The Potentiality of the Old-Time Rag-Bag

Thanks to the contributor who not long since sent the venerables of the Club trooping back to the breweries of sixty years ago after yeast for the Saturday baking, — a copper penny rattling in each pail,— the smell of malt in our nostrils! We had well-nigh forgotten that delightful common duty of our childhood, and recalling it has brought back much it is good to remember. How much that is inseparable from reminiscences of our childhood has no part in the experience of children to-day! They live in another world, seemingly,— nor is it a fairer and better than was ours. Now, going for yeast had a flavor of romance; but its potentiality for enjoyment was exceeded, in my case, by that which could be evolved only from the family rag-bag, — that now extinct feature of the oldtime, well-regulated household. The family rag-bag of the old-time housekeeper was very different from anything seen to-day. An old bedtick was used oftentimes, — or a grain bag of sufficient capacity to hold the rapidly accumulating collection that in due season would be exchanged largely for tinware. When bright calico gowns (home-made) were good enough for Sunday best, and red flannel underwear(home-made) was universally worn, the contents of the family rag-bag did not lack in color at least. Permission to empty a full bag on the garret floor, with liberty to appropriate a reasonable amount of treasure,— what more could children ask when a rainy day shut them within doors ? How greedily we delved into the mountain of rags, bringing forth such rare finds for our dolls’ wardrobes, our patchwork, such fine stuff for horse-reins, and wealth of material for long, long gay kite-tails! How we bargained for exchange, pillaged each other’s piles, played at snow storms with white clippings, and transformed blue jean aprons and ragged trousers into royal robes! There was nothing we could not become with those rags, — brides, “injuns,” circus horses, clowns in motley, — anything. But best of all were the burials, after the difficulty of deciding which one of us should enjoy the bliss of burial had been finally settled. Such lovely graves could be fashioned from rags, — the mourners wailing, on one occasion I remember, the only thing they could wail together, — “twinkle, twinkle, little star.” And through it all the droning whir of the spinning-wheel in the room below, with the steady patter of rain on the roof, the air filled with the fragrance of herbs hanging from the rafters. That sound of the spinningwheel, that smell of dried herbs, ever comes back with the memory. Is there not always a sound and a fragrance interwoven with memories closest to the heart ?

And the children of this generation ? What of the sounds, alone, that will come back to them some day from the past ? There will be the clanging roar of trolleys, of course, the panting cough of automobiles, the rag-time melodies of vaudeville matinées, and much else of the kind, — but never the creaking of a well windlass, nor the hoarse sawing of wood, nor the sharp regular fall of a woodcutter’s axe, through some thrilling episode within the cross-roads schoolhouse on a winter’s day, — say a spelling match, or an oratorical contest. . . . Long is the list of sounds interwoven with the childhood memories of the elderlys among us, — sounds and fragrance that were vividly recalled when we heard the copper pennies in the little tin pails once more, and caught the sniff of the foamy yeast.