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Updated: June 4, 2025
Here he witnessed a degree of social advancement far beyond that of the shiftless Algonquins on the St. Lawrence. Here were people living in permanent villages protected by triple palisades of trees, and cultivating fields of maize and pumpkins and patches of sunflowers. To him, coming from gloomy desolation, this seemed a land of beauty and abundance.
The door opened upon a stone-paved hall, or entry, leading into the huge single room of the basement, which was lighted by two small windows, the ceiling black with the smoke of a century and a half; a huge fireplace, calculated for eight-feet wood, occupying one entire side; while, overhead, suspended from the timbers, or on shelves fastened to them, were household stores, farming utensils, fishing-rods, guns, bunches of herbs gathered perhaps a century ago, strings of dried apples and pumpkins, links of mottled sausages, spareribs, and flitches of bacon; the firelight of an evening dimly revealing the checked woollen coverlet of the bed in one far-off corner, while in another "the pewter plates on the dresser Caught and reflected the flame as shields of armies the sunshine."
But before those evenings came Hal and Mab had harvested all the things in the garden, with the help of their father and mother, Uncle Pennywait and Aunt Lolly. "We must get in the pea and bean vines," said Daddy Blake when he saw what a hard frost there had been. "Then we'll thresh them on the barn floor and it will be time soon, Hal, to husk your corn and bring in Aunt Lolly's pumpkins."
Pumpkins, gourds, and water-melons were cut to pieces, and most of the vegetables, including the Indian corn, were destroyed. The fruit trees, too, had suffered greatly. Forty or fifty sheep had been killed outright, and hundreds more were so much hurt that for days they went limping about or appeared stupefied from blows on the head.
One day the Jackal said to the Barber, "It would be a nice thing for us to have a garden of our own, in which we might grow as many cucumbers, pumpkins and melons as we like. Why should we not buy one?" The Barber answered, "Very well; here is money. Do you go and buy us a garden."
Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.
The cucumbers and other similar vegetables sown were ready for picking in less than twenty days. Cabbages, beets, lettuces, salads, and other garden stuff were ripe within ten days; pumpkins and melons were picked twenty-eight days after the seeds were sown.
To these poor invalids our embryo doctor was so useful, that after a few days dosing with proper medicine, their health and spirits began to improve rapidly, and their gratitude was such that they heaped upon him every delicacy that the place afforded, such as bananas, plantains, oranges, lemons, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, beef, goat's flesh, venison, and pork, besides filling his pockets with doubloons!
Why, I don't suppose this girl ever saw anything livelier than a township cattle show, or a Sunday-school picnic, in her life. They don't pay visits in the country except at rare intervals, and their evening parties, when they have any, are something to strike you dead with pity. They used to clear away the corn-husks and pumpkins on the barn floor, and dance by the light of tin lanterns.
They are a little dazed, and do not venture to speak; but they are canny for all that, and bide their time. Amid the babel of voices that surrounds us on all sides, we catch a few utterances as follows: "Five shillings a day, and your tucker!" "Five and threepence, lads!" "He'll give you nothing but salt pork; try me at the same wage!" "And you'll have to live on potatoes and pumpkins with him!"
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