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Once a quarter came the presiding elder. He arrived on Friday afternoon, for quarterly meeting meant service on both Saturday and Sunday. This dignitary was so great that he was regarded with awe by the children on the farm, and while many good men of this rank visited the home, no one of them ever favorably touched the life of the small boy. Indeed the coming of so exalted a personage cast a cloud over the home. Parents were too deferential; the old minister told no stories, gave no instruction; and worst of all the children were sentenced to the second table. Were you ever compelled to wait for the second table on account of company at your father's house? If not, you have no adequate appreciation of the severity of the resulting pain. The meal has been delayed beyond the usual hour by the tardiness of the guests and the extent of the preparation in the kitchen. The children are told to play in the yard, run down into the pasture, or pick fruit in the orchard. But what attraction has yard, pasture or orchard for the small boy in whose stomach there are a million peptic glands swollen to the point of bursting with gastric juice ? What fascination has the yard, when the odor of fried chicken, cream gravy and hot biscuits floats from the dining room window? Why go to the pasture when the incense of its fattest mutton rises from the kitchen chimney? What raw product of the orchard can attract when a stack of pies, every one a magnet of great strength, pulls on every cell in the body with immeasurable force toward the pantry? Oh! The torture of having to wait for the second table! How slowly the guests eat. They are certainly oblivious of the cruel torture they are inflicting. At last human nature prevails and the small boy ventures to the kitchen door and casts a wistful eye on the cook who stops for a moment, and preparing a place on the kitchen table, says: "Come, honey, come and eat these scraps before they get cold." After that the choicest samples of each course are placed on the boy's platter before the change is made in the dining room.
The early Missourian was strong in his convictions and unyielding in his creed. His ancestors fought the battles of Protestantism in France. In this struggle he lost his home and became an exile, but he never for one moment thought of modifying his creed. His nature would not permit his doing so, certainly not at the command of someone else. The right to think for himself and arrive at his own conclusions he has always regarded as a possession from which he could never part, even at the cost of life itself. If I correctly understand the primitive Missourian, it was his right of choice rather than what he chose, of which he was so tenacious. He began as a Protestant and he has continued to protest.
In this country of religious freedom, finding themselves without a common enemy, the descendants of the old French Huguenots broke into factions in their creeds and differed earnestly on free will, predestination and forms of baptism. I have listened to many a warm discussion of these points. I well remember a most amusing termination of one of them before the open fire at the old home. The antagonists were eating juicy Northern Spies. One had cut a nice bit from his apple and holding it aloft on the point of his knife he said: "I believe that it was foreordained before the world was created that I should eat this piece of apple." His antagonist, resorting to an argument more forceful than polite, knocked the piece of apple into the midst of the blazing logs.
I also remember how warmly the disputations concerning forms of baptism were waged. Some held that immersion was a positive command and that entrance to the celestial city would be permitted only to those whose sins had been washed away in this manner. Fortunately, however, these differences in theological dogma had no effect upon their practical Christianity, and Methodists and Baptists lived side by side in brotherly love. Their sons and daughters married and intermarried and wisely left nice distinctions in creed to be settled in another world where we may be sure they will not have much weight one way or the other.
One of my earliest lessons in theology came when I could not have been more than seven years old. Mother had permitted me to spend the night with a neighbor boy whose father was a Baptist. After family prayers Mr. B. took me on his knees, told me what a good man and neighbor my father was, but assured me that he could never go to heaven because he had not been immersed. I was horrified at this statement. By the side of my boy friend I sobbed myself to sleep. In the early dawn I slipped out of the bed, crept out of the still slumbering house and fled to my home. On Father's neck I told my story and wildly begged that he be immersed forthwith. To my surprise Father was not disturbed. Indeed, he seemed greatly amused. He told me that Mr. B. was a good and well meaning man, but a religious fanatic. It took some days to allay my anxiety but after much thinking I became calm and afterwards listened to stories of future rewards and punishments much as I did to those told me by Black Mammy of "raw head and bloody bones."
The mistress of the Missouri farm of antebellum times had her days filled with duties. It was for her to direct the busy and somewhat complicated machinery of the household. Meals were provided under her direction. The dairy products must pass through the usual routine. The poultry yard demanded frequent visits. The flower and vegetable gardens were under her supervision. The products of the orchard must not be permitted to go wholly to waste. The fibers, from which the clothing for both whites and blacks was made, must pass through every stage of their manufacture under her inspection. The carding, spinning and weaving of both the coarser and finer textures depended upon her experience and skill. She served as nurse, and in many ailments as physician to both whites and blacks. One of her duties was to instruct her daughters in the art of housekeeping, and that meant much in those days. Her hospitality was unbounded in quantity, if plain in quality. Guests were frequent and welcome. On account of the distance between friends and relatives, visitors often prolonged their stay for days. Camp and protracted meetings were frequent, and well filled lunch baskets were a necessity. In all this busy life mothers did not neglect the intellectual and moral education of their children. Good manners and refinement in behavior were inculcated and practiced. These mothers knew nothing of women's clubs and did not discuss woman suffrage but they did the duties that fell to their share and this is all that can be expected of mortal man or woman.
In these days of special labor, of machine-made goods, and of facility of interchange, one is inclined to doubt the veracity of his own memory as he recalls the old farm and the occupations of its inhabitants. All the ordinary clothing worn by both whites and blacks was made from home grown fibers, flax and wool. Attempts were made to grow cotton and these were not without some success. The hand cotton gin, something like a diminutive clothes wringer, and homemade, served to remove the seeds. Spinning wheels for flax and wool, reels that cracked at every one hundred rounds, and looms for both plain and fancy fabrics were busy in providing clothing, blankets and carpets. The working day garments for summer were of coarse flax and those for winter were linsey and jeans. Sumac berries and walnut hulls supplied the ordinary dyes. Straw hats for summer and cloth or fur caps for winter were the products of the unskilled labor of the farm. As I have already said, plows, harrows, corn planters, wagons, and even the family carriage were joint productions of the carpenter and blacksmith; the cradle in which the child was rocked was a section of the gum tree; and the coffin in which both the young and the aged were laid to rest was shaped of black walnut boards sawed partly through and bent after being treated at the right place with boiling water.
The practical chemistry of soap making in all its details was well-known to the early Missourian. The ashes stored in great wooden hoppers and leached with water supplied the alkali and this boiled with the scraps of fats obtained at hog killing time, made the soap. Candle making was a fine art, and the iron lamp with its twisted wick gave out a dim light and much bad odor.
With the exception of coffee, tea and sugar, most of the food consumed on the farm was the product of its own growth. Sorghum often served the purpose of cane sugar, and coffee substitutes in the form of roasted rye or wheat were not unknown. The big kitchen fireplace was a wonderful laboratory and the memory of its products stimulates my digestive secretions even now. There was the great swinging crane on which hung boiling pots of vegetables and meats. The broad stone hearth was covered with the baking ovens with live coals underneath and piled on the lid, all aglow. From these came the great pones of cornbread and the toothsome beaten biscuits. On winter nights the prizes of the hunter, rabbits, "possums," quail and larger birds, as wild geese and turkeys, were suspended in front of the blazing logs and basted with melted butter and spices applied with swabs on long sticks as they swung about, first one side and then the other, turned to the culinary artists. Sweet and Irish potatoes never tasted better than when roasted in the ashes, and it may be added that their sterilization was complete. While these delectable dishes were being prepared the winter winds moaned and sighed through the great locusts in the yard, and black Mammy told grewsome stories of "raw head and bloody bones." I have seen imitations of the old kitchen in the Creole quarters in New Orleans, and, I may add, have enjoyed their well-prepared dishes, but the greatest pleasure came from the awakening of memories of the old Missouri home.
One of the duties of those too young to do heavier work was to cure the meat that hung in tier upon tier to the rafters in the smokehouse. A smoldering fire was kept going for weeks. Chips from the woodpile furnished the fuel and the fire must not blaze but generate as much smoke as possible. The task of keeping these fires going just right so frequently called the small boy from play or entertaining book that he has ever since had an aversion to the odor of creosote.
The methods of farming were crude and wasteful. "What does not go into the granary goes into the smokehouse" was a favorite saying, and implied that the hog picked up and converted into pork whatever grain was left in the field or dropped from the wagon. The grain was cradled, bound, shocked and stacked. In the barn was a large room floored with puncheons laid as smoothly as the crude workmanship of the day permitted. On this floor the wheat was spread and trampled by a troop of horses, the leader of which was ridden by the small boy. The trail was kept near the wall, and men stood in the middle of the room and kept tossing the grain in front of the trampling horses. The grain, crudely and imperfectly separated, was winnowed in a fan mill turned by hand and then carried to the old grist on the creek and ground. The flour thus produced could have awakened even in the mind of my friend, Doctor Harvey Wiley, no suspicion that it had been bleached. There were fields of corn, wheat, oats, rye, tobacco, flax and meadowland. There were broad acres of open woodland where the scaly barked hickory, the spreading oak and the graceful elm reared their massive trunks and spread their green branches high above the beautiful carpet of blue grass painted in shades of color, shifting with light and shadow and more beautiful than any texture that ever came from the looms of the Orient. On this carpet so beautifully spread over hill and dale in the woodland pasture the farmers' horses, cattle and sheep fed to repletion and then rested for more perfect digestion in the shade. The oak and hickory supplied without stint, the fast-growing porkers, which, happily oblivious of the fact that hog killing day would be due in December, lazily divided their time between the mast-strewn ridge and the cooling waters of the pond. The grass, both carpet and food, ever renewed itself. With the coming of winter it only changed its color and, retaining all its nutriment, lay buried beneath the white blanket of snow and when this had been imperceptibly lifted by the magic hand of spring, there it lay, an abundant supply for the quadrupeds of the farm, until through its roots it should convert the richness of the soil into a new growth of proteins and carbohydrates.
The woodland pasture was not devoid of gastronomic enticement for the farmer's boy. Down in the deepest parts of the shade on the slope toward the creek, near where the lime kiln had been operated, modestly sheltered under more pretentious neighbors, grew the mulberry trees for whose rich but fleeting gifts the red-headed woodpeckers and the suntanned boys contended. The boy quite equalled the bird in reaching the topmost boughs, and in capacity was equal to a dozen of his winged competitors. The contest was soon over, for the black mulberry ripens suddenly and disappears into the stomach of boy or bird quickly. Then for a few days longer it is only a memory in the form of stains on the hands and cheeks of the former, and on the white collar of the latter. The next thing in the woodland pasture to direct the bare feet and stimulate the digestive secretions of the boy was the wild plum. The trees grew best in thickets along the rail fence and the fruit ripened in the dog-days. The hogs rooted up the ground in the clump of trees and the thorns were sharp, but the boy first filled his distensible stomach and then a less capacious basket and promised to return to-morrow with an empty stomach and a more generous basket. I can testify from personal experience that the prize products of the best orchards of the Santa Clara Valley failed to produce the same effect on the gustatory nerve of the man of fifty that the wild plum of Missouri did upon the same nerve in the barefooted boy of ten. I shall refer this matter to the National Research Council for investigation.
With the first severe frost another gastronomic feast was prepared for the small boy. In the open field the thoughtful ax of the pioneer had left a few trees which bore a fruit fit for the feasts of Olympus. In my boyhood days I imagined that the manna upon which the children of Israel were fed in the wilderness was something like the persimmon after the killing frosts had, through the magical chemistry of nature, converted its acid substances into the richest and daintiest of sweets. Then there were haws, red and black, and the flavor of the Missouri wild grape has been wafted to me across the wide ocean, even as I have lingered in the vineyards of the Italian Riviera.
There was the winding creek with its fringe of hazel, willow and towering sycamores, with its deep pools in which dwelt the homely and elusive catfish, ever tempting, generally evading the youthful Izaak Walton. The creek had other irresistible attractions for the youthful dweller near its banks. In summer its cool waters were ever inviting the small boy to a plunge and in winter its coat of ice had its fascination, and the possibility that one might break through and undergo baptism without sanction of the church added to the allurement. In summer the feathery songsters of the hazel fringe were constantly calling to the small boy, especially if some task in lesson or work had been placed upon him, and the possibility of meeting with a blue racer in the bushes increased the zeal with which he searched for the bird's nest. Then there was the plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will as the shadows of evening were falling, and what success was secured when the eggs of this mysterious bird were found Iying in the dead leaves without form of nest! In autumn hazel nuts must be gathered, and farther down, where the creek broadens and loses its shrubby fringe, where it flows through the massive timber, there grew the great hickory, and in late October it literally strewed the ground with the big creek nuts. Here on Saturday afternoon came the whole family with a wagon which was filled with bags of these, the most delicious of the native nuts of Missouri. These, with the black walnuts that grew near by, were stored away in the cellar to furnish refreshments for the long evenings of the coming winter. In winter the banks of the creek and the woods of the ridge became the haunts of rabbits and quail, the pursuit of which, with snare or net or gun, quickened the currents of red blood that flowed through the muscles of the Missouri boy of sixty years ago.
In the fall, clouds of wild pigeons flew so near the earth that with a shotgun many could be brought down at one discharge. At night so many of these would alight on small trees that the limbs were often broken. This bird has suddenly and unaccountably become extinct. In the winter, flocks of wild geese came to rest in the corn field, and hunters, hidden in the shocks, had at least one good shot. Wild ducks were numerous on the lakes in the fall and there were no laws forbidding their being killed. Along the heavily wooded ridges wild turkeys tempted the hunter by responding to his call. Food on the old farm was unstinted in quantity, divers)fied in kind and not wanting in vitamines.
Patches of potatoes of both kinds supplied the family. In the orchards, apples, peaches, pears, cherries and plums were free to all, including the hogs and birds. Berries of all kinds came in season and in abundance. In our community no one ever thought of limiting white or black in consumption of food of any kind, and no vegetables, fruits or berries were ever sold.
At one time I had a horse which was never ridden save by mother or myself. With mother in the saddle, he would be a gentle, ambling gray, never shy and never going faster than a moderate pace, or at most in a rhythmic lope. With the boy astraddle, the horse was off like a flash dodging among the trees and leaping fences and gullies. When I approached this horse in the pasture he would come and rub his head against my breast, appar ently anticipating fun. I would jump on his back without saddle or bridle and away he would go. At one place there was a low fence and about a rod beyond and parallel to it was a deep ditch with soft clay banks. The ditch was too wide for the horse to attempt, but he delighted in leaping the fence and, with a sudden turn, running between the fence and the ditch. More than once this manoeuver resulted in my landing in the ditch, which the horse seemed to enjoy more than I did. I am deeply grieved to say that this horse-play of mine caused another boy's death. The other boys on the farm had been repeatedly told not to follow my example, but the son of a tenant tried it. He was thrown against a tree and his skull was fractured. The degree of my responsibility in this accident has given me serious moments.
The neighborhood boys became quite expert in bareback riding. In summer there was a long stretch of sand, left by the drying up of a stream. Here the boys were wont to assemble with their horses. Bareback riding with or without a surcingle is quickly learned by a nimble boy. With a surcingle supplied with handles, getting on and off a horse in full gallop is jolly fun. Without a surcingle the grasp must be on the mane. Even standing with bare feet on the broad hips of a horse going at a rhythmic gait is easily done and costs only a few falls.
An innocent amusement consisted in swimming horses across the large mill pond in Sweet Springs. A horse goes into deep water timidly and with evident apprehension, but when firmly urged he takes the plunge and then devotes his whole attention to his strokes. The wash of the water over the shoulders of the horse and against the bare body of the boy rider is most agreeable to the latter. It is better to guide the horse since he does not always show good judgment in the selection of his landing place.
Another pastime occasionally indulged in was not free from danger, and I do not advise its practice. Near the barn there was a large straw stack. On sunny wintry Sundays when neither boy nor beast had enough to do to break the monotony of the day, horses, mules and cattle would stand with their heads and necks up to their shoulders hidden in the straw, which they munched slowly and with apparent satisfaction. The boys would climb to the top of the stack and each selecting his animal, slide down and drop on its back. Then the fun began. The first time a horse or a mule met with this shock the reaction was immediate and violent. But these animals soon got on to the trick and the sudden thud on the back no longer disturbed their feeding. From this I concluded that horses and mules have memories and learn by experience. One day having exhausted these animals, I tried a drop on a lusty young ox. The animal responded immediately and forcefully. The result was disastrous to the boy and the experiment was never repeated; therefore, I do not know to this day how far an ox profits by past experience.
In 1925 I witnessed at Tucson, Arizona, a three days' rodeo. As I looked on I recognized that practically every detail was an evolution from the old straw stack play of sixty years ago. I am sure that if at the age of sixteen I had been transplanted to Arizona instead of going to Central College, I would have become a cowboy and the story of my life would be quite different.
The boys of my childhood days never heard of tennis nor did they know of golf, but their lives could not be said to have been wholly devoid of sport. I believe that had I remained on the old farm and continued my active exercise, the tubercle bacilli would not have troubled the body cells in the apex of my lung; but when I went to college, studied in a small unventilated room, and neglected exercise in the open, the sleeping bacilli awoke and began the contest, which was finally terminated in my favor by the improved appetite stimulated by riding and the cold baths. ~
Telling a wilful lie was counted among both whites and blacks a most heinous and unforgivable sin. Temporarily I once fell under this ban. I spent the whole of one rainy Sunday morning in trying to comprehend the description by Julius Caesar of the wonderful bridge he claimed to have built. In fact for some weeks I had been trying to make a model of this structure. The whole family had become interested in it. The afternoon came on cloudless. I saddled Golden and rode into the forest. The woods have always had a special fascination for me when the sun comes out after a heavy rain. The foliage, free from dust and debris, is at its best; the birds sing their sweetest songs. Rabbits and other small quadrupeds leave their damp burrows and scamper in joy through the brush. All nature renders thanks to heaven for the long needed and fructifying rain. I will acknowledge that I have some remnant of the spirit of tree worship, possibly transmitted to me through the Welsh line from my Druidian ancestors. I came to a bend in Sweet Springs. On the side on which I stood the bank was low and the area was frequently overflowed. The opposite bank rose perpendicularly to a height of twenty feet or more. My astonished eyes saw a rude foot bridge across the stream, one end resting on the low shore and the other terminating abruptly against the bank on the other side. For some time I sat on Golden rubbing my eyes and wondering if I was asleep or awake.
When I returned, the family was at the supper table. I took my place and told my story. Father's questions showed plainly that he thought I was Iying. More charitably, Mother suggested that I lay aside all thought of Cesar's bridge. The subject was dropped so far as Father and Mother were concerned, but the attendants took my story to the cabins. I did not sleep well that night and my dreams were filled with all kinds of bridges, including the Pons assinorum. The following week days brought their pressing duties. But I knew especially from questions asked by the negroes that my story had been widely distributed and that I was suspected of either Iying or insanity. Towards the end of the week there was a lull in the work and Father proposed that we take a ride. I noticed that he turned immediately into the forest and when we reached the creek he gently asked me to lead him to the spot where I had seen the bridge. I complied with a benumbed brain, doubting my own sanity. When we reached the point there was no bridge, but lying on the low bank were the poles which had supported it and the boards which had constituted the flooring. More astounding still, where the point of the farther end of the bridge had touched the cliff there was a tunnel, some feet square, dug into the earth. The excavated soil had evidently fallen into the creek. My heart rejoiced for there was visible truth that I was neither a liar nor was I insane.
The matter became for some time a neighborhood mystery, which was finally solved by ascertaining that a pros- pector had tested the bank in his search for a vein of coal; similar bluffs not far distant were then yielding an inferior grade of bituminous coal. This experience has made me more tolerant of improbable stories told me by my own and other boys, and less ready to pronounce every big story teller a liar.
Being a physician I have been interested in collecting all possible information concerning the prevalence of diseases in the Huguenot branch of my family. Since comma to America three diseases have caused the majority of deaths; one in childhood, one in early adult life, and one in old age. Naturally I am not able to give exact figures since my information comes from tradition, confirmed in part by records in family Bibles. The most fatal childhood disease is designated in the family records as "bloody flux." It is a bacterial dysentery and in some generations has killed quite one half the children, mostly before they reached five years of age. I am the eldest of a family of ten children, five of whom succumbed to this disease, and the fatality among my first cousins was about the same.
My wife and I had a serious experience with this disease in our youngest son. In 1894, she with our five boys went to Missouri to make her father a visit. In about two weeks she called me on account of the serious illness of the baby, then about eighteen months old. I arrived at Huntsville at two P. M. My wife's uncle, Doctor W. H. Taylor, was in attendance and told us that he had at that time some forty children with "bloody flux" under his care and that the mortality was great. The weather was intensely hot, day and night. Even a breeze was like a breath from a blast furnace.
By eight o'clock that even ing my wife and I with the baby were in a stateroom on the fast train for Chicago. The next morning we took the child to a room high up in a hotel facing the lake and by six P. M. we were on a boat and moving northward. During the long vigil of that night we kept the baby on a cot on deck. Strangers in their unwise sympathy crowded about us, cutting off the cool air which we were seeking so desperately. I think that I have never been so ferocious as I was that night. With words as gentle as I could make them I begged the crowd to let the child have air. In my deepest soul I cursed their stupidity. All kinds of suggestions as to treatment came from the kind-hearted people. In words I thanked them; in my heart I damned them. During the next afternoon there came one of those storms which so frequently sweep over Lake Michigan. As darkness was deepening we took the child, still alive but barely so, from the boat to a hotel in Charlevoix where a former and beloved pupil, Doctor Armstrong, rendered us every aid possible. Early the next morning Doctor George Dock, my colleague from Ann Arbor, arrived. A few days later we were in our cottage at Old Mission watching with joy the child's speedy return to health. The memory of this is one of the ties that binds us to Old Mission. This is not a medical essay, but I beg to say that I am thoroughly convinced that the intense and prolonged heat of the Missouri summers is a factor in the high mortality from "bloody flux" in that region. Fortunately improved sanitary conditions have done much towards the elimination of this disease.
Consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis as we now call it, has been a frequent cause of death in the early adult in my family. I have told of my grandfather's attempts to rid himself of this disease by living an outdoor life. Of his seven children who reached maturity three developed consumption; two succumbed and one overcame it after two overland trips from Missouri to New Orleans and a subsequent journey across the plains to California.
In my twenty-first year, my great uncle, Doctor Warren Dameron, recognized the fact that I had pulmonary tuberculosis. At that time I was losing flesh rapidly, my minimum weight being 108, coughing badly and suffering from exhaustive night sweats. This was long before Koch identified and isolated the tubercle bacillus. My good uncle went over the family history with me and gave advice to live an outdoor life. Then with a smile on his lips and a tear in his eyes he said: "Victor, postpone dying as long as possible; let it be the last thing you do." I am consistently following this advice now in my seventy-fifth year.
The treatment which I adopted with my uncle's approval was more heroic than I have ever dared prescribe for any patient. About two miles from my father's house was a sulphur spring, which had some local reputation for its medicinal virtues in which neither my uncle nor I believed. The water welled up into a box which reached to my chin when I stood in it. Every morning during an entire summer and late into the fall before breakfast I rode to the spring, stripped in the open and stood for a few moments in the ice cold water. As cold weather approached I frequently found thin ice in the cow tracks about the box. Soon I began to gain flesh and other unfavorable symptoms gradually faded away. Now the only evidence of the presence of the tubercle bacillus in my body is a lesion in one apex.
An old saying which has run in our family for many generations is as follows: "If you escape consumption in early life you will die of cancer in old age." Of my grandfather's seven children who reached adult life four died after fifty of cancer. It is worthy of note that of these no two had the malignant growth in the same organ. The same grim and remorseless reaper has been equally busy in other branches of the family.
I hope that no one led by my description will attempt to find the old Missouri home. As I have described it, it does not exist; in fact, it has never existed except to me. A wise man centuries ago wrote: "To me things are as they seem to me; to you they are as they seem to you." I have described the old home colored by the imagination of Walter Scott, the stately lines of Virgil and the eloquence and wisdom of that great pagan, Cicero.
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