Radio Script #86
Little Talks On Common Things
December 3, 1950
One of the most penetrating commentators on the life of our times is Ed Chase of Portland. He ought to have a wider audience than the news letter sent out weekly to the customers of his securities business.
Even the most elementary student of biology knows about mutation, the changes which take place to bring varied forms of plant and animal life. Let me pass on to you what Ed Chase said recently about differentiation of species.
“It has long been an American Article of Faith that athletic games exercise a beneficent influence in the formation of character. Tangible evidence of this faith will be found in the proportion of the educational plant facilities which is devoted to athletics. The weight of this evidence, as indicated by expenditure on athletic construction and instruction, seems to justify the belief that of all the competitive sports, football must do the most for character.
But until quite recently the conviction that a superior type emerges from the gridiron environment seemed likely to remain in the domain of faith. No one had ever proved beyond question that football players are destined to become different from other men in particular and desirable traits.
Now we have the two-platoon system. Each school has one first team specializing on offense and another trained for defense. If there is anything in the theory that football produces a type, then there should be a perceptible variation in species, when we vary the environment. Ten years from now, as we observe these men in after-life, we may expect to find not only differing physical traits, as in the use of hands, but also differing mental attitudes, as between a disposition to confidence on the one side and suspicion on the other. Notably, their conceptions of progress should be quite different. Surely then it will be hardly necessary for the psychiatrist to ask: ‘Which team were you on?’
“But if it should turn out that there isn’t any difference, we might have t0o review our educational policy. We might even shift the competitive emphasis from the gridiron to the classroom. What a disaster that would be, or wouldn’t it?”
While that journal of Fairfield’s prominent citizen of the mid-nineteenth century is still fresh in mind, let’s have a bit more of it.
Now William Bryant was first of all a farmer and he gave much attention to the crops he raised on the big farm at Nye’ sCorner. As you have heard me say before on other occasions, the principal crop of Central Maine at that time was corn. But large quantities of wheat and oats were also raised. As now, the hay crop was important, but for a different reason. Now it is to feed the big herds of milk cattle, for whose product the Hood or Whiting collectors come to the farmer’s very barn door. In William Bryant’s day comparatively little of the hay was used to feed milk cows. The great bulk of it went to the horses and oxen. The oxen far outnumbered the horses. We noted last week that it was not unusual for Wi11iam Connor to start out for the sapling with six teams of six yokes each. That means 72 oxen for just one lumbering operation.
So year after year William Bryant notes in his diary his attention to hay, wheat, oats and corn — especially corn.
It seems that Mrs. Bryant had some kind of formula for predicting the kind of summer each year would bring. It was something like the modern predictions based on Ground Hog Day which, I believe, is February 2nd. Mrs. Bryant’s fateful day was January 25.
On January 25, 1843 Mr. Bryant wrote in his diary: “Clear, fair and cold.
According to my wife’s system we shall have a good corn season, notwithstanding the Millerites are preaching that the world is to be destroyed in April.” That is one of the few references I have ever seen in a private diary to the followers of the fantastic Miller, who predicted the end of the world for April, 1843. The believers donned white clothes and assembled on roofs or heights of land to await the end. Their disillusionment broke up the sect so that a generation afterward few remembered the furor they so briefly caused.
But to get back to Mr. Bryant’s corn. What about the boom year his wife had predicted? On May 19 he wrote: “stephen Nye and Joseph Hubbard finished planting my corn this day. They dropped the seed directly on the hog manure before they put on any earth, and if the corn comes up well I shall think I have been too particular in planting corn. If they are right I have been wrong all my life. But I think it will not come up. I have about determined to plant it over.”
On May 29 he had come to a decision, although he does not say whether it was because the first planting showed no signs of breaking the soil. He merely wrote: “We began to plant our corn over this day. I soaked the seed in strong, wann pickle.”
Two weeks later on June 16 he noted that the corn had come up, but poorly.
“My corn”, he said, “has not looked so slim for a great number of years.”
On July 6 the corn was about 6 to 8 inches high. On the 19th it had begun to spindle, but Mr. Bryant lamented, “Some of it stands almost still.” On August 4th he was very pessimistic, noting, “Corn almost eat up by wonns.” A week later on August 10 he wrote dolefully, “Two-thirds of my corn has silked, the rest spoiled by worms.”
When September was ushered in Mr. Bryant recorded: “I don’t think I have got one ear of corn filled.” On september 26 he .wrote what seemed to be the sad climax: “I have cut up for fodder the most of my corn.” But this was not the end, for on October 20 there was held in William Bryant’s barn what he called “the biggest huskin party I have ever had, with over a hundred bushels husked”.
Evidently his pessimism somewhat outran the· facts.
Having told you recently .about the freshet of 1832, .1 was interested in Mr. Bryant’s reference to that event. He wrote: “The winter of 1831-32 was the coldest known for many years and continued to the 11th day of April. After a warm spell it grew cold again on the 23rd. That morning my well was scum over and manure froze in the barn. Planted some corn on May 11. On May 19 it began to rain and rained powerfully through the 21st. On the 22nd was the highest freshet ever known on the Kennebec.”
March of 1846 saw another freshet mentioned by Mr. Bryant. On March 27 he wrote: “The river raises fast, and I think we shall have the highest freshet since 1832. Now at 11 o’clock the water is over the Corner bridge. The ice is dammed up below Noble’s ferry.”
Most of the bridges across principal rivers were then toll bridges. That the toll keepers sometimes enlisted their relatives for a spell of duty is shown by Mr. Bryant’s entry of November 16, 1848: “Thanksgiving Day. My wife spent the day at Nahum Totman’s and attended at the toll house until I went there and took my dinner. Now in the evening we are home alone.”
That touch “home alone” has a note of sadness. Samuel Haley had just departed for Pennsylvania. Cyrus and his wife were with her people in Vassalboro. The three girls were all married and in homes of their own. A lot of people know just how William and Lydia Bryant felt at the end of that Thanksgiving Day a hundred years ago.
Mr. Bryant did not fail to notice one of Waterville’s most eventful days.
On November 27, 1849 he recorded: “The cars arrived in waterville this day for the first time. A great day for Waterville.” That, of course, was the coming of the first railroad line, the Androscoggin and Kennebec, linking Waterville with Lewiston — an event whose hundredth anniversary was appropriately mentioned by the Waterville Sentinel a year ago, but otherwise went unnoticed and unsung. I fear we waterville folks aren’t strong on anniversaries. What about the Hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Waterville’s incorporation? Are any plans being made for that?
One small item in Mr. Bryant’s diary shows a future governor of Maine in an embarrassing situation. On February 27, 1845, according to Mr. Bryant, Greteon Wells’ colt met with a fright, run into William Connor’s entry, and knocked down his wife and son Selden.” It was probably one of the few times anybody or anything knocked Selden Connor down, until a Civil War shell severed his foot.
The Connors then lived in the house now owned and occupied by Dr. William Bovie, just off High Street in Fairfield. That house has one of the largest and most spaciously arranged-brick ovens you will find anywhere in Central Maine.
Wages weren’t high in those days, but when one could work out for cash it was decidedly welcome. Most work was in exchange for commodities, and long were the credits extended on both sides. On April 25, 1842 Cyrus Bryant started for the Dead Water in Vassalboro to work for Nahum and Ezra Totman at $14 a month. On the same day the father recorded: “OWen Spalding began to work for me for 4 months at $6.50 per month. Cyrus was now his own man and could demand wages. Apparently it was better to let him work away from home and hire a replacement at less than half of Cyrus I earning wage.
Not often does one get a chance to determine from these old records how early children worked for wages, but fortunately William Bryant kept a set of accounts as well as a diary. In fact the diary begins at one end of the big book.
Then, turn the book upside down, and at the other end you find the beginning of the accounts.
The first mention of a son’s wages is on June 11, 1832 when, we read, “Herman Nye, to Cyrus planting one day — 25 cents.” Cyrus was then just 13 years old. A year later an entry reads: “Charles Pishon. to Cyrus and my oxen to haul lumber out of the river.” That was a real job for a 14 year old boy. In 1833 the father collected from Isaac Chase 50 cents for Cyrus 2 days haying. In 1834, when Cyrus was 16, Mr. Bryant collected from Thomas Connor 25 cents for Cyrus hoeing corn one day.
When the younger brother Samuel was 14, in 1837, the father received from William Connor $26.00 for Sam’s four months’ wages.
In our day it seems excessively harsh for a father to take and keep the wages of his growing boys, but that was the universal custom a hundred years ago.
Every father controlled a son’s wages until the boy reached 21. There was nothing harsh or unseemly about what every family recognized and practiced. When these modern 75 cents an hour grammar school kids get their snow shoveler’s pay it takes a mighty brave father to get any share of it.
As we noted last week, William Bryant lived through the Civil War. After his wife died in 1858 he missed her greatly, and he himself was not nearly so active.
Yet much of the old pride remained. On January 5, 1861 he wrote: “I am 80 years old this day. I have not lost a tooth nor had the toothache for over 12 years.
My hair is almost as black as when I was young. But I feel weak and not worth InUch.”
As the years went by he felt himself growing weaker. “December 25, 1865,Christmas. A fair day. I am very feeble. I was taken bleeding of the nose for the third time in one week.” “December 27 I am failing.” “March 10, 1866 — I fear I am failing and I think I shall not be here long.” “March 31 — I feel I shall not write much more in this book.” But on his 86th birthday in 1867, something of the old vigor reasserted itself for he then wrote: “I am 86 years old this day. I am not smart, but I saw wood, sleep and eat well.”
Early in life Mr. Bryant became a staunch Universalist. The diary’s first mention of that denomination, which was to become so prominent in Fairfield, was on May 10, 1838: “Levi Barrett preached at the ferry school house the third time. The first universal preacher at this place that almost all admire to hear.”
On December 18 of the same year Mr. Bryant and George Drew went to the meetinghouse to hear the Universalist, Mr. Henry, preach, and the diarist recorded a cold time coming home. In 1842 the whole family attended a three day meeting of Universalists at Canaan. On January 19, 1858 the diary tells us: “Universalist levee at Bunker’s Hall. Was so crowded we had to. stand on our feet, which was very tiresome.” One summer Susan was off to Vassalboro for a brief visit and then on to Augusta for the Universalist convention. There is something, therefore, peculiarly fitting about the last entry in William Bryant’s diary. It is dated February 6, 1867 and consists of one short sentence: “I can’t go to meeting this day.” Soon afterwards this great citizen of Fairfield was stricken with paralysis and on June 15, at the home of his daughter Susan, he died.
Memorial windows to William and Lydia Bryant, as well as those in memory of Nahum and Susan Totman, were removed from the Fairfield Universalist Church when that society dissolved, and were appropriately reset in the Methodist Church, the oldest church edifice in Fairfield Village.
Year: 1950