Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 02
II
LIFE AS A STORE-BOY AND CLERK
IN the month of December, 1830, when I was about one month less than thirteen years of age, Mr. Simeon Heywood, the postmaster at Lunenburg and the owner of a small store, proposed to my father that I should go into his service to remain four years. An arrangement was made by which I was to receive my board and clothes, and the privilege of attending school during the winter months. I commenced my service the 26th of December, 1830, and I remained until December 1, 1834.
My life with Mr. Heywood was a peculiar one. The business of the store was largely in the sale of goods for hats made of palm leaf. The business was comparatively new at the time. For many previous years the women had been employed in braiding straw and making hats and bonnets for market. Gradually, work in palm leaf had taken the place of work in straw. The neighbor of Heywood, Major Daniel Putnam, was doing a large business in hats. The preparation of the palm leaves was not an easy business. The leaves were stripped on the folds by the hand, then bleached with sulphur in large boxes. The leaves were then split so as to produce straws from one twentieth to one eighth of an inch in width. The first process of stripping the leaves on the folds was paid for at the rate of ten cents per one hundred leaves. I devoted my leisure to the work, and thus earned a small sum of money. Heywood was a shoemaker by trade, and an end of the store was used as a shop. There one man and sometimes two men were employed. From much seeing I was able to make a pair of shoes for myself—rather for the amusement of the thing than from any advantage. While at Heywood’s store, probably about 1834, I had a disagreeable experience, the recollection of which has often returned. A blacksmith, named Choate, died, and with another boy, whose name I do not recall, I was summoned to watch the body during a night. We occupied an adjoining room, and once an hour we were required to bathe the face of the corpse in spirits of camphor. To this day I have never been able to understand why two half-grown boys were put to such service.
Heywood was more of an inventor than a trader, and becoming interested in the manufacture of nail kegs he made an invention in connection with Dr. Bard for sawing staves concave on one side and convex on the other. In the year 1834 they obtained a patent for the invention. As a consequence the business of the store was neglected. The invention did not yield a large return in money, as it was soon superseded by other devices. The saw, a hoop-saw, was set up in a mill two miles away, and from time to time I tended the saw, and thus I began a training in mechanics which has been useful to me in my profession as a patent lawyer. Heywood also invented a wheel for bringing staves to a bevel and taper, for the construction of barrels systematically. Mr. Heywood remained in town eight or ten years, when he moved to Claremont, N. H., where he died at the age of eighty years or more. He was thoroughly upright, but he had too many schemes for a successful business man. During my term with Mr. Heywood I had charge of the post-office, keeping the accounts, which were then cumbrous, and I made the returns once in three months.
During a part of the time a stagecoach ran from Lowell, through Tyngsboro, Pepperell, Townsend Harbor, Lunenburg and Fitchburg, and thence westward through Petersham and Belchertown to Springfield. The distance was about one hundred miles, and I was compelled to be ready to open the mail three mornings each week, at about two o’clock. The driver would sound his horn when he was eighty or one hundred rods away, and it was my duty to be ready to take the mail when the coach arrived at the door.
It was when so summoned that it was my fortune to see the shower of falling stars in November, 1833. From the time I arose until after daylight there was no part of the heavens that was not illuminated—not with one meteor merely—but with many hundreds. Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard’s window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to commence preparations for his morning rounds, but conceiving that the day of judgment had come, he returned into the house and gave up business for the day. In the year 1901, I know of one other person only, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who witnessed that exhibition, and it has not been repeated.
During my term with Mr. Heywood, and for many previous years, and for a short period afterwards, the business of printing standard books, Bibles, spelling-books and dictionaries had been carried on at Lunenburg by Col. Edmund Cushing. The books were bound, and then sent by teams to Boston. The printing was on hand-presses, and upon stereotype plates. Deacon William Harrington carried on a small business as a bookbinder, and Messrs. William Greenough & Sons erected a building on the farm now owned by Mr. Brown on the Lancaster road, and introduced the business of stereotyping—a business then new, I think. These various industries gave employment to a large number of workmen, mostly young men. The establishment of Colonel Cushing was near the store of Heywood, and it was at the bindery that I first saw Alvah Crocker, afterwards known in the politics of the State, and as the projector of the Fitchburg railroad. He was a maker of paper at Fitchburg, and he came with a one-horse wagon to Cushing’s place and carried away the paper shavings produced in the bindery. Crocker was a lean and awkward man, remarkable for his voice, which could be heard over the larger part of the village. When in after years we were associated in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and boarded at the same hotel, the Hanover House, I was compelled to hear the same voice in constant advocacy of the Fitchburg railroad project.
Colonel Cushing was one of the foremost men in town, but his aristocratic ways made him unpopular, and therefore he failed to secure official recognition. He was the father of Luther S. Cushing, for many years clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, then reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court, afterwards a judge upon the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, and then the author of Cushing’s Manual. Another of his sons, Edmund Cushing, Jr., was a member of the Supreme Court of the State of New Hampshire. Of his two other sons, one was a clergyman, and one a civil engineer. The sons were all my seniors, and my acquaintance with them was limited, but when I became a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in January, 1842, Luther S. Cushing, then the clerk, came to me, and after some words of congratulation, gave me this advice: “Never champion any private scheme, unless the parties are your constituents.” Good advice, which I followed in all my legislative experience.
During the four winters of my term with Mr. Heywood, I attended the school, studying the usual branches with something of algebra, geometry, and Latin grammar. It was during these years that the teacher, Mr. Kilburn, created such an interest in his plans that he obtained a contribution of twenty-four dollars with which he purchased a twelve-inch celestial and a twelve-inch terrestrial globe. Several pleasant evenings were devoted to a study of the heavens with the aid of the celestial globe. I attended usually, and thus I gained a partial knowledge of the constellations, and an acquaintance with some of the stars by name and location. The post-office gave me access to several publications of the day, and in one or two instances I obtained a few subscribers to journals, and thus secured a free copy for myself. The Penny Magazine I obtained in that way for two years. In the cholera seasons of 1832-3 and 1834, the people were so alarmed that they hesitated to take letters and papers from the post-office. For a time gum-camphor was thought to be a preventive against the contagion.
Between 1830 and 1834 the ambition of the town was stimulated by the building of a new road from Fitchburg to Shirley. It was claimed that a shorter and more nearly level route to Boston from Fitchburg and the country above was thus secured. For a time the travel was considerable, but the teamsters preferred the old roads, the old taverns, and the old acquaintances. The construction of the Fitchburg railroad in 1844 ended the business from the country to Boston over the old highways.
In the month of November, 1834, I had a call from Mr. Joseph Hazen, of Shirley, who asked me to accept the post of teacher in the school at Pound Hill, half-way between Shirley Village and Shirley Centre. The pay was sixteen dollars per month in addition to board. After making an arrangement with Mr. Heywood, by which I was to pay him eight dollars for the twenty-six days in December, I accepted the invitation, and after an examination conducted by the Rev. Seth Chandler and the Rev. Hope Brown, I entered the school the first Monday of the month of December.
In the preceding June I had received my freedom suit of clothes—blue coat, bright buttons, black trousers, and buff vest. They were made by Daniel Cross, of Fitchburg, and, when in 1884, I visited that town, and found him still engaged in the business, I ordered a dress suit from his hand.