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By-and-by, however, I began to discern that there was something as good in her example, as the giving of alms to the poor folk; for all the wives of the parish were stirred up by it into a wonderful thrift, and nothing was heard of in every house, but of quiltings and wabs to weave; insomuch that, before many years came round, there was not a better stocked parish, with blankets and napery, than mine was, within the bounds of Scotland.
The farms keep more stock and yield better crops, owing to the amount of imported grain consumed upon them, but the families have dwindled or gone out entirely, and the social and the neighbourhood spirit is not the same. No more huskings or quiltings, or apple cuts, or raisings or "bees" of any sort. The telephone and the rural free delivery have come and the automobile and the daily newspaper.
Lord Upperton, finding pleasure in the society of Miss Newville, asked what recreation the young people in the Colonies enjoyed. She told of the launching of the ship Berinthia Brandon, the pung-ride and dance at the Greyhound Tavern, the quiltings, huskings, and tea-parties. "I hope, Miss Newville, this will not be the last time I shall have the pleasure of seeing you.
Had I been taught that he who does any honest work serves God and follows Christ, what a world of woe would have been spared me. Quiltings furnished the principal amusement, and at these I was in requisition, both for my expertness with the needle, and my skill in laying out work; but as I had no brother to come for me, I usually went home before the evening frolic, which consisted of plays.
Log-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came together to do what the family itself could hardly accomplish alone.
So they grew up, and Zebbie often met Pauline at the quiltings and other gatherings at the homes of non-partisans. He remembers her so perfectly and describes her so plainly that I can picture her easily. She had brown eyes and hair. She used to ride about on her sorrel palfrey with her "nigger" boy Cæsar on behind to open and shut plantation gates.
So much paint had been stolen by the sailors, in daubing their overhaul trowsers and tarpaulins, that by the time I an honest man had completed my quiltings, the paint-pots were banned, and put under strict lock and key. Said old Brush, the captain of the paint-room "Look ye, White-Jacket," said he, "ye can't have any paint."
Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood, but how by herself she learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and trailing arbutus, how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high school, how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising generation, how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer meetings and Sunday sermons, how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr's Island.
Folks ain't got no love in their hearts like they used to have. "Folks would give quiltings. They don't think about quilting now. They would quilt out a quilt and dance the rest of the night. They would have a big supper at the quilting. Nice time too. They would kill a hog and barbecue it. They would cook chicken. Have plenty of whiskey too. Some folks would get drunk. That was whiskey them days.
As for marriage, the possibility of such a thing never crossed her mind; there was not a man in the parish who did not offend her sense of propriety and shock her taste, whenever she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her a blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly regretted at quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she had been so "sociable-like."
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