ROBERT WALDEN GOES TO MARKET

Joshua Walden, of Rumford, Province of New Hampshire, was receiving letters from Samuel Adams and Doctor Joseph Warren in relation to the course pursued by King George iii. and his ministers in collecting revenue from the Colonies.  Mr. Walden had fought the French and Indians at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in the war with France.  The gun and powder-horn which he carried under Captain John Stark were hanging over the door in his kitchen.  His farm was on the banks of the Merrimac.  The stately forest trees had fallen beneath the sturdy blows of his axe, and the sun was shining on intervale and upland, meadow and pasture which he had cleared.  His neighbors said he was getting forehanded.  Several times during the year he made a journey to Boston with his cheeses, beef, pigs, turkeys, geese, chickens, a barrel of apple-sauce, bags filled with wool, together with webs of linsey-woolsey spun and woven by his wife and daughter.  He never failed to have a talk with Mr. Adams and Doctor Warren, John Hancock, and others foremost in resisting the aggressions of the mother country upon the rights and liberties of the Colonies.  When at home he was up early in the morning, building the fire, feeding the cattle, and milking the cows.  Mrs. Walden, the while, was stirring the corn meal for a johnny-cake, putting the potatoes in the ashes, placing the Dutch oven on the coals, hanging the pots and kettles on the hooks and trammels.

Robert, their only son, twenty years old, would be glad to take another nap after being called by his father, but felt it would not be manly for one who had mowed all the hired men out of their swaths in the hayfield, and who had put the best wrestler in Rumford on his back, to lie in bed and let his father do all the chores, with the cows lowing to get to the pasture.  With a spring he was on his feet and slipping on his clothes.  He was soon on his way to the barn, drumming on the tin pail and whistling as he walked to the milking.

The cows turned into pasture, he rubbed down the mare Jenny and the colt Paul, fed the pigs, washed his face and hands, and was ready for breakfast.

It would not have been like Rachel Walden, the only daughter, eighteen years old, to lie in bed and let her mother do all the work about the house.  She came from her chamber with tripping steps, as if it were a pleasure to be wide awake after a good sleep.  She fed the chickens, set the table, raked the potatoes from the ashes, drew a mug of cider for her father.  When breakfast was ready, they stood by their chairs while Mr. Walden asked a blessing.  The meal finished, he read a chapter in the Bible and offered prayer.  When the “Amen” was said, Mr. Walden and Robert put on their hats and went about their work.  Mrs. Walden passed upstairs to throw the shuttle of the loom.  Rachel washed the dishes, wheyed the curd, and prepared it for the press, turned the cheeses and rubbed them with fat.  That done, she set the kitchen to rights, made the beds, sprinkled clean sand upon the floor, wet the web of linen bleaching on the grass in the orchard, then slipped upstairs and set the spinning-wheel to humming.  His neighbors said that Mr. Walden was thrifty and could afford to wear a broadcloth blue coat with bright brass buttons on grand occasions, and that Mrs. Walden was warranted in having a satin gown.

Haying was over.  The rye was reaped, the wheat and oats were harvested, and the flax was pulled.  September had come,-­the time when Mr. Walden usually went to Boston with the cheese.

“Father,” said Rachel at dinner, “I wish you would take the cheeses to market.  It is hard work to turn so many every day.”

Mr. Walden sat in silence awhile.  “Robert,” he said at length, “how would you like to try your hand at truck and dicker?”

“If you think I can do it I will try,” Robert replied, surprised at the question, yet gratified.

“Of course you can do it.  You can figure up how much a cheese that tips the steelyard at twenty pounds and three ounces will come to at three pence ha’penny per pound.  You know, or you ought to know, the difference between a pistareen and a smooth-faced shilling.  When you truck and dicker, you’ve got to remember that the other feller is doing it all the time, while you will be as green as a pumpkin in August.  When you are tasting ’lasses, you must run a stick into the bung-hole of the barrel clear down to the bottom and then lift it up and see if it is thick or thin.  T’other feller will want you to taste it at the spiggot, where it will be almost sugar.  When you are selecting dried codfish, look sharp and not let him give you all damp ones from the bottom of the pile, neither the little scrimped ones from the top.  Of course you will get cheated, but you have got to begin knocking about some time.  You’re old enough to have your eye teeth cut.  You can put Jenny up at the Green Dragon and visit Cousin Jedidiah Brandon on Copp’s Hill, see the ships he is building, visit with Tom and Berinthia.  Tom, I guess, is going to be a chip of the old block, and Berinthia is a nice girl.  Take your good clothes along in your trunk, so after you get through handling the cheese you can dress like a gentleman.  I want you to pick out the best cheese of the lot and give it to Samuel Adams, also another to Doctor Warren, with my compliments.  You can say to Mr. Adams I would like any information he can give about what is going on in London relative to taxing the Colonies.  He is very kind, and possibly may ask you to call upon him of an evening, for he is very busy during the day.  Doctor Warren is one of the kindest-hearted men in the world, and chuck full of patriotism.  He will give a hearty shake to your hand.

“You had better mouse round the market awhile before trading.  John Hancock bought my last load.  His store is close by Faneuil Hall.  He is rich, inherited his property from his uncle.  He lives in style in a stone house on Beacon Hill.  He is liberal with his money, and is one of the few rich men in Boston who take sides with the people against the aggressions of King George and his ministers.  Mr. Adams begins to be gray, but Warren and Hancock are both young men.  They are doing grand things in maintaining the rights of the Colonies.  I want you to make their acquaintance.  By seeing and talking with such men you will be worth more to yourself and everybody else.  Your going to market and meeting such gentlemen will be as good as several months of school.  You’ll see more people than you ever saw on the muster-field; ships from foreign lands will be moored in the harbor.  You’ll see houses by the thousand, meetinghouses with tall steeples, and will hear the bells ring at five o’clock in the morning, getting-up time, at noon for dinner, and at nine in the evening, bed-time.  Two regiments of redcoats are there.  The latest news is that they are getting sassy.  I can believe it.  At Ticonderoga and Crown Point they used to put on airs, and call the Provincials “string-beans,” “polly-pods,” “slam bangs.”  They turned up their noses at our buckskin breeches, but when it came to fighting we showed ’em what stuff we were made of.  Don’t let ’em pick a quarrel, but don’t take any sass from ’em.  Do right by everybody.”

“I will try to do right,” Robert replied.

The sun was rising the next morning when Robert gathered up the reins and stood ready to step into the wagon which had been loaded for the market.

“You have three dozen new milk cheeses,” said Rachel, “and two and one half dozen of four meal.  I have marked the four meals with a cross in the centre, so you’ll know them from the new milk.  There are sixteen greened with sage.  They look real pretty.  I have put in half a dozen skims; somebody may want ’em for toasting.”

“You will find,” said Mrs. Walden, “a web of linsey-woolsey in your trunk with your best clothes, and a dozen skeins of wool yarn.  It is lamb’s wool.  I’ve doubled and twisted it, and I don’t believe the women will find in all Boston anything softer or nicer for stockings.”

“I have put up six quarts of caraway seed,” said Rachel.  “I guess the bakers will want it to put into gingerbread.  And I have packed ten dozen eggs in oats, in a basket.  They are all fresh.  You can use the oats to bait Jenny with on your way home.”

“There are two bushels of beans,” said Mr. Walden, “in that bag,-­the one-hundred-and-one kind,-­and a bushel and three pecks of clover seed in the other bag.  You can get a barrel of ’lasses, half a quintal of codfish, half a barrel of mackerel, and a bag of Turk’s Island salt.”

“Don’t forget,” said Mrs. Walden, “that we want some pepper, spice, cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, and some of the very best Maccaboy snuff.  Oh, let me see!  I want a new foot-stove.  Our old one is all banged up, and I am ashamed to be seen filling it at noon in winter in Deacon Stonegood’s kitchen, with all the women looking on, and theirs spick and span new.”

“Father and mother have told me what they want, and now what shall I get for you, Rachel?” Robert asked of his sister.

“Anything you please, Rob,” Rachel replied with such tender love in her eyes that he had half a mind to kiss her.  But kissing was not common in Rumford or anywhere else in New England.  Never had he seen his father give his mother such a token of affection.  He had a dim recollection that his mother sometimes kissed him when he was a little fellow in frock and trousers, sitting in her lap.  He never had kissed Rachel, but he would now, and gave her a hearty smack.  He saw an unusual brightness in her eyes and a richer bloom upon her cheek as he stepped into the wagon.

“I’ll get something nice for her,” he said to himself as he rode away.

Besides the other articles in the wagon, there was a bag of wool, sheared from his own flock.  Years before his father had given him a cosset lamb, and now he was the owner of a dozen sheep.  Yes, he would get something for her.

The morning air was fresh and pure.  He whistled a tune and watched the wild pigeons flying in great flocks here and there, and the red-winged blackbirds sweeping past him from their roosting in the alders along the meadow brook to the stubble field where the wheat had been harvested.  Gray squirrels were barking in the woods, and their cousins the reds, less shy, were scurrying along the fence rails and up the chestnut-trees to send the prickly burrs to the ground.  The first tinge of autumn was on the elms and maples.  Jenny had been to market so many times she could be trusted to take the right road, and he could lie upon his sack of wool and enjoy the changing landscape.

Mrs. Stark was blowing the horn for dinner at John Stark’s tavern in Derryfield when Jenny came to a standstill by the stable door. Robert put her in the stall, washed his face and hands in the basin on the bench by the bar-room door, and was ready for dinner.  Captain Stark shook hands with him.  Robert beheld a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a high forehead, bright blue eyes, and pleasant countenance, but with lines in his cheek indicating that he could be very firm and resolute.  This was he under whom his father served at Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

“So you are the son of Josh Walden, eh?  Well, you have your father’s eyes, nose, and mouth.  If you have got the grit he had at Ti, I’ll bet on you.”

Many times Robert had heard his father tell the story of the Rifle Rangers, the service they performed, the hardships they endured, and the bravery and coolness of John Stark in battle.

Through the afternoon the mare trotted on, halting at sunset at Jacob Abbott’s stable in Andover.

It was noon the next day when Robert reached Cambridge.  He had heard about Harvard College; now he saw the buildings.  The students were having a game of football after dinner.  The houses along the streets were larger than any he had ever seen before,-­stately mansions with porticoes, pillars, pilasters, carved cornices, and verandas.  The gardens were still bright with the flowers of autumn.  Reaching Roxbury, he came across a man slowly making his way along the road with a cane.

“Let me give you a lift, sir,” Robert said.

“Thank you.  I have been down with the rheumatiz, and can’t skip round quite as lively as I could once,” said the man as he climbed into the wagon. “’Spect you are from the country and on your way to market, eh?”

Robert replied that he was from New Hampshire.

“Ever been this way before?”

“No, this is my first trip.”

“Well, then, perhaps I can p’int out some things that may interest ye.”

Robert thanked him.

“This little strip of land we are on is the ‘Neck.’  This water on our left is Charles River,-­this on our right is Gallows Bay.  Ye see that thing out there, don’t ye?”

The man pointed with his cane.  “Well, that’s the gallows, where pirates and murderers are hung.  Lots of ’em have been swung off there, with thousands of people looking to see ’em have their necks stretched.  ’Tain’t a pretty sight, though.”

The man took a chew of tobacco, and renewed the conversation.

“My name is Peter Bushwick, and yours may be-?”

“Robert Walden.”

“Thank ye, Mr. Walden.  So ye took the road through Cambridge instead of Charlestown.”

“I let Jenny pick the road.  That through Charlestown would have been nearer, but I should have to cross the ferry.  My father usually comes this way."

“Mighty fine mare, Mr. Walden; ye can see she’s a knowing critter.  She’s got the right kind of an ear; she knows what she’s about.”

They were at the narrowest part of the peninsula, and Mr. Bushwick told about the barricade built by the first settlers at that point to protect the town from the Indians, and pointed to a large elm-tree which they could see quite a distance ahead.

“That is the Liberty Tree," he said.

“Why do you call it the Liberty Tree?”

“Because it is where the Sons of Liberty meet.  It is a mighty fine tree, and, as near as we can make out, is more than one hundred years old.  We hang the Pope there on Guy Fawkes’ day, and traitors to liberty on other days.”

“I have heard you have jolly good times on Gunpowder Plot days.”

“You may believe we do.  You would have laughed if you’d been here Gunpowder day seven years ago this coming November, when the Pope, Admiral Byng, Nancy Dawson, and the Devil, all were found hanging on the old elm.”

“I don’t think I ever heard about Admiral Byng and Nancy Dawson.”

“Well, then, I must tell ye.  Byng didn’t fight the French and Spaniards at Minorca, but sailed away and sort o’ showed the white feather, and so was court-martialed and shot on his own ship.”

“What did Nancy do?”

“Oh, Nancy never did anything except kick up her heels; she’s the best dancer in London, so they say.  We haven’t any theatre in this ’ere town, and don’t have much dancing.  We have the Thursday lecture instead.”

Robert wondered whether the allusion to the lecture was said soberly or in sarcasm.

“In London they go wild over dancing.  Maybe I might sing a song about her if ye would like to hear it.”

“I would like very much to hear it.”

Mr. Bushwick took the quid of tobacco from his mouth, cleared his throat, and sang,-

     “’Of all the girls in our town,
     The black, the fair, the red, the brown,
     That dance and prance it up and down,
     There’s none like Nancy Dawson.

     “’Her easy mien, her shape, so neat,
     She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet,
     Her every motion so complete,-
     There’s none like Nancy Dawson.

     “’See how she comes to give surprise,
     With joy and pleasure in her eyes;
     To give delight she always tries,-
     There’s none like Nancy Dawson.’”

“That’s a good song,” said Robert.  Mr. Bushwick put the quid once more in his mouth, and went on with the story.

“On that night a great crowd gathered around the tree; the boys who go to Master Lovell’s school came with an old knocked-kneed horse and a rickety wagon with a platform in it.  They fixed the effigies on the platform with cords and pulleys, so that the arms and legs would be lifted when the boys under it pulled the strings.  We lighted our torches and formed in procession.  The fifers played the Rogue’s March, and the bellman went ahead singing a song.

     “’Don’t you remember
     The fifth of November-
     The gunpowder treason plot? 
     I see no reason
     Why gunpowder treason
     Should ever be forgot.

     “’From the city of Rome
     The Pope has come
     Amid ten thousand fears,
     With fiery serpents to be seen
     At eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

     “’Don’t you hear my little bell
     Go chinking, chinking, chink? 
     Please give me a little money
     To buy my Pope a drink.’

“The streets were filled with people, who tossed pennies into the bellman’s hat.  Everybody laughed to see the Pope lifting his hands and working his under jaw as if preaching, Byng rolling his goggle eyes, Nancy kicking with both legs, and the Devil wriggling his tail.  We marched awhile, then put the Pope and the devil into the stocks, Nancy in the pillory, tied Byng to the whipping-post and gave him a flogging, then kindled a bonfire in King Street, pitched the effigies into it, and went into the Tun and Bacchus, Bunch of Grapes, and Admiral Vernon, and drank flip, egg-nogg, punch, and black strap."

Mr. Bushwick chuckled merrily, and took a fresh quid of tobacco.  Robert also laughed at the vivacious description.

“But I don’t quite see why it should be called the Liberty Tree,” Robert said.

“I was coming to that.  You know that Lord Bute brought forward the Stamp Act a few years ago:  well, this old elm being so near the White Lamb and the White Horse, it was a convenient place for the citizens to meet to talk about the proposition to tax us.  One evening Ben Edes, who publishes the ‘Gazette and News-Letter,’ read what Ike Barre said in Parliament in opposition to the Stamp Act, in which he called us Americans Sons of Liberty, and as that was our meeting-place, we christened the place Liberty Hall and the old elm Liberty Tree.  That was in July, 1765, just after Parliament passed the Stamp Act.  The king had appointed Andrew Oliver stamp-master, and one morning his effigy was dangling from the tree, and a paper pinned to it writ large:-

     “’Fair Freedom’s glorious Cause I’ve meanly quitted
     For the sake of pelf;
     But ah, the Devil has me outwitted;
     Instead of hanging others,
     I’ve hanged myself.’

“Then there was a figure of a great boot, with the Devil peeping out of it, to represent the king’s minister, Lord Bute.  When night came, all hands of us formed in procession, laid the effigies on a bier, marched to the Province House so that the villain, Governor Bernard, could see us, went to Mackerel Lane, tore down the building Oliver was intending to use for the sale of the stamps, went to Fort Hill, ripped the boards from his barn, smashed in his front door, and burned the effigies to let him know we never would consent to be taxed in that way.  A few days later Oliver came to the tree, held up his hand, and swore a solemn oath that he never would sell any stamps, so help him God!  And he never did, for ye see King George had to back down and repeal the bill.  It was the next May when Shubael Coffin, master of the brigantine Harrison, brought the news.  We set all the bells to ringing, fired cannon, and tossed up our hats.  The rich people opened their purses and paid the debts of everybody in jail.  We hung lanterns on the tree in the evening, set off rockets, and kindled bonfires.  John Hancock kept open house, with ladies and gentlemen feasting in his parlors, and pipes of wine on tap in the front yard for everybody.”

“It must have been a joyful day,” said Robert.

“That’s what it was.  Everybody was generous.  Last year when the day came round a lot of us gathered under the old tree to celebrate it.  Sam Adams was there, James Otis, Doctor Warren, John Hancock, and ever so many more.  We fired salutes, sang songs, and drank fourteen toasts.  That was at ten o’clock.  Just before noon we rode out to the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury in carriages and chaises, and had a dinner of fish, roast pig, sirloin, goose, chickens and all the trimmings, topping off with plum-pudding and apple-pie, sang Dickenson’s Liberty Song, drank thirty more toasts, forty-four in all, filling our glasses with port, madeira, egg-nogg, flip, punch, and brandy.  Some of us, of course, were rather jolly, but we got home all right,” said Mr. Bushwick, laughing.

“You mean that some of you were a little weak in the legs,” said Robert.

“Yes, and that the streets were rather crooked,” Mr. Bushwick replied, laughing once more.

They were abreast of the tree, and Robert reined in Jenny while he admired its beautiful proportions.

“I think I must leave you at this point; my house is down here, on Cow Lane, not far from the house of Sam Adams.  I’m ever so much obliged to you for the lift ye’ve given me,” said Mr. Bushwick as he shook hands with Robert.

“I thank you for the information you have given me,” Robert replied.

Jenny walked on, past the White Horse Inn and the Lamb Tavern.  A little farther, and he beheld the Province House, a building with a cupola surmounted by a spire.  The weather-vane was an Indian with bow and arrow.  The king’s arms, carved and gilded, were upon the balcony above the doorway.  Chestnut trees shaded the green plot of ground between the building and the street.  A soldier with his musket on his shoulder was standing guard.  Upon the other side of the way, a few steps farther, was a meetinghouse; he thought it must be the Old South.  His father had informed him he would see a brick building with an apothecary’s sign on the corner just beyond the Old South, and there it was. Also, the Cromwell’s Head Tavern on a cross street, and a schoolhouse, which he concluded must be Master Lovell’s Latin School.  He suddenly found Jenny quickening her pace, and understood the meaning when she plunged her nose into a watering trough by the town pump.  While she was drinking Robert was startled by a bell tolling almost over his head; upon looking up he beheld the dial of a clock and remembered his father had said it was on the Old Brick Meetinghouse; that the building nearly opposite was the Town House. He saw two cannon in the street and a soldier keeping guard before the door.  Negro servants were filling their pails at the pump, and kindly pumped water for the mare.  Looking down King Street toward the water, he saw the stocks and pillory, the Custom House, and in the distance the masts and yard-arms of ships.  Up Queen Street he could see the jail.

The mare, having finished drinking, jogged on.  He saw on the left-hand side of the street the shop of Paul Revere, goldsmith. The thought came that possibly he might find something there that would be nice and pretty for Rachel.

Jenny, knowing she was nearing the end of her journey, trotted through Union Street, stopping at last in front of a building where an iron rod projected from the wall, supporting a green dragon with wings, open jaws, teeth, and a tongue shaped like a dart. The red-faced landlord was standing in the doorway.

“Well Jenny, old girl, how do you do?” he said, addressing the mare.  “So it is the son and not the father?  I hope you are well.  And how’s your dad?”

Robert replied that his father was well.

“Here, Joe; put this mare in the stable, and give her a good rubbing down.  She’s as nice a piece as ever went on four legs.”

The hostler took the reins and Robert stepped from the wagon.

“Pete Augustus, take this gentleman’s trunk up to Devonshire.  It will be your room, Mr. Walden.”

Robert followed the negro upstairs, and discovered that each room had its distinctive name.  He could have carried the trunk, but as he was to be a gentleman, it would not be dignified were he to shoulder it.  He knew he must be in the market early in the morning, and went to bed soon after supper.  He might have gone at once to Copp’s Hill, assured of a hearty welcome in the Brandon home, but preferred to make the Green Dragon his abiding-place till through with the business that brought him to Boston.