The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden seeds in our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the preparation of botanical medicines, raising, gathering2, drying, and preparing herbs and roots for market; and this industry, driven from the field by modern machinery3, was still a valuable source of income in Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for Susanna, and she loved them like friends, humoring their weakness, nourishing their strength, stimulating4, coaxing5, disciplining them, until they could do no less than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.
Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its wholesome6 fragrances7! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf and bud, and the strong aromatic8 odors stimulated9 her flagging spirit or her aching head, after the sleepless10 nights in which she tried to decide her future life and Sue's.
The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps11, and she soon learned to know the strange ones—chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage, boneset, lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue12, as well as she knew the old acquaintances familiar to every country-bred child—pennyroyal, peppermint13 or spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.
There was hoeing and weeding before the gathering and drying came; then Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the dried herbs and press them into quarter- and half-pound cakes ready for Sister Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering and labeling them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over, Brother Ansel would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his driving trip through the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but Brother Issachar, who once took his place and sold almost nothing, brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward14 became a shining light in the Community. (“Thus,” said Elder Gray, “does God teach us the diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.”)
If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent15 in faith, Susanna thought that their “works” would indeed bear the strictest examination. The Brothers made brooms, floor and dish-mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and indeed almost every trade was represented in the various New England Communities. Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs, policemen, constables16, or soldiers, just as there were no courts or saloons or jails. Where there was perfect equality of possession and no private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see the cheery labor17, often continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the earnest desire to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were hammering, nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen18, straw Shaker bonnets19, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not forgetting their famous Shaker apple sauce.
Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the early rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and hardier20 than she had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled21 with delicacies22, yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently23 varied24. At first there had been the winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips25, beets26, and parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker dinner of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk gravy27. Each Sister served her turn as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with flour, and the wholewheat bread, cookies, ginger28 cake, and milk puddings were marvels29 of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate Shaker from a too riotous30 devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory31, and attractive.
Dear, patient, devoted32 Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as they worked together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and pan and spoon might have served as a mirror! Martha had joined the Society in her mother's arms, being given up to the Lord and placed in “the children's order” before she was one year old.
“If you should unite with us, Susanna,” she said one night after the early supper, when they were peeling apples together, “you'd be thankful you begun early with your little Sue, for she's got a natural attraction to the world, and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, obedient little soul; but when she's among the other young ones, there's a flyaway look about her that makes her seem more like a fairy than a child.”
“She's having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she'll do better in time,” sighed her mother. “She came to me of her own accord yesterday and asked: 'Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?'”
“I never put that idea into her head,” Martha interrupted. “She's a visitor and can wear her hair as she's been brought up to wear it.”
“I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I get up so early, Mardie,' she said, 'and it takes so long to unsnarl and untangle me, and I get so hot when I'm helping33 in the hayfield, and then I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it seems like wasting both our times!' Her hair would be all the stronger for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her age; but I could n't put the shears34 to it when the time came, Martha. I had to take her to Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little looking-glass as still as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when the last one fell into Abby's apron35, she suddenly put her hands over her face and cried: 'Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after this!'—She seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, slipping away from her, all in an instant. I did n't let her know that I cried over the box of curls last night!”
“You did wrong,” rebuked36 Martha. “You should n't make an idol37 of your child or your child's beauty.”
“You don't think God might put beauty into the world just to give His children joy, Martha?”
Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made, from those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to make any sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by too many opposing theories of God's intentions.
“You know I never argue when I've got anything baking,” she said; and taking the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the oven door and delicately plunged38 it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the straw as she withdrew it, she said: “You must talk doctrine39 with Eldress Abby, Susanna, not with me; but I guess doctrine won't help you so much as thinking out your life for yourself.
Reward must come from labor,
I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
God's mercy and his favor!”
Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many hymns41 and tunes—some of them under circumstances that she believed might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to the great barn.
The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life, although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.
Another spot for meditation42 was the great barn, relic43 of the wonderful earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell, to do its duty later on in fertilizing44 the farm lands; then came the first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers45 ten feet in height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain room, where mounds46 of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling; and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and Knights47' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as Shaker doctrines48 to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of corncobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting49 threads from her mother's work.
“My head feels awfully50 undressed without my curls, Mardie,” she said. “I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we ought to have asked him before we shingled51 me?—He does despise unpretty things so!”
“I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think best.'”
“He always says that when he does n't care what you do,” observed Sue, with one of her startling bursts of intuition. “Sister Martha has a printed card on the wall in the children's diningroom, and I've got to learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the others:—
“What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
“We often find left on the same China dish,
Another's replenished55 with butter and cheese,
With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these.”
“You say it very nicely,” commended Susanna.
“There's more:—
By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread.
“There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker,” sighed Sue, as she finished her rhyme.
“There's a great deal to learn everywhere,” her mother answered. “What verse did Eldress Abby give you today?”
“For little tripping maids may follow God
Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,”
quoted the child. “Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?” she continued.
“Yes, dear.” “If I trip too much, might n't I fall?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Is tripping the same as skipping?”
“About the same.”
“Is it polite to trip an' skip when you're following God?”
“It could n't be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means just a young one.”
“What is a maid?”
“A little girl.”
“When a maid grows up, what is she?”
“When a maiden grows up, what is she?”
“Just a woman, Sue.”
“What is saintly feet?”
“Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have always tried to do right.”
“Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?”
“He's a good, kind, hardworking man.”
“Is good, kind, hardworking, same as saintly?”
“Well, it's not so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I've asked you before, don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every instant; it is n't good for you, and it certainly is n't good for me!”
“All right; but 'less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don't see how I'll ever learn the things I 'specially59 want to know?” sighed Sue the insatiable.
“Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last evening?”
“Oh, do, Mardie!” cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and looking up into her mother's face expectantly.
“Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some one wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found a Settlement in the western part of New York State. He and some other Elders and Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at the house of a certain Joseph Pelham to spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday morning, very tired, and wondering where to stay and begin his preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to pray for guidance. When he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-hearted, a young quail60 came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing61 near by show any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder smoothed the young bird's feathers a little while and then let it go, but he thought an angel seemed to say to him, 'The quail is a sign; you will know before night what it means, and before tomorrow people will be coming to you to learn the way to God.'
“Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph Pelham's house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the flock of Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see more in signs than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve or thirteen knocked at the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to become a Shaker, and that her father and mother were willing.
“'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, and indeed she was the first who flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.
“On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took the little quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals through which they traveled were clogged62 with ice. One night, having been ferried across the Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked for miles before they could find shelter. Finally, when they were within three miles of their home, Elder Calvin shortened the way by going across the open fields through the snow, up and down the hills and through the gullies and over fences, till they reached the house at midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged63 beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail.”
Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining, her hands clasped. “Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl, Mardie! What became of her?”
“Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you could walk for miles through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?”
“I don' know's I could,” sighed Sue; “but,” she added hopefully, “perhaps I could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much as ever I liked.” Then, after a lengthy64 pause, in which her mind worked feverishly65, she said, “Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I won't do it any more tonight. If the old quail birds in the woods where Elder Calvin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker birds, there would n't have been any little quail birds, would there, because Shakers don't have children, and then perhaps there would n't have been any little Polly Reed.”
Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work. “I'll go up and help you undress now,” she said; “it's seven o'clock, and I must go to the family meeting.”
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1
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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fragrances
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| n.芳香，香味( fragrance的名词复数 )；香水 | |
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aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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12
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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peppermint
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| n.薄荷，薄荷油，薄荷糖 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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16
constables
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| n.警察( constable的名词复数 ) | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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18
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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bonnets
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| n.童帽( bonnet的名词复数 )；（烟囱等的）覆盖物；（苏格兰男子的）无边呢帽；（女子戴的）任何一种帽子 | |
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hardier
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| 能吃苦耐劳的，坚强的( hardy的比较级 )； （植物等）耐寒的 | |
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21
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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23
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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turnips
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| 芜青( turnip的名词复数 )； 芜菁块根； 芜菁甘蓝块根； 怀表 | |
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beets
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| 甜菜( beet的名词复数 )； 甜菜根； （因愤怒、难堪或觉得热而）脸红 | |
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gravy
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| n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快 | |
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ginger
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| n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气 | |
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29
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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30
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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savory
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| adj.风味极佳的，可口的，味香的 | |
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32
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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shears
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| n.大剪刀 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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36
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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39
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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psalm
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| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
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41
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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42
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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44
fertilizing
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| v.施肥( fertilize的现在分词 ) | |
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45
piers
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| n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 )；（常设有娱乐场所的）突堤；柱子；墙墩 | |
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mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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47
knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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48
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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49
basting
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| n.疏缝；疏缝的针脚；疏缝用线；涂油v.打( baste的现在分词 )；粗缝；痛斥；（烤肉等时）往上抹[浇]油 | |
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50
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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51
shingled
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| adj.盖木瓦的；贴有墙面板的v.用木瓦盖(shingle的过去式和过去分词形式) | |
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52
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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53
pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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54
minced
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| v.切碎( mince的过去式和过去分词 )；剁碎；绞碎；用绞肉机绞（食物，尤指肉） | |
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replenished
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| 补充( replenish的过去式和过去分词 )； 重新装满 | |
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56
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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57
forfeit
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| vt.丧失；n.罚金，罚款，没收物 | |
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58
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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59
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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60
quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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61
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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62
clogged
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| （使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞 | |
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63
trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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64
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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65
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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