Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew at
what time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted,
and potatoes dug.
She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with her
own hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visited
and relieved the poor.
"I remember that they had various ways of employing the young people who
called upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-board
and chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which the
oily parts had been extracted by boiling. 'You do not want to be idle,'
they would say, 'chop this meat, and you shall have your share of the
mince-pies that we are going to make.' At other times a supply of old
woollen stockings were ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care to
be idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would oblige
us by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of
woollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it as
the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had
negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of
theirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet.
"They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory you
know, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had their
hickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire they
laid on the andirons, a little in front of the blaze, so as to subject it
to a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood to drop from
each end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way a
gallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this they
flavored their finest cakes.
"They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, and
the other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it was
recorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Their
father was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich man in his time, and
kept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, for the purpose
of supplying his table with venison. He prided himself on the strict and
literal fulfillment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit with
one of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was cast
and ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shilling as the fees of
court. He paid the ten shillings, and asked the justice whether he would
allow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 156 of 206
Words from 80677 to 81181
of 107287
