1930 - Annual Convention Report

              S I X T E E N T H A N N U A L C O N V E N T I ON 73
In the corner stood a massive bureau, finished in mahogany, with three
capacious long drawers in the lower story, and three deep square drawers
above, the centre one being divided. On the top of this, no matter what else
was there, three china ornaments that came from the old land, always stood.
They stand there today, along with the old clock that at one time had a wall
shelf all to i t s e l f ; because the bureau, the clock and the ornaments were sent
me when the old home was dismantled. The old bureau has been fixed up a
b i t ; it was not the freight agent who shipped it to me, because in a broad-minded
spirit he nailed the shipping tag upon the mahogany instead of upon
the crate. It is hard to say how old the bureau may be, but I found some
letters that had been written to the old country, stuck in a crevice at the
back, and one of them dated 1827. The clock was a small affair, also of
mahogany; it may have been constructed by some would- be wag, for I find
within it the following legend: " Eight Days and T h i r t y Hours." It is still
in good running order and strikes like a steam rivetter.
The dining room was fitted out with chairs, slightly less rugged than
those in the kitchen, and in addition there was mother's high- backed rocking
chair, which I do say was the most comfortable chair ever made. Along the
wall near one of the windows, always stood a piece of furniture that we called
the " rockee." a sort of double rocker that would comfortably hold two, as
concrete evidence shall prove. In my early days there dwelt with us an aunt
who might have been described as an " unmated lade," a woman of lovely
disposition, but given to the passing of surreptitious hand- outs to the children, .
We deemed her a fixture in the family, but one day an earnest Scot " cam'
o'er the hills"; he was what would today be called a fast worker, and the
courtship had progressed only three weeks when he took her away to help
found a new home, to which her nephews were always partial. Well, they
did their courting in the old double rocker, as I can testify, and the way they
blissfully sat and spooned was away ahead of their time, had they only known
it. This piece of furniture was provided with a simple frame that could be
fixed in front, and then it was a cradle. It rocked at least two generations
of our people, before the day came when mothers decided that rocking the
baby was a perfectly needless gesture.
On the other side of the dining room stood the great box stove; there
hid been a large opening cut in the partition and the stove stood so as to
offer the heat of one side to the parlor, the vacant spaces being filled up
with nice shiny tin. This stove was of the old Three Rivers type, once in
quite common use in eastern Canada. There was a big fire box below that
would hold the current stick of cordwood. but that does not mean the " four-feet"
mentioned in the arithmetic. The top story was the oven, with its pair
of large doors that often were allowed to swing open to let the heat out.
Mighty friendly this stove looked and felt after a fellow had driven home at
night from— oh well, that was his own business.
By a door from the dining room one entered that wonderful institution
once peculiar to country" farm homes, the parlor, a room that was bathed in
a dim religious light most of the time, because the blinds were only hoisted to
do honour to some special guest— the minister of course, or some fussy lady
visitor, perhaps. Its floor was covered by a gorgeous carpet, that twisted
pleasantly under the bare feet when a fellow sneaked in for something. This
carpet was securely tacked down all the way around, but was ripped from the
floor, hauled to the clothes line, r. nd earnestly beaten every spring by some
of the men folk. Those who have survived look somewhat pensively at a
vacuum cleaner today. This parlor carpet was set out by two or three fancy
mats: one made of gay rags, twisted into a rope and coiled in the same way
as the women wore their hair; another was a hook- mat of colored yarns; I
forget what the other mat was built from, but it had to be a winner to
match that carpet.