Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-12-10
and stone that their less sturdy children

and stone that their less sturdy children
have built after them.
They loved 10 build them, too, after the
fashion rendered so necessary in the mar
row streets of the cities whence they had
come--with projecting upper stories. lhls
feature has given rise 70 supposltion
that this was their plan of keeping the In
dams from scaling their outer walls, but
the explanation is a much simpler one.
They followed the quaint rule OF their
mother-land.
In 1906 then, on the evening of the
10Th day OF October, in the stout, low
ceiled "sittng ROOM" whose two front
windows looked out upon the waves. OPP
posite from the deep, old fireplace, sat
gran'ther and Granny Clap; Prudence
Heard, their only surviving child; her
husband, Ezekiel; and two stout, tow
headed and beach blistered boys, respect
ively Jonathan and Truthful Heard.
Granther and Granny Clap were dot
ing and doing old couple, who had lived
the hard, practical New England work
day and weekday lives of this people to
the best OF their knowledge and their
faith; and having reared a house full of
boys for the sea to swallow up one by one
in their fathers trade and theirs, had done
their duty generally, as their neighbors
understood it. and were now nursing the
remnant of their vitality at the hearth
stone around which they sat on their we'd
ding night, and which they had transmit
ted in due time to their only daughter.
Prudence has been brought up on the
New England Primer, whole daty-ol-man
principle, and has thrivcd upon it. She
4 . MONDAYS Jrv n
Tuesdays, iron on Wednesdays, bake on
Thursdays, brew on Fridays. TO keep her.
self composed and sober on Saturdays, to
eat cold dinner and 90 to meetin on the
Sabbaths. And so, first for her fathers
family, and then for her own, she had
washed, dried. ironed, baked and brewed,
and gone to meeting, for twenty-four
years In the intervals of these duties
she had been courted, asked" and mar
ried. There had seemed to her to be but
very slight interval between her child
hood and her motherhood. between the
days when she toiled and spun for her
brothers, and when she toiled and spun
for her babies. She had married because
the strong, sturdy, aud honest fisherman
had "asked her in meetin," and because
it was her duty to go on as her mother
and grandmother before her had gone
spinning and going to mectin', baking and
brewing, and replenishing the land.
The society with which she had mingled
like the society that had been her mothers
and her fathers had been and was bound
ed by the four walls of Governor VIM
throp's storm-beaten house on the cliff;
but, in the absence of society, she loved
her husband and her children, tenderly
cherished the two relies at the fircside,
who were her parents, and did her duty.
For all the hard, thorny, dispiriting life
of old New England (Which; however,
was the life that made our statesmen,
whose empty places we have scarcely
filled in these days. which she had led,
Prudence was a soft-eyed, tender-hearted
girl, and her hand. for all the labor of
twenty years, touched very softly her
husbands stalwart arm and her children 5
shaggy heads. Ezekiel, her husband.
was a skipper, proud of his wife. proud of
home, proud OF his boys, and-God-fearing
man that he was-proud of the skill and
cunning Of his hands, which God had
given him, enabling him to earn the bread
which was theirs and his, out of the brnv
and boisterous sea, that was his quarry
and nearest neighbor.
Prudence had had nine brothers. all sea
faring boys and men, all fishermen save
one, who had been fretful of the smaller
service; and at last breaking the COM
mandments of the Lord and of his father
after the flesh $50 they told him), had run
away to Boston, and shipped on a huge
vessel, which went long voyages after the
leviathan in the northern seas.
Prudence and the "keepin'-room'' had
known the fate of eight Of her brothers.
From the stiff, starch, and trim, high
backed chairs that still stood in the keepin'
room, she and the neighbors had seen
them, one by one, carried out, feet fore
most; had heard the same "remarks"
from the parson over each brief and ex-
tinguished candle, and the scarcely less
composed Goods will be DONE OF her
father, after all.
!