Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/179

 SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

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��experience in college life, as student and teacher, now runs back nearly fifty years. The expenses of living are now three times as great at home and at school as they then were. My annual expenses in college were one hundred and fifty dollars, all told ; now the com- mon bills of students are from three to six hundred per annum. But let me re- cur to pleasing recollections. When I left home for college, my mother gave me just such a present as Shakespeare willed to his wife, "a second best bed," which being wrapped in a home-made coverlet was placed in a farm wagon without springs, and to this was har- nessed the poorest horse on the farm, lame in one leg, and blind in one eye, to take me and my little store of home-spun clothes to college. My charioteer was a ' hired boy,' who seemed to be without father, without mother, and without de- scent. In fact, he had never heard of any place of education but the town school, and might say with Falstaff, " I have forgotten what the inside of a church is made of."

It required two whole days to travel the sixty miles. Here let me interrupt my personal narrative to speak briefly of the domestic, social, moral and literary condition of the people of New Hamp- shire fifty years ago. The population then was not very much less than at present. It was homogeneous. The ma- jority were farmers. Manufactures were scarcely known in the State. There was little money. The chief business of daily life was carried on by barter. The farm- ers raised all their food, and made at home all their clothes. The shoemaker and tailor paid semi-annual visits to each house, and made the shoes and clothes for the entire household. The cloth used was made in the house, and dressed by a neighboring fuller, as he was called. The leather was tanned, by one of the community, from skins taken from ani- mals slaughtered for the use of the fami- ly. A sufficient amount of wheat and Indian corn was raised for the supply of the entire population. It was one of the boy's duties to go to mill, and on horse- back, above two or three bags of grain. The picture of the mill boy in Henry

��Clay's life shows the trials to which such youths were often subjected. The houses of that period were generally low, ill- warmed and ill-ventilated structures, without paint inside or out. Carpets and pianos were unknown. The old-fash- ioned spining-wheel occupied the place of the latter, and mats made of rags curi- ously wrought served as an apology for carpets. The work of the farm, in the house and field, was performed by the hands. Maehines for mowing, reaping and threshing; for washing, churning and sewing, were unknown. It was lit- erally manual labor that subdued the rough and stony soil, and prepared the food and wrought the fabrics which warmed and fed the people. Railroads and telegraphs had not been heard of. Steam was just coming into use in naviga- tion. Men travelled in their own wag- ons and sleighs. Very few chaises had been introduced. The mail was carried in the rural districts on horseback in sad- dle-bags, and the carrier, though not a student* blew a tin horn to announce his arrival at a house that was so fortunate as to take one newspaper. I remember when the first coach for the conveyance of passengers was put upon the road from Gilmanton to Dover. More people, dai- ly, watched its approach than now stand at the railway station to witness the ar- rival of the train.

Society, as it now exists, was un- known. People visited their neighbors once or twice a year, the ladies arriving at the scene of action at two o'clock, the gentlemen about six. The table, for sup- per, was luxuriously furnished with all the dainties of the season : cakes, pies, preserves and domestic viands and con- diments of every description. The tongues, which are the only edged tools that grow sharper by using, and the nee- dles were plied with great diligence by the ladies till the session adjourned. The standard of morals was higher than at present. Crime was punished. Insan- ity, before, or during, or after, the crim- inal act, was seldom pleaded as an ex- cuse. The murderer was hanged with- out benefit of clergy, and the minister ' improved " the occasion by an appro- priate sermon.

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