Daughters of the Revolution. Charles Carleton Coffin
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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.1 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.”2
“Mighty