning.
Not a red face approached Fort Safety that night. The two ladies, letting the Christmas fires go down, kept watch from the windows until the day dawned.
“I’m so glad,” exclaimed Carl, “that my fine, old, greatest of grandmothers thought of having that good time at Christmas.”
“Dear me!” sighed Bessie, “if she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have this nice home to-day.”
“Mamma,” said Dot, “let’s have a good stocking-time next Christmas; just like that one, all but the Indians.”
“O, mamma, will you?” cried Bessie, jumping with glee.
“Where would we get the soldiers’ children, though,” questioned Carl.
“Lots of ’em in Russia and Turkey, if we only lived there,” observed Bessie. “But there’s always plenty of children that want a good time and never get it, just as much as the soldiers’ children did. Will you, mamma?”
“When Christmas comes again, I will try to make just as many little folks happy as I can,” said Mrs. Livingston.
“And we’ll begin now,” said Carl, “so as to be all ready. I shall saw all summer, so as to make lots of pretty brackets and things.”
“And I s’pose I shall have to dress about five hundred dolls to go ’round,” sighed Bessie, “there are so many children now-a-days.”
Monday morning, July 5th, 1779, was oppressively warm and sultry in the Naugatuck Valley. Great Hill, that rises so grandly to the northward of Union City, and at whose base the red house still nestles that was built either by Daniel Porter or his son Thomas before or as early as 1735, was bathed in the full sunlight, for it was past eight of the clock. Up the hill had just passed a herd of cows owned by Mr. Thomas Porter and driven by his son Ethel, a lad of fourteen, and Ethel’s sister Polly, aged twelve years.
“It’s awful hot to-day!” said Ethel, as he threw himself on the grass at the hill-top—the cows having been duly cared for.
“You’d better not lose time lying here,” said Polly. “There’s altogether too much going on uptown to-day, and there’s lots to do before we go up to celebrate.”
“One thing at a time,” replied Ethel, “and this is my time to rest. I never knew a hill to grow so much in one night before.”
“Well! you can rest, but I’m going to find out what that fellow is riding his poor horse so fast 182 for this hot morning—somebody must be dying! Just see that line of dust a mile away!” and Polly started down Great Hill to meet the rider.
The horseman stayed his horse at Fulling Mill Brook to give him a drink, and Polly reached the brook just at the instant the horse buried his nose in the cool stream.
“Do you live near here?” questioned the rider.
“My father, Mr. Thomas Porter, keeps the inn yonder,” said Polly.
“I can’t stop,” said the horseman, “though I’ve ridden from New Haven without breakfast, and I must get up to the Center; but you tell your father the British are landing at West Haven. They have more that forty vessels! The new president was on the tower of the College when I came by, watching with his spy-glass, and he shouted down that he could see them, landing.”
At that instant, Ethel reached the brook. “What’s going on?” he questioned.
“You’re a likely looking boy—you’ll do!” said the horseman, with a glance at Ethel, cutting off at the same instant the draught his horse was enjoying, by a sudden pull at the bridle lines. “You go tell the news! Get out the militia! Don’t lose a minute.”
“What news? What for?” asked Ethel, but the rider was flying onward.
“A pretty time we’ll have celebrating to-day,” said Polly, to herself, dipping the corner of her 183 apron into the brook and wiping her heated face with it, as she hurried to the house. Meanwhile, her brother was running and shouting after the man who had ridden off in such haste.
As Polly entered the house the big brick oven stood wide open, and it was filled to the door with a roaring fire. On the long table stood loaves of bread almost ready for the oven. Her sister Sybil was putting apple pies on the same table. Sybil was a beautiful girl of twenty years, much admired and greatly beloved in the region.
“What is Ethel about so long this morning, that I have his work to do, I wonder!” exclaimed Mr. Thomas Porter, as he lifted himself from the capacious fire-place in which he had been piling birch-wood under the crane—from which hung in a row three big iron pots.
“It is a pretty hot morning, and the sun is powerful on the hill, father,” said Mrs. Mehitable Porter in reply—not seeing Polly, who stood panting and glowing with all the importance of having great news to tell.
“Father,” cried Polly, “where is Truman and the men? Send ’em! send ’em everywhere!”
“What’s the matter? what’s the matter, child?” exclaimed Mr. Porter, while his wife and Sybil stood in alarm.
At that instant Ethel sprang in, crying out, “The militia! The militia! They want the militia.”
“What for, and who wants the men?” asked his father.
“I don’t know. He didn’t stop to tell. He said: ‘Get out the militia! Don’t lose a minute!’ and then rode on.”
“Father, I know,” said Polly. “He told me. The British ships, more than forty of them, are landing soldiers at New Haven. President Stiles saw them at daybreak from the college tower with his spy-glass.”
Before Polly had ceased to speak, Ethel was off. Within the next ten minutes six horses had set forth from the Porter house—each rider for a special destination.
“I’ll give the alarm to the Hopkinses,” cried back Polly from her pony, as she disappeared in the direction of Hopkins Hill.
“And I’ll stir up Deacon Gideon and all the Hotchkisses from the Captain over and down,” said ten-year-old Stephen, as he mounted.
“You’d better make sure that Sergeant Calkins and Roswell hear the news. Tell Captain Terrell to get out his Ring-bone company, and don’t forget Captain John and Abraham Lewis, Lieutenant Beebe, and all the rest. It isn’t much use to go over the river—not much help we’d get, however much the British might, on that side,” advised Mr. Porter, as the fourth messenger departed.
When the last courier had set forth, leaving only Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Sybil and two servants 185 in the house, Mr. Porter said to his wife: “I believe, mother, that I’ll go up town and see what I can do for Colonel Baldwin and Phineas.” Major Phineas Porter was his brother, who six months earlier had married Melicent, daughter of Colonel Baldwin and widow of Isaac Booth Lewis (the lady whose name has been chosen for the Waterbury, Connecticut, Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution).
After Mr. Porter’s departure Mrs. Porter said to Sybil, “You remember how it was two years ago at the Danbury alarm, how we were left without a crumb in the house and fairly went hungry to bed. I think I’d better stir up a few extra loaves of rye bread and make some more cake. You’d better call up Phyllis and Nancy and tell them to let the washing go and help me.”
Phyllis and Nancy were filled with astonishment and awe at the command to leave the washing and bake, for, during their twenty years’ service in the house, nothing had ever been allowed to stay the progress of Monday’s washing.
Before mid-day another messenger came tearing up the New Haven road and demanded a fresh horse in order to continue the journey to arouse help and demand haste. He brought the half-past nine news from New Haven that fifteen hundred men were marching from West Haven Green to the bridge, that women and children were escaping to the northward and westward with all the treasure that they could carry, or 186 bury on the way, because every horse in the town had been taken for the defence.
He had not finished his story, when from the northward the hastily equipped militia came hurrying down the road. It was reported that messengers had been posted from Waterbury Centre to Westbury and to Northbury; to West Farms and to Farmingbury—all parts of ancient Waterbury—and soon The City, as it was called in 1779, now Union City, would be filled with militiamen.
The messenger from New Haven grew impatient for the fresh horse he had asked for. While he waited on the porch, Cato, son of Phyllis, whose duty it was to make ready his steed, sought Mrs. Porter in the kitchen.
“Where that New Haven fellow,” he asked, “get Massa’s horse. He say he come from New Haven, and he got the horse Ethel went away on.”
“Are you sure, Cato?”
“Sure’s I know Cato,” said the boy, “and the horse he knew me—be a fool if he didn’t.”
Mrs. Porter immediately summoned the rider to her presence and learned from him that about four miles down the road his pony had given out under haste and heat; that he had met a boy who, pitying its condition, had offered an exchange of animals, provided the courier would promise to leave his pony at the Porter Inn and get a fresh horse there.
“Just like Ethel!” said Polly. “He’ll dally all day now, while that horse gets rested and fed, or else he’ll go on foot. I wonder if I couldn’t catch him!”
“Polly,” said Mrs. Porter, “don’t you leave this house to-day without my permission.”
Poor Mrs. Porter! Truman, her eldest son, had gone. He was sixteen and had been a “trained” soldier for more than six months; that, the mother expected; but Ethel, only fourteen, and full of daring and boyish zeal! Stephen also, the youngest, and the baby, being but ten years old—he had not yet returned from “stirring up the Hotchkisses.” Had he followed Captain Gideon?
“Ethel is too far ahead,” sighed Polly. “I couldn’t catch him now, even if mother would let me; but here comes Uncle Phineas in his regimentals, and Aunt Melicent and Polly and little Melicent, and O! what a crowd! I can’t see for the dust! It’s better than the celebration. It’s so real, so ’strue as you live and breathe and everything.”
Polly ran to the front door. At that day it opened upon a porch that extended across the house front. This porch was supported by a line of white pillars, and a rail along its front had rings inserted in it to which a horseman could, after dismounting beneath its shelter, secure his steed. Long ago, this porch was removed and the house itself was taken from the roadside on 188 the plain below, because of a great freshet, and removed to its present location. The history of that porch, of the men and women who dismounted beneath its shelter, or who, footsore and weary, mounted its steps, would be the history of the country for more than a century, for the men of Waterbury were in every enterprise in which the colonies were engaged; but this is the record of a single day in its eventful life, and we must return to the porch, where Polly is welcoming Mrs. Melicent Porter with the words: “Mother will be so glad you have come, Aunt Melicent, for Ethel has gone off to New Haven and he’s miles ahead of catching, and Stephen hasn’t got back yet from ’rousing the Alarm company. Mother wouldn’t say a word, but she has got her mouth fixed and I know she’s afraid he’s gone, too. I don’t know what father will do when he finds it out.”
“You go, now,” said Mrs. Porter, “and tell your mother that your father staid to go to the mill. He will not be here for some time.”
While Polly went to the kitchen with the message, Mrs. Melicent alighted from her horse and, assisting her little daughter Melicent from the saddle, said: “You are heavier to-day, Milly, than you were when I threw you to the bank from my horse when it was floating down the river. I couldn’t do it now.”
The instant Major Porter had set little Polly Lewis on the porch Mrs. Porter was beside him, 189 begging that he would look for Ethel and care for the boy if he found him. The promise was given, and looking well despite the uncommon heat, the Major, in all the glory of his military equipment, set forth.
From that moment all was noise and call and confusion without. Men went by singly, in groups, in squads, in companies, mounted and on foot. It is a matter of public record that twelve militia companies, with their respective captains, went from Waterbury alone to assist New Haven in the day of its peril. It is no marvel that they set off with speed, for the horrors of the Danbury burning was yet fresh in memory.
In the long kitchen, as the heated hours went by, the brick oven was fired again and again until the very stones of the chimney expanded with glowing heat, and the last swallow forsook its ancient nest in despair. The sun was in the west when Mr. Porter, with a bag of wheat on one side of the saddle and a bag of rye on the other, appeared at the kitchen entrance and summoned help to unload, but his accustomed helpers were gone. Even Cato, the reliable, was missing. Phyllis and Nancy received the wheat and the rye.
“Mother,” said Mr. Porter, “I had to do the grinding myself—couldn’t find a man to do it, and I knew it couldn’t be done here to-day, water’s too low. Where are the boys?” he questioned, as he entered and looked around. When informed, 190 his sole ejaculation was, “I ought to have known that boys always have gone and always will go after soldiers.”
“Don’t worry, mother,” he added to his wife, as she stood looking wistfully down the road.
There were tears in her eyes as she said: “Not a boy left.”
“Why yes, mother, here comes Stephen and Stiles Hotchkiss up the road. My! how tired and hot the boys and the horses do look!” exclaimed Polly.
Stephen waited for no reprimand. He forestalled it by saying: “Captain Hotchkiss let Stiles and me go far enough to see the British troops—way off, ever so far—but we saw ’em, we did, didn’t we, Stiles?”
“Come! come!” said Mr. Porter, while the lad’s mother stood with her hand on his head. “Stephen, tell us all about it!”
“Captain Hotchkiss said he was a boy once, and if we’d promise him to go home the minute he told us to, he’d take us along. Well! we kept meeting folks running away from New Haven, with everything on ’em but their heads. One woman was lugging a lot of salt pork, ‘because she couldn’t bear to have the Britishers eat it all up;’ and another woman was carrying away a lot of candles hanging by a string, and the sun had melted the last drop of tallow, leaving the wicks dangling against the tallow on her dress, but she didn’t know it; and mother, would you 191 believe it—Mr. Timothy Atwater told Captain Hotchkiss that he met a woman whom he knew hurrying out of town with a cat in her arms. When he asked her where her children were, she said, ‘Why, at home I suppose.’ ‘Well,’ said Mr. Atwater, ‘hadn’t you better leave the cat and go back and get them?’ And she said, ‘Perhaps she had,’ and went back for ’em.”
“What became of the cat?” asked Mrs. Melicent Porter.
“Why, Aunt Melicent, how nice!” cried Stephen, running back to the porch and returning with a cat in his arms.
“I’ve fetched her to you. I knew you loved cats so! Here she is, black as ink, and she stuck to the saddle every step of the way like a true soldier’s cat. I was afraid she’d run away when I took her off the saddle, and I hid her. You know mother don’t like cats around under her feet.”
In a minute pussy was on the floor, and the last drop of milk in the house was set before her by little Polly Lewis. Little Melicent cooed softly to her, while Stephen and Stiles went on with their story,—from which it was learned that the boys had gone within a mile of Hotchkisstown (now Westville), where, from a height, they had a view of the British troops. The lads were filled with admiration of the marching, “as though it was all one motion,” of the “mingling colors of the uniforms worn, as the bright red of 192 the English Foot Guards blended with the graver hues of the dress worn by the German mercenaries,” and of “the waving line of glittering bayonets.”
“We didn’t see,” said Stephen, “but just one flash of musketry, because Stiles’s father said we must start that instant for home, and he told Stiles to stay here until morning, and we haven’t had a mouthful to eat since breakfast, and its been the hottest day that ever was, and I’m tired to death.”
“And the cows are on the hill and nobody here to fetch them down,” sighed Mr. Porter.
“Such a lot of captains waiting to see you, father!” announced Polly. “There’s Captain Woodruff and Captain Castle and Captain Richards and a Fenn captain and a Garnsey captain. I forget the rest.” The captains invaded the kitchen itself, declaring that it being Monday in the week, every householder had been short of provisions for the emergency—that every inn on the way and many a private house had been unable to provide enough for so many men, and what could they have at the Porter Inn?
Polly disappeared. Before her father had considered the matter she had, assisted by her Aunt Melicent and Polly Lewis, seized from the pantry shelves all that they could carry, and going by a rear way, had hidden on the garret stairs a big roast of veal, one of lamb, and enough bread and pies for family requirements, and still the pantry 193 shelves seemed amply filled. “I’m not going to have Ethel come home in the night and find nothing left for him I know, and the hungry boys fast asleep and tired out on the kitchen settle will come to life ravenous. Wonder if I hadn’t better be missing just now and go fetch the cows down. Father would have asthma all night if he tried it,” said Polly to her aunt; and up the hill Polly went accompanied by little Polly—while Mrs. Porter stood by and saw the fruits of her hard day’s work vanish out of sight.
“Pray leave something for your own household,” she ventured to intercede at last. “Don’t forget that we have four guests of our own for the night;” but Mr. Porter, rather proud to show that, however remiss others had been, the Porter Inn was prepared for emergencies, had already bidden Nancy and Phyllis fetch forth the last loaf.
“Like one for supper,” ventured Nancy, as her master carefully examined the empty larder, hoping to find something more. As the last captain from Northbury started on the night journey for New Haven, Mr. Porter faced his wife. “Now Thomas Porter,” she said, “you can go hungry to bed, but what can I do for my guests and the children and the rest of the household?”
Mr. Porter scratched his head—a habit when profoundly in doubt—and said: “I must fetch the cows! It’s most dark now,” and set forth, to find that Polly had them all safely in the cattle yard.