Phebe Earle Gibbons

“ I have just told how the little fellow was saving his pennies to “buy a horse and buggy,”—the great pride of our farmer boy’s heart. On a neighboring farm to ours lived the grandfather, who had his own plain carriage, the father with another, and two sons, aged about twenty-one, each with a buggy. This must be the great extravagance of our young farmers now. But having buggies they can take the girls to ride; and they can sometimes take others too. The other day a lad kindly took me up; an Amish boy, in a plain buggy, driving a pretty good horse. ”

“ And now think not that they feign simply to eat and drink,—that the meal from first to last is but a poor pretence. A full and hearty dinner is “made out” there. It is a bona fide eating and drinking that is done in the meeting-house of the Schwenkfelders on their Gedächtniss Tag (Remembrance Day) . They are all hard-working men and women,—farmers and farmers’ wives and farmers’ children. They are sunburnt, healthy, and hungry besides. And why should they not relish the sweet bread, with their sweet butter and apple-butter, then? ”

“ The miners do not seem to have any desire to buy into the stock of the companies. Is it for fear that, as a miner’s wife said, “the big fishes would eat the little fishes up?”
But if the miner does not thus co-operate with his employers, or in the manner that the poorest sailor on a whaling vessel once did with the owners, the principle of joint-stock is not unknown to them. An intelligent man, once a miner, tells me that all working men are now aspiring to form co-operative associations for the purpose of carrying on mining and iron-works themselves. ”

“ It was surprising to one accustomed to the small farms of the fertile district in which I live to find such large farmers as many of the English. Said one of my acquaintances in Huntingdonshire, “One who farms fifty acres is scarcely called a farmer. He farms a little land. In another county I know a farmer who holds fifteen hundred acres.” The tendency of course is largely to increase the number of farm-laborers, while diminishing the number of those who farm themselves. ”

“ When I spoke in Cork of the great cost of such roads I was told that they were probably made after the famine, when the government gave laborers employment. The roads, however, seemed deserted. Once I saw a man on horseback, and occasionally market carts were seen, but of plain carriages, like those of the farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania, I remember none. Poverty hangs like a cloud over the land. Yet the people seem honest. The servant-girl at Collins’s said to me, “Nothing do ever be taken.” I wished to know whether it was safe to leave my towels to dry on furze bushes near the road. ”

“ Although the hour was so early, and meeting was fixed to begin at one, I found a considerable number here, which did not surprise me, as I knew the early habits of our “Dutch” people. Taking a seat, I began to read a number of the Living Age, when a black-eyed maid before me, in Dunker dress, handed me her neatly-bound hymn-book in English and German. I told her that I could read German, and when I read a verse in that language she said, “But you don’t know what it means.” Reading German is with us a much rarer accomplishment than speaking the dialect. ”

“ COUSIN JEMIMA.
“Well, Phebe, I guess thee did not expect me this afternoon. Don’t get up. I will just lay my bonnet in the bedroom myself. Dinah Paddock told me thy quilt was in; so I came up as soon as I could. Laid out in orange-peel! I always did like orange-peel. Dinah’s was herring-bone; and thine is filled with wool, and plims up, and shows the works, as mother used to say. I’ll help thee roll before I sit down. Now then. Days are long, and we’ll try to do a stroke of work, for thee’s a branch quilter, I’ve heard say. ”

“ In the depressed condition of farming of which I have spoken, it has been found that grazing and dairy farms are more profitable than grain. The abolition of the corn laws, said a friend, made bread cheap and enabled the mechanic and manufacturer to live, and they can buy more meat than before, and grazing and dairy farms are very profitable. Grain, which can readily be transported by sea, comes more closely into competition with the English grain than meat does.
One of the persons whom I met in Huntingdonshire was a retired farmer, and must have been a successful one. ”

“ Looking out at the country, I asked, “Why are there no barns?”
“They have nothing to put into barns,” he replied. “They sell their hay in the fields, and thresh their grain and get it quickly into market. They even sell their straw sometimes to meet their rent. Then when spring comes the landlord endorses for them in the bank. This answers for one year. On the next year the farmer must go to a money-lender, to whom he signs a note for twenty-five pounds, receiving only twenty pounds.” ”

“ They drive the laborers very hard, and treat them badly. Often they do not give them a house fit to put a pig into. The houses are roofed with sods, as they want the straw for farming purposes. Nearly all the poor people lie on straw beds, and it is hard to get straw from the farmers. They allow the laborer about one-fourth of an acre for his potato-patch, and charge him rent of from two pounds to four pounds, sometimes in advance. The laborer’s wages may be counted at one shilling a day the year round, and as his wife works in harvest, we may reckon hers at sixpence a day for six months. ”

“ The movings, on or about the first, are made festive occasions; neighbors, young and old, are gathered; some bring wagons to transport farm utensils and furniture, others assist in driving cattle, put furniture in its place, and set up bedsteads; while the women are ready to help prepare the bountiful meal. At this feast I have heard a worthy tenant farmer say, “Now help yourselves, as you did out there” (with the goods) .
Whitsuntide Monday is a great holiday with the young “Dutch” folks. It occurs when there is a lull in farm-work, between corn-planting and hay-making. ”

“ The peculiarities of a people are always best observed by those who do not live among them, or rather by those who visit them occasionally. Most of my notes on this subject are taken from the conversation of physicians born in other localities than those in which they practise. One in my own county mentions the “apnehme,” or wasting away of children. He says that popular remedies are measuring the child and greasing it by certain old women. Another says that the “Pennsylvania Dutch” also measure for wild-fire or erysipelas, generally using a red silk string, and measuring about sundown. ”

“ His beautiful bright wife—bright in the colored sense,—that is, bright-colored, or nearly white,—was secretly and safely brought to him, and nursed him through that fatal disease which made him of no value in the man-market,—the market which had been the great horror of his life. ”

“ The Welshman is an experienced miner in his own rugged country. We are informed that the coal-field of Glamorganshire, in Wales, is one of the most important mineral districts in the world, and that in this small district more iron is manufactured than in all the United States. The Welsh here work more exclusively at mining than do the Irish and Germans. The Welshman is the miner, who blasts and takes down the coal, while the Irishman loads it upon the cars, a certain number of car-loads forming his daily task. ”

“ A few years ago, in an adjoining county, an adherent of the Democratic party told me that the word democracy has a magic sound for the people of Lehigh. “A Democratic parade,” he added, “can easily be got up in Allentown two miles in length, composed in a great measure of farmers on horseback; and in Presidential campaigns sometimes farmers’ daughters also appear on horseback in the procession. A skilful speaker, generally a lawyer, who speaks the dialect, and who will frequently introduce the words democrat and democracy, can lead the crowd. ”

“ There are no free schools in Ireland like ours. The poorest citizens need not pay in the national schools, but others must. A gentleman in Dublin, who publishes a school journal, told me that he doubted whether these schools would ever become entirely free to the public, like those in my own State. He had never heard that such a movement was contemplated.
In further conversation Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost seven cows in eighteen months, and that they were nearly broken down. They had to incur some debt to replace them, and they must meet the rent or be thrown upon the world. ”

“ A like circumstance is certainly very uncommon, if not unknown, among the “Dutch” of my own county.
Neither does there appear to be the same objection to education there that exists among some of our people here. One of the Schwenkfelders said to me that he told his boys to learn as much as they can; “I’d not seen a man yet that had been too wise; and the girls may do the same.” He also told me that they do not neglect to teach the children in their family to read and write German, a custom which tends to preserve the purity of the language. ”

“ It is a lamentable case that those who boast that they are the followers of the defenceless Lamb do no longer possess the lamb’s disposition, but, on the contrary, have the nature of the wolf. It seems as if they could not bear it that any should travel towards heaven in any other way than that which they go themselves, as was exemplified in the case of Hans Landis, who was a minister and teacher of the gospel of Christ. Being taken to Zurich, he refused to desist from preaching and to deny his faith, and was sentenced to death,—the edict of eighty years before not having died of old age. ”

“ If the farmer’s wife never “has luck” in making soap, she employs some skilful woman to come in and help her. It is not a long operation, for the “Dutch” rush this work speedily. If the lye is well run off, two tubs of hard soap and a barrel of soft can be made in a day. A smart housekeeper can make a barrel of soap in the morning, and go visiting in the afternoon.
Great are the household labors in harvest; but the cooking and baking in the hot weather are cheerfully done for the men, who are toiling in hot suns and stifling barns. ”