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V. The Little Quail Bird

Susanna had helped at various household tasks ever since her arrival at the Settlement, for there was no room for drones in the Shaker hive; but after a few weeks in the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had been assigned to her as her particular province, the Sisters thinking her better fitted for it than for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or the basket-weaving that needed special apprenticeship.

The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden seeds in our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the preparation of botanical medicines, raising, gathering, drying, and preparing herbs and roots for market; and this industry, driven from the field by modern machinery, was still a valuable source of income in Susanna’s day. Plants had always grown for Susanna, and she loved them like friends, humoring their weakness, nourishing their strength, stimulating, coaxing, disciplining them, until they could do no less than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.

Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its wholesome fragrances! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf and bud, and the strong aromatic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or her aching head, after the sleepless nights in which she tried to decide her future life and Sue’s.

The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps, and she soon learned to know the strange ones—chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage, boneset, lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew the old acquaintances familiar to every country-bred child—pennyroyal, peppermint or spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.

There was hoeing and weeding before the gathering and drying came; then Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the dried herbs and press them into quarter- and half-pound cakes ready for Sister Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering and labeling them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over, Brother Ansel would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his driving trip through the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but Brother Issachar, who once took his place and sold almost nothing, brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became a shining light in the Community. (“Thus,” said Elder Gray, “does God teach us the diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.”)

If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent in faith, Susanna thought that their “works” would indeed bear the strictest examination. The Brothers made brooms, floor and dish-mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and indeed almost every trade was represented in the various New England Communities. Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs, policemen, constables, or soldiers, just as there were no courts or saloons or jails. Where there was perfect equality of possession and no private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see the cheery labor, often continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the earnest desire to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were hammering, nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen, straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not forgetting their famous Shaker apple sauce.

Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the early rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and hardier than she had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled with delicacies, yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently varied. At first there had been the winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips, beets, and parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker dinner of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk gravy. Each Sister served her turn as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with flour, and the wholewheat bread, cookies, ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate Shaker from a too riotous devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory, and attractive.

Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as they worked together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and pan and spoon might have served as a mirror! Martha had joined the Society in her mother’s arms, being given up to the Lord and placed in “the children’s order” before she was one year old.

“If you should unite with us, Susanna,” she said one night after the early supper, when they were peeling apples together, “you’d be thankful you begun early with your little Sue, for she’s got a natural attraction to the world, and for it. Not but that she’s a tender, loving, obedient little soul; but when she’s among the other young ones, there’s a flyaway look about her that makes her seem more like a fairy than a child.”

“She’s having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she’ll do better in time,” sighed her mother. “She came to me of her own accord yesterday and asked: ‘Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?’”

“I never put that idea into her head,” Martha interrupted. “She’s a visitor and can wear her hair as she’s been brought up to wear it.”

“I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. ‘I get up so early, Mardie,’ she said, ‘and it takes so long to unsnarl and untangle me, and I get so hot when I’m helping in the hayfield, and then I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it seems like wasting both our times!’ Her hair would be all the stronger for cutting, I thought, as it’s so long for her age; but I could n’t put the shears to it when the time came, Martha. I had to take her to Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little looking-glass as still as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when the last one fell into Abby’s apron, she suddenly put her hands over her face and cried: ‘Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after this!’—She seemed to see her ‘little past,’ her childhood, slipping away from her, all in an instant. I did n’t let her know that I cried over the box of curls last night!”

“You did wrong,” rebuked Martha. “You should n’t make an idol of your child or your child’s beauty.”

“You don’t think God might put beauty into the world just to give His children joy, Martha?”

Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made, from those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to make any sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by too many opposing theories of God’s intentions.

“You know I never argue when I’ve got anything baking,” she said; and taking the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the oven door and delicately plunged it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the straw as she withdrew it, she said: “You must talk doctrine with Eldress Abby, Susanna, not with me; but I guess doctrine won’t help you so much as thinking out your life for yourself.

 
  “No one can sing my psalm for me,
  Reward must come from labor,
  I’ll sow for peace, and reap in truth
  God’s mercy and his favor!”
 

Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many hymns and tunes—some of them under circumstances that she believed might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to the great barn.

The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life, although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.

Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell, to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling; and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and Knights’ Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of corncobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting threads from her mother’s work.

“My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie,” she said. “I’m most afraid Fardie won’t like the looks of me; do you think we ought to have asked him before we shingled me?—He does despise unpretty things so!”

“I think if we had asked him he would have said, ‘Do as you think best.’”

“He always says that when he does n’t care what you do,” observed Sue, with one of her startling bursts of intuition. “Sister Martha has a printed card on the wall in the children’s diningroom, and I’ve got to learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the others:—

 
  “What we deem good order, we’re willing to state,
  Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
  Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
  And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
 
 
  “We often find left on the same China dish,
  Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
  Another’s replenished with butter and cheese,
  With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these.”
 

“You say it very nicely,” commended Susanna.

“There’s more:—

 
  “Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
  By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
  We freely will forfeit whatever we’ve said,
  And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread.
 

“There’s a great deal to learn when you’re being a Shaker,” sighed Sue, as she finished her rhyme.

“There’s a great deal to learn everywhere,” her mother answered. “What verse did Eldress Abby give you today?”

 
  “For little tripping maids may follow God
  Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,”
 

quoted the child. “Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?” she continued.

“Yes, dear.” “If I trip too much, might n’t I fall?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Is tripping the same as skipping?”

“About the same.”

“Is it polite to trip an’ skip when you’re following God?”

“It could n’t be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means just a young one.”

“What is a maid?”

“A little girl.”

“When a maid grows up, what is she?”

“Why she’s a maiden, I suppose.”

“When a maiden grows up, what is she?”

“Just a woman, Sue.”

“What is saintly feet?”

“Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have always tried to do right.”

“Are Brother Ansel’s feet saintly?”

“He’s a good, kind, hardworking man.”

“Is good, kind, hardworking, same as saintly?”

“Well, it’s not so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I’ve asked you before, don’t let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every instant; it is n’t good for you, and it certainly is n’t good for me!”

“All right; but ‘less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don’t see how I’ll ever learn the things I ‘specially want to know?” sighed Sue the insatiable.

“Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last evening?”

“Oh, do, Mardie!” cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and looking up into her mother’s face expectantly.

“Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some one wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found a Settlement in the western part of New York State. He and some other Elders and Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at the house of a certain Joseph Pelham to spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday morning, very tired, and wondering where to stay and begin his preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to pray for guidance. When he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-hearted, a young quail came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing near by show any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder smoothed the young bird’s feathers a little while and then let it go, but he thought an angel seemed to say to him, ‘The quail is a sign; you will know before night what it means, and before tomorrow people will be coming to you to learn the way to God.’

“Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph Pelham’s house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the flock of Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see more in signs than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve or thirteen knocked at the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to become a Shaker, and that her father and mother were willing.

“‘Here is the little quail!’ cried the Elder, and indeed she was the first who flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.

“On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took the little quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals through which they traveled were clogged with ice. One night, having been ferried across the Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked for miles before they could find shelter. Finally, when they were within three miles of their home, Elder Calvin shortened the way by going across the open fields through the snow, up and down the hills and through the gullies and over fences, till they reached the house at midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail.”

Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining, her hands clasped. “Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl, Mardie! What became of her?”

“Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don’t know what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you could walk for miles through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?”

“I don’ know’s I could,” sighed Sue; “but,” she added hopefully, “perhaps I could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much as ever I liked.” Then, after a lengthy pause, in which her mind worked feverishly, she said, “Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I won’t do it any more tonight. If the old quail birds in the woods where Elder Calvin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker birds, there would n’t have been any little quail birds, would there, because Shakers don’t have children, and then perhaps there would n’t have been any little Polly Reed.”

Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work. “I’ll go up and help you undress now,” she said; “it’s seven o’clock, and I must go to the family meeting.”

VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting

It was the Sabbath day and the Believers were gathered in the meetinghouse, Brethren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate benches, with the children by themselves in their own place. As the men entered the room they removed their hats and coats and hung them upon wooden pegs that lined the sides of the room, while the women took off their bonnets; then, after standing for a moment of perfect silence, they seated themselves.

In Susanna’s time the Sunday costume for the men included trousers of deep blue cloth with a white line and a vest of darker blue, exposing a full-bosomed shirt that had a wide turned-down collar fastened with three buttons. The Sisters were in pure white dresses, with neck and shoulders covered with snowy kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their white net caps, and a large white pocket handkerchief hung over the left arm. Their feet were shod with curious pointed-toed cloth shoes of ultramarine blue—a fashion long since gone by.

Susanna had now become accustomed to the curious solemn march or dance in which of course none but the Believers ever joined, and found in her present exalted mood the songs and the exhortations strangely interesting and not unprofitable.

Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Albion Sisters, confessed that she missed the old times when visions were common, when the Spirit manifested itself in extraordinary ways, and the gift of tongues descended. Sometimes, in the Western Settlement where she was gathered in, the whole North Family would march into the highway in the fresh morning hours, and while singing some sacred hymn, would pass on to the Center Family, and together in solemn yet glad procession they would mount the hillside to “Jehovah’s Chosen Square,” there to sing and dance before the Lord.

“I wish we could do something like that now!” sighed Hetty Arnold, a pretty young creature who had moments of longing for the pomps and vanities. “If we have to give up all worldly pleasures, I think we might have more religious ones!”

“We were a younger church in those old times of which Sister Tabitha speaks,” said Eldress Abby. “You must remember, Hetty, that we were children in faith, and needed signs and manifestations, pictures and object-lessons. We’ve been trained to think and reason now, and we’ve put away some of our picture-books. There have been revelations to tell us we needed movements and exercises to quicken our spiritual powers, and to give energy and unity to our worship, and there have been revelations telling us to give them up; revelations bidding us to sing more, revelations telling us to use wordless songs. Then anthems were given us, and so it has gone on, for we have been led of the Spirit.”

“I’d like more picture-books,” pouted Hetty under her breath.

Today the service began with a solemn song, followed by speaking and prayer from a visiting elder. Then, after a long and profound silence, the company rose and joined in a rhythmic dance which signified the onward travel of the soul to full redemption; the opening and closing of the hands meaning the scattering and gathering of blessing. There was no accompaniment, and both the music and the words were the artless expression of fervent devotion.

Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha, who would never dance again before the Lord, though her quavering voice joined in the chorus. The spring floor rose and fell under the quick rhythmic tread of the worshipers, and with each revolution about the room the song gained in power and fervor.

 
  I am never weary bringing my life unto God,
  I am never weary singing His way is good.
  With the voice of an angel with power from above,
  I would publish the blessing of soul-saving love.
 

The steps grew slower and more sedate, the voices died away, the arms sank slowly by the sides, and the hands ceased their movement.

Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how or why. Her cheeks were flushed, her head bent.

“Dear friends,” she said, “I have now been among you for nearly three months, sharing your life, your work, and your worship. You may well wish to know whether I have made up my mind to join this Community, and I can only say that although I have prayed for light, I cannot yet see my way clearly. I am happy here with you, and although I have been a church member for years, I have never before longed so ardently to present my body and soul as a sacrifice unto the Lord. I have tried not to be a burden to you. The small weekly sum that I put into the treasury I will not speak of, lest I seem to think that the ‘gift of God may be purchased with money,’ as the Scriptures say; but I have endeavored to be loyal to your rules and customs, your aims and ideals, and to the confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, my dear Sisters and Brothers, pray for me that I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is not the fleshpots that will call me back to the world; if I go, it will be because the duties I have left behind take such shape that they draw me out of his shelter in spite of myself. I thank you for the help you have given me these last weeks; God knows my gratitude can never be spoken in words.”

Elder Gray’s voice broke the silence that followed Susanna’s speech. “I only echo the sentiments of the Family when I say that our Sister Susanna shall have such time as she requires before deciding to unite with this body of Believers. No pressure shall be brought to bear upon her, and she will be, as she ever has been, a welcome guest under our roof. She has been an inspiration to the children, a comfort and aid to the Sisters, an intelligent comrade to the Brethren, and a sincere and earnest student of the truth. May the Spirit draw her into the Virgin Church of the New Creation!”

“Yee and amen!” exclaimed Eldress Abby, devoutly: “‘For thus saith the Lord of hosts: I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.’”

 
  “O Virgin Church, how great the light,
     What cloud can dim thy way?”
 

sang Martha from her place at the end of a bench; and all the voices took up the hymn softly as the company sat with bowed heads.

Then Brother Issachar rose from his corner, saying: “Jesus called upon his disciples to give up everything: houses, lands, relationships, and even the selfishness of their own lives. They could not call their lives their own. ‘Lo! we have left all and followed thee,’ said Peter; ‘fathers, mothers, wives, children, houses, lands, and even our own lives also.’ It is a great price to pay, but we buy Heaven with it!”

“Yee, we do,” said Brother Thomas Scattergood, devoutly. “To him that overcometh shall the great prize be given.”

“God help the weaker brethren!” murmured young Brother Nathan, in so low a voice that few could hear him. Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby, and Martha burst into one of the most triumphant of the Shaker songs, one that was never sung save when the meeting was “full of the Spirit”:—

 
  “I draw no blank nor miss the prize,
  I see the work, the sacrifice,
  And I’ll be loyal, I’ll be wise, A faithful overcomer!”
 

The company rose and began again to march in a circle around the center of the room, the Brethren two abreast leading the column, the Sisters following after. There was a waving movement of the hands by drawing inward as if gathering in spiritual good and storing it up for future need. In the marching and countermarching the worshipers frequently changed their positions, ultimately forming into four circles, symbolical of the four dispensations as expounded in Shakerism, the first from Adam to Abraham; the second from Abraham to Jesus; the third from Jesus to Mother Ann Lee; and the fourth the millennial era.

The marching grew livelier; the bodies of the singers swayed lightly with emotion, the faces glowed with feeling.

Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering strength and fullness as the Believers entered more and more into the spirit of their worship. Whenever the refrain came in with its militant fervor, crude, but sincere and effective, the singers seemed faith-intoxicated; and Sister Martha in particular might have been treading the heavenly streets instead of the meetinghouse floor, so complete was her absorption. The voices at length grew softer, and the movement slower, and after a few moments’ reverent silence the company filed out of the room solemnly and without speech.

 
  I am as sure that heav’n is mine
  As though my vision could define
  Or pencil draw the boundary line
  Where love and truth shall conquer.
 

“The Lord ain’t shaken Susanna hard enough yet,” thought Brother Ansel shrewdly from his place in the rear. “She ain’t altogether gathered in, not by no manner o’ means, because of that unregenerate son of Adam she’s left behind; but there’s the makin’s of a pow’ful good Shaker in Susanna, if she finally takes holt!”

“What manner of life is my husband living, now that I have deserted him? Who is being a mother to Jack?” These were the thoughts that troubled Susanna Hathaway’s soul as she crossed the grass to her own building.