Duffels

Edward Eggleston

Description

The once famous Mrs. Anne Grant - known in literature as Mrs. Grant of Laggan - spent part of her childhood in our New York Albany, then a town almost wholly given to traffic with the aborigines. To her we owe a description of the setting out of the young American-Dutch trader to ascend the Mohawk in a canoe, by laborious paddling and toilsome carrying round rifts and falls, in order to penetrate to the dangerous region of the tribes beyond the Six Nations. The outfit of this young bushloper, as such a man was called in the still earlier Dutch period, consisted mainly of a sort of cloth suited to Indian wants. But there were added minor articles of use and fancy to please the youth or captivate the imagination of the women in the tribes. Combs, pocket mirrors, hatchets, knives, jew's-harps, pigments for painting the face blue, yellow, and vermilion, and other such things, were stored away in the canoe, to be spread out as temptations before the eyes of some group of savages rich in a winter's catch of furs

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819904571
• Langue: English

Extrait

PREFACE.
The once famous Mrs. Anne Grant – known inliterature as Mrs. Grant of Laggan – spent part of her childhood inour New York Albany, then a town almost wholly given to trafficwith the aborigines. To her we owe a description of the setting outof the young American-Dutch trader to ascend the Mohawk in a canoe,by laborious paddling and toilsome carrying round rifts and falls,in order to penetrate to the dangerous region of the tribes beyondthe Six Nations. The outfit of this young "bushloper," as such aman was called in the still earlier Dutch period, consisted mainlyof a sort of cloth suited to Indian wants. But there were addedminor articles of use and fancy to please the youth or captivatethe imagination of the women in the tribes. Combs, pocket mirrors,hatchets, knives, jew's-harps, pigments for painting the face blue,yellow, and vermilion, and other such things, were stored away inthe canoe, to be spread out as temptations before the eyes of somegroup of savages rich in a winter's catch of furs. The cloths soldby the traders were called duffels, probably from the place oftheir origin, the town of Duffel, in the Low Countries. By degreesthe word was, I suppose, transferred to the whole stock, and atrader's duffels included all the miscellany he carried with him.The romantic young bushloper, eager to accumulate money enough tomarry the maiden he had selected, disappeared long ago from thewater courses of northern New York. In his place an equallyinteresting figure – the Adirondack guide – navigates single-handedthe rivers and lakes of the "North Woods." By one of those curiouscases of transference that are often found in etymology, the guidestill carries duffels, like his predecessor; but not for Indiantrading. The word with him covers also an indefinite collection ofobjects of manifold use – camp utensils, guns, fishing tackle, andwhatnots. The basket that sits in his light boat to hold hissmaller articles is called a duffel basket, as was the basket ofsundries in the trader's canoe, I fancy. If his camp grows into ahouse frequented by sportsmen, there will be a duffel room tocontain all manner of unclassified things.
Like the trader of old New York, I here open my kitof duffels. I have selected from the shorter tales written by mesince I began to deal in the fancy wares of a writer of fictiononly such as seem to have elements of permanent interest. I findtheir range to be wide. They cover many phases of human nature;they describe life in both the eighteenth and the nineteenthcenturies; they are of the East and of the West, of the North, theMiddle, and the South. Group or classify them I can not; they aretoo various. Some were written long ago, in my younger manner, andin the tone prevailing among the story-writers of those days.Opinions and sentiments are inextricably interwoven with some ofthese earlier stories that do not seem to be mine to-day. But a manin his fifties ought to know how to be tolerant of the enthusiasmsand beliefs of a younger man. I suspect that the sentiment I findsomewhat foreign to me in the season of cooler pulses, and thesituations and motives that seem rather naïve now, had something todo with the acceptability of the stories. The popularity of theseearly tales in their day encouraged me to go on, and a little laterto set up in more permanent and wholesale business as a novelist.To certain of these stories of my apprenticeship I have appendeddates to explain allusions in the text. Other stories there arehere, that are of recent production, and by these I am willing tobe judged. The variety in subject, manner, date, location, makesproper to them the title I have chosen – a good word with a savorof human history and an odor of the New World about it; a word yetin living use in this region of lakes and mountains. I am notwithout hope that some of my duffels will please.
If formal dedications were not a littleold-fashioned, I should give myself the pleasure of writing on oneof these pages the name of my friend Mr. Richard Watson Gilder. Ihave read with delight and sincere admiration the poems that havegiven him fame, but they need no praise of mine. The occasion of mymentioning his name here is more personal – it was by hissolicitation that I was seduced, nearly a quarter of a century ago,into writing my earliest love story. I may say, perhaps withoutpushing the figure too far, that on his suggestion I first embarkedin the light canoe of a dealer in duffels.
E. E.
SISTER TABEA.
Two weather-beaten stone buildings at Ephrata, inPennsylvania, remain as monuments on this side of the water of thegreat pietistic movement in Germany in the early part of theeighteenth century. One of these was called Bethany, the otherSharon. A hundred and thirty or forty years ago there were otherbuildings with these, and the softening hand of time had not yettouched any of them. The doorways were then, as now, on the groundlevel, the passages were just as narrow and dusky, the cells hadthe same little square windows to let in the day. But the stones inthat day had a hue that reminded one of the quarry, the mortarbetween them was fresh, the shingles in the roof had gathered nomoss and very little weather stain; the primeval forests were yetwithin the horizon, and there was everywhere an air of newness, ofadvancement, and of prosperity about the Dunkard Convent. One seesnow neither monks nor nuns in these narrow hallways; monks and nunsare nowhere about Ephrata, except in the graveyard where all thebrethren of Bethany, and all the sisters who once peopled Sharon,sleep together in the mold. But in the middle of the eighteenthcentury their bare feet shuffled upon the stairs as, clad in whitehooded cloaks descending to the very ground, they glided in and outof the low doors, or assembled in the little chapel called "Zion"to attend service under the lead of their founder, Conrad Beissels.In the convent, where he reigned supreme, Beissels was known asBrother Friedsam; later he was reverently called Father FriedsamGottrecht, a name that, like all their convent names, had plenty ofmystical significance attached to it.
But monks and nuns are men and women; and neithercloister life, nor capuchin hoods and cloaks, nor bare feet, norprotracted midnight services, can prevent heartburnings andrivalries, nor can all of these together put down – what is most tobe dreaded in a monastery – the growth of affection between man andwoman. What could be done to tame human nature into submission, tobring it to rejoice only in unearthly meditations, and a contentedround of self-denial and psalm-singing, Brother Friedsam had triedon his followers with the unsparing hand of a religious enthusiast.He had forbidden all animal food. Not only was meat of eviltendency, but milk, he said, made the spirit heavy and narrow;butter and cheese produced similar disabilities; eggs excited thepassions; honey made the eyes bright and the heart cheerful, butdid not clear the voice for music. So he approved chiefly of thoseplain things that sprang direct from the earth, particularly ofpotatoes, turnips, and other roots, with a little bread soup andsuch like ghostly diet. For drink he would have nothing but what hecalled "innocent clear water," just as it flowed from thespring.
But even a dish of potatoes and turnips and beetsand carrots, eaten from wooden trenchers, without milk or butter ormeat, was not sufficient to make the affections and passions of menand women as ethereal as Friedsam wished. He wedded his people inmystic marriage to "the Chaste Lamb," to borrow his frequentphrase. They sang ecstatically of a mystical city of brotherly andsisterly affection which they, in common with other dreamers of thetime, called Philadelphia, and they rejoiced in a divine creaturecalled in their mystical jargon Sophia , which I supposemeant wisdom, wisdom divorced from common sense. These anchoritesdid not eschew social enjoyment, but held little love feasts. Thesisters now invited the brethren, and next the brethren entertainedthe sisters – with unbuttered parsnips and draughts of innocentclear water, no doubt.
That which was most remarkable at Ephrata, and thatout of which grows my story, was the music. Brother Friedsam,besides his cares of organization, finance, and administration, andhis mystical theological speculations, was also a poet. Most of thesongs sung in the little building called "Zion" were written by him– songs about "the lonesome turtledove in the wilderness," that is,the Church; songs in praise of the mystical marriage of virginswith the chaste Lamb; songs about the Philadelphian brotherhood ofsaints, about the divine Sophia, and about many other things whichno man can understand, I am sure, until he has first purifiedhimself from the gross humors of the flesh by a heavenly diet ofturnips and spring water. To the brethren and sisters who believedtheir little community in the Pennsylvania woods to be "the Womanin the Wilderness" seen by St. John, these words represented theonly substantial and valuable things in the wide universe; and theysang the songs of Conrad Beissels with as much fervor as they couldhave sung the songs of heaven itself. Beissels – the Friedsam ofthe brotherhood – was not only the poet but the composer of thechoral songs, and a composer of rare merit. The music he wrote ispreserved as it was copied out with great painstaking by thebrethren and sisters. In looking over the wonderful old manuscriptnotebook, the first impression is one of delight with the quaintsymbolic illuminations wrought by the nuns of Ephrata upon themargins. But those who know music declare that the melodies arelovely, and that the whole structure of the harmonies is masterful,and worthy of the fame they had in the days when monks and nunsperformed them under the lead of Brother Friedsam himself. In thegallery of Zion house, but concealed from the view of the brethren,sat the sisterhood, like a company of saints in spotless robes.