Puritan Homes and Thanksgiving-Days
There is a rivulet of Yankee blood in my veins through the line of the Ledyards; and I am not ashamed of my kinship with either the hero who defended Fort Griswold, or the other hero who tracked his way into Siberia and died, like Livingstone, while trying to explore the Dark Continent. Part of my school days were spent (in the Cayuga Lake region of New York) among a colony from Berkshire County, Mass, How proud they were of their nativity in the most picturesque county of New England! How eagerly they welcomed every letter from Lee or Lenox or Barrington! How devoutly they cherished every custom of
their Puritan ancestors! They “opened their windows” towards old Berkshire, as exiled Daniel did his towards the city on Mount Zion.
I boarded in the family of a primitive Yankee deacon — such as Mrs. Stowe has limned in her best portraitures. The honest old saint was no more troubled with any doubts about the Pentateuch than about the sun rising “on time”; he no more dreamed of any New Departure in theology than he did of going out to plough on a Sabbath morning. His gospel milk never curdled. True to the ancient traditions, he “kept Saturday night,” for he held that the Lord’s Sabbath began with the sunset on the previous evening. Promptly at the minute all secular work was laid aside; even his venerable wife put away her knitting-needles; the “chores” were all finished up, and the family gathgi BEULAH-LAND.
ered around the hickory fire for a genuine domestic worship. Good books were read — stiff, marrowy books they were too, and no modern syllabubs — and before the serene and solemn evening closed the patriarch opened Scott’s family Bible, and, as Burns says, he “waled a portion with judicious care.” After reading the text he read the practical observations also; then, in his prayer, he came into close grips and wrestled with God. The Sabbath in that household — yes, and in almost every household of the village — was kept, and so stoutly hemmed was it that it never raveled out into unseemly frivolities.
The village meeting-house (it was not the fashion to call it “church “), to which everybody went, was a plain structure, and the square, high-backed pews were guiltless of paint or damask. Half-way up the wall was perched the pulpit, like a martin box.
The village pastor — whose name, Seth Smith, was as severely simple as his costume — ascended to his perch by a winding stair. On bitter winter days he kept on his camlet cloak and knit woolen mittens until he warmed up to his work. As for the mothers in Israel, they kept their feet from freezing by foot-stoves well stocked with hickory coals. The discourse was no light diet of condiments and confectionery; it was strong, solid, substantial meat, as homely and brawn-making as the pork and beans which furnished the family dinner. Bible doctrine was the backbone of the sermon, and it was served warm. That godly minister of the Word preached the Word — preached it without defalcation or discount, and preached as if the surges of eternity were rolling against the church door. He believed in heaven, and he believed in a hell; they both seemed close at g4 BEULAH-LAND.
hand — as close by as the tombs of the villagers who slumbered around the sanctuary. Nor did any impenitent soul go out from before that pulpit with any such delusion as that he would have another chance for repentance after his own bones were laid in that churchyard. Often there was sweetness in the sermons also, as well as strength — honey out of Samson’s lion — the sweetness of the Christian’s promises and sweet glimpses of the saint’s everlasting rest. After the services ended we all went homeward, well stocked with Bible and Catechism; and the family dinner was eaten as the sun was wheeling into the west. When his last rays departed the holy hours were ended, and the Sunday evening was spent in secular reading, or in a visit to a neighbor’s, where the day’s sermon was discussed, and the latest news from «id Berkshire. Oh, the blessed
old Puritan Sabbaths! Will they ever come back again? Strict they were, no doubt, and because our forefathers worshipped a strict God: severe they were in some of their restraints on carnal appetites, and lacking in some pleasant things they ought to have had, but they were a glorious discipline; they girded our loins with mighty truths, they put iron into our blood, they made the men and women that have made the backbone of American character.
Of course, in such a Yankee community the annual Thanksgiving Day was the chief festival of the year. It was more jubilant than Christmas, more impressive than New- Year’s Day; it was the kingday of the calendar. Afar its coming shone. We boys counted the time until its approach. The night before was a sad time in all the barnyards and turkey-cotes p6 BEULAH-LAND.
and chicken-roosts; for the slaughter was terrible, and the cry of the feathered tribe was like the “mournino; of Hadadrimmon.” For that Thanksgiving service the village pastor made diligent preparation, and the choir rehearsed their finest “fugues” and most resonant anthems. For that Thanksgiving dinner the housewife tasked her culinary skill; it was the feast of fat things, the masterpiece of domestic gastronomy, at which the most rigid Puritanism ate, drank, and was merry. Children and grandchildren, kith and kindred, gathered to these festivities in the old homestead; for, as in the times of David at Bethlehem, “there was a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.”
These two days, the weekly Sabbath and the annual Thanksgiving Day, have been the type-days of the best era of New England. They were typical of the no-PURITAN HOMES. g?
blest traits of New England character. Reverence for Jehovah, faith in his Word to the uttermost syllable, loyalty to law, cheerfulness under adversities and in a hard fight for daily bread, often out of a stubborn soil — a sturdy life sweetened by fireside joys — all these were the fruitage of the Puritan home. It was the real training-school for both church and commonwealth. Both patriotism and piety rooted under those hearth-stones.
If any one wants to see a fair picture of the Puritan homes threescore and fourscore years ago, let him read Dr. Horace Bushnell’s Age of Homespun (delivered at the Litchfield County Centennial), or Lyman Beecher’s autobiography, or, best of all, that charming tract in which Father Goodell described the rustic cabin in which he was born and bred. The house had no paint on its ciap-boards, no carpet on 13 g8 BEULAH-LAND.
its floor, and no lock on a single door. But a godly mother sang hymns at her spinning-wheel, and every acre of the farm was prayed over as well as plowed over; the Thanksgiving meal had the sweet smell of the field which God had blessed. “Those royal men and women of homespun I” exclaims Bushnell. “How great a thing to them was religion! the district school was there, and the great Bellamy and Edwards were there in the mountain peaks of divine government, and between them are close living and hard work, but they are kings alike in all!”
In those Puritan homes the American Board of Foreign Missions was nurtured; its early heroes were trained there. From those homes went out the pioneers who rang the first church bells in the great West. Wedlock had not lost its sanctity in those homes, nor had the filthy facilities
of divorce laws rotted off the tie. Orthodox faith was so anchored to Bible and catechism that it did not drift into new departures.
To recall that steel-bright and strongstitched era of New England life is a wholesome memory and study. It may quicken the old flames, and renew the old faith. The nation looks to the Land of Puritans yet; and if Plymouth Rock gives way we shall all go down — and other lands may be dragged down with us!