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A BUSY YEAR AT THE OLD SQUIRE'S

by

C. A. STEPHENS







Published by
The Old Squire's Bookstore
Norway, Maine
Copyright, 1922
By C. A. Stephens
All rights reserved

Electrotyped and Printed by
The Colonial Press
Clinton, Mass., U. S. A.




DEDICATED WITH CORDIAL BEST WISHES TO THE THOUSANDS OF READERS WHO HAVE
REQUESTED THIS Memorial Edition OF THE C. A. STEPHENS BOOKS




Contents

CHAPTER

I. Master Pierson Comes Back

II. Cutting Ice at 14 Degrees Below Zero

III. A Bear's "Pipe" in Winter

IV. White Monkey Week

V. When Old Zack Went to School

VI. The Sad Abuse of Old Mehitable

VII. Bear-Tone

VIII. When We Hunted the Striped Catamount

IX. The Lost Oxen

X. Bethesda

XI. When We Walked the Town Lines

XII. The Rose-Quartz Spring

XIII. Fox Pills

XIV. The Unpardonable Sin

XV. The Cantaloupe Coaxer

XVI. The Strange Disappearance of Grandpa Edwards

XVII. Our Fourth of July at the Den

XVIII. Jim Doane's Bank Book

XIX. Grandmother Ruth's Last Load of Hay

XX. When Uncle Hannibal Spoke at the Chapel

XXI. That Mysterious Daguerreotype Saloon

XXII. "Rainbow in the Morning"

XIII. When I Went After the Eyestone

XXIV. Borrowed for a Bee Hunt

XXV. When the Lion Roared

XXVI. Uncle Solon Chase Comes Along

XVII. On the Dark of the Moon

XXVIII. Halstead's Gobbler

XXIX. Mitchella Jars

XXX. When Bears Were Denning Up

XXXI. Czar Brench

XXII. When Old Peg Led the Flock

XXXIII. Witches' Brooms

XXXIV. The Little Image Peddlers

XXXV. A January Thaw

XXXVI. Uncle Billy Murch's Hair-Raiser

XXXVII. Addison's Pocketful of Auger Chips




A Busy Year at the Old Squire's




CHAPTER I

MASTER PIERSON COMES BACK


Master Joel Pierson arrived the following Sunday afternoon, as he had
promised in his letter of Thanksgiving Day eve, and took up his abode
with us at the old Squire's for the winter term of school.

Cousin Addison drove to the village with horse and pung to fetch him;
and the pung, I remember, was filled with the master's belongings,
including his school melodeon, books and seven large wall maps for
teaching geography. For Master Pierson brought a complete outfit, even
to the stack of school song-books which later were piled on the top of
the melodeon that stood in front of the teacher's desk at the
schoolhouse. Every space between the windows was covered by those wall
maps. No other teacher had ever made the old schoolhouse so attractive.
No other teacher had ever entered on the task of giving us instruction
with such zeal and such enthusiasm. It was a zeal, too, and an
enthusiasm which embraced every pupil in the room and stopped at nothing
short of enlisting that pupil's best efforts to learn.

Master Pierson put life and hard work into everything that went on at
school--even into the old schoolhouse itself. Every morning he would be
off from the old Squire's at eight o'clock, to see that the schoolhouse
was well warmed and ready to begin lessons at nine; and if there had
been any neglect in sweeping or dusting, he would do it himself, and
have every desk and bench clean and tidy before school time.

What was more, Master Pierson possessed the rare faculty of
communicating his own zeal for learning to his pupils. We became so
interested, as weeks passed, that of our own accord we brought our
school books home with us at night, in order to study evenings; and we
asked for longer lessons that we might progress faster.

My cousin Halstead was one of those boys (and their name is Legion) who
dislike study and complain of their lessons that they are too long and
too hard. But strange to say, Master Joel Pierson somehow led Halse to
really like geography that winter. Those large wall maps in color were
of great assistance to us all. In class we took turns going to them with
a long pointer, to recite the lesson of the day. I remember just how the
different countries looked and how they were bounded--though many of
these boundaries are now, of course, considerably changed.

When lessons dragged and dullness settled on the room, Master Joel was
wont to cry, "Halt!" then sit down at the melodeon and play some school
song as lively as the instrument admitted of, and set us all singing for
five or ten minutes, chanting the multiplication tables, the names of
the states, the largest cities of the country, or even the Books of the
Bible. At other times he would throw open the windows and set us
shouting Patrick Henry's speech, or Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean. In
short, "old Joel" was what now would be called a "live wire." He was
twenty-two then and a student working his own way through Bates College.
After graduating he migrated to a far western state where he taught for
a year or two, became supervisor of schools, then State Superintendent,
and afterwards a Representative to Congress. He is an aged man now and
no word of mine can add much to the honors which have worthily crowned
his life. None the less I want to pay this tribute to him--even if he
did rub my ears at times and cry, "Wake up, Round-head! Wake up and find
out what you are in this world for." (More rubs!) "You don't seem to
know yet. Wake up and find out about it. We have all come into the world
to do something. Wake up and find out what you are here for!"--and then
more rubs!

It wasn't his fault if I never fairly waked up to my vocation--if I
really had one. For the life of me I could never feel sure what I was
for! Cousin Addison seemed to know just what he was going to do, from
earliest boyhood, and went straight to it. Much the same way, cousin
Theodora's warm, generous heart led her directly to that labor of love
which she has so faithfully performed. As for Halstead, he was perfectly
sure, cock-sure, more than twenty times, what he was going to do in
life; but always in the course of a few weeks or months, he discovered
he was on the wrong trail. What can be said of us who either have no
vocation at all, or too many? What are we here for?

In addition to our daily studies at the schoolhouse, we resumed Latin,
in the old sitting-room, evenings, Thomas and Catherine Edwards coming
over across the field to join us. To save her carpet, grandmother Ruth
put down burlap to bear the brunt of our many restless feet--for there
was a great deal of trampling and sometimes outbreaks of scuffling
there.

Thomas and I, who had forgotten much we had learned the previous winter,
were still delving in _AEsop's Fables_. But Addison, Theodora and
Catherine were going on with the first book of Caesar's _Gallic War_.
Ellen, two years younger, was still occupied wholly by her English
studies. Study hours were from seven till ten, with interludes for
apples and pop-corn.

Halstead, who had now definitely abandoned Latin as something which
would never do him any good, took up Comstock's _Natural Philosophy_, or
made a feint of doing so, in order to have something of his own that was
different from the rest of us. Natural philosophy, he declared, was far
and away more important than Latin.

Memory goes back very fondly to those evenings in the old sitting-room,
they were so illumined by great hopes ahead. Thomas and I, at a
light-stand apart from the others, were usually puzzling out a
Fable--_The Lion, The Oxen, The Kid and the Wolf, The Fox and the Lion_,
or some one of a dozen others--holding noisy arguments over it till
Master Pierson from the large center table, called out, "Less noise over
there among those Latin infants! Caesar is building his bridge over the
Rhine. You are disturbing him."

Addison, always very quiet when engrossed in study, scarcely noticed or
looked up, unless perhaps to aid Catherine and Theodora for a moment,
with some hard passage. It was Tom and I who made Latin noisy,
aggravated at times by pranks from Halstead, whose studies in natural
philosophy were by no means diligent. At intervals of assisting us with
our translations of Caesar and the Fables, Master Pierson himself was
translating the Greek of Demosthenes' Orations, and also reviewing his
Livy--to keep up with his Class at College. But, night or day, he was
always ready to help or advise us, and push us on. "Go ahead!" was "old
Joel's" motto, and "That's what we're here for." He appeared to be
possessed by a profound conviction that the human race has a great
destiny before it, and that we ought all to work hard to hurry it up and
realize it.

It is quite wonderful what an influence for good a wide-awake teacher,
like Master Pierson, can exert in a school of forty or fifty boys and
girls like ours in the old Squire's district, particularly where many of
them "don't know what they are in the world for," and have difficulty in
deciding on a vocation in life.

At that time there was much being said about a Universal Language. As
there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say
nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel
freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language
for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. At
present, months and years of our short lives are spent learning foreign
languages. A complete education demands that the American whose mother
tongue is the English, must learn French, German, Spanish and Italian,
to say nothing of the more difficult languages of eastern Europe and the
Orient. Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make
himself understood, and do business outside his own country.

The want of a common means of communication therefore has long been
recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat
imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody
learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands
without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty
different languages.

The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a considerable
popularity for a time. But practically this was soon found to be a
clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other drawbacks
attended its adoption.

But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak,
Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great success.
The same disadvantages attend them, each and all.

In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old
Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical
plan for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward.
"Latin is the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he
said. "Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them.
Law, theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their
descriptive terms. Without Latin words, modern science would be a jargon
which couldn't be taught at all. Without Latin, the English language,
itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of our
ancestors. No one can claim to be well educated till he has studied
Latin.

"Now as we have need to learn Latin anyway, why not kill two birds with
one stone, and make Latin our universal language? Why not have a
colloquial, every-day Latin, such as the Romans used to speak in Italy?
In point of fact, Latin was the universal language with travelers and
educated people all through the Middle Ages. We need to learn it anyhow,
so why not make it our needed form of common speech?"

I remember just how earnest old Joel became as he set forth his new idea
of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He rubbed my
ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both her hands and
went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down the table, lamp
and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just what's wanted for a
Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old Squire to hear about
it; and the old Squire admitted that it sounded reasonable. "For I can
see," he said, "that it would keep Latin, and the derivation of words
from it, fresh in our minds. It would prove a constant review of the
words from which our language has been formed.

"But Latin always looked to me rather heavy and perhaps too clumsy for
every-day talk," the old gentleman remarked. "Think you could talk it?"

"Sure!" Master Pierson cried. "The old Romans spoke it. So can we. And
that's just what I will do. I will get up a book of conversational
Latin--enough to make a Common Language for every-day use." And in point
of fact that was what old Joel was doing, for four or five weeks
afterwards. He had Theodora and Catherine copy out page after page of
it--as many as twenty pages. He wanted us each to have a copy of it; and
for a time at least, he intended to have it printed.

A few days ago I came upon some of those faded, yellow pages, folded up
in an old text book of AEsop's Latin Fables--the one Tom and I were then
using; and I will set down a few of the sentences here, to illustrate
what Master Pierson thought might be done with Latin as a universal
language.

Master Pierson's Universal Language in Latin, which he named _Dic_
from _dico_, meaning to speak.

1 It is time to get up. = Surgendi tempus est.
2 The sun is up already. = Sol jamdudum ortus.
3 Put on your shoes. = Indue tibi ocreas.
4 Comb your head. = Pecte caput tuum.
5 Light a candle and build a fire. = Accende lucernum, et fac ut
luceat faculus.
6 Carry the lantern. We must water = Vulcanum in cornu geras.
the horses. Equi aquatum agenda sunt.
7 It is a very hot day. = Dies est ingens aestus.
8 Let's go to the barn. = Jam imus horreum.
9 Grind the axes. = Acuste ascias.
10 It is near twelve o'clock. = Instat hora duodecima.
11 It is time for dinner. = Prandenti tempus adest.
12 Please take dinner with us. = Quesso nobiscum hodie sumas
prandiolum.
13 Make a good fire. = Instruas optimum focum.
14 This chimney smokes. = Male fumat hic caminus.
15 The wood is green. = Viride est hoc lignum.
16 Fetch kindling wood. = Affer fomitem.
17 Lay the table cloth. = Sterne mappam.
18 Dinner is ready. = Cibus est appositus.
19 Don't spoil it by delay. = Ne corrumpatur mora vestra.
20 Sit down. = Accumbe.
21 This is my place. = Hic mihi locus.
22 Let him sit next me. = Assideat mihi.
23 Say grace, or ask a blessing. = Recita consecrationem.
24 Give me brown bread. = Da mihi panem atrum.
25 I am going to school. = Eo ad scholam.
26 What time is it? = Quota est hora?
27 It is past seven. = Praeteriit hora septima.
28 The bell has rung. = Sonuit tintinnabulum.
29 Go with me. = Vade mecum.
30 The master will soon be here. = Brevi praeceptor aderit.
31 I am very cold. = Valde frigeo.
32 My hands are numb. = Obtorpent manus.
33 Mend the fire. = Apta ignem.

I have copied out only a few of the shorter sentences. There were, as I
have said, fully twenty pages of it, enough for quite a respectable
"Universal Language," or at least the beginnings of one. Perhaps some
ambitious linguist will yet take it up in earnest.




CHAPTER II

CUTTING ICE AT 14 DEGREES BELOW ZERO


Generally speaking, young folks are glad when school is done. But it
wasn't so with us that winter in the old Squire's district, when Master
Pierson was teacher. We were really sad, in fact quite melancholy, and
some of the girls shed tears, when the last day of school came and "old
Joel" tied up the melodeon, took down the wall maps, packed up his books
and went back to his Class in College. He was sad himself--he had taken
such interest in our progress.

"Now don't forget what you have learned!" he exclaimed. "Hang on to it.
Knowledge is your best friend. You must go on with your Latin,
evenings."

"You will surely come back next winter!" we shouted after him as he
drove away.

"Maybe," he said, and would not trust himself to look back.

The old sitting-room seemed wholly deserted that Friday night after he
went away. "We are like sheep without a shepherd," Theodora said.
Catherine and Tom came over. We opened our Latin books and tried to
study awhile; but 'twas dreary without "old Joel."

Other things, however, other duties and other work at the farm
immediately occupied our attention. It was now mid-January and there was
ice to be cut on the lake for our new creamery.

For three years the old Squire had been breeding a herd of Jerseys.
There were sixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary, Jersey Second, Little
Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the rest. Each one had her own little
book that hung from its nail on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall.
In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the number of pounds of
milk she gave at each milking. The scales for weighing the milk hung
from the same beam. We weighed each milking, and jotted down the weight
with the pencil tied to each little book. All this was to show which of
the herd was most profitable, and which calves had better be kept for
increase.

This was a new departure in Maine farming. Cream-separators were as yet
undreamed of. A water-creamery with long cans and ice was then used for
raising the cream; and that meant an ice-house and the cutting and
hauling home of a year's stock of ice from the lake, nearly two miles
distant.

We built a new ice-house near the east barn in November; and in December
the old Squire drove to Portland and brought home a complete kit of
tools--three ice-saws, an ice-plow or groover, ice-tongs, hooks,
chisels, tackle and block.

Everything had to be bought new, but the old Squire had visions of great
profits ahead from his growing herd of Jerseys. Grandmother, however,
was less sanguine.

It was unusually cold in December that year, frequently ten degrees
below zero, and there were many high winds. Consequently, the ice on the
lake thickened early to twelve inches, and bade fair to go to two feet.
For use in a water-creamery, ice is most conveniently cut and handled
when not more than fifteen or sixteen inches thick. That thickness, too,
when the cakes are cut twenty-six inches square, as usual, makes them
quite heavy enough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house.

Half a mile from the head of the lake, over deep, clear water, we had
been scraping and sweeping a large surface after every snow, in order to
have clear ice. Two or three times a week Addison ran down and tested
the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches, we bestirred
ourselves at our new work.

None of us knew much about cutting ice; but we laid off a straight
base-line of a hundred feet, hitched old Sol to the new groover, and
marked off five hundred cakes. Addison and I then set to work with two
of our new ice-saws, and hauled out the cakes with the ice-tongs, while
Halstead and the old Squire loaded them on the long horse-sled,--sixteen
cakes to the load,--drew the ice home, and packed it away in the new
ice-house.

Although at first the sawing seemed easy, we soon found it tiresome, and
learned that two hundred cakes a day meant a hard day's work,
particularly after the saws lost their keen edge--for even ice will dull
a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful, for it was over
deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is likely to break
off suddenly underfoot.

Hauling out the cakes with tongs, too, is somewhat hazardous on a
slippery ice margin. We beveled off a kind of inclined "slip" at one end
of the open water, and cut heel holes in the ice beside it, so that we
might stand more securely as we pulled the cakes out of the water.

For those first few days we had bright, calm weather, not very cold; we
got out five hundred cakes and drew them home to the ice-house without
accident.

The hardship came the next week, when several of our neighbors--who
always kept an eye on the old Squire's farming, and liked to follow his
lead--were beset by an ambition to start ice-houses. None of them had
either experience or tools. They wanted us to cut the ice for them.

We thought that was asking rather too much. Thereupon fourteen or
fifteen of them offered us two cents a cake to cut a year's supply for
each of them.

Now no one will ever get very rich cutting ice, sixteen inches thick, at
two cents a cake. But Addison and I thought it over, and asked the old
Squire's opinion. He said that we might take the new kit, and have all
we could make.

On that, we notified them all to come and begin drawing home their cakes
the following Monday morning, for the ice was growing thicker all the
while; and the thicker it got, the harder our work would be.

They wanted about four thousand cakes; and as we would need help, we
took in Thomas Edwards and Willis Murch as partners. Both were good
workers, and we anticipated having a rather fine time at the lake.

In the woods on the west shore, nearly opposite where the ice was to be
cut, there was an old "shook" camp, where we kept our food and slept at
night, in order to avoid the long walk home to meals.

On Sunday it snowed, and cleared off cold and windy again. It was eight
degrees below zero on Monday morning, when we took our outfit and went
to work. Everything was frozen hard as a rock. The wind, sweeping down
the lake, drove the fine, loose snow before it like smoke from a forest
fire. There was no shelter. We had to stand out and saw ice in the
bitter wind, which seemed to pierce to the very marrow of our bones. It
was impossible to keep a fire; and it always seems colder when you are
standing on ice.

It makes me shiver now to think of that week, for it grew colder instead
of warmer. A veritable "cold snap" set in, and never for an hour, night
or day, did that bitter wind let up.

We would have quit work and waited for calmer weather,--the old Squire
advised us to do so,--but the ice was getting thicker every day. Every
inch added to the thickness made the work of sawing harder--at two cents
a cake. So we stuck to it, and worked away in that cruel wind.

On Thursday it got so cold that if we stopped the saws even for two
seconds, they froze in hard and fast, and had to be cut out with an ax;
thus two cakes would be spoiled. It was not easy to keep the saws going
fast enough not to catch and freeze in; and the cakes had to be hauled
out the moment they were sawed, or they would freeze on again. Moreover,
the patch of open water that we uncovered froze over in a few minutes,
and had to be cleared a dozen times a day. During those nights it froze
five inches thick, and filled with snowdrift, all of which had to be
cleared out every morning.

Although we had our caps pulled down over our ears and heavy mittens on,
and wore all the clothes we could possibly work in, it yet seemed at
times that freeze we must--especially toward night, when we grew tired
from the hard work of sawing so long and so fast. We became so chilled
that we could hardly speak; and at sunset, when we stopped work, we
could hardly get across to the camp. The farmers, who were coming twice
a day with their teams for ice, complained constantly of the cold;
several of them stopped drawing altogether for the time. Willis also
stopped work on Thursday at noon.

The people at home knew that we were having a hard time. Grandmother and
the girls did all they could for us; and every day at noon and again at
night the old Squire, bundled up in his buffalo-skin coat, drove down to
the lake with horse and pung, and brought us a warm meal, packed in a
large box with half a dozen hot bricks.

Only one who has been chilled through all day can imagine how glad we
were to reach that warm camp at night. Indeed, except for the camp, we
could never have worked there as we did. It was a log camp, or rather
two camps, placed end to end, and you went through the first in order to
get into the second, which had no outside door. The second camp had been
built especially for cold weather. It was low, and the chinks between
the logs were tamped with moss. At this time, too, snow lay on it, and
had banked up against the walls. Inside the camp, across one end, there
was a long bunk; at the opposite end stood an old cooking-stove, that
seemed much too large for so small a camp.

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