2a
��AMONG THE SHAKERS.
��ers believe in sun and light, and a free circulation of air, so you will see no outer blinds, or thick shrubbery, or shade trees. The orchards are for the most part away back, and smooth fields roll towards the south so far as the line of forest down in the low-lands. Your road dips into a shaded hollow, and when you come out, you are where four meet ; a stone watering-trough is in the centre space, and guide-boards on the tree- trunks point to shaded ways off towards country villages, or north over the mount- ains. Your route is up the long hill, be- tween the beautiful uplands, skirted with such stone walls as you see nowhere but in New England.
At the first house, you find your place of entertainment. The two front doors open, and a brother and sister come out; and your attention is called first to their arrangement for alighting from a vehicle, of which you avail yourself, stepping upon a platform level with the fence-top, and by stairs descend to the nagged walk within the yard. You are addressed by your given name ; you are no longer Mr., Mrs., or Miss, but John or Mary; and, in answer to your questions, you hear "yea" and "nay," often twice uttered, and with an approving or deprecatory inflection which the rougher "yes" or "no" of common usuage are incapable of; you are thus brought to the knowledge of such flexibility in the enunciation of those monosyllables as you had never suspected; for while the "nay," besides its legitimate negative, is made te mean denial, reproof, warning, surprise, dis- appointment and sorrow, the " yea" not only affirms, but invites, approves, ca- resses, and is, in the 'very cadence in which it is spoken, a welcome. If you are a friend, you are made doubly free to their hospitality. In this way it was that we came to know something of the homes and hearts of the Shaker women.
If one's preconceived idea about the rooms is that they are unattractive, by reason of the austerity in furnishing, and the general primness — that is alto- gether a mistake. There is an esthetic, as well as a very practical side. But it is by no means certain that it is not the latter which most readily takes the eye
��of the visitor who has ever had a house of her own. To such, there is refresh- ment in the absolute cleanliness and tidi- ness, and order. It is the one kind of household life where the rule of having " a place for everything, and everything in its place," is always carried out. The consummate result has there been reached. Everything runs smoothly. Evidently those who planned the domes- tic arrangements, while they had in view handiness and compactness, did not over- look the fact that there might be a great saving of noise and labor in the con- struction of furniture ; and so, as far as practicable, they had presses and heavy benches built into the wall, in- stead of movable fixtures. Except in the dining-rooms, they can hardly be said to have any tables — though small round stands serve to hold the evening lamp — but in lieu of them, are broad benches, with compartments and closets filling the space beneath. Every avail- able place is occupied with drawers or closed-in-shelves, of all depths and sizes, answering for clothes-rooms, trunks, bureaus and wardrobes; and in those commodious and nicely-finished recepta- cles are consolidated the multifarious articles, which in ordinary houses are always getting into places where they should not be; and the sight must be comforting to any much-worried mistress of a house, who, delighting in quiet and system, enjoys putting her things to right, but is always haunted by the recol- lection that they will not "stay put."
There are almost no steps to be taken, no doors to be opened, and there are no hiding-places for dirt or cobwebs; the speckless walls present a polished sur- face, unbroken by mirror or picture; the stained floors are crossed by paths of carpet; the window-shutters slide down a groove, and drop out of sight within the ceiling when not in use; the care- fully ironed muslin curtains, which slip on rings, are folded like a napkin and laid up over the rod from which they are suspended; on wooden pins at the top of the room are hung all the chairs not immediately needed ; and on another of these ubiquitous pins, behind the little oblong box stove, which is set high and
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