1480 RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE THANKSGIVING SONG 
Pabt III. 
Martin and I might have voted the 
afternoon a lonesome one if we had not 
been busy. The cookie under an ener¬ 
getic cook will always be kept going. It 
was a dull, gray day. Thick clouds float¬ 
ed across the sky, making you think of 
rhe face of some sad-faced woman who 
constantly uses her handkerchief as an 
absorbing sponge. Our little clearing 
was just a handful torn out of the forest. 
The great pines stood all around us. 
Even on a sunny afternoon the long 
shadows gathered early, and on this dull 
Thanksgiving it seemed as if dark patches 
of gloom gathered all around the clearing 
under the trees. A wind was rising and 
the pine branches sent out a deep mur¬ 
mur or hum, which grew louder as the 
wind increased. It seemed to me like the 
distant roar of the ocean as in old days 
we heard it back among the Massachu¬ 
setts hills on my uncle’s farm. 1 remem¬ 
bered how, years before, on Thanksgiving 
night, we had all sat before the fire talk¬ 
ing or singing. Then suddenly we all fell 
silent, and over the hills, across the fog¬ 
gy marsh, there came the roar of the dis¬ 
tant ocean, softened by its passage into a 
low murmur, full of a» wild melancholy. 
The singing of the wind through the big 
pines brought that old murmur back to 
me. It came into that lonely clearing 
like some sad, sweet message of old times. 
* ❖ * ❖ * 
But an active cookie has little time 
for a musical entertainment in memories 
— not when burgoo is cooking. Martin 
crushed the checkerberry, the mint, a lit¬ 
tle cedar and some other herbs with a 
stick and put the fragrant mess into the 
boiling meat. The shelled corn had soft- 
,ened a little in the lye made of wood 
ashes and water. It was not fully 
'‘hulled,” of course, but we put it in with 
the rest to boil. About two quarts of 
baked beans went in with It, and a good- 
sized piece of salt pork, cut up fine. We 
kept the wash boiler oA the front of the 
stove with a hot fire under it. As the 
water evaporated we poured in more, and 
all through the afternoon we kept that 
fragrant mess tumbling and jumping with 
heat." Finally the potatoes and the dump¬ 
lings were put in and the whole mass 
thickened with a little flour. There was 
plenty to do—wood to cut, and beans to 
boil for the bean hole. There were sev¬ 
eral places in the walls of the shanty 
where the chinking between the logs had 
fallen out, so it was part of my job to 
pack moss into these chinks and daub 
thick mud on the outside. So the after¬ 
noon slid away almost before we knew it. 
It was part of my job to sweep out the* 
men’s shanty, fill the water bucket and 
have the lanterns ready for the men to 
light when they came in from the swamp. 
* * * * * 
They came early — hungry men with a 
craving for food which would be worth 
half of your bank account if such things 
could be bought for cash. Barney and 
Dick had brought great armfuls of run¬ 
ning pine. 
“Here. Bert,” they said, “is the green 
rope. Tie it up.” 
So I carried it back to the cook’s shan¬ 
ty and tacked it up around the room. 
Martin and I recognized the great im¬ 
portance of this occasion, and we rose to 
it. He tied a red. handkerchief around 
his neck, and I put on a little white jack¬ 
et — part of the uniform of a waiter at 
college. That burgoo was served in style. 
Martin took a tin dipper and stirred up 
the boiling mass in the wash boiler. A 
great, overpowering food fragrance filled 
the room. It penetrated as far as the 
men's shanty, where the crowd, washed 
and combed, stood ready to run at the 
signal. Martin was proud of his handi¬ 
work. It was a perfect blend, from 
checkerberry to salt pork. Martin took 
a great spoonful and pronounced it good. 
“Bert,” he said, “it’s the boss. When 
them boys get outside of that they will 
jump like a rabbit, crow like a chicken, 
run like a deer and then sleep like a hog. 
Call ’em in.” 
- I stood at the door with my battered 
tin pan and struck the bottom with my 
stick. It was an effective call. There 
was a cheer from the men’s shanty, and 
what one might call a volley of humanity 
shot out of the door in a wild race for 
the cook’s shanty. They nearly knocked 
me down and ran over me in their hungry 
haste. 
“Quit it! Ain’t you got no manners?” 
The cook is the master of the cook house, 
and at this command from Martin the 
men stopped crowding and seated them¬ 
selves on the benches. At some six- 
course dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria the 
guests would no doubt have waited pa¬ 
tiently until Martin and I could serye 
them properly, but here we had all six 
courses concentrated in the burgoo, and 
while we had the entire evening before 
us, no man can satisfy his hunger with 
ceremony. So Martin and I ladled the 
burgoo out into great fin bowls, and let 
each man help himself. They spooned it 
out into their tin plates and disposed of 
it—each to his own fashion. Some filled 
their plates and then put in a thick 
slice of bread. Several made fair prog¬ 
ress eating with a knife. Andy was too 
hungry to wait for ordinary service. He 
filled his plate, and then, holding it with 
both hands, poured the hot contents down 
his throat. Well, take it as you will, it 
was all a very high compliment to our 
cooking, and Martin and I were kept 
busy ladling out the rich mixture. When 
the last man was satisfied we could see 
the bottom of the wash boiler! At last 
the men were all filled, and with many a 
sigh of contentment they pulled them¬ 
selves away from the benches and strolled 
back to the men’s shanty. Bob Kay stop¬ 
ped to express the general sentiment of 
the company : 
“Say, boys, I’ve et Thanksgiving chuck 
high and low, and 1 want to tel) you 
gents this feed takes the rag right off the 
bush !” 
***** 
As soon as Martin and I could clean 
up our dishes we went over to the men’s 
shanty to see what “doings” were on. 
The room was thick with smoke. The 
lanterns gave but' a dim light—most of 
the room was in shadow. The lines strung 
around the stove were filled with wet 
clothes, for several of the men had fallen 
into the brook. As they were short of 
extra clothing they hung their wet goods 
over the stove and then crawled into their 
The picture shown herewith is sent us 
by H. J. Flint of Rhode Island. He says 
that a little over a year ago a doe was 
shot near Mt. Ivineo, Me. The little 
spotted fawn running with this deer was 
discovered and the hunter captured it 
alive. He carried it down the valley to 
the family of Wm. Fulson, and there 
Mrs. Fulson and her children named the 
little fawn Spot and started to bring 
it up on the bottle. Mr. Flint said he 
was recently in Maine on his vacation, 
and . he heard of this fawn and went to 
see it. The animal is in the habit of 
bunks to wait for the drying. Hugh 
Titus was tuning up his fiddle. When¬ 
ever I think of the glorious music I have 
heard in long-distant years, my mind goes 
back to the master—Hugh Titus—sitting 
there in the dim light, hugging his fiddle 
as a mother might hold her baby tight. 
Years ago I heard Ole Bull draw, as it 
seemed, all the harmonies of nature from 
his violin—the storm, the song of birds, 
the whisper of the wind. It was wonder¬ 
ful, but if I could have my choice of all 
of it I would have Hugh Titus, with his 
sad eyes, play “Home Sweet Home” as 
he did that night. 
“Gents, take pardners for a two-by- 
four ninepin. I choose Bert.” 
Barney Finnegan was floor manager, 
and it was a great honor to be chosen as 
his lady. Before you knew it we had a 
“set” by the side of the stove. Barney 
and T were “first couple.” At our right 
were Mike Brady and Jim Foster. Across 
were Ben Stone and Andy, and on our 
left Bob Kay and Bill Harris, while Jack 
Brady was ninepin. He danced alone, 
his play being to break in whenever he 
could and cut out a “lady.” 
“Salute pardners,” called Hugh Titus 
as the fiddle began to talk. Such bow¬ 
ing and scraping was never known be¬ 
fore. 
“First couple lead to the right!” 
“Shake a leg!” 
“Right and left with the next couple!” 
“Ladies’ chain back!” 
“Ladies’ chain” was where the ninepin 
saw his chance. He made a dive and 
pushed Barney to one side, got me by the 
arm and joyfully carried me through the 
form as his “lady.” 
We shook the dust from the floor and 
jarred the lanterns, while Hugh’s fiddle 
laughed on through the dance. Your mod¬ 
ern two-steps or foxtrots or whatever you 
may call them, may be up to date, but 
give me a ninepin two-by-four whenever 
I want to give thanks with my feet. 
* * * * * 
We stopped finally, out of breath. 
“Now, gents, Bert will sing the shanty 
song. Shut up, you fellers, and give him 
room for his voice.” 
The shanty song! There always has to 
be one. I presume it traces back to the 
days of the old minstrels or harpers, be¬ 
fore the days when reading became gen¬ 
eral. The minstrel recorded local his¬ 
tory in song. Often that was the only 
known record of men or events. As the 
literary member of Cooney Camp I was 
the minstrel—the musical historian. It 
comes back to me now after all these 
years—how I stood up in the dim lantern 
light and began my song. I had written 
a verse for each man in camp, to the tune 
of the old song, “The Captain and His 
Whiskers.” 
Up in Oceana County in the dismal cedar 
swamp, 
There’s a crowd of jolly fellows who ar^ 
working Cooney Camp, 
And in raining or in sunshine or in freez¬ 
ing or in thaw, 
They are always at their duty—working 
with the ax and saw. 
And when night lias cast her shadow and 
the long day’s work is done, 
Then they gather in the shanty and have 
lots of honest fun. 
There are thin boys, there are fat boys, 
there are boys both great and small. 
There are Barney, Jack and Andy—who 
for talking beats them all; 
There are Dick and Joe and Bill and 
Mike and Mox and Fred and Ben ; 
Then there’s Barney, who can dance a 
jig—oh, they are solid men. 
coming out of the woods where it lives 
up to the farm, where it is still being fed 
three times a day. Mildred Fulson is the 
little girl who is shown in the picture 
feeding this deer. When this child went 
out into the field and called Spot, just 
as one would a dog, the deer bounded out 
of the woods and ran up to her. Other 
pictures taken of this wild animal shows 
it just after finishing the bottle of milk 
and in the act of eating blueberries, so 
that deer as well as dears are fond of 
blueberries and milk, the fine old coun¬ 
try dish for ending a meal. 
There is Andy, helps to cook the beans- 
and run the one-arm saw ; 
How that saw would cut the timber if 
’twas fastened to his jaw. 
And so the song went on—a verse for 
each man. Hugh Titus caught up his 
fiddle and played an accompaniment as I 
sang. What a night it was, in that dim, 
smoky room; outside in the dim woods, 
the wind humming and singing in the 
pines. The men were like children. As 
each name was reached in the song its 
owner would start to his feet and yell his 
pleasure. Oh, I know those old minstrels 
must have been favorite sons in their 
communities. And at the end. on a sud¬ 
den impulse, I improvised a new verse: 
We are pilgrims in the forest, but we will 
not long remain, 
For when Spring unlocks the river we 
shall see our home again. 
Though the night be dark and stormy, let 
us meet it brave and true, 
For the mother, wife or sister, or the 
sweetheart waits for you. 
Far beyond the roaring forest, far beyond 
each weary mile, 
There’s a woman waiting for you with 
the old, sweet, tender smile. 
Pretty rank poetry, I know, and I 
never was much of a singer, but you 
should have been in that shanty when the 
song ended. Usually there was a roar of 
applause, but that night a silence fell 
upon us—a silence so perfect that we 
could all hear the wind outside. Then 
Hugh Titus tucked his fiddle under his 
chin, and with head bent low, began 
playing “Home Sweet Home.” There was 
a big Dane in camp—a silent, surly man. 
He seldom spoke. We could not place 
him. Now he got up from the bench and 
came and stood in the lantern light, took 
off his hat and began singing in a curious 
dialect: 
“An exile from home, splendor dazzles in 
vain, 
November 29, 1924 
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage 
again ; 
The birds singing gaily, that came at my 
call, 
Give me them, and that peace of mind, 
dearer than all.” 
“Home, home, sweet, sweet home, 
Be it ever so humble, there is no place 
like home.” 
I cannot make you realize the pathos, 
the beauty of it all. When the song end¬ 
ed we all sat silent for a moment. Then 
Jim Foster, the toughest man in camp, 
said something so characteristic that I 
give it in his own words: 
“Hell! I’ve got to write to the old 
lady! Bert, come and sling a little ink 
for me.” 
It did not seem like profanity, and I 
do not think it was. Jim and I went to 
the cook’s shanty, where I wrote a letter 
to his mother—he sent her “a month’s 
time.” When I went back to the men’s 
shanty most of the men were in their 
bunks. The wind was singing louder 
than ever. I remember lying in my bunk 
for a while, watching the fire. By morn¬ 
ing Thanksgiving would be a memory— 
the song would be forgotten. But it was 
good while it lasted. H. w. c. 
Thanksgiving Table Talk 
As the skies turn gray, the flame grows 
redder under the stovelids. The more 
chill and damp the air outside, the more 
seductive the warm atmosphere inside. 
And when the weather-beaten face of na¬ 
ture has lost all its Summer loveliness 
and stares grimly in at the windows, 
man appreciates the simple pleasures of 
the fireside threefold more. Thoughts 
turn from making of money to the cut¬ 
ting and hauling of wood, to the making 
of preparations for existence through 
the Winter just ahead. Supplies are 
gathered and put in the cellar, and for¬ 
tunate is he who with pork to cure, a 
bushel or two of beans, wheat for flour, 
corn for meal, a list of storable vege¬ 
tables, and canned fruit on his shelves is 
practically independent of the grocery 
store. He should also have popcorn and 
apples, and he may have peanuts. 
I don’t think the farm families of New 
York State realize how easy it is to raise 
a bushel of peanuts. We should never 
have thought of planting a quart of pea¬ 
nuts when we planted the garden peas, 
only the man from Florida, insisting 
that peanuts would grow, sent back to 
his home town for seed. “Just one seed 
in a hill,” he said, “and if the weather 
don’t get too cold and wet you’ll sure 
have peanuts.” Those little Spanish 
peanuts came up like clover and little 
runners dropping from the branches 
went back into the ground to produce the 
long slim pods that hold the meat. There 
were a few small yellow blossoms borne 
so low on the stalk that one must look to 
find them. Good plants bear 70 full 
sized pods, which usually hold three or 
four nuts. These little Spanish peanuts 
are not as large as some, but they make 
up in numbers, not to speak of their 
flavor. They can be eaten raw with 
relish,' which is more than I can say of 
the larger varieties. 
The drying of the peanuts, for they 
must be fully dried, would best be done 
in the sun, if there was a hot sun. But 
in Fall, sun is never hot. We have al¬ 
ways put them in a wooden or a wire 
rack in a warm garret over the cookstove, 
turning them over once a day. It is a 
temptation to turn the vines upside down 
to dry as one pulls them in the field, and 
this would be good practice only that 
crows like peanuts and are not for a 
minute fooled into thinking them beans. 
We lost a good crop by this method, 
thinking that. New York crows would 
not know Virginia peanuts. They didn’t 
even have to split the shuck, but carried 
it away whole. 
It is remarkable how a given locality 
will change in the cash crops it uses. 
Apparently there is a popularity of cer¬ 
tain crops as there is of certain stvles 
in clothing. Old-timers speak of the days 
when wintergreen was the accepted 
money maker, in a neighborhood where 
wintergreen has come to be only a road¬ 
side weed. Here cabbage is in the throes 
of popularity. There seems to be a fatal 
facility in getting a crop of cabbage, a 
very attractive facility to an over-driven 
man of the soil. The plants are set by 
machine expertly, uniformly, with a 
touch of water added also by machine: 
one may sit at this job of setting. Then 
the cultivation may begin soon enough 
to cheek the weeds, which at time of 
June setting are well subdued. A few 
.ultivations and the cabbage is ready to 
turn into money. This is pertaining to 
early cabbage, which some years lies in 
the fields to rot, because there are no 
cattle to eat it. Only a hope well worth 
realizing coupled with the ease of han¬ 
dling could stimulate a whole community 
into production year after year, of flood¬ 
ing kraut factories that require a team¬ 
ster to wait, in line all day Ion? for a 
chance to unload, and if he fails to 
reach the scales before night, throw his 
cabbage on the ground. One cannot re¬ 
sist wondering what would happen to t’ e 
kraut factory if all the cabbage in our 
section descended upon it! 
Cabbage is not grown everywhere, like 
corn and potatoes. The prices of storage 
cabbage are proof enough that there is 
room on the market for the great sur¬ 
plus if it were offered at the right time. 
