Stableyard

“ You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables; you remember that gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls, now slowly falling to pieces; you remember that stable, and that—but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, the paint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in the yard ”

“ In the stable you will find, kept only for pleasure, full thirty-five horses, of the most approved blood for speed and beauty. There are two men here constantly employed in taking care of these horses. One of these men must be always in the stable, to answer every call from the great house. Over the way from the stable, is a house built expressly for the hounds—a pack of twenty-five or thirty—whose fare would have made glad the heart of a dozen slaves. Horses and hounds are not the only consumers of the slave's toil. ”

“ Four persons in each room is as many as they can possibly contain, the remainder must abide by the lot which falls to them. Two in the stable where the old horse now lives, two in the cow-shed, two in the tumble-down barn, and two in the large stable, where the mules and donkeys have till lately held their revels.”
This last edifice was in tolerable repair, and, provided its four-legged inhabitants were turned out, we considered would make a very tolerable abode. ”

“ If possible, avoid a draught, but always remember that it is better to have plenty of fresh air and a draught than a stuffy stable without one, as the horse can always be kept warm with extra clothing, bandages, and bedding. Thatched roofs are much cooler in summer and warmer in winter than the flat earthen ones that are generally used in Northern India. Indian stables are almost always divided off into loose boxes, the partition walls being continued up to the roof. ”

“ When the settler is building a log house to shelter himself and family, when all his goods are exposed to the open air, when nothing is done—but all remains to do, he will find that the women who are watching the cattle, cooking the provisions and caulking the seams of his house with moss and grass, are any thing but incumbrances. ”

“ But later, as they drew nearer the settlement, an abandoned homestead—standing silent and deserted, its kraals empty and the place devoid of life, or a trek of sheep and cattle raising a cloud of dust in the distance, together with a waggon or two loaded with the families and household goods of those, like themselves, hastening from their more or less isolated positions to seek safety in numbers, spoke eloquently and with meaning. ”

“ The girl found that the plantation was a little empire in itself. The mansion house was the seat of government, with dependencies, such as kitchens, smoke-houses, work-shops and stables. There were numerous house servants for domestic service, and a host of field negroes for the culture of the crops. Their quarters formed a kind of hamlet apart, composed of various huts with little gardens and poultry yards, all well stocked, and swarming with little darkies gamboling in the sunshine. ”

“ They are very striking objects: they stand upon the waste in disconnection with everything else, and one is at a loss to conceive how any particular town came to be placed in this spot or that, nature having framed no allurement of valley shelter among the undulations of the wide expanse. Each town stands upon its site, as if it might have been wheeled [Pg 195] thither. There is no sympathy, no bond of connection with surrounding fields, not a fence to be seen, no woods for shelter, only the dreary black patches and lines of forest, used probably for fuel, and often far fetched. ”

“ For a search-party organized on a strict military principle had carefully ransacked every portion of the house and cellar and also the attic,—where no traces betrayed recent habitation,—examined all the vineyard, hedges, shrubbery, and even the boughs of the great trees, and invaded the stable, barn, crib, ice-house, poultry yards, dairy, kennel, dove-cote, the miscellaneous outbuildings, sties and byres, all empty, devoid even of the usual domestic animals—absolutely with no result. ”

“ I always make it a practice to dig up the floors of stables in a new house, before they are occupied, a foot and a half deep, and thoroughly renew it, and usually it is astounding the amount of foul earth that has to be removed. ”

“ In the course of time, owing to an advantageous position or to intensity of commerce or industry, these one-time shelters grew into towns, rising in wealth, power, and independent spirit, girt about with strong walls and moats, each town a state within the state, protected by imperial grants and privileges, bound together by the common enmity of the feudal power, and within the walls by an ardent local patriotism. ”

“ Where there are no longer any profits to corrupt, or fears to deter, the charm of dominion is broken, and the naked slave, as awake from a dream, is astonished to find he is free. When the fence is destroyed, the wilds are open, and the herd breaks loose. The pasture of the cultivated field is no longer preferred to that of the desert. ”

“ Their plan as it finally grew into a workable fact was in reality nothing more than the renting of a large building formerly used as a warehouse for a brewery, reconstructing it and living in it themselves in the very heart of a territory where the saloon ruled with power, where the tenement was its filthiest, where vice and ignorance and shame and poverty were congested into hideous forms. ”

“ Imagine a broad plantation stretching its sunny acres from river to forest, a vast and lonely area with no signs of human occupancy anywhere, except, perhaps, the toil-bent figures of a few bondservants of the soil at their tasks in the fields, under the eye of the overseer, lending by the unjoyous monotony of their labor an air of gloom and melancholy to the oppressive loneliness of the scene. ”

“ In great anguish, you drag it along, through the midnight darkness, to the hut of a poor plantation-slave, who binds on a poultice of ashes, but dares not, for fear of his life, shelter you after day has dawned. He helps you to a deep gully, and there you remain till evening, half-famished for food. A man in the neighborhood keeps blood-hounds, well trained to hunt runaways. ”

“ There are every where signs of dilapidation, from the mansion of the planter with its windows half-glazed, its doors half-hinged, its lawn trampled by domestic animals that have ingress and egress through the broken enclosures, to the ragged roadside house where thriftless poverty finds its abode. ”

“ It does, for as soon as the loaning broadens out, you find yourself on quite a plateau, and keeping on to the right you come to the steading, a beautiful roomy square of tall stone buildings surrounding a well-paved courtyard, with its byres, its stables, coach-houses, its mill and grain loft, but nothing to offend the eye or sense of smell, such as the slimy pools and manure heaps that exist on English farms. ”

“ From house to house, from hut to hut, and from barn to barn, the factor and his menials proceeded, carrying on the work of demolition, until there was scarcely a human habitation left standing in the district. Able-bodied men who, if the matter would rest with a mere trial of physical force, would have bound the factor and his party hand and foot, and sent them out of the district, stood aside as dumb spectators. ”

“ Nor could the landlord “knowingly harbor in house, barn, or stable, any rogues, vagabonds, thieves, sturdy beggars, masterless men or women.” Our ancestors were kindly neighbors to godly folk, but sternly intolerant of wrong-doers, or even of those suspected of wrong.
We cannot wonder that citizens did not seek to become ordinary-keepers when we learn how they were hampered, or how the magistrates tried to hamper them. They were at one time not to be permitted to sell “sack or strong waters,” nor have any dancing or singing within their walls. No games could be played in their precincts. ”

“ And the poor frightened beasts, not understanding why their sheltering stables were closed against them, or what was the meaning of this strange light, lurid and hot, rushed about, panting and snorting, in a terrified circle, always turning blindly towards that stable door which was closed against them. The shepherds and herdsmen worked with a will. With relentless energy they tried to keep their herds together, hoping to get them well out of reach, before some straying spark caught the dry thatch of the first group of stables. ”

“ In the case of habitations in particular, it was natural to observe, that even the brute creation, to whom every thing else was in common, maintained a kind of permanent property in their dwellings, especially for the protection of their young; that the birds of the air had nests, and the beasts of the field had caverns, the invasion of which they esteemed a very flagrant injustice, and would sacrifice their lives to preserve them. ”

“ The stable, which was built of brick, had been occupied by pigeons without objection for so many years that they were now very numerous, and protested in reels and whirls and dives and dips in the air against the new owner coming among them at all; perhaps they imagined that in time they would be permitted to occupy the house itself, and rear their young in more respectable quarters. ”

“ Why should they fight? There was room enough in the forest and scrub for all. If they—the blacks—would leave the cattle and flocks of the squatters alone, he—Craig—could assure them things would go on as happily as before. ”

“ The “hunkers,” or conservative-minded men, and the “barn-burners,” or progressive reformers, who sympathized with the anti-renters.
After impatiently riding an hour or more through this delectable region, the horseman drew near the patroon village, a cluster of houses amid the hills and meadows. Here the land barons had originally built for the tenants comfortable houses and ample barns, saw and grist mills. But the old homes had crumbled away, and that rugged ancestry of dwellings had been replaced by a new generation of houses, with clapboards, staring green blinds and flimsy verandas. ”

“ In the open field village the entirely landless labourer was scarcely to be found. The division of holdings into numerous scattered pieces, many of which were of minute size, made it easy for a labourer to obtain what were in effect allotments in the common fields. If he had no holding, he still might have a common right; if no acknowledged common right, he might enjoy the advantage of one in a greater or less degree. ”

“ The company's stables are all alike, and open at each end with great doors. The stable is the best house in the place; there are three or four houses besides, and one of them is white, and has vines growing over the front door, and hollyhocks by the front gate. Three or four women, and as many barelegged girls, have come out to look at the procession, and we lounge towards the group. ”

“ It has been argued that where horse hoofs have been cut in a slab, that indicates the wider limits of a domain, or a community-district, which was ridden round, but that the footprints of men thus graven betokened private lands belonging to individuals, or rather, to heads of households. ”

“ With the exception of the women to whose care the children of the planter, if he had any, might be confided, and perhaps a little boy or girl slave, kept as a sort of pet animal and allowed to pass the night on the floor of the sleeping apartment of some member of the family, the residence of any slaves belonging to a plantation night and day in their master's house, like Northern or European servants, is a thing I believe unknown throughout the Southern States. ”

“ Then again I did not believe that a man who thought tilled ground even in the limestone enriched land of the Blue Grass section would not be better for stable manure would bother particularly about the advantages of keeping stables clean.
Stables should be light not dark. There is a notion as old as the hills that a stable should be a dark and somber place. There are those who still hold stoutly to this view. Why a stable should be dark and the living room of a human being light, I cannot conceive. Light and air are the great purifying agents. ”

“ Once each year all the great leaders come for a stay, long or short, to the metropolis. The birds leave the desert to seek the oasis, with its palm trees and springs of water. Young men, for two generations, have been deserting the farm and the village, to make their home in the great city. Many unexpected perils have sprung up from this massing of population. Among these dangers are the tenements, saloon, gambling houses, dens of vice, the tendency to anarchy, incident to [Pg x] the contrast between the palaces on the avenues and the rookeries on the Bowery. ”

“ Small gatherings of houses and cots appear as oases in the moorland and forest, more or less frequent according to the early or late settlement of the district, and its freedom from, or exposure to, the ravages of war and the punishment of rebellion. These oases, townships or vills if of some extent, hamlets if of but a few houses, gather round one or more mansions of superior size and importance, the Manor houses, or abodes of the Lords of the respective Manors. Round each township stretch the great ploughed fields, usually three in number, open and uninclosed. ”

“ For months Jacob Strong might have been observed, side by side with his mistress, threading the alleys, searching in attic chambers, for objects of just charity. Old men and women, generally of the educated poor, who could not work, and were too proud for begging, soon became the inmates of those splendid saloons. Any day, when you passed that mansion, some old lady in her snow-white cap might be seen looking quietly from the casement, while others strolled in the gardens, or amused themselves in the marble vestibule. ”