In modern times the Husking Party has gone out of fashion in Summerfield; but in ancient times, while the manners of the people remained primitive and pure, this festival (for festival it was) continued of great account. It was sometimes held in barns, and sometimes in the open fields; and the attendance of good wives and maidens, and the occurrence of music and dancing at the close, was no unusual joy. We may call it a 'movable feast,' for every autumn it moved the rounds of the Settlement; and now in rare October, and near the wane of the month, it came Fabens' turn to hold it again.

It was one of those golden weeks when the pleasantest house seems a prison, and you feel as if you must live day and night out of doors. The breeze from the cool Cayuga never fanned the brow nor tingled the blood with a more hilarious spirit; and the orchards were never more fragrant, nor the silver moon more round or fair.

Fabens marshalled his corn 'stouts,' like a legion of soldiers in a hollow square, on the green mown meadow in front of his house, a quarter of a mile away; and sent invitations far and near for a very large gathering. He was particular even to invite Tilly Troffater and his family; and a great number came. They came at half-past six; and as the last sat down to the husking, the mild and majestic moon rose smiling over the Owasco woods, and flooded the skies, and kindled the dews with her mellow beams. Uncle Walter and Mr. Waldron were the first on the ground; and Wilson and Troffater did not linger long behind. A number of women were present; and a whole bevy of jocund boys enjoyed it. The greetings were warm and brief, and the songs and stories commenced quite early. Colwell had been on a bee hunt, he said, that day, in the Richmond Openings, and discovered three swarms, and almost traced another. Uncle Walter had been husking the corn he had topped and left on the hill. Mr. Nimblet had harrowed in a late-sown fallow. Troffater had looked to his traps, and spent the rest of the day fishing on the lake. Most of the women had been drying apples and coloring flannel.

Fanny Fabens and Nancy Nimblet sang the 'Silver Moon;' and all confessed it was never sung better. Uncle Walter told a panther story, with thrilling additions they never had heard before; sent cutting little tremors of terror trembling through their hearts, and made them thank their stars that those perilous days were over. Troffater told his "Jemmy Harvey" story, saying "Jemmy was green as a mess o' cowslops and the priest tuck forty dollars for pardoning his sins, and left him without a shiner to tuck himself hum agin;" then he crossed and cocked his black and blue eyes and laughed in convulsions at the story, while they laughed at the manner in which the story was told. Teezle told a story about the Indians and Tories "that cut up such didoes in the revolution down there in the Diliway." Colwell repeated the story of Milo Dale, the money-digger.

Then Squire Fabens told a story of a man who was caught in his neighbor's granary borrowing wheat, and who was given a bag full and his supper in the bargain, and sent home, promising he'd never do the like again.

"A sap-headed fool, I guess it was, that found him, and let him slip off in that way," said Colwell.

"That may be; but he did one wise act of his life, in his treatment to the borrower, and I dare say that man will never violate his vow," answered Fabens.

"I don't know about that," said Teezle. "I should be afraid on't, and lock up my grainery olers after."

"The person did not lock his granary, and no borrower I dare say has set foot in it since."

"Thief, why didn't ye say?" inquired Colwell.

"O, he did not mean to steal," answered Fabens. "His family were hungry, and he was too bashful to ask for it, and was taking the wheat only till after the next year's harvest. The exposure of his error might have ruined him; and he might have been driven to a desperate life of crime. Now I think he must be a better man than before overtaken by temptation."

"Yes,—but—the scamp orto've been punished," rejoined Colwell. "I don't b'lieve in lettin' such scamps off without their punishment."

By this time the company were enlisted in the discussion, and more than one remarked that he ought to have been punished; yet no one surmised that the culprit sat in their midst, and was tortured by their words. Troffater knew not where to turn his little earthen eyes, for fear of encountering accusers; and he fixed them on the moon, and whistled a snatch or two of his addicted music; then bit his lips, and blowed, and hitched around on his seat, and blushed like a jack-o'-lantern.

"Yes, the scamp orto've been punished, I say," repeated Colwell.

"Think he was not punished then?" asked Fabens. "I think he was a little! If I had stood in his shoes, I am sure I should rather have been basted, or anything else, than served as he was."

"But he got away from the law," said Colwell.

"Not the living law, let me tell you," answered Fabens. "Not away from God's law written on his heart, and threading the bone and marrow of his being. To get away from that law, he had first to escape the reach of God's hand, and run away from his own body and spirit. That was not so easy a feat, Mr. Colwell.

"For the sake of our good social law, it may have been the person's duty to drag the poor man to light, and give him open justice; but he probably judged in that case, that the social law was better served and guarded in its spirit, if not in its letter, than if the offender had been exposed and imprisoned, to be let loose again with vengeance against the law, and against mankind.

"I venture to assert that the treatment cured the error, and the borrower will not violate the law again; while he might have run riot in open crime, had he been openly dealt with. The majesty of the law then was vindicated, and the injury done the system was repaired.

"And all that while he was amenable to God's living law traced all over and around his heart; and supposing he runs abroad and treads the green earth, and tastes the free air, and sees the bright sky; he is a prisoner still if he lives, and has not risen in goodness beyond sight of his sin; his body is his prison, his veins bind him down and his nerves bar him in. He senses his punishment keenly; it cuts to the quick, and he grieves, and trembles and gasps, whenever his fault comes to mind. Let him run at large; that law of God will follow him, watching with eyes from which no night can hide him; scourging with whips from which no shield defends."

"Squire Fabens is a very forgiving man," said Mrs. Teezle. "He's very forgiving, and I think he's right."

"I claim no merit for that," said Fabens. "It is easy and right to forgive others. God himself forgives very freely. But the man has one enemy who may never forgive him in this world, and may not forgive him at Judgment till long after God has forgiven him. Though this will depend somewhat on his indolence or diligence in cultivating goodness and truth. That enemy is himself, and self-forgiveness is the most difficult, as it is the last to obtain."

"That may be all so, but I'd a given him some, I swanny, if I had a ketched him in my grainery," said Colwell.

"I never see it in Fabens's light afore," interrupted Teezle.

"Nor I," "nor I," added others; and the discussion ended.

Then a song was called for, and Colwell sang the 'Tea Song;' and Fanny Fabens sang the 'Whippoorwill,' and the very air attended, to hear the happy girl, and the insects were hushed to silence, and the moon leaned and listened, and the woods and the lake bandied back and to the chorus, and repeated, and prolonged her full and silvery sounds.

Then they talked old times over, and rehearsed a few personal histories, while the yellow corn glistened in rising hills before them. Mr. Waldron related scenes he witnessed at Bennington and Saratoga, and told of the Captain's commission and forty dollars in silver, he received for taking six Hessians at the battle of Trenton. Troffater wanted to tell what his father did in the Revolution, but he had not courage to speak; and perhaps if he had, some one would have hinted the current tradition, that his father was a cowboy, and stole cattle from the Americans, and drove and sold them to the British, and then stole them from the British and drove them back again. The conversation soon turned on the settlement, and the history of the oldest inhabitants.

"I tell ye what, they were rather tough times after all," said Uncle Walter. "I remember when I cut the first tree on my farm, and stuck the first stake for my shanty. I had come a good ways from home, and it was going on night, and the wolves howled in hearing, and I begun to feel dubious. Uncle Waldron heard me chopping, and come, and took me home to his little hemlock hut. Remember it, Uncle Mose? I slep on the softest corner of your black muck-floor, and you said I snored like an alligator."

"The Stringers kept bachelors-hall, they say, over on the Owasco Flats, and baked nine crusts to one jonny cake," added Colwell.

"O, my stars!" cried Nancy Nimblet, "that must have been long before we came here; and, pray tell, Mr. Colwell, how they managed their dough."

"Why, they wet their pounded corn in water (there was no mill in these parts then), tossed up a hunker of a loaf, laid it down on a flat stone by the fire, and baked a crust, then peeled it off and eat it, while another was bakin', and so on to the ninth crust of the same smokin' cake."

"And it was thought a scrumtious kind of a thing to visit the gals in our buff-leather breeches in them days," said Colwell.

"O, the buff breeches came long after that," said Fabens. "We had grown quite civilized and fashionable when we wore the yellow buffs. Besides, in those times there were not many girls in the country to visit. But if the times were tough, they gave us a great deal of comfort. I came here with my axe on my shoulder; I cut the first tree on my farm, too, and paid for my farm, chopping for others. I made my first bedstead. There was an auger in the settlement—it was yours, Uncle Walter, and I borrowed that and framed me a bedstead of maple saplings, and laced in elm-bark in lieu of a cord, and it gave me many pleasant sleeps.

"After a while, I wanted a carriage of some kind to bring in my grain, and draw away my ashes. So I blocked off the wheels with my axe, from the butt of a black oak tree, and backed home boards for a box, three miles, from the nearest saw-mill. It did me good service, and I sold it for a price when I bought my first wagon. But we all took a world of comfort; and what was pleasanter work than putting up log heaps and brush heaps in the cool of the night, and seeing them blaze again on our clean sweet fallows?"

"A feast on bear's meat and metheglin, at Aunt Polly's," cried Colwell.

"Picking bushels of wild strawberries, big as your thumb," added Mrs.
Colwell.

"And going four miles to raisins," added Thomas Teezle.

"And five miles to weddins, once in a while," added Mrs. Teezle.

"To those very times we are indebted," said Fabens; "to its tugging labors and hard privations, its trials, and griefs, we are indebted for much of the fulness of heart, and breadth of character we now possess, and the comforts we are taking on our handsome farms. We took muscle and might from nature; we rounded out our life; we learned to shift for ourselves, and feel for our neighbors; and the earth crowned our labors with such harvests, we grew hopeful and brave. We all of us learned things that cannot be found in books. Books have their value, and it is very great. They teach us to take the hip-lock of nature, and lead us cross-lots to success; they increase and elevate the pleasures of our vocation; a taste for them, is itself a blessing that sweetens our leisure hours, attracts us from temptations, and will gladden our old age. But of the two, a large and wise experience is better, and comes well before them."

As he concluded these words, the hour of the clock was told, and the company were served to warm pumpkin-pie, that was a luxury to taste, and refreshment to remember. Then the young people had a play and a dance on the green, and the old people exchanged good wishes, and all went their ways, leaving the Fabenses happier for that reunion of neighborly hearts, than for the multiplied piles of corn they left glowing in the moonlight.