Stories of American Life and Adventure Part 2

When the first settlers came to this country, tea and coffee were unknown to them. The favorite drink of that time was a kind of weak beer, which was usually made at home. The first settlers in America could not buy drinks such as they had had in England, and in a new country they often could not make them. So they found out ways of making other drinks in place of them. What we call root beer and birch beer, and a drink flavored with the chips of the hickory tree, were made in New England. Farther south the people made a kind of drink by mixing water and mola.s.ses together, and putting in Indian corn.

Such drinks were taken at meals as we take tea and coffee. People also drank a great deal of cider. As the cows hardly ever gave any milk in winter, children were given cider and water to drink. But about fifty years after the time that the first settlers came to this country, people in England began to get tea and coffee. Tea and coffee were soon after brought into this country. At first they were thought to be medicines good for many diseases. Little books were written to tell how many diseases these new drinks would cure. Root beer and birch beer, and tea and coffee, were good things in one way. After they came into use, people did not care so much for stronger drinks.

When tea first came, it was very fashionable. It was called the new China drink. Along with the tea, people brought from China little teacups to drink it from. Most of the cups before this time had been made of pewter. The new cups and saucers were called chinaware. They also brought from China pretty little tables on which they set the teacups when they drank the tea.

When people first got tea in country places, they did not know how to use it. There was a minister in Connecticut who bought two pounds of tea in New York. He took it home with him, and put it away to use when anybody in his house should be ill. He wanted the tea for medicine.

His daughters had heard about the fine ladies in town who took tea.

They were curious to taste it, and were not willing to wait until they should be ill. So one afternoon, without letting their father know it, they asked two young men who were friends of theirs to the house. Then they got out the package of tea, intending to treat themselves and the young men to a new pleasure. They knew nothing about making tea. When they had boiled it a long time, they poured off the tea and threw it away. They put the tea leaves on a dish, and tried to eat them as one would eat spinach. This is the way they punished themselves for disobeying their father.

Before the Revolution, when gentlemen called at fine houses in the afternoon, the ladies always gave them tea to drink. As soon as a gentleman's little cup was empty, one of the ladies would fill it up again, and it was not polite to refuse to drink all the tea that was offered. A French prince who was in Philadelphia during the Revolution drank twelve little cups of tea one afternoon. The ladies kept giving him more, and the poor prince did not know how to stop them until another French gentleman told him privately that if he would lay his teaspoon across the top of the cup no more tea would be poured in. He put the teaspoon across the teacup as a sign that he did not wish to drink any more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Colonial Tea Party.]

Long after tea and coffee were in use in this country they were not known in the backwoods. The people on the frontier drank tea made from the root of the sa.s.safras tree or from the leaves of some wild vines.

The whole work of preparing food was done at home. When they wanted to grind meal, they did it by pounding corn in a hole cut in the stump of a tree. They used a large stone pounder which was tied by a rope to a limb of a tree above. After each blow the limb would spring back and raise the pounder. Their corn meal was sifted through a sieve made of deerskin with little holes punched through it. They had to make their shoes and hats and caps themselves, and to weave their cloth at home.

A boy who lived on the west side of the Alleghany Mountains in those days afterward wrote a book telling all about this rough life. His name was Joseph Doddridge. He spent his boyhood in a log cabin, in constant danger from Indians. The settlers had built a fort in the middle of the settlement. Sometimes in the night Joseph would hear a man tapping gently on the back window of his father's cabin. As soon as anybody waked up, the man would whisper, "Indians!" Joseph's father would then take down his gun. The children would be dressed in the dark as quickly as possible. Such things as would be needed in the fort were then picked up. Not a word was spoken, nor was any candle lighted. Even the little children learned to be perfectly silent, and the dogs were taught not to bark. When all was ready, the family would hurry away along the foot path to the fort. All the other families in the settlement would be called in the same way.

Every fall these settlers sent pack horses over the mountains. The horses were loaded with the skins of animals. When they came back, they carried salt, which was the one thing that could not be made in the settlement. But the men never thought it worth while to bring home with them tea and coffee or other unnecessary things.

When Joseph was about seven years of age, he was sent over the mountains to school. The little boy was very much puzzled when he first saw a house that was plastered inside. He had never in his life seen anything but a cabin built of logs. He could not understand how a plastered house was built. It seemed to him like something that had grown that way.

When supper time came in this plastered house, he saw a teacup and saucer for the first time in his life. The people in his neighborhood used wooden bowls to drink out of. But here he saw what seemed to him to be a little cup standing in a bigger one. He had never heard of coffee. He only knew that the brownish-looking stuff in his cup was not milk, or hominy, or soup. What to do with the little cups, or how to make use of the spoon that was in them, he could not tell, so he watched the big folks handle their cups and spoons. He drank the coffee just as they did, but he disliked it very much. It made the tears come into his eyes to drink it. When he got his cup nearly empty, it was filled again. He did not dare to say that he had had enough, and he did not know what to do. At last he saw one man turn his empty cup bottom upward in the saucer, and lay his little spoon across the bottom of the cup. That was the custom in those days. He saw that this man's cup was not filled any more. So Joseph drank his coffee as quickly as possible, turned his cup over in the saucer, and laid the spoon across the bottom. He was delighted that he did not have to drink any more coffee.

KIDNAPPED BOYS.

In the days when our country belonged to England, white people were brought here to be sold. Some of these were poor people who could not get a good living in England. They came over to this country without any money. The captain of the ship in which they came sold them in this country to pay their pa.s.sage.

Men and women who were sold had to serve four years; and boys and girls, a longer time. The person sold was just like a slave until his time was out. The man who had bought him might beat him, or sell him to another master. Many of these white slaves did not get enough to eat.

Here are some stories of boys who were brought to this country and sold before the Revolution. They are all true stories.

THE STORY OF PETER WILLIAMSON.--TWICE A SLAVE.

One day a boy named Peter Williamson was walking along the streets of Aberdeen in Scotland. The little fellow was eight years old. Two men met him, and asked him to go on board a ship with them. When he got on board, he was put down in the lower part of the ship with other boys.

The ship sailed to America with twenty boys. Like Peter, the other lads had been stolen from their parents. They were taken to Philadelphia and sold, to work for seven years.

Little Peter was lucky enough to fall into the hands of a kind master.

Among those who came to buy boys off this ship was a man who had himself been stolen from Scotland when he was young. He felt sorry for little Peter when he saw him put up for sale. The price the cruel captain asked for him was about fifty dollars. The Scotchman paid this money, and took Peter for his boy. He sent him to school in the winter, and treated him kindly. Peter, for his part, was a good boy, and did his work faithfully. He staid with his master after his time was out.

When Peter was about seventeen years old, this good master died. He left to Peter about six hundred dollars in money for being a good boy.

He also gave him his best horse and saddle and all his own clothes.

Some years after this, Peter married, and went to live in the northern part of Pennsylvania. He was by this time a man of property.

One night, when his wife was away from home, the Indians came about his house. He got a gun and ran upstairs. He pointed the gun at the Indians, but they told him that if he would not shoot they would not kill him. So he came down, and gave himself up as a prisoner.

The Indians treated him very cruelly. He was with them more than a year. His sufferings were so great that he wished sometimes that he was dead. He knew that if he ran away the Indians would probably catch him, and kill him in some cruel way. But one night, when the Indians were all asleep, he resolved to take the risk. You may believe that when he had started he ran with all his might.

When daylight came, he hid himself in a hollow tree. After a while he heard the Indians running all about the tree. He could hear them tell one another how they would kill him when they found him. But they did not think to look into the tree.

The next night he ran on again. He came very near running into a camp of Indians. But at last he came in sight of the house of a friend. He was tired out, and starving. He had hardly any clothes left on him. He knocked at the door. The woman who saw him thought that he was an Indian. She screamed, and the man of the house got his gun to kill him. But he quickly told his friend that he was no Indian, but Peter Williamson. Everybody had given him up for dead. But now all his friends were happy to see him alive once more. He had twice been carried into slavery,--once by cruel white men, and once by yet more cruel red men.

SOLD LIKE JOSEPH.--STORIES OF TWO KIDNAPPED BOYS.

You have heard the beautiful story of Joseph in the Bible. You remember that he was sold by his brothers. Then he was carried into Egypt, where he became a great man.

In 1730 there was a little English lad at sea with his uncle, who was the captain of a ship. Whether the boy's father and mother were dead or not, history does not tell. But the boy was sailing on his uncle's ship, as though he were the captain's son.

One day the captain was taken ill at sea. After a while he died. The mate and the sailors thought that they would like to steal the ship and all the captain's property. But it now all belonged to the little boy. Like Joseph's brothers, the sailors laid a plan to get the boy out of the way. You remember that Joseph's brothers saw some slave traders going by. These traders were Arabs, like the Arabs that carry off slaves to-day. Joseph's brothers stopped the Arabs, and sold little Joseph to them. The Arabs took Joseph to Egypt and sold him.

Just so the mate and his men saw a ship coming toward them. This ship had a great many people on board. They were Irish people, who were being taken to America to be sold as servants.

The mate hailed the ship, and made a bargain with the captain and the mate. He sold the poor little boy, who had no friends, to this captain.

Then the mate and his men sailed away. What became of them we do not know; but the ship, loaded with white servants, sailed to Boston. It landed at the Long Wharf, a pier running far out into the water. The servants were obliged to run up and down this wharf. The people who came to buy watched them to see how strong they might be.

The little boy sold by the mate was there. He ran up and down with the others, to show how nimble his legs were. He was bought by a Mr.

Willard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Selling the Captain's Nephew.]

The boy served out his time, and became free. He became a well-known officer in the Indian wars. His name was Johnson. He did not become so great as Joseph in Egypt, but, like Joseph, he gained honor in the country into which he had been sold as a slave.

Here is another story of the same kind. A little boy six years old got lost in London. After he had wandered about a good while, a ship captain met him, and told him that he would take him to his father.

The captain took him into a boat, put him on board his ship, carried him to Maryland, and sold him. After the boy had served out his time and grown to be a man, he became a rich farmer.

The wicked ship captain who carried off the boy was caught stealing many years afterward. In that day, thieves were often sold into America for seven years, as a punishment. This captain who had sold others was now put on a ship and sent to be sold in Maryland. The man who bought him was the very person whom he had carried off when he was a boy.

You remember how much Joseph's brothers were afraid of him when they found themselves in his power. This wicked old sea captain was frightened when he saw that he was now a slave to the boy he had stolen. He was so much alarmed that he killed himself.

A LITTLE LORD SOLD INTO BONDAGE.