A Lumberwoman

HAZAEL was shut up in the house. This may seem to you an unimportant fact, but it was not so to me, being Hazael’s wife, and it was very important to him, being a man.

Is sickness a kindly means of discipline ? Neither Lamb (see his “Essay on Convalescence ”) nor Hazael viewed it as such; both grumbled, and one wrote ; the likeness to the known must make clear to you the unknown ; and Hazael was no happier than Lamb.

I read to him every word that Jeremy Taylor says on “The Practice of the Grace of Patience in Sickness,” but as fast as I put him into patience something else put him out of it. I read George Herbert’s “ Content,” — at least three verses of it, and was going on with the fourth, —

but he stopped me with,—

“ Dun-dee! ”

This was Hazael’s only and (he said) strictly orthodox oath. It wasn’t very resigned in him, and was so unsatisfactory to me that I “gave him up,” and Herbert too. Things would n’t have been so bad if his business had been all in one place ; or if he had been a doctor, and could have killed off his patients instead of having a doctor kill him off; or a jeweller instead of only the jewel he was ; or, as he more concisely and feelingly expressed it, “ been anything in the world but what he was, or had anything in the world but what he had.” Now Hazael was a lumbermerchant, and had a bad cold ; so you will see this was only his way of looking at it. Perhaps he was excusable ; for in all the seven years I had been with him he had never been shut up in the house before. Still, it cannot be denied that he had a “way,” indeed, a peculiar way, of looking at most things.

In seven years he had made a small fortune ; but “ he had been a perfect slave ! and it was only a care to him ! ” He had rather a large income for two people, which would generally be regarded as a happy state of affairs ; but “ he was sure he didn’t know how to invest it, and ‘blessed be nothing’ ! ” which change I’m afraid I never very heartily joined in desiring.

Hazael thought the world was n’t at all worth while; and that everybody was “dead set” against him. For instance, when he came to town every man had his own drag. Instead of borrowing one of these, he had one made when he built his house. It was a little stouter than the others, and so the next man who built a stone-wall came to borrow it; and the next, and the next, till it was worn out. Whether the neighbors had used their old ones for kindling, or the boys had stolen them for bonfires, it is a fact that when Hazael wanted one himself, two years after, he had to make a new one.

The dragging work of the town must have been dragging on for two years, for the new one was as great a favorite as the old, and the process was repeated ; and thereupon Hazael declared that he supplied the town with all the tools it ever used, and never had any to use himself; this instance is e pluribus unum.

So we will not wonder that the abused, good-natured man felt himself aggrieved when this cold was added to the sorrows of his lifetime. At this crisis I had been with Hazael seven years, as I have said.

I was an invalid when he took me,—for he took me more than I, by active will, went, — and nothing seemed so fitting as that I should keep out in the air with him.

In the mill or under the mill, perched on piers or swinging on booms, while he chose logs as they were wanted,— Norways and pines for the ship-builders, spruces for house-timber, and logs clear of knots for the planers ; stowed away on some teetering board of a lumber-pile, while he measured deal for New York, scoots for a lence, or refuse for a pigsty, — for no one could do anything just right but Hazael (so Hazael thought); up river, on skates in winter, on a big log in summer, to the Port, three miles away as many times a day, where all the vessels were loaded and all the captains swore, where all the storekeepers got used to me sitting round on the empty tobacco - boxes made into easy-chairs; where the sailors all learned to know me, and to use a quarter less tobacco to the halfday when I was about, which greatly diminished my supply of stools ; and whereunto the road was the very worst road in the county, so Hazael said; — in short, any and every where that Hazael went I was sure to go, by which means three things were accomplished :

I got health, some knowledge of the lumber business, and disposed of seven years, which last is a great gain for a (married) woman.

So when Hazael was ill I alone was thought competent to bring reports. And I did bring report from his mill, from his store, from his vessels, letters from his captains and commission merchants ; and it was strange how everything was reported wrong.

There were too many saws in the gang, and they were set wrong, and were sawing the wrong stuff. The wrong men had left the mill, and wronger men had come in their places.

The wrong amount of lumber had gone to the wrong vessels ; not even the captains even remembered how many thousand their vessels would carry : nobody but Hazael ever knew.

The bills of lading had been made out to the wrong commission merchant, the wrong captain had been paid for freight he never brought. The wrong goods had been ordered of the wrong firm at the wrong time of year ; and a wronger establishment could n’t have been found than Hazael’s.

Hazael was in despair, as who would not have been, if a lumber-merchant with a cold ?

I did my best to comfort him. I let his dog stay in my room. I read him John Brown and Montaigne and “ Water Babies” (Jeremy Taylor and Herbert having failed), and magazines of every nature.

Hazael would not be comforted. I brought him great ledgers that made my arms ache ; packages of accounts of sales and receipts, day-books and survey-books ; turned my library into a counting-room and myself to an accountant ; neglected my books and my horse, to add up long columns of hated figures : still Hazael was fast growing worse than Rachel weeping for her children. He would not be comforted.

Everything was wrong, both intrinsically and as related to him.

He never could be made to see, with Sir Thomas Browne, that “we carry with us the wonders we seek without us ; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.”

By reporting so much I became by one and the same means so useful and so tiresome to Hazael, that when I reported myself one noon as having been in the counting-room answering neglected letters, making out neglected bills, and giving neglected directions generally, he actually refrained from calling that wrong ; which was a great sacrifice for Hazael.

I determined to repeat the experiment next day ; so, after arranging him for the morning, I betook myself to walk as far as he was concerned, and to work as far as I was concerned, and you see there is really so little difference in the sound that the means justified the end, and went to the counting-room.

I believe it was because he had an inherent fear of fire or sudden death that he had instructed me, and only me, in the mysteries of that safe-lock in the counting-room. By an effort of memory I got it unlocked that day, but it was a great while after this before I was able to perform the operation with the rapidity and the slight degree of attention that would make a philosopher wonder if it were purely mechanical.

Before going into the details of this business, I wish it to be clearly understood here that I was not ” woman’s rights.”

I have never been inside of a woman’s convention, nor argued on the affirmative of the woman question ; neither have I felt that I had any disputed claims to advance and prove.

Of course, I always did as I pleased ; I drove fast horses of my own, and have in the course of my life sent back some forty “women’s horses ” to some forty livery-stables ; I have had my own library and locked my doors, and refused to see callers till four, when 1 pleased (which was generally when I was n't sitting on the aforementioned booms and tobacco-boxes, waiting for Hazael).

I never wore a bonnet in my life ; knew perfectly well how to use a plane, a level, a spokeshave, and a saw ; also I always carried a foot-rule and a knife as regularly as a pencil, a note-book, and my thimble; also in some way Hazael had discovered that when he, the husband, commanded, Calistel the wife did just as her common sense bade her, but I never upheld or spoke of any of these things, and I was not and am not “woman’s rights.”

Why in the world women should spend their valuable time and take up the columns of invaluable newspapers in arguing and deciding that they should and shall do as they please, and then never please to do anything that women haven’t done many times before, I do not see.

Why the best of them should hold that business is open to women, and then go about lecturing or devote themselves to book-keeping, which any boy with common (mathematical) sense might do, or to a milliner’s shop, or to taking a trip round the world alone, instead of going into the hardware, or boot and shoe, or hat. cap, and fur business, or out-of-doors photography (or in-doors either) ; why lady agents and doctors should be in ever-increasing demand, and the real bread-and-butter businesses left for slack-brained women to prove to the male portion of the world that they (the male portion) alone are able to conduct “business affairs,” I cannot see clearly, which is a slight (and unpardonable ?) digression, as I was only to tell you what I did see,— and I saw a great deal.

The day of my trial was Friday, (unlucky chance, it I had been superstitious !) and the last Friday in the month ; so I knew that the next day the millmen would all expect the month’s wages. Connected with Hazel’s establishment was a store where the married men got their family supplies and the more fortunate single individuals their pipes and tobacco, and said countingroom was in said store; so I had a great many accounts to look over and balance, and no peace and quiet to do it in.

When I had got my safe fairly unlocked, books out, and all ready to go to work, another ill omen greeted me.

In coming in, I had with difficulty made my way round or over an open scuttle, which but for unseen guiding hands might as well have furnished me with my death as with a story, except perhaps for the additional fact that the story was foreordained.

The scuttle was three feet from the outer door, and the cellar eight feet from the scuttle.

The person who came in after me, judging from the short time I saw him, was about six feet and two inches high (if he had not impressed me so much like a ship-mast I should say tall), and apparently all bones.

As he opened the door he shouted to the clerk, —-

“ I say, there ! ”

What he would have said “ there ” I have no reliable means of knowing.

What he said eight feet below there I heard through the open scuttle distinctly.

“ D—n it! It ought to ’a’ kilt me, an’ I ha'n’t hurt a bit ! ”

So instinctively do men philosophize ! I am sure that a woman, under the circumstances, would have died whether it “ kilt ” her or not. ,

I felt at once a loss of spirits, and I think they must have gone down to him, for he came up (the stairs, not the scuttle) hilarious, and I had no more that day.

For the sake of science, I asked him what he thought in that quick descent.

“ Wondered if my watch 'd knock off into the pork-barrel and spile.”

I almost wished that he had broken his arm, that Hazael might see that there were other things in the world as bad as a cold.

Notwithstanding my disappointment and loss of spirits, I was determined to look over accounts that forenoon ; so at day-book I went, comparing each sum total with its constituent items, till I should have been glad if I might reasonably hope never to hear of molasses, saleratus, pork, or any of the necessities of life again. Some of my gossiping neighbors — I will call no names — would have given a new dress to see, as I saw that day, just how much flour, eggs, and butter some of their dear gossiping neighbors had used in the last month : but we traders keep these little confidences strictly.

It was dreary enough to remember a library and locked doors that day and stand at a desk, the only thing besides the safe enclosed within those four white, close walls. Visions of Coleridge and Lamb, De Quincey and Shelley, came before me like triumphant friends. John Brown coaxingly invited me to “Spare Hours,” as if I had any hope of such ! I think I felt more pity for the “laboring class " that day than ever before or since ; before their sorrows were imaginary (with me), and since pity has given place to sympathy and fellow-feeling.

I got through the accounts of twenty men that forenoon, however, and went home to dinner, glad to relieve Hazael by this surprise ; for I knew they had troubled him more than I had any reason to think they had troubled the debtors.

“Well, Calistel, where have you been ? ”

“ Well, Hazael, what do you suppose I have been doing?”

“ Whatever you pleased, as usual.”

Now, however logical a conclusion that may have been to draw from my past history, it wounded my feelings very much to hear the statement then and there ; but men have no intuitions, and how should he know that I had once in my life made a sacrifice ? One must make a great many before the face will tell it.

So 1 answered, “ No, Hazael,” with a mixture of brag and grief.

“ Been doing mission, then t ”

By this Hazael meant had I been visiting the poor and afflicted, healing hearts and converting souls ; he always expressed it thus concisely, and always persisted that I “ did mission ” from, duty, not from love of it.

“ Yes, Hazaei, mission for you and mission for the mill-men. " Then I told him of the twenty accounts looked over, and of the jarring the cellar had had from the man of six feet and two inches.

To this day I ’m afraid Hazael looks for the man with six feet who cost him so much in repairing the underpinning of that store ; to this day he thinks he was an escaped curiosity of Barnum’s.

“Are you going to keep at it? " Hazael asked.

“ Yes.”

“What are you going to do to-morrow when the men come to be paid ?”

“ Pay them, I guess.”

“ But they ’ll cheat you.”

“Very well, if they can.”

“Well,” and Hazaei sighed. (You remember the occasions that are so often taken, according to Mrs. Browning. for sighing.)

“ You mean to do it, Calistel ? They 're dreadfully rough when I pay them; fifty of them, you know, all at once.”

Calistel quite meant to do it. In the course of the afternoon and next day, the other thirty accounts were cast and recast and balanced.

Saturday came, and five o' clock came, and I heard the mills stop; at least I did n’t hear them go, and concluded they had stopped.

Tramps and scuffles and double-shuffles out on the platform suggested to me that the men might possibly be there.

Up went my shutter, and I called through the loophole, “John Low!”

John Low, having heard a voice come through that loophole on other Saturday nights, knew of what interest it was to him to hear it this Saturday night; therefore John Low stopped on the half-shuffle and came up.

John Low saw me ; John Low stared ; John Low turned round and communicated to the crowd the specific intelligence, —

“By George, it’s her ! ”

Whereupon forty-nine of the fifty heads appeared in direct line with my loophole, and there came such a jamming and pushing and quarrelling as can be seen only among mill-men on pay-night. Whether it was an unusually rough time because it was “ her ” I did not know, but I was determined that she would make it smoother.

My shutter went down, my door went open, myself went out among them. “If you will come up one by one as I call you, I will pay you all to-night. If I see any more of this pushing and scuffling, I shall stop at once.”

I went in, I shut my door, I pulled up my shutter.

“John Low ! ”

Again John Low came up; this time alone.

“ The balance due you is twelve dollars ; the month’s wages thirty-two, the things taken up in the store twenty.”

John Low growled out something about an extravagant wife, wrote his name under the squared account, and left.

Eight other men went off very quietly, with greater or less funds in their pockets.

The tenth man came, heard my statement of his finances and disputed it.

“ 1 ha’n’t had but half them things ! ” The spirit of cheat spread rapidly, and those who had gone off content before came back to “git a little suffin more out of her.”

My shutter went down, my door went open, myself went out among them.

“ I have no time to dispute claims with you ; you can take your money or leave it. Monday morning, if you care to come and look over the items of account you may. I have looked them over carefully, and know them to be correct. Let me hear no more of this to-night.”

I went in, I shut my door, I pulled up my shutter, paid off the rest, heard no more grumbling, and went home moderately happy (for a married woman whose husband was sick at home with a cold).

This was in the fall, — November, I think; and before Hazael got out, it was time for the men to go into the woods.

Such an amount of talking to be done between Hazael and the loggers !

I judge of the number of men I sent to him every day only by the state of my carpet every night ; no amount of force applied to brooms has ever been enough to get those carpets free from mud. If ever Hazael has a cold again, I sincerely hope it may not be in spring or fall.

If the talking fell to Hazael this time, by the same convulsion of nature the work fell to me. Of course there was a clerk to put everything up as called for, but how could he undertake to do that, and keep account of everything that went to the woods in that week of fitting out teams ?

You would never believe if I were to tell you the average amount of food that went to every man.

“ Wanted enough to last six weeks,” they said. Ten barrels of flour, three barrels of pork, and no end of molasses and spices, black pepper enough to have set the whole region round about into a fit of sneezing; but first and foremost beans and tea and tobacco. In spite of this practical, sickening part of it, there was something very fascinating in the idea of being off in the woods and snow, away from everything and everybody for four whole months ; at least I thought so till I made them a visit in the course of the winter.

But it was not at all fascinating to get those teams ready to go ; yet the week came to an end, as all weeks except one, coming some time, will, and every day of it found me busy and left me tired, but quite glad to be doing something active and business-like, though the visions of dear friends at home, bound in leather, calf, and muslin, according to desert, were not less constant and enticing than at first.

Hazael was pleased and relieved and fast growing better, and he found the world so much more worth while than when he had everything to do himself, that it was really quite comfortable living with him, comparatively.

Hazael was out before November was, and soon quite well and strong ; but from some reason he never told me, nothing was said about my going back to my old place. Instead of being an appurtenance of the establishment, I was a part of the thing itself.

Hazael taught me the real art of book-keeping, and I kept his books. He taught me business-letter writing, which is quite a science, if you do it well; and I wrote his letters, keeping a copy of every one. He taught me how to make out drafts, write receipts, and half a thousand other little things that have to be done about a countingroom.

But with all this I began now to have some time for reading ; so my half of the desk was about equally filled with essays, poetry, and account-books.

Here is a page of my note-book written at that time.

“ The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool. The truest heroism is to resist the doubt, and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted and when to be obeyed.” — HAWTHORNE.

Make out a draft on G. Callum & Co., payable to order of Obed Lingum, Jr. Amt. $ 335. Due, Jan’y 7, promptly.

Perhaps both resemble certain characters the world calls shallow, only because the world has nothing with which to probe deep.

Don’t forget to pay Hazael’s doctor’s bill this month.

Dean Small’s lumber bill, $42.47

Joshua Reynold’s bill, 74.75

Collect both within three weeks.

A. J. Wardwell’s store account, $ 264.87.

Capt. Babcock wants timber sent to his master-builder next Saturday, the 5th.

Send draft for last bill of dry goods.

“ Hardness is a want of minute attention to the feelings of others.” — SYDNEY SMITH’S definition of the hardness of character.

We got through the winter with little excitement, and not a great deal to do except on the days when three or four men came out of the woods, which were generally Saturdays, that they might spend Sunday at home.

River-driving came on, and the beautiful, restless spring days together, when it seemed a sin and a shame to have to think of river-driving or any other practical thing ; and I thought I had never seen such suggestive weather as came that spring. Fifteen days of sun and shower and gray cloud, till you dread not so much a stormy day, which in itself considered might not be undesirable, as the change from this to that; and yet you half want it.

There was just enough of the fascination of uncertainty about those days to make them seem delightful before all others. They almost cheat one into the notion that, even after a new birth, a moody creature has some divine authority for remaining a moody creature still, which notion, to be sure, the steadier beauty of the later months would hardly justify.

When the storm came at last, the decision of it was almost heart-breaking, it was so inexorable, so certain after the puzzling days that would break out, no one knew where ; which of course has nothing to do with a lumber story, only as all changes of weather affect the rivers on which lumbermen are so dependent.

With river-driving came on the running of the mill again, and all the regular summer business ; and by the time the logs were all driven down, everything was going on in the usual methodical manner.

First came log-driving affairs to be settled : for however willing men may be to wait for the pay for the winter’s work in the woods, they cannot rest quietly twenty-four hours after log-driving is over, till they have their money. They generally get in sight a little before the last log.

So I made up my mind to a series of pay-days, which began at once.

The head man of the river-driving crew had handed me a paper stating how many days each man had worked, and the price agreed upon in payment therefor, which went on somewhat in this way : —

Duncan Wall, 17½ days' works @ $ 22 a month.

Jerry Heath, 18 days’ works @ $ 20 a month.

The list was twenty names long, perhaps.

It was really pitiful to see, as Jerry Heath and the rest came to be paid. that nearly every one held out a cut or a bruised hand ; some had a finger or a thumb gone, some half a hand lost in this or other year’s work ; some came limping in with a mangled foot, “hurt in the great jam on the rips,” perhaps, “or chopped off a toe or two the last month of logging.” This year one boy was drowned, — only eighteen. He fell in and got frightened, they said, and would n’t swim.

Scarcely one came that had not some bruise to show, and laugh or growl over, according to disposition.

And the accounts they would give of the way they had been living!

“ I say, Sam, you got any more flannel as good as that I bought jus’ afore we went in ? ”

“ Don’t remember anything particular about that; we’ve got some good flannel now, though.”

“ By George, that was the best stuff I ever wore. I had two shirts made of it ; one of ’em I put on when I went in and never had off again till I come out, and the other one I wore all through log-driving, till it’s jist rotting off.”

“ Clean way you have of living up there,” I heard the clerk suggest.

Whereupon a general shout was set up by the rest of the crowd.

“ By George ! we ha’n’t had but two towels in with us this winter,” said one.

“ Makes your face cold to wash it ’fore you go out in the morning,” chimed in another.

“ You bet we don’t want no soap an’ water up there,” echoed a third.

In the course of a few days they were all paid, and scattered off for the summer ; some to the mill and the rest to their farms, if they happened to have them, or to sea, or to loaf about till logging next year.

The hurry of the busy season seemed to come all at once with us ; there was a good deal of driving about to do, which perhaps was all that saved me from wearing out with the confinement the rest of the day ; but on the whole I was better than when I was doing nothing. This I mention here, not because in my conceit I think it will be of any personal interest to you, but because so much is said about women being “ too delicately organized ” to go into hard work ; this is my testimony. I would give it on oath in court.

There were a great many spring talks between Hazael and the captains about carrying lumber, and the rates of freight for the coming season ; there were a great many vessels to load as the result of them ; there was a great deal of lumber to look atter as the result of that.

All of Hazael’s lumber was carried to his vessels by rafts. A sluice ran from under the mill down to the river, and by the side of the sluice the lumber was piled in long, high piles. One man stood on top of the pile and surveyed it (by which I don’t mean that we kept him there to look at it, but to measure it), stick by stick, as two other men turned it off into the sluice with pickaxes.

Another man was at the other end of the sluice to take the sticks as they came down. This he did with a pickaxe that he struck into the stick as it came rushing out of the sluice, and dragged it just where he wanted it ; he had only to guide it, it got so much motion in coming.

The rafts were made on a wooden platform at low tide, and slipped off and taken to the vessels when the tide was full. It was miserable work sometimes going down the crooked narrow river in the dead of night, dark and stormy perhaps ; but they must go when the tide was in, whether that was at morning, noon, or midnight; and the men were often six hours getting down with them.

It was the slowest, dreariest, most lonesome work, they said, that they ever had to do about the whole concern.

I cannot truthfully say that I ever did it myself, but this is their report.

When the lumber got to the vessel and got in, some one must make out the bills of lading: that made a ride for me generally to the Port to get the captain to sign them.

When that was done, somebody must send one of them and the bill of lumber to whichever commission merchant Hazael had consigned it to. First the bill had to be made out, which the surveyor and I did together ; then it had to be copied to the account of sales-book ; then sent off.

Besides all this regular business, there was a good deal of outside business in supplying all the region round with lumber,—the ship-builders and the house-builders and all kinds of builders who were building anything; and this part of the work was the most fussy of all. Every stick must be of just such a length, breadth, and thickness, as it was wanted for a particular purpose.

Whoever wanted the lumber usually brought a paper with the dimensions he wanted written on it. Then some one must go all over the millpond hunting up the logs that would best saw into those sticks.

I had n’t as much time to sit round on the piers and booms as I used to have when Hazael did it, but I did n’t so much mind that, because I found that he took occasional trips on the banks after squirrels now that he had some one to help him and more time ; I found, too, that he was getting into the way of stopping an hour or so when he went to the Port to talk to his fellow-merchants.

Two make lighter work than one, and I hope that the happy time will come some day when wives and husbands will have one interest in one business ; they may be situated so that they can very often, as we were.

Don’t think you can do nothing in your husband’s business, unless he happens to have a fancy store. Is n't it “ ladylike ” to go into a hard business ? Stay at home, then, and take care of your children, and sew and make over your old dresses to save, and help your husband get through the year, and be as ladylike as you please. But if there is nothing in the business itself that your husband as a gentleman does not find defiling, there must be some part of it that you could take, that would not entirely forbid your being a lady.

Has n’t the world got up to that yet ? How will it get up, if no one pushes it along ?

Would it distress your husband very much to see you work ?

My dear friend, I am not talking to you. I am talking to some one whose husband is letting the growth of sense push out the refuse of chivalry and romance.

But more than that, I am talking to some one who has not now, but may some time have, a husband; and through all this begging and beseeching her to be careful of his romance.

As for Hazael and me, he is content, and I was a lady before, and have n’t felt any decided change since.

I received a salary for my labor from the business, which was a company business, and not wholly Hazael’s. I will not say how much it was, but quite enough to have supported me comfortably if I had had no other income, which, having Hazael, I had.

Two make lighter work of a thing than one, as I said ; so we got through the summer with great peace and comfort, and through the fall with bliss.

Winter is on us now, with its lighter work (or I should not have time to tell you about it), and finds me hoping that, until my hair is gray and I retire from business “ in a full age,” I may not be one of the happy feminine band whose watchword as they meet is, —

“ What do you find to do ? ”

Did so much grow from the single fact that Hazael was shut up in the house ?