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"We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." Pompions, and what Higginson called squantersquashes, Josselyn squontersquoshes, Roger Williams askutasquashes, Wood isquoukersquashes, and we clip to squashes, grew in vast plenty. The Indians dried the pompions on strings for winter use, as is still done in New England farm communities.
John Josselyn, who was much of the time in New England from 1638 to 1671 and saw more marvels there than anybody else ever imagined, says, "I have sought for this berry he speaks of, as a man should for a needle in a bottle of hay, but could never light upon it; unless that kind of Solomon's seal called by the English treacle-berry should be it."
She began to talk to my brother, and when at last topics of conversation failed, turned to look at the picture of Saint Josselyn, which could be seen through the open folding-doors." "The gentleman whose sole garment consists of some sort of skin thrown over his shoulders: you must all have observed it as we came in to dinner," said our host, in parenthesis.
Van Alstyne, who had a little bonnet, of black lace and nasturtiums, at this very time, that Martha Josselyn had made for her, was astonished to find that she was Mrs. Ingleside's sister and had come on to the marriage. General and Mrs. Ingleside Leslie's cousin Delight had come from their away-off, beautiful Wisconsin home, and brought little three-year-old Rob and Rob's nurse with them.
In nothing could they have experienced so sharp a contrast as in the absence of horses, cattle, and sheep in their husbandry, and especially of milch kine. Josselyn, in his "Two Voyages to New England," gives, in 1628, the following very pertinent list of "Tools for a Family of six persons, and so after this rate for more, intending for New England."
How Miss Craydocke answered, with her gentle, tolerant common-sense, and right thought, and wide-awake brightness; how the Josselyns grew cordial and confident enough to confess that, with five little children in the house, there wasn't a great necessity for laying up against a rainy day, and with stockings at a dollar and a half a pair, one was apt to get the nine stitches, or a pretty comfortable multiple of them, every Wednesday when the wash came in; and how these different kinds of lives, coming together with a friendly friction, found themselves not so uncongenial, or so incomprehensible to each other, after all, all this, in its detail of bright words, I cannot stop to tell you; it would take a good many summers to go through one like this so fully; but when the big bell rang for dinner, they all came down the ledge together, and Sue and Martha Josselyn, for the first time in four weeks, felt themselves fairly one with the current interest and life of the gay house in which they had been dwellers and yet only lookers-on.
Hence we are not surprised to find that Josselyn, in his second visit to New England, some twenty-five years after his first, speaks of the great increase of servants and negroes.
Next day, Tom, Dick, and Harry that is to say, Miss Craydocke, Susan and Martha Josselyn, and Leslie Goldthwaite were gathered in the first-named lady's room, to make the great green curtain. And there Sin Saxon came in upon them, ostensibly to bring the curtain-rings, and explain how she wanted them put on; but after that she lingered.
I speak of it here neither to uphold nor to condemn, simply because they did dance it at Outledge as they do everywhere, and I cannot tell my story without it; but I think at this moment, when Sin Saxon led the figure with Martha Josselyn, there was something lovely, not alone in its graceful grouping, but in the very spirit and possibility of the thing that so appeared.
They had besides apple-tarts, apple mose, apple slump, mess apple-pies, buttered apple-pies, apple crowdy and puff apple-pies all differing. Josselyn said the "Quinces, Cherries, & Damsins set the Dames a-work. Marmalet & Preserved Damsins is to be met with in every house."
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