The Three Marys of Sharpsville

THEY are all dead now, —as dead as their Scriptural namesakes, so that they may lawfully “ become the prey of literature,” and, without any glamour of romance, only with the safety of time and distance, be made to live in the memories of the few Sharpsville people who survive them.

Three unmarried Pollys they were, of different degrees of education and opportunity, but of the same social position, being that of “ one that serves,” and of very nearly the same age.

In the early part of the century, Relief, Return, and Pedy (the diminutive for Experience) were common names in the parlor, and both Polly and Sally played the harpsichord and rustled in paduasoys, but, presently ascending to the genteeler titles of Mary and Sarah, left their cast-off appellations to do homely duty in the kitchen ; and thus it came to pass that our three Pollys suited their names to their employment of scrubbing, nursing, and the mending of old clothes and carpets. Some of our kind-hearted and condescending magnates liked to call them Mary Frank and Mary Dexter, but the more conservative among us confined themselves strictly to the proprieties, and never varied from them out of a weak sympathy. But, indeed, I think neither of our three Pollys cared at all for such nominal elevation, being selfsustained as only full-blooded NewEnglanders can be. Perhaps they foresaw that the whirligig of time’s revenges would some day bring Polly and Molly up again, and reduce Ellen and Angelina to the company of pots and pans.

Polly Frank had a story ; a sorrowful one, of which I never heard many particulars, and those only years after my first guess. Poor thing! I suppose it was a comfort to her to whisper her sad secret to the ears of even a child, else why should she have told me once that she had a son, twenty years old ; and when I said, “ I did n’t know you were married, Polly,” why did she unnecessarily confuse my infant mind by saying she never had been ?

She must once have been very handsome, for her face was of the Grecian ideal type, with a line running straight from the low forehead to the tip of the nose and following a short upper lip and round chin that Aspasia would have been proud of. So much of beauty was left that age could not wither; with a tall, commanding figure, that never stooped nor bent to living man or woman. Blue-eyed, fair-haired, and strong-limbed she was as the charioted Boadicea, or as a daughter of the New Hampshire hills was wont to be.

Had she a father ? had she a mother ? And why was she scrubbing in any back-kitchen in Sharpsville that happened to want her, when every one knew that she counted kindred with the bluest blood in W., and when she could n’t wash a floor or cook a dinner without making enough classical allusions to astonish a sophomore ?

“ How came you to know Latin, Polly ? ”

“ Studied it, child, of course. My father taught me, Dr. Frank; and Greek, too.”

Then she would recite in what purported to be that tongue. We never thought of questioning the Greek or Latin then ; but there came a day when doubt broke in upon us, and when we doubted everything, — I mean about her knowledge. That first day, so fatal to faith, I was reading in the kitchen, and looking up dutifully as usual, said, “ Polly, where’s Crown Point ? do you know? ”

“ Know ! of course I know ! Crown Point ? why, it is off Cape Cod.” She leaned on her mop-handle, as on a sceptre, while she asserted this, fixing her eyes gravely on me. If manner would have done it, the fortification would have been planted at Provincetown, and she doubtless thought it was, or else believed in herself as implicitly as Norna of the Fitful Head in her own prophecies. But, somehow, the assertion did n't fit in with Ticonderoga ; and so, as I said, the whole fabric of faith came eventually to the ground. Do we remember when we first chipped the shells of childish belief, and shivered into the doubtful air ? and how, having once changed doubt into conviction, we changed places also with our instructors, adopting even more than their infallibility and pomposity ?

Whatever we might think of Polly’s geography, or even Greek, we were heartily afraid of her knuckles in the nursery, and rather bore the ills of keeping our own faces clean, than have those hard hands at our windpipes. Then the wondrous tales by the kitchen fire at night! Even after we came to disbelieve one of the most frightful, we shuddered at the “black legs coming down chimney ” as with the pleasant thrill from a theatrical catastrophe.

Polly had fallen from her high estate of maidenhood in W., and, as the custom was, had been discarded by all her large circle of unspotted relatives. Coming to Sharpsville, where she was both known and unknown, she had some peculiar advantages. People could afford to sympathize with her; and, being down, she feared no fall. She readily found employment, and lived and died among us, an honest, industrious woman, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and a respected member at last, with three others, of the town’s poorhouse.

To the poorhouse we all sent her friendly contributions of green tea, loafsugar, and such delicacies as are not provided by the selectmen ; as also, from time to time, whatever garments she seemed likely to need. These she accepted with a lofty grace, quite her own, leaving us only humble that our offerings were not twice as many and better. Sometimes, in my mother’s eagerness to bestow good gifts on Polly, she quite forgot the proprieties, as when she sent her, all too soon, my father’s winter drawers; — so that, returning from church in the teeth of a northeast wind, the good man was moved by conflicting emotions to exclaim with even angry, bitter personality as he rubbed the chilled surfaces of his sacred legs, “I met Polly Frank, going to the Orthodox meeting, — with my drawers on !”

Whosesoever garments she had on, be sure she wore them royally, and gave her opinions to the day of her death in an ex cathedra style that beat the deacons hollow.

I should do wrong to say that she was “a professor.” Sitting in the front pew, where the town’s poor were paraded, in what seemed to me an indelicate and inconsiderate manner, Polly always stayed to the communion, quietly waiting for “ the elements,” which never came. The deacons would not bring them to her, as she had never given what was called “satisfactory evidence” of her fitness to sit at the Lord’s table. They might have forgiven her for her much loving, as He did the other Mary, but they wouldn’t do this without “a confession,” as they called it, and this confession Polly would never make. Of her “misfortune ” she would say nothing, literally nothing, at any time or to any person. Only she asserted with her grand air, “ My skirts are clean ” ; from which oracular saying the deacons might have inferred much, if they had been less eager or curious, or more Christ-like.

So she soared about in Sharpsville, in an empyrean of her own,— which was well ; for in a thinner air, how soon her poor, broken wings would have brought her, stained and humiliated, to the ground ! And, after all, what was anybody in Sharpsville, that we should throw stones at her ?

I guess that a keen sorrow to Polly Frank was that serpent-toothed one of her son’s alienation. He never came near her in all her long life ; and she never whispered, but to herself, his name. In those weary years, which could not be called repentant ones, bad she not paid, pressed down and running over, in her hard, disgraced life, for the sin of her young, foolish days ?

Then again, putting one’s self in the place of the wanderer, the nameless son, with no fair chance in life, — for the world has a wholesome severity for the innocent consequence as for the guilty cause, — can we condemn him for his hardness ? He was inexperienced in the slipperiness of sin, and the young, being so good, are also so cruel ! God only, who sees and understands all, has long ago cleared away the cloud and brought the son to the mother’s heart !

I take the second Polly on the same principle as, when a child, I swallowed my “ pikery drops,” — to be done with it, and get the bad taste out of my mouth.

Of course, people cannot all be good, and we need n’t have expected it in Sharpsville. Nevertheless, there are reasons and reasons. And Polly Dexter, who was well-to-do, well enough connected, had no story, no mystery, no excuse, and was a “ professor ” besides in good church standing, had no business to be so heartily disliked and dreaded as she was, in every house where rents and holes made her advent necessary.

Polly Dexter was as mustard and vinegar to the feast; nay, rather like cayenne or horseradish ; so sharp, so biting were all her sayings, so persistent her fault-finding, so faithful her transmission from house to house of every item of information unsuited to such travel !

For all that, Polly was as necessary to Sharpsville as the air she filled with her mischief-making ; for who, in her absence, could or would undertake the accumulations of carpet-mending consequent on limited means and social ambitions? From six in the morning (for she preferred breakfasting with her customers) till nine at night, she made her needle and tongue fly, transforming, with godmotherly skill, rags into ball-

dresses, and making darns at which the eleven thousand virgins would have hesitated. And then, the modest way in which she announced, after many years, that she must raise her price from twenty-five to thirty-three cents a day, because “ wood has raised ” ! What was seven cents more or less, when put in competition with skill and patience like hers ?

She had a dark, bony body, with coarse black hair tightly drawn back in a knot. So were her thin lips drawn from her teeth ; and her black eyes, restless and roving, saw everything they should n’t, and seemed like the child’s description of Satan, “ walking up and down, seeking how he might catch somebody.”

Her arrival.was the unwelcome signal for the portcullis of silence to descend before our lips ; and the smallest among us, without understanding why, knew better than to talk before Polly Dexter. It was reserved for further experience to show us that it makes all the difference in the world to whom a thing is said,and that a remark as innocuous as a drop of fair water may fall on some minds poisonous as one of hemlock. Being instructed to “shut up,” before Polly, we naturally associated her with the restraint of our position ; but, indeed, she never said or did anything to make us like her. So, as I did n’t and don’t love her, it may be with a slightly acidulated sense of justice that I describe her, and feel a certain pleasure that, on a life like hers, bearing as it did only thorns and thistles, not the gauziest shadow of tender remembrance need be thrown ; but that it should be left bare, — a reminder and a warning to carpet-menders and carpettreaders as well. I mention the last, because it is a sad thought that the vices slip unawares into all floors,— scandal being harbored so frequently, even in parlors, as to have given rise in some quarters to the imputation of depravity in the general heart.

But judgment like this shows shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness. If such thinkers looked about in their own neighborhood, they would see numberless disprovers of so pitiful an accusation. They would see how a sincere and hearty interest shades off unintentionally into a curious and unwarrantable interference ; how the kindest sympathy wanders into careless expressions and unfounded speculations ; so that when the various yarns are woven together and colored by a skilful and malicious spirit, a picture is so embroidered as to shock every one, though the spinning of the separate threads it might not be easy to deny. In the shudder with which we look at the completed ideal of malice, we prove the lack of native depravity. But what can be said for the bad painter, the malicious embroiderer? And now, we come back to Polly again.

How are we to excuse a person who has not even fallen ? one who is poorspirited and mean by nature, and has not been so placed as to remedy, educate, and destroy bad qualities ? For, perhaps, no good-natured friend told her of them. Only everybody “shut up ” as well as they could when she was by ; and, except in a general way, when informed that with many millions of the same species she was a sinner, how was she to know ? She was rich. She owned three houses in Sharpsville. But she was snappish, scandalous, and mean. On the other hand, she gave her money to the church when she died. The church, at least, ought to tread lightly on her grave ; and be sure the deacons always gave her “the elements.”

In another world, must she not be somehow made over, with tentacular instincts which may dimly reach towards something higher, something unknown and undreamed of here ? No doubt, in that future state which is to clear up all the mysterious injustice of this, the monkey-like malice lingering in the undeveloped humanity of Polly Dexter will have dropped away and given her an equal chance with her fellows. Till when, what Is there left in life for such as she, but to be pitied, avoided, and — not to put too fine a point upon it — hated ? That last expression sounds, and indeed is, both sharp and hard. How do I know what she has resisted ? How do I know but that, when she was quite young and her mental bones still soft and flexible, something happened to her, so harsh, so cruel, so bad every way, that the experience of it entered every fibre of her being, and made her the bitter Polly she was ? Shutting my eyes, I see her up in her mother’s house, on Sugar-Loaf Hill, lying pale and senseless as a corpse. She is on a settle in the kitchen, and her mother cannot, with all her efforts, “ bring her to.” The man in a brown, hemlock-dyed surtout, who pushed past me and ran down the path to where Smith waited in his wagon for me, while I did my errand, — who was he, and why did he speed by Smith, and tear along down the hill ? If he had looked back, he might have seen one Fury at least, in the person of Mrs. Dexter, who followed him and stood at the door, holding her level hand before her eyes, and grinding her teeth. She did not see me for a minute, or hear my trembling application for Polly’s services in behalf of a departing carpet ; and when she did see and hear, she still looked so like an avenging ghost, that if I had been fifty instead of five, I must have suspected and unriddled the mystery.

And then, being only Polly, and having no more soothing or stimulating influences than rags of carpeting and broken trousers, she had, so to speak, no materials for improvement. My elegant friend, Agatha M., whose betrothed left her on the eve of marriage, had the stimulus of avenging friends and great social opportunity. She was fitted for Washington and for St. James. She bound her wounds with gold tissue, and wreathed her brows with rosebuds; and if a savor of bitterness could always be discerned through her graceful ways and æsthetic tastes, only the few beloved ones understood why such a drop should mingle in a cup so fair and foaming as hers.

But Polly took her bitters every day and all day ; and she had no opportunities, and no beauty. She might be said to have, in her expressive vernacular, “ no nothing.” And so Polly Dexter may have at least as good a chance as Burns gave to a worse spirit.

Like all New England villages fifty years ago, ours was full of original characters, sharply cut and definite in their manifestations. Even the mindless ones had their individual notions, which they carried out with vigor and dignity; like the half-witted Luna, who, being supplied daily by my mother from her own table, sent the following message to her benefactress: “If Miss P. is a goin' to send me my dinners every day, I want 'em hot!” Which was reasonable, divested of the conventionalities ; and the rebuke was meekly accepted, with a corresponding reform.

All characteristics ran to seed in Sharpsville, the social pruning-knife of these days being unknown or disregarded ; so that nothing could be more relishing than the curt phrases current among us which described individuals without naming them. We had every variety in our town, from the poor, generous Polly Frank,—who let in old Almy, gave up her own bed to her, while she herself slept on the floor, and, when I said, “ Is n’t old Almy dreadful, Polly ? ” answered tenderly, “ She’s dreadful poor, dear 1 ” — to the rich man who, lending a hammer to his neighbor to drive a nail, thriftily charged three cents for the use of it.

Polly Forest, my third and best, owned a farm, or rather a part of one, in Sharpsville Swamp; and might have lived at home, had she so chosen, or if she had been afflicted with that disease of false and foolish pride which brings so many girls, in our days, to bad lives. But being neither self-important nor self-conscious, her affectionate nature and religious faith led her to devote herself to the interest of her employers with an assiduity and faithfulness that even the Apostle Paul might have made an example of. Also, because she was self-reliant and independent, she despised putting herself forward, or out of her place, as she phrased it; and she kept that of a servant with a pertinacity only equalled by her modest dignity. At the same time she held herself as the dear friend of us all, and an unwearied correspondent when we were away from home ; giving important particulars of the cat and fox, which she suspected might be forgotten in our parlor correspondence. Being a great reader, with also a pretty taste for verse-making, many were the pages of rhyme she sent us, always under the seal of secrecy, for she was far too modest to make any talk of what she was, or had learned. But in fact hers was

“ A deedful life, — a silent voice.”

My Polly the third had sorrows of her own, as well as Polly Frank, but not like hers. Indeed, I doubt if Cupid ever so much as brushed a feather of his wing against her red cheeks. They were those hard, unspoken sorrows, that admit no sympathy. An intemperate, lazy brother, and a mother, so proud, so unreasonable, and so reticent, that by no chance did a kindly or affectionate word ever escape her. To drunken Joe she addressed all her wordless kindnesses, insisting on Polly’s outdoor services in his place. Insomuch that one day Polly came near being torn to pieces by the bull, and only escaped by climbing a small tree. Here, at the distance of a few feet from the roaring creature, tearing at the slight trunk with his horns and ploughing the ground with angry hoofs, did she await the threatened destruction, which, indeed, seemed inevitable. But for drunken Joe and a neighbor, who with much clubbing changed the bull’s mind, where would have been my Polly? Polly always addressed her mother in the third person, as if she spoke to some potentate.

“Would ma’am like to have the door shut ? ” or, “ Shall I get the water for ma’am ? ”

There was nothing to be afraid of, that I could see, in Mrs. Forest, who seemed only a pale, stiffish woman; but to her daughter she was an object of awful deference, and she obeyed every token of her will more like a slave than a child.

I think Mrs. Forest had no objection to Polly’s “going out to live,” for a year at a time, though she never said so ; and Polly always formally asked ma’am’s leave, when she came to us, though she was twenty-five or thirty years old.

There were no “ base laws of servitude ” between us. It was always a love-matter. It was understood that she was to have the highest wages given in town (four and sixpence a week, and time to mend her own clothes after nine o’clock at night); but she earned it well in a family of sixteen, and with children about in all directions, hindering as well as helping her.

Before the kings of Ireland overran this land, and before the Yankee tendency to patent inventions had been so stimulated by ignorance and stupidity that a pail of water cannot be drawn in a natural way from the well, our Polly used to go smiling into the garden, and gather eight or ten kinds of vegetables for dinner, preparing each for the table, and they had a sweet freshness and flavor found in no market produce now.

Her skilled eye detected the full corn in the ear by the look of the husk, and she knew by the swell of the pod when the peas were ready for boiling; she knew what squashes not to get, and where were the crispest cucumbers. Indeed, she had that native talent which induced cows to give down their milk, even without the promise of a silk gown ; the wit to make hens lay and chickens live; and rising, like the virtuous woman in Proverbs, while it was yet night, her washing was hung in snowy lines, or ever her breakfast was eaten. Whatsoever her hands found to do, that did she with her might. She was so fond of flowers, and so patient with them in their shortcomings and their ever-needed pottings, that I think she must have a garden now somewhere in Paradise, and croons Methodist hymns over her flowers as she used to here, about

and so on ; for I don’t see how heaven is going to change one’s tendencies unless one is made over ; how a queen is to take up the role of a peasant, or a philosopher that of a stock-broker, merely by another place of residence.

My Polly! In that state or place where you are gone, do you find any one to minister to, to serve with loving diligence with heart-full, unwearied tenderness, as you did here ? There was a tie between you and those you loved closer than that of a maid to her mistress, and that tie may remain in another world. She whom you loved so much, and in whose arms you died, when she too went to the world of souls, must have found you, I think, waiting for her, with the same simple devotion as when you left her, to take up your old relation of unselfish love.

Like most country girls, Polly could drive a nail and split wood if necessary, which I fancy it often was at her home. She was a pretty good carpenter, and, besides tinkering the house on occasions, could give form to her own inventions with some skill. A board for scouring knives of her make, with sundry contrivances and conveniences, lasted in my kitchen until silvering them came into fashion.

The greatest treat we had as children was to go to Polly’s farm between whiles to visit her. I remember vividly the queer, long, narrow passages to remote parts of the house, which defied all rules of architecture, and which led nowhere, with a captivating mystery. I was glad to find something that illustrated the “ Romance of the Forest ” ; — doubly glad when I got only into the back kitchen and was relieved from the fear of seeing a skeleton. Mrs. Forest was generally to be found there untiringly scrubbing; and a smell, inhaled there, of milk and very clean pans and tubs, lingers in my memory to this day, as also the impression of the whole inside of the dwelling freshly whitewashed always, the boards as well as plastering. It was fearfully and wonderfully clean at the Forest farm.

Then, not having the dread of the bull before our eyes, having ascertained that he was tightly confined, we strolled off into the woods that skirt South Mountain, where we gathered the tender checkerberry-leaves, or, if early in the season, the rich berries themselves and the delicate May-flower. Afterwards, being refreshed by ma’am’s hospitality of rye and Indian bread and cheese, we set off at dusk, on our twomile homeward way, and Polly stood at “ the delectable gate,” as we called it, guarding us with her smiles, till the long road bent, and shut her away from our sight.

I know, my Polly, that the recording angel never set down against you the little whiffs of temper that made you sometimes even throw the chairs out of window, or the little injustices that made my brother Ralph hate you. To me you were always kind, gentle, and patient; but who pretended you were perfection ? Only I would I could find a helper to my domestic infirmities one hundredth part as faithful, as clean and capable, faults all counted in ; would there be any question of wages between us ? Think of Polly “ going to leave, because there is sickness in the family!” Think of Polly withdrawing from the storeroom portions of groceries, under some ethical delusion familiar to the Celtic imagination ! Think of Polly at all in the same category with locks and keys, with modern notions of hire and service ! The whole thing is as different as if we lived on another planet.

She was such a large part of my child-life, that it is difficult to look back without seeing her constantly. Now that she is gone, I naturally dwell only on her excellences ; the more when I contrast her solid virtues with the flimsy ghosts of such that I see now in every kitchen, — her faithfulness that let nothing run to waste ; her neverweary feet, that with angel-like persistence ascended and descended to minister to the wants of others ; all her thoughtfulness, her sweetness, her patient energy !

C. A. H.