In the Beecher household there was naturally a necessity that every one should be up and doing: Monday, because it was washing day; Tuesday, because it was ironing day; Wednesday, because it was baking day; Thursday, because to-morrow was Friday, and so on through the week. Daily life began at four o’clock in the morning when the tapping of a pair of imperative heels on the stair and an authoritative rap on the door dispelled the slumbers of the children. On winter mornings the door was opened and a lighted candle was set inside. The sleepy eyes of little girl Harriet could then watch the forest of glittering frostwork made by her breath as it froze on the threads of the blanket. She saw rainbow colors on this frostwork, and she then floated off into dreams and fancies about it which would perhaps end in a doze. Very soon, however, her cold little fingers managed the fastenings on her own clothes as well as on those of her little brother, and she was at her breakfast with the large family circle.

The breakfast! It was not like the five-course banquet we have to-day. The bread was that black compound of rye and Indian meal which the economy of New England made the common form because it could be most easily raised on a hard and stony soil; but Mrs. Stowe in later life informed all whom it might concern that rye and Indian bread, smoking hot, together with savory sausage, pork and beans formed a breakfast fit for a king, if the king had earned it by getting up in a cold room, washing in ice-water, tumbling through snow-drifts and foddering cattle. The children in the Beecher home no doubt partook of this form of nourishment with thorough cheerfulness, dividing their portions with the dog and the cat of the establishment in a contentment pleasant to behold.

After breakfast came family prayers. They read the Bible through in course, without note or comment. At that time the very letter of the Bible was one of the forces that formed the minds of the children, since it was for the most part read twice a day in every family of any pretensions to respectability. It was also used as a reading book in every common school. If the children understood, well; if not, the mental stimulant of constant contact with the Book was left to make what impression it would. It was wonderful to hear the Doctor read the Bible at family prayers in the morning, for he read it in such an eager, earnest tone of admiring delight, with such an indescribable air of intentness and expectancy, as if the Book had just been handed him out of Heaven! The joy of his soul in every new ray of Heaven’s glory was manifest to each member of the home circle and had its effect on the impressionable children so that they could hardly fail to partake with him of that hunger and thirst after the knowledge of God. The reading of the chapter was followed by an earnest prayer by Dr. Beecher, and sometimes by what they called a “concert of prayer,” when every member of the family would offer an extemporaneous petition, long or short, according to ability and experience. These sacred hours were remembered by the children as long as life lasted.

After this ceremony, the first thing to do was to get the children off to school. It was not a small matter when the list included William Henry, Edward, Mary Foote, George, Harriet Elizabeth, Henry Ward and Charles. Later on were added the names of Isabella Holmes, Thomas Kennicut and James. Now the dinner for each child was packed in a small splint basket, and after much business was gone through all were away to Academy or Dame School, according to age and ability. In winter William and Edward had their sleds—not gayly painted ones from the emporium as modern boys have, but rude fabrics made on rainy days out of odds and ends of old sleigh runners and any rough boards that could be fashioned with saw and hatchet. Such as they were, they served the Beecher family well, and happy was the day when big brother William or Edward would take the little sister to school on the sled, drawing her swiftly over the snow, her little charge, the younger brother, closely clasped in her arms.

On Sunday mornings strenuous exertions were required, for besides going through the usual routine, Sunday clothes had to be donned; also, it was to be made quite certain that the catechism had been successfully and permanently drilled into the mind of each child. In her account of the life of her distinguished brother, Henry Ward Beecher, Mrs. Stowe records an early experience of hers in trying to teach him his grammar, and if she had equal difficulties in making him learn the catechism, she certainly had her hands full.

“Now, Henry,” she would say, “A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used only with a singular noun. You can say a man, but you can’t say a men, can you?”

“Why, yes, I can say Amen, too,” was the ready rejoinder. “Father says it at the end of his prayers.”

“Come, Henry, now don’t be joking; now decline he.”

“Nominative, he; possessive, his; objective, him.”

“Yes,” said the young teacher. “You see, his is possessive. Now you can say, his book, but you cannot say him book.”

“Yes, I do say hymn-book, too,” said the incorrigible scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one of his sallies produced from the teacher a laugh, which was the victory he wanted.

“But now, Henry, seriously. Just attend to the active and passive voice. Now I strike is active, you see, because if you strike you do something. But I am struck is passive, because if you are struck you don’t do anything, do you?”

“Yes, I do; I strike back again.”

When Harriet was old enough to become the instructor of a frisky pupil like this she may well have found that the New England Catechism occasionally brought her to her wit’s end.

The church to which the Beecher children were regularly led was one of those square, bald structures of which but few have come down to us from the old times. It was wide, roomy, and of a desolate plainness. During the long hours of the sermon the youngsters, perched in a row on a low seat in front of the pulpit, attempted occasionally sundry small exercises of their own, such as making their handkerchiefs into rabbits, or exhibiting slyly the apples and gingerbread they had brought for the Sunday dinner, or pulling the ears of some discreet, meeting-going dog, who now and then soberly pit-a-patted through the broad aisle. But woe be to them, says Harriet, if during those contraband sports they should see the sleek head of the Deacon dodge up from behind the top of his seat. Instantly all the apples, gingerbread and handkerchiefs would vanish and the whole row of children would be seen sitting there with their hands folded looking as demure as if they understood every word of the sermon and more, too.

Mrs. Stowe says that her book, “Poganuc People,” consists of chapters taken right out of her own life, and so we may read the name “Harriet” in the place of “Dolly” all the way through. We may believe, then, that Harriet was disposed of in all those shorthand methods by which children were taught to be the least possible trouble. She was told to come when called, and to do as she was bid without question or argument, to be quiet in bed at the earliest possible hour of the night, and, in the presence of her elders, to speak only when spoken to. All this was a great repression to Harriet, who was by nature a lively, excitable little thing, bursting with questions that she longed to ask, and with comments and remarks that she burned to make. Perhaps it never distinctly occurred to her to murmur at her lot in life, yet at times she must have sighed over the dreadful insignificance of being only a little girl in a great family of grown-up people. For even the brothers nearest her own age were studying at the Academy and spouting scraps of superior Latin at her to make her stare and wonder at their learning. They were tearing, noisy, tempestuous boys, good-natured enough and willing to pet her at intervals, but prompt to suggest that it was time for her to go to bed when her questions or her gambols interfered with their evening pleasures.

Moreover, since Harriet was a robust, healthy little creature, she received none of the petting which a more delicate child might have claimed. The general course of her experience impressed her with the mournful conviction that she was always likely to be in the way. But if she was it was because of her childish curiosity, and of her burning desire to see and hear all that interested the grown people about her.

At that time there were no amusements especially provided for children, no children’s books, and no Sunday schools to teach bright little songs and to give children picnics and presents. It was a grown people’s world. The toys of the period were so poor and so few that, in comparison with our modern profusion, they could scarcely be said to exist. Harriet was, however, not without some home-made toys, and we are glad to believe that a doll baby, though perhaps only a rag one, was, in the course of providential events, assigned to little, human-hearted Harriet Beecher.

We know that Harriet’s older sister Catherine was a master hand at making dolls. With scissors, needle, paint and other materials she could make dolls of all sizes, sexes and colors, and surround them with all sorts of droll contrivances. For instance, she once made a Queen of Sheba with a gold crown, seated her in a chariot made of half a pumpkin drawn by four prancing steeds fashioned out of crook-necked squashes, whose ears and legs she whittled out and fastened securely in their proper places. Then she manufactured a negro driver and placed him above with the reins in hand. Her care and artistry were rewarded by the admiration and amusement of the whole family. It was certainly worth a great deal to the little Harriet to have a sister like that, and we believe that the exercise of Catherine’s talents was not wholly selfish.

In “Poganuc People,” Mrs. Stowe, remembering her own childhood well, gives to the young heroine a gorgeous wooden doll with staring glass eyes. This precious treasure was the central point in all Dolly’s arrangements. To this companion Dolly showed her stores of chestnuts and walnuts, gave jay-bird feathers and bluebird’s wings, and a set of tea cups made out of the backbone of a codfish. She brushed and curled the doll’s hair till she took all the curl out of it, and washed all the paint off its cheeks in her motherly zeal.

Besides her doll and its excellent codfish backbone tea-set—and no one who has not tried to make them, by the way, can know how beautiful and delicate such tea cups can be—Harriet had in her earliest play days an unfailing source of occupation and delight in the gigantic woodpile in the back yard where the fuel for the season was laid up in long rows eight or ten feet high. Here was a world of marvels. The child skipped and sung and climbed among its intricacies, finding and collecting wonderful treasures, green velvet mosses, little white trees of lichen that seemed to have tiny apples upon them, fine scarlet cups and fairy caps. From these materials she constructed miniature landscapes in which the mosses made the fields, little sprigs of spruce and ground pine the trees, and bits of broken glass the lakes and rivers, reflecting the overshadowing banks.

With such delights as these, Harriet was busy, healthy and happy. When her brothers came home from the Academy in the evening and tossed her up in their long arms, her laugh rang out gay and loud as if there were no such thing as disappointment in the world. Sometimes the other children joined her in the magic field of the woodpile. Then they made themselves houses, castles and fortresses. They played at giving parties and entertainments at which the dog and the cat assisted. They held town meetings also, and had voting days with speeches against the Democrats. (The word did not mean then what it does now.) They held religious meetings, too, sung hymns and preached sermons, and on these occasions Harriet was known to exhort and recite texts of Scripture with a degree of fervor that seemed to produce a great effect upon her auditors. Thus the woodpile became a great forum of debate as well as a studio of art, and Harriet was the first to welcome the time when its stores should be reinforced at that great event of the year, the wood-spell.

A wood-spell is an old-fashioned sort of donation party. The pastor used to be settled with the understanding that he should receive a certain sum of money as salary, and his wood, just as in Easthampton, Long Island, Dr. Beecher’s first pastorate, one-fourth of the whales that were stranded on the beach was assigned to the minister as a part of his yearly payment. In Litchfield a day was set apart in the winter about the time when the sleighs were running most smoothly over the pressed snow, and on that day every parishioner was to bring to the minister a sled-load of wood. This was built up in the back yard of the parsonage into a mighty woodpile for the year’s use. When Harriet was five years old, partly because sorrow had visited the Beecher family that year, and partly because of a quickened religious enthusiasm throughout the community, the wood-spell of that winter was more than usually interesting and the number of loads very generous. With her father’s rejoicing approval, Harriet’s elder sister, Catherine, now sixteen years old, was allowed to take the whole responsibility of preparing the banquet for the occasion. This meant a great deal. Everything in the house must be spick and span; dozens of doughnuts must be cooked; and, above all, the wood-spell cake must be made.

For nearly a week the kitchen was as busy as an ant-hill. The fat was prepared to fry the doughnuts, the spices were pounded, the flour was sifted, the materials for the flips were collected. Catherine was assisted by eleven-year-old Mary; William, Edward and George split and brought in an incredible amount of wood for the oven, and the girls sat all the evening about the kitchen fire stoning raisins, with the best story-teller in the midst to make the time pass—and she, we are sure, could have been none other than Harriet.

Then came the baking of the cake. For two days beforehand the fire was surrounded by a row of earthen jars in which the spicy compound was rising to the necessary lightness. At exactly the quivering instant for perfection each loaf was shoved into the little black door of the brick oven.

At last all the wood-spell loaves came out victorious, while each helper merrily claimed merit for the baking.

The frying of the doughnuts was also a matter of the greatest delicacy, requiring experience and the nicest art; but this also was a triumph. Catherine said, “Were I to tell how many loaves I have put in and taken out of the oven, and how many bushels of doughnuts I have boiled over the kitchen fire, I fear my credit for veracity would be endangered.”

Finally all was finished. A mighty cheese was brought; every shelf in the closet and all the dressers of the kitchen were crowded with the abundance. The delicious stores of food were indeed a sight to behold, calling in admiring visitors, and Catherine’s success was a matter of universal congratulation. But may we not give Harriet some credit, too? For though her part may have been largely the care of the younger children, still, without her help, Catherine would not have been free to do the work.

The auspicious day for the coming of the farmers arrived. It was a jewel of a morning, one of those sharp, clear, sunny, winter days when the sleds squeak over the flinty snow and the little icicles, falling from the trees, tingle along on the glittering crust. The breath of the slow-pacing oxen steamed up like a rosy cloud in the morning sun and then fell back condensed in globes of ice on every hair.

All the children were astir early, full of life and vigor. The boys were at home for the day. There was a holiday at the Academy, for the teacher had been asked to come over to the minister’s to chat and tell stories with the farmers and give them high entertainment. There was enough work for all to do, for the three big boys and for the two sisters. Besides all the rest, there was little Henry Ward, aged three, and Charles, aged but one, to be cared for and kept out of mischief. Eager, lively, little Harriet could take care of herself, and do a great deal of helping besides.

Pretty soon the first load came squeaking up the village street, and the boys clapped their hands and shouted, “Hurrah for Heber!” as his load of magnificent oak, well-bearded with gray moss, came scrunching into the yard.

“Well, Mr. Atwood,” said the Doctor, “you must have had pretty hard work on that load; that’s no ordinary oak, I can tell you.”

And now the loads began to arrive thick and fast. Sometimes two and three, sometimes four and five, came stringing along in unbroken procession. For every load the minister had an appreciative word, noticing and commending the especial points, and the farmers themselves, shrewdest of observers, looked at every pile and gave it their verdict. The loads were of the best, none of your crooked-stick makeshifts. Good, straight, shagbark hickory was voted none too good for the minister.

Before long the yard, street, and the lower rooms of the house were swarming with cheerful faces. Then Aunt Esther began to cut the first loaf of wood-spell cake. The flip-irons were taken out of the fire and thrust into the foaming bowl. The little folks were as busy as bees in waiting on the kind farmers. They handed around the good things to eat, the cider and doughnuts, the cheese and the cake. The teacher and the minister were in the midst of merry chatting circles; their best stories were told, and roars of laughter resounded.

Meantime such a woodpile was arising in the yard as never before was seen in ministerial domains! And how fresh and woodsy it smelt! Harriet eyed it with a view to future plays. There was the black birch whose flavored bark she prized as a species of confectionery. There were also gleaming logs of white birch, from the bark of which she could cut strips for her woodland parchment. Then there were massive trunks of oak affording veritable worlds of supplies for her woodsy palette.

And now the sun was going down. The sleds had ceased to come, the riches of woodland treasure were all in, the whole air was full of a trembling, rose-colored light. All over the distant landscape there was not a fence to be seen, nothing but waving hollows of spotless snow, glowing with the rosy radiance and fading away into purple and lilac shadows. And the evening stars began to twinkle, one after another, keen and clear, through the frosty air, as the children all sat together in triumph on the highest perch of the woodpile.

In the town where the Beechers had their home there were other unique expressions of social feeling calculated to influence the mind of a growing child, as for instance, the Fourth of July, the apple bee, and the sleighing party. But perhaps Thanksgiving Day was the one most noted in the calendar. When this characteristic Yankee festival came around there was again an opportunity for the parishioners to show the grace of generosity toward the minister. In 1818 Dr. Beecher writes to his son at college: “We had a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner and, they say, a good sermon. We had presents piled up yesterday at a great rate. Mr. Henry Wadsworth sent 6 lbs. of butter, 6 lbs. lard, 2 lbs. Hyson tea, 5 dozen eggs, 8 lbs. sugar, a large pig, a large turkey and four cheeses. The governor sent a turkey; Mrs. Thompson, do.; and, to cap it all, Mr. Rogers sent us a turkey!” Under such circumstances as these it is rather fortunate that the Beecher family had a considerable number of mouths to be filled.

Again the kitchen was fragrant with the smell of cinnamon, cloves and allspice which the children were set to pound to a most wearisome fineness in the great lignum-vitæ mortar. Again there was the stoning of raisins, the cutting of citron, the slicing of orange-peel. Again the fire was built up more architecturally than usual and roared and crackled up the wide chimney, brightening with its radiance the farthest corner of the ample room. Then a tub of rosy-cheeked apples, another of golden quinces, and a bushel basket full of cranberries were set in the midst of the circle of happy children who were being led in the ways of industry, sorting and cutting, to the tune of the snapping fire.

But who shall do justice to the dinner? Who shall describe the turkey, the chicken, with the confusing series of vegetables, the plum puddings and the endless variety of pies? After dinner the father of the house conformed to the old Puritan custom by recounting the mercies of God in his dealings with the family. He recited a sort of family history, closing with the time-honored text that expressed the hope that as years went by every member of the house circle might so number his days as to apply his heart unto wisdom. Then with the national hymn of the Puritans,

sung to the venerable tune of St. Martin’s, the ceremonies closed.

So it was in the noble old New England days! Amid scenes like this a child was growing up in whose character love of home and love of country were to be corner stones.