Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1869-07-31
From Mrs. Beecher Stove. New Novel, -old To,
The Yankee Do-Nothing.
MRS. STOVES PORTRAIT OF SAN LAwsos

Every New England village, if you
only think of it, must have its do-noth.
ing as regularly as it has it's school-house
or meeting-house. Nature is always wide
awake in the matter of compensation.
Work, thrift, and industry are such an
incessant steam-power in Yankee life,
that society would burn itself out with
intense friction were there not interpcsed
here and there the lubricating power of
a decided do-nothing-a man who won't
be hurried, and won't work, and will
take his case in his own way, in spite of
the protest of his whole neighborhood
to the contrary. And there is on the
face of the whole earth no do-nothing
whose softness, idleness, general inapti-
tude to labor, and everlasting, universal
shiftlessness can compare with that of
this worthy, as found in a brisk Yankee
village.
Sam Lawson filed this post with am
pie honor in Oldtown. He was fellow
dear TO the souls of all Gus boys" in the
village, because, from the special nature
of his position, he never had any thing
more pressing to do than Groom and gos-
sip with us. He was ready to spend
hours in tinkcring boys jack-knife, or
mending his skate, or start at the small
est notice to watch at q woodchuck's
hole, or give incessant service in tending
n dogs sprained paw. He was always
on hand to 60 fishing with us on Satur-
day afternoons; and have known him
to sit hour after hour on the bank, sur
rounded by troop of boys, batting our
hooks and taking off our fish. He was
a soft-hearted old body, and the wrig-
glings and contortions of our prey used
to disturb his reposo SO that it was n
regular part of his work to kill the fish
by breaking their necks when he took
them from the hook. "Why, lordy mas
sy, boys" he would say, 81 can't bear to
see no kind O. critter in torment. These
ere pout amt to blame for bein' fish, and
ye ought to put 'em out of their mipery.
Fish hes their rights as well as any on
u.s." Nobody but Sam would have
thought of poking through the high
grass and clover on our back lot to look
me up, as l lay sobbing under the old
apple-tree, the most insignificant atom
of misery that ever bewailed the inevi-
table.
Sam was of respectable family, and
not destitute of education. He was an
expert in at least five or six different
kinds of handicraft, in all of which ho
had been pronounced by the knowing
ones to be a capable workman, eff only
he would stick to it," He had a black
smiths shop, where, when the fit was
on, he would shoe horse better than
any man in the country. No one could
supply a missing screw, or supply a
timely brace, with more adroitness. He
could mend cracked china so as to be
almost as good as new; he could use
carpenters tools as we'll as a born car
penter, and would doctor rheumatic
door or q shaky window better than half
the professional artisans in wood. No
man could put refractory clock to
rights with more ingenuity than Sam
that is, il you would give him his time
to be about it.
shall never forget the wrath and dis
may which he reused in my Aunt Lois
mind by the leisurely way in which,
after having taken our own venerable
kitchen clock to pieces, and strewn the
Fragments all over the Kitchen, he would
roost over it in endless incubation, tell
ing stories, entering into long-winded
theological discussions, smoking pipes,
and giving histories of all the other clocks
in Oldtown, with occasional memories of
those in Meedmore, the North Parish,
and Podunk, as placidly Indifferent to all
her volleys Of sarcasm and contempt, her
stinging expostulations and philippics,
as the sailing old moon is to the frisky,
animated barking OF some puppy dog OF
earth.
Besides this, Sam was endowed with
no end of idle accomplishments. His
Incidence was precisely of turn that
enjoyed the excitement of an occasional
odd bit of work with which he had
clearly no concern, an6 which had no
sort of tendency toward his support or
that of his family. Something SO far out
of the line Of practical utility as to be
IN manner an artistic labor would ava