A Tribute To The Home of His Childhood

Maine, 1916

By Rev. George B. Ilsley.

Where was it? In Limerick — one of the best of all the towns in York county, Me., encircled by hills on every side — with excellent farms and orchards, having "fine variety of hard and soft wood growth." The old academy stood upon one of its most sightly hill tops — with the village just below it to the north. From this eminence a splendid view of Mt. Washington was obtained. Except for the climb, it was an ideal spot for scholars. It was a High school, indeed! The village with its three meeting-houses and numerous stores was a centre for trade to surrounding towns. Stages ran daily to Portland, Saco and every other to North Berwick via Alfred.

Not a mile south was the home of my childhood. In 1825 grandfather and father bought one of the Felch farms, and lived together upon it, till 1856, when within three weeks they both died. Until then for 16 years it was my happy home. Working on the land was conducive to physical health and vigor.

Going to the summer and winter terms at the old schoolhouse, developed our mental abilities from the A B C's up to admission to the academy where I began to fit for college in 1856.

"How dear to my heart are those scenes of my childhood!" The making of maple-sugar was strenuous recreation — to lug up the sap from the woods and the boiling of it down to syrup! But, oh how sweet it was! Then came the putting up the gaps in the walls which the frosts had made all around the fields and pastures. It was an early spring task. In haying 5 and 6 would be mowing one after the other. It was fun for us boys to follow up and spread it; and then ride the horse to rake it with "the old revolver."

Sometimes it would be September ere we finished.

The old farm of 200 acres seemed immense to my childish comprehension. It was two miles around it. To go through the woods to the Marr's pasture, where the sheep and oxen were kept, was quite an expedition. But it was always a delight to go with father to salt the sheep!

The farm was well located, all in one solid block, bounded on the west by the Main road, on the north by the county road to Limington, on the east by Peter Fogg's pasture, and south by Isaiah Guptil's farm. (He had six boys, Moses, the triplets, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Hiram and Stillman, and five girls. At one time five in the family could not walk alone.)

To the south Ossipee Mt., 4 miles away, was the highest point to gaze upon. Shapleigh hills and plains were beyond. To the north those of Cornish and Limington appeared. The outlook, going back and forth to the village was always beautiful and inspiring. It is still so as I return to it. No other scenery is quite like it. II. No neighbors were quite so good as those just at a near by "Felch Corner". Shall I name them? Across the garden, below, was uncle Jeremiah's house, with cousins Ben and Ed. The Allen sisters, who sold out to Stoddards and moved to the village, one was my earliest school teacher. Then the Meserves, and aunt Polly and son, Nathaniel L. The Brackett Leavitt family with Shubel, Sarah and Louise; across on the corner. The FelcheS, Amos Gene, Amos Jr, and Alvan, the preacher, then beyond Major his son, Moses Fogg. Westward a bit the little Knowlton home, and then the Pierce family, Daniel and Josiah brothers; then the old wooden school house now since 1858, the brick one then, Albion Bradbury, mother and sisters, then the Doles and Gilpatricks, just on the brow of Favor's hill, where we had our best coasting in winter. Half a mile from Felch's Corner to the East way Tufts bridge. Here was the trout brook running through Bradbury's and Tufts field above the road and through Fogg's pasture south of it, and then into Cradbourne's, then into Pierce, and Gilpatrick's meadows. Do I not still see the hole where I caught my first one? Yes indeed, and going back to it 40 years later cutting away the alders I took another out of the same place. I may do it again before I'm eighty.

The new Dole, Gilpatrick, and Hodgdon saw-mill in which father had a share was a place of great attraction to me and all the boys of the neighborhood. In early spring we could get a big trout, and in summer pickerel. It was a fine place for swimming also, and for building rafts to paddle over the pond to fish and dive from when in bathing.

Many a pleasant picnic was held here, as well as on the old farm when the cousins came in summer time from Portland and Chelsea. But now the old mill is all gone.

Planting time always had some excitement about it, carting out the barn dressing, then plowing it in. Breaking up new ground required all the oxen and steers we could muster. It was a big team sometimes.

One year, Abe Guptil was the hired man, one of the twins. We began spring work April 9th and got all the planting done on May 13th. Then came the sheep washing when the flock was driven to the County Bridge over a mile away. Sometimes we boys, in ducking the big lambs, got plunged in ourselves by their vigorous resistance. This with the shearing and the marking of the lamb's ear, by splitting them was a time of great interest to us. There was nothing dull or dreary about such childhood days.

The hoeing, when the twitch-grass was stout I never enjoyed very much. But I recall one time when grandfather was about 80 and I 15. We had a race to see who would hoe his row out first. I did my best, but he beat me. Up to 83 he was a smart man to work, no matter whether it was hoeing or mowing, digging potatoes or husking corn, he was sure to do his part.

Seventy years ago we as boys had no boughten toys. We had to make our traps for squirrels, skunks and woodchucks if we caught them. Our bows and arrows to shoot with, and our kites to fly we made.

Grandpa being a cabinet-maker in Portland brought many of his tools to Limerick, and had a shop for them. This was our resort on rainy days; and we were not slow about using them to make what we felt we wanted most. At one time I strove hard to construct a violin, but failed in glueing it together. At bow-guns, stilts, traps and sleds, we became quite proficient.

When grandpa found that we had dulled his saws, planes or chisels, and each of us answered that "I didn't do it," he would make his earnest reply to us, "Nobody did it." "Nobody did it."

But we loved him if sometimes he did seem to scold us. We knew he loved us. He was a kind and great hearted, Christian man.

Every morning just before gathering about the big, round breakfast table, when all were present, was his time to furnish devotion. A chapter was read from his Bible, taken down from the dinning room shelf, then he knelt in prayer on our behalf. At every meal it was his custom to ask God's blessing on the food before us.

When the weather was too cold for the Sunday evening prayer meetings to be at the school house our dining room was the usual place for them, at early candle light, where 50 or more, by opening the sitting room, could be seated. In this he always took some part by prayer or testimony. He was a good singer and joined in every song. As a small boy I remember how I helped bring in the chairs and arrange them in rows, for men on one side and women on the other. The light-stand with the Bible and hymn book for the minister was always near the sitting-room-door. The young folks used to gather and those who were not church members used to take the sitting room.

It was grandfather's custom to have a song service after the people had gone.

It was his delight to rehearse many of the old hymns, and have us gather round and help him. With my three sisters and two brothers we had a good time of it; especially when he got out the old bass viol, and uncle Jeremiah came in with his clarionet, and if Aunt "Nodie" was there with her excellent soprano voice, those to me were pretty fine concerts. Here I took my first lessons in music. One of his favorite hymns was "How Firm a Foundation Ye Saints of the Lord." Such influences tended to draw me early into Christian life, and later all my brothers and sisters.

Our aged grandpa's example and life were a constant benediction upon us, filling the home with the sweetest of good influences. His benignant face stills hangs upon my study wall.

It was always a pleasure to be with him in the field, in the carriage, or in the old meeting house on the Hill. One of my boyish amusements in the square pew at the right of the pulpit, with closed door was the getting of flies and wasps into a paper box which was made for that purpose. In the winter Grandma had her foot stove there. Old Elder Flanders of Buxton, who had a very big nose, whom my father used to shave, before he went to church Sunday morning to supply, was one of the first I can remember. He used to put up at our house. When he blew his nose with a big red bandanna handkerchief he made a loud noise of it. In the "40's" when Josiah Tilton was pastor I remember going to the Donation Party at the parsonage and the eating of blancmange of which I still have a fondness. Then came Elder Tripp who taught one term of winter school, whereby my thirst for knowledge was much strengthened. After he came Rev. Jeremiah D. Tilton under whom I joined the church in 1854.

It is with grief I think now of the diminished membership and the closed doors on Lord's Day of the Little White church on the Hill.

Most of the people of 70 years ago are buried in the cemetery close by. What a joy it would be to go back and meet them there again as in the days of childhood.

"Backward, turn backward,
O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again
Just for to night!"
***. (To mother)

"Many a summer,
The grass has grown green
Blossomed and faded,
Our faces between;
Yet with strong yearning
and passionate pain
Long I tonight
For your presence again.
Rocke me to sleep mother
Rocke me to sleep."
—Earnest Leslie.

"Be it ever so humble,
there is no place like home;
A charm from the skies
Seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek thru the world,
Is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home, home sweet, sweet home."
— John Howard Payne.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 8.

Wise Words — "Whatever Love Undertakes"

1896

Whatever love undertakes to do, it does well.

A sunbeam in the heart is bound to light the face.

Some people might as well be crazy; they have no sense.

Labor is drudgery only when we do not put heart in our work.

A pessimist is not blind, yet he can not see even a bright prospect.

It is to live twice when we enjoy the recollections of our former life.

Some people prepare their excuses before they make their failures.

Everyone believes in friends until he has had occasions to try them.

Nothing succeeds like success. It can convert a traitor into a patriot in five seconds.

When we come close to a giant, he often turns out to be only a common man on stilts.

A little lovers' quarrel or two is a good thing by which to take each other's measure.

It is a question with many bright young men whether they will practice law, medicine or deception.

Never lie in bed thinking that the cat that is howling in the back yard will grow weary and go away.

A single man has nobody but himself to blame if things go wrong. A married man can blame it all to his wife.

It is not in the power of a good man to refuse making another happy, where he has both ability and opportunity. — The South-West.

A Sugar Barrel

1900

"A sugar barrel, boys!" What a scampering that announcement used to cause among the boys in the vicinity of a country store, a few years ago, when much soft brown sugar was used. The emptied hogsheads, with a luscious coat of sweetness adhering to the rough staves, were cast out in the back yard, much to the boys' delight. John B. Grozier, who spent his youth in Canada, recalls these "sugar-barrel" scenes from his own experience.

One of the boys was always on the watch as informal scout, to give notice to the rest of anything interesting and available in the way of fun. The empty sugar hogshead used to appear with considerable regularity. The scout would see it, and after a liberal taste himself, would rush to the mill-pond, where he would probably find the rest of us bathing.

"A sugar barrel, boys!" was his greeting. It was enough. Putting on half of our clothes as we went, we would dash off after our guide, like a scattered train of camp-followers.

It must have been comical to see a dozen urchins straggling along, picking their way barefooted over the rocks and rough ground; struggling to put on a ragged vest or a coat, while maintaining a sort of Indian jog-trot for fear of losing a share in the feast.

Then, lo, the hogshead; and into it the first comers rushed pell-mell. Those who came after contented themselves with hoping there would be enough for all; or possibly they obtained a morsel or two by clever reaching from the outside. — Youth's Companion.

The Lullaby Song Mother Used To Sing

1911

The Lullaby Song

Some time ago a western contemporary gave utterance to this practical, prosaic and unemotional declaration: "Another very pretty sentiment that should be exploded is the lullaby song. Did your mother rock you to sleep and sing while doing it, and you recall the song? As a rule, a woman has so many children they are hustled off to bed without being rocked, and what mother ever knew a lullaby from start to finish?"

There are some things that are too sacred for alleged humor or wit and the above is an instance in point, as there are many who will not accept it as either, for as observed by an exchange there are those whose years have exiled them to dreamland, who can call up tender recollections of childhood and remember the songs that mother used to sing.

There are plenty of old men living who had mothers who could sing in low, tender, though uncultivated, tones the lullaby song, and its melody is still enshrined in the heart and thrills in memory. The old man of German stock especially can remember the simple folk song of the Fatherland that his mother sang above his cradle. Long ago its music came from over the sea, and at last has incorporated in the runic rhymes the old colored nurse crooned or warbled to woo sleep to infantile eyelids.

It may be that in later years we have been privileged to hear the great voices of the day. But all their grand arias never so touched our hearts as when in an encore they gave us a melody that had been dedicated to babyland and which thousands of mothers had sung to the cradle's rocker beating time.

It is strange what a hold these simple melodies of childhood retain in a life, however long, however filled with changes and vicissitude. There is something in their joys though they be ever so fleeting, that remains indelible. Every now and then, in quiet hours, the heart will hark back over the intervening years and remember it with reverence. And who will say that we are not better men and women for such moments of reflection, even though they do bring back the sound of voices that have long been silent, and the touch of hands that are dust?

And can you recall the song? Of course! You hear the familiar notes again in the midst of other surroundings, and instantly the scene is changed about you. You are a child again, just for a moment, and you look up, as you did in days gone by, into a face you love — oh, it may be aged and wrinkled and homely now, but it's still to you the sweetest face in the world.

You look again into eyes that are eloquent with a mother's unspeakable love — the purest, sweetest, holiest feeling the human heart may know. You feel again the comforting presence of her who guided your first uncertain footsteps, who heard you lisp your first little words, and whose tender solicitude for you has never ceased in all these years.

Can you recall the song? A generation may have passed since you heard it. Perhaps, in the corner of some quiet churchyard the singer lies asleep. Years and experience may have come upon you since you heard it last from her dear lips. Scenes may have changed, and your feet have wandered far since then; but never, never have you forgotten.

Life has brought you discords, but they can't erase it. After it may have come the other songs of other days. but the echo of those earlier ones is with you always. Childhood can never die.

No, do not tell us that the lullabies have gone out of fashion, after all these ages in which they have been sung over cradle and couch, in hovel and palace, and been remembered by millions in whose hearts remained an echo and a light of other days. The childhood that never heard a mother's lullaby is not apt to have a manhood of wholesome sentiment or that reverence for womankind which ennobles the heart and uplifts the soul.

—The Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, Feb. 28, 1911, p. 6.

Flowers in the Home

1883

Flowers! How our thoughts brighten at that word! They fly back over, ten, twenty, thirty, aye, forty years, to the times when we wove garlands from the wild sweet blossoms. What dainty, golden necklet we have since worn has given us the pleasure we felt when we decked ourselves in a simple daisy chain?

But I did not take up my pen to write of our sweet childhood; I wish to speak to my sisters of the home; I wish to remind them that nothing will make a home truly refined but flowers. Ah, they are infinitely more than rich furniture, and even more than books or pictures, or music itself, for they speak to all. None are too old, too young, too ignorant nor too refined to be taught by those sweet, fragile teachers. Then, busy, planning housewives, find a place for something that will tell you "God is love" — a little flowering plant.

It need not be a rare exotic in a costly vase. Primroses, violets, hyacinths, or any sweet, simple flower in an ordinary pot is quite enough. But you can make your pot quite a work of art with a little patience, ingenuity and corks. Take a flower-pot, a small wooden box, or anything convenient, and glue on fragments of corn until the outside is covered with a rustic coat. Then fill with mold and plant your flower.

Another way is — paint your pot or box a dark brown; then, when, it is dry, gum on some of those pretty, cheap scraps in wreaths or groups, and finish with a coat of clear varnish. Yet another way is to adapt common sea shells and pebbles. Ah, they are little things, but they will brighten a room, and perhaps a sad, dark, weary soul. What memories they awaken!

But a week ago a pot of spring flowers was placed in my hand, and with their sweet breath floated the memories of ten years ago, when I gathered the wild flowers and wove them into garlands; when I was not alone, but had the companionship of one who now sleeps in God's Acre beneath the flowers, when my faith in God and man was unshaken; and for that glimpse of my fair, pure childhood I was stronger and better. Then find a place for flowers. For all your care and trouble their sweetness and beauty will reward you fourfold. — The Toronto Globe.

The Charm of A Great Biography

1916

It Leads the Reader Into Quaint and Delightful Byways

Reading biography will furnish you with a peculiar and rare form of entertainment, for besides the subject at hand biography legitimately treats of the foibles, the fashions and the peculiarities of the age with which it deals, says Youth's Companion.

History, although it may have its lighter moments, is essentially sober, but biography, although it is never merely farcical or satirical, may touch vividly open the lighter phases of life and take you, as it were, into quaint and delightful byways, through private parks and into remote and lovely fields.

"Indeed," wrote Boswell in his introduction to his famous biography, "I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life than by not only relating the most important events of it in their order, but by interweaving what he privately wrote and said and thought, by which mankind are enabled, as it were, to see him live and to live o'er each scene with him as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life."

Biography, treated in that manner, must inevitably include much that is delightfully diverting. It will give you "the table talk of the great;" it will recount those fascinating little incidents and anecdotes that history so often regards as beneath its notice. It will afford far more than a running account of a life, "beginning with a pedigree and ending with a funeral."

Aphasia Victim Responds

1920

Serum Injected Into Spine of San Quentin Convict Causes Memory to Return.

SAN QUENTIN, Cal., Feb. 24.— "Robert Lockwood" serving a term for grand larceny at the prison here, has responded to treatment for aphasia and has recovered his memory, lost in 1917, Dr. Leo L. Stanley announced today.

"Lockwood's" real name is Fred Bruley. He formerly lived in Plattsburg, N. Y., and he has a wife and family in that state. His father's name is Peter Bruley. He now remembers boarding a train for Chicago, but can recall no details of what occurred after that.

Dr. Stanley injected serum into his spine and the memory returned soon after. Bruley's steady attitude of not trying to excuse his crimes convinced Dr. Stanley he was not trying to feign aphasia.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 24, 1920, page 1.

A Poem in Memory of Mrs. E. Calvey, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

1912

IN MEMORIAM

Lines in Memory of Mrs. E. Calvey.

Grandma's chair is vacant
In the old familiar place
Where the children sat and listened,
To her tales of childhood days.

We children loved her dearly
Our grandma, good and kind,
Whose tender voice and loving hands
Now cold in death, they'd ever soothing find.

We will grieve for her and call her,
But we will call in vain:
She has gone to her eternal rest,
To no care or pain.

Her old arm chair is vacant,
But we will hold her memory dear,
And we'll keep the old chair sacred,
Though she'll never more be here.

MARIE FITZGERALD.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 20, 1912, page 5.