[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

The house where Margaret lived, of a type common in
the early history of New England, and still seen in the
regions of the West, was constructed of round logs sealed
with mud and clay; the roof was a thatch composed of
white-birch twigs, sweet-flag and straw wattled together,
and overlaid with a slight battening of boards; from the
ridge sprang a low stack of stones, indicating the chimney-top.
Glass windows there were none, and in place thereof
swung wooden shutters fastened on the inside by strings.
The house was divided by the chimney into two principal
apartments, one being the kitchen or commons, the other a
work shop. In the former were prominently a turn-up
bed used by the heads of the family, and a fireplace; the
last, built of slabs of rough granite, was colossal in height,
width, and depth; stone splinters filled the office of and-irons.
A handle of wood thrust into the socket of a broken
spade supplied the place of a shovel. The room was neither
boarded nor plastered; a varnish of smoke from tobacco
pipes and pine-knots possibly answering in stead; and the
naked stones of the chimney front were blackened and
polished by occasional effusions of steam and smoke from
the fire. The room also contained the table-board, block,
and rag-bottom chairs, and little stool for Margaret before
mentioned. In one corner stood a twig broom. On
pegs in the log, hung sundry articles of wearing apparel;

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

sustained by crotched sticks nailed to the sleepers above,
were a rifle and one or two muskets; a swing shelf was
loaded with shot-pouches, bullet-moulds, powder-horns,
and fishing tackle, &c.; on the projecting stones of the
chimney were sundry culinary articles, and conspicuously
a one-gallon wooden rum-keg, and the silver tankard. In
the room, which we should say was quite capacious, hung
two cages, one for a robin, the other with a revolving apartment
for a gray squirrel, called Dick. You would not also
omit to notice a violin in a green baize bag, suspended on
the walls, which belonged to Chilion, and was an important
household article. On a post, near the chimney, were
fastened some leaves of a book, which you would find to be
torn from the statistical chapters of the Old Testament.
The floor of the room was warped in every direction,
slivered and gaping at the joints; and, being made of
knotty boards, the softer portions of which were worn down,
these knots stood in ridges and hillocks all over the apartment.

The workshop, of smaller dimensions, was similar, in its
general outline, to the kitchen; it contained a loom, a kit
where the father of Margaret sometimes made shoes, a
common reel, hand reel, a pair of swifts, blades, or windle,
a large, small, and quilling wheel, a dye tub, with yarn of
all colors hanging on the walls. The garret was divided
by the chimney in a manner similar to the rooms below;
on one side Margaret slept, and the boys on the other; her
bed consisted simply of a mattrass of beech leaves spread on
the floor, with tow and wool coverlids, and coarse linen
sheets. The ascent to this upper story was by a ladder.

In rear of the kitchen was a shed, a rough frame of slabs
and poles. Here were a draw-shave, beetle and wedges,
hog and geese yokes, barking irons, a brush-bill, fox-traps,

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

frows and sap-buckets; this also was the dormitory of the
hens. At one corner of the shed was a half-barrel cistern,
into which water was brought by bark troughs from the hill
near by, forming an ever flowing, ever musical, cool bright
stream, passing off in a runnel shaded by weeds and grass.
On all sides of the house, at certain seasons of the year,
might be seen the skins of various animals drying; the
flesh side out, and fastened at the extremities; foxes,
wood-chucks, martins, raccoons, and sometimes even bears
and wolves; the many-colored tails of which, pendant, had
an ornamental appearance.

The house was on the west side of the road, and fronted
the south. Across what might have been a yard, saving
there were no fences, was a butternut tree—the Butternut
par excellence—having great extension of limb, and beautiful
drooping willow-like foliage. Beyond lay the eastern
extremity of the Pond. On the north was a small garden
enclosed by a rude brush hedge. On the east side of the
road stood a log-barn, covered with thatch, and supported
in part by the trunks of two trees.

The name of the family whose residence we have explored
was Hart, and it consisted essentially of six members; Mr.
and Mrs, Hart, their three sons, Nimrod, Hash, and Chilion,
and Margaret. We should remark that the heads of this
house were never or rarely known by their proper names.
Mr. Hart at some period had received the sobriquet
of Head and Pluck, by the latter part of which he was
generally designated; his wife was more commonly known
as Brown Moll. Mr. Hart had also a fancy for giving his
children scriptural names; his first-born he called Nimrod;
his second, Maharshalalhashbaz, abbreviated into Hash; and
for his next son he chose that of Chilion. It must not be
thought he had any reverence for the Bible; his

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

conduct would belie such a supposition. He may have been
superstitious; if it were so, that certainly was the extent of
his devotion. The subject of this Memoir was sometimes
called after her mother, Mary or Molly, and from regard to
one long since deceased she had received the name of
Margaret. Her father and mother were fond of contradicting
each other, especially in matters of small moment, and
while the latter called her Margaret or Peggy, the former
was wont to address her as Molly.

Nimrod, the oldest son, was absent from home most of
the year; how employed, we shall have occasion hereafter
to notice. Hash worked the farm, if farm it might be called,
burnt coal in the fall, made sugar in the spring, drank,
smoked, and teased Margaret the rest of the time. Chilion
fished, hunted, laid traps for foxes, drowned out wood-chucks;
he was also the artisan of the family, and with
such instruments as he could command, constructed sap-buckets
and spouts, hencoops, sleds, trellises, &c. He was
very fond of music, and played on the violin and fife; in
this also he instructed Margaret, whom he found a ready
pupil; taught her the language of music, sang songs with
her; he also told her the common names of many birds and
flowers. He was somewhat diffident, reserved, or whatever
it might be; and while he manifested a deep affection for
his sister, he never expressed himself very freely to her.
Mr. Hart, or Pluck, if we give him the name by which he
was commonly known, helped Hash on the farm, broke
flax, made shoes, a trade he prosecuted in an itinerating
manner from house to house, “whipping the cat,” as it was
termed, and drank excessively. Mrs. Hart, or Brown
Moll, carded, spun, colored and wove, for herself and more
for others, nipped and beaked her husband, drank and
smoked. At the present time she was about forty-five or

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fifty; she had seen care and trouble, and seemed almost
broken down alike by her habits and her misfortunes. She
was wrinkled, faded and gray; her complexion was sallow,
dark and dry; her expression, if it were not positively
stern, was far from being amiable; she was a patient
weaver, impatient with every thing else. Her dress was a
blue-striped linen short-gown, wrapper, or long-short, a
coarse yellow petticoat and checked apron; short grizzly
hairs bristled in all directions over her head. If in this
family you could detect some trace of refinement, it would
not be easy to discriminate its origin or to say how far
removed it might be from unmixed vulgarity.

The term Pond, applied to the spot where this family
dwelt, comprised not only the sheet of water therein situated,
but also the entire neighborhood. In the records of the
town the place was denominated the West District. Sometimes
it was called the Head, or Indian's Head, from a hill
thereon to which we shall presently refer, and the inhabitants
were called Indians from this circumstance. An
almost unbroken forest bounded the vision and skirted the
abode of this family. They had only one neighbor, a
widow lady, who resided at the north about half a mile.
A road extending across the place from north to south
terminated in the latter direction, about the same distance
below Mr. Hart's, at a hamlet known as No. 4. In the
other course, directly or divergingly, this road led to
sections called Snakehill, Five-mile-lot, and the Ledge. On
the south-west was a plantation that had been christened
Breakneck. The village of Livingston, or Settlement, as
it was sometimes termed, lay to the east about two miles in
a straight line. If a stranger should approach the Pond
from the village he would receive the impression that it
was singularly situated up among high hills, or even on a

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mountain, since his route would be one of continual and
perhaps tedious ascent. But those who abode there had
no idea their locality was more raised than that of the rest
of the world, so sensibly are our notions of height and
depression affected by residence. From the village you
could descry the top of the Head, like a tower upon a
mountain, elevated far into the heavens.

On this hill, it being a striking characteristic of the Pond,
we must cast a passing look. A few rods back of Mr. Hart's
house the ascent commenced, and rose with an abrupt
acclivity to the height of nearly one hundred feet. Its
surface was ragged and rocky, and interspersed with
various kinds of shrubs. From the edge of the water its
south front sprang straight and sheer like a castle. The
top was flat and nearly bare of vegetation, save the dead
and barkless trunk of a hemlock, which, solitary and alone,
shot up therefrom, and was sometimes called the Indian's
Feather. This hill derived its specific name, Indian's
Head, from a rude resemblance to a man's face that could
be traced on one of its sides. This particular eminence
was not, however, a detached pinnacle; it seemed rather
to form the abrupt and crowned terminus of a mountainous
range that swept far to the north, and ultimately merged in
those eternal hills that in-wall every horizon. Behind the
hill at the northern extremity of the Pond proper, where its
waters were gathered to a head by a dam, and a saw-mill
had been erected, was the Outlet; which became the source
of a stream, that proceeding circuitously to No. 4, and
turning towards the village where it was again employed
for milling purposes, had been denominated Mill Brook.

Mr. Hart had cleared a few acres for corn, potatoes and
flax, and burnt over more for grain. He enjoyed also the
liberty of brooks and swamps, whence he gathered grass,

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brakes and whatever he could find to store his barn. Beyond
the barn was a lot of five or six acres, known as the
Mowing or Chesnuts. It was cleared, und partially cultivated
with clover and herdsgrass. This consisted originally
of a grove of chesnut trees, which not being felled, but
killed by girdling, had become entirely divested of bark
even to the tips of the limbs, and now stood, in number two
or three score, in height fifty or seventy-five feet, denuded,
blanched, a resort for crows, where woodpeckers hammered
and blue-linnets sung.

When Margaret had done her task, she was at liberty to
repair the effect of Hash's spleen and attend to other little
affairs of her own. Obed Wright, the son and only child
of their only neighbor, was at hand to assist her. She had
hops and virgin's bower trained up the side of the house,
and even shading her chamber window. To prevent the
ravages of hogs and geese, Chilion had fenced in a little
spot for her near the house. Obed brought her new flowers
from the woods, and instructed her how to plant them.
He was thirteen or fifteen years of age, homely but clever,
as we say, a tall, knuckled-jointed, shad-faced youth; his
hair was red, his cheeks freckled; his hands and feet were
immense, his arms long and stout. He suffered from near-sightedness.
He was dressed like his neighbors, in a shirt
and skilts, excepting that his collar and waistbands were
fastened by silver buttons; and he wore a cocked hat. It
seemed to please him to help Margaret, and he staid till
almost sunset, when Hash came in from his work. Hash
hated or spited Obed, partly on Margaret's account, partly
because of misunderstandings with his mother, and partly
from the perverseness of his own nature; and he annoyed
him with the dog, who always growled and glared when he
saw the boy. But Margaret stood between him and harm.
In the present instance, she held the dog by the neck, till

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Obed had time to run round the corner of the house and
make his escape.

Margaret seated herself on the door-step to eat her supper,
consisting of toasted brown bread and watered cider,
served in a curiously wrought cherry-bowl and spoon. The
family were taking their meal in the kitchen. The sun
had gone down. The whippoorwill came and sat on the
butternut, and sang his evening note, always plaintive,
always welcome. The night-hawk dashed and hissed
through the woods and the air on slim, quivering wings.
A solitary robin chanted sweetly a long time from the hill.
Myriads of insects revolved and murmured over her head.
Crickets chirped in the grass and under the decaying sills
of the house. She heard the voice of the waterfall at the
Outlet, and the croaking of a thousand frogs in the Pond.
She saw the stars come out, Lyra, the Northern Crown,
the Serpent. She looked into the heavens, she opened her
ears to the dim evening melodies of the universe; yet as a
child. She was interrupted by the sharp voice of her
mother, “Go to your roost, Peggy!”

“Yes, Molly dear,” said her father, very softly, “Dick
and Robin are asleep; see who will be up first, you or the
silver rooster; who will open your eyes first, you or the
dandelion?”

“Kiss me Margery,” said Chilion. She climbed into
her chamber, she sank on her pallet, closed her eyes and
fell into dreams of beauty and heaven, of other forms than
those daily about her, of a sweeter voice than that of father
or mother.

We conclude this chapter by remarking, that the scenes
and events of this Memoir belong to what may be termed
the mediæval or transition period of New England history,
that lying between the close of the war of our Revolution
and the commencement of the present century.

p624-037

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