Stories of New Jersey - Frank R. Stockton (free books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Frank R. Stockton
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This letter informs the doctor that he has invited Mrs. Cochran and Mrs. Livingston to dine with him the next day, and says that the table is large enough for the ladies, and then proceeds to tell "how it is covered." "Since our arrival at this happy spot, we have had a ham, sometimes a shoulder of bacon, to grace the head of the table; a piece of roast beef adorns the foot, and a dish of beans or greens, almost imperceptible, decorates the center. When the cook has a mind to cut a figure, which I presume will be the case to-morrow, we have two beefsteak pies, or dishes of crabs, in addition, one on each side of the center dish, dividing the space, and reducing the distance between dish and dish to about six feet, which without them would be twelve feet apart. Of late, he has had the surprising sagacity to discover that apples will make pies, and it is a question if in the violence of his efforts we do not get one of apples instead of having both of beefsteak. If the ladies can put up with such entertainment, and will submit to partake of it on plates once tin, now iron (not become so by scouring), I shall be happy to see them."
The fact that the early physicians of New Jersey were very skillful, and patients in that healthful country very scarce, seems to have had the effect of making some physicians of that day extremely sharp about business matters. A certain doctor of Rahway had been called upon to visit a rich man who was in great pain and distress. The doctor having administered some medicine, the patient very speedily recovered. Some time after this, the doctor determined to leave Rahway; and the rich man who had been attended by him with such gratifying results began to be afraid that he might be taken sick again in the same way. So he went to the doctor, and requested that before he left, he would give him the prescription which had seemed to suit his case so admirably.
Doctors seldom approve of their patients taking their treatment into their own hands; but, after a little consideration, he said he would furnish the prescription, but that it would cost ten dollars. This quite astonished the rich man, and at first he refused to pay such a high price; but, after considering that it might save him many visits from the new doctor who should come to Rahway, he agreed to pay the price demanded, and the prescription was written, and delivered to him. When he reached his home, he thought he would try to make out what this prescription was; but when he opened the paper, he found nothing but the word "catnip." It is not likely that he ever again tried to take advantage of the medical profession.
But it was not always Jersey doctors whose wit shone brightest in a financial transaction. There was a doctor in the town of Rocky Hill who was sent for to attend a poor old man who was suffering with a piece of bone sticking in his throat. The doctor went immediately to the old man's house, and it was not long before the bone was out. As the doctor was packing up his instruments, the old fellow, whose name was William, inquired how much he would have to pay; and the doctor replied that for an operation of that sort his charge was five dollars. This quite astonished William, who probably had not five cents in the house; but he wished to pay his debts, and not to be considered a pauper patient, and so he asked the doctor if he might come to his house and work out the bill. The doctor replied that that would be entirely satisfactory to him, and that William might come the next day and work in the garden.
The next day old William went to the doctor's house. All day he faithfully dug and hoed and raked. Toward the end of the afternoon the doctor came into the garden, and, after informing William that he might come again, he casually asked him how much he charged for a day's work. William stood up and promptly answered, that for a day's labor in the garden his charge was five dollars. Now was the doctor surprised.
"You don't mean," he exclaimed, "that you are going to ask five dollars for one day's labor!"
"That is exactly my price," said William. "If two minutes' yanking with a pair of pincers at a little bone is worth five dollars, then one day's hard labor in tilling the ground is worth just as much."
It often happens that doctors are men of wit and humor; and it is recorded that a New Jersey physician, named Dr. Hole, was the author of the first version of a tombstone epitaph which afterwards became widely known and used. The lines of Dr. Hole are cut upon a tombstone of a child, and run as follows:—
Forsitions were in vain
Till God above did hear my moan,
And eased me of my pain."
That some of those early doctors were honest is proved by a doctor's bill which is now preserved in the New Jersey Historical Society. At the end of this bill, after all the different items of service and medicine had been charged upon it, there is this entry: "Contrary credit by Medsons brought back." It would be difficult now to find a doctor in New Jersey, or anywhere else, who would be willing to take back, and allow credit for, all partly filled bottles of medicine, and boxes of pills, the contents of which had been ordered, but not entirely used.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE SLAVES OF NEW JERSEY.We have so long looked upon New Jersey as prominent among what were called the "free States" of the Union, that it now seems strange when we consider, that among the first of the institutions established upon its soil by the early settlers, was the system of slavery. This was the case not only in New Jersey, but in all the American Colonies. The settlers of New England, as well as those of the Southern Colonies, used negro slaves as laborers on their farms; and the trade in native Africans was a very important branch of industry.
The Duke of York, to whom his brother, Charles II., had made a grant of extensive American possessions, was at the head of the African Company, formed for the purpose of bringing slaves from Africa, and selling them. The Dutch were then the great rivals of the English in this trade; and the Duke of York was very glad to possess New Jersey and the rest of his grant, for then he could not only oust the Dutch from the territory, but could possess himself of this very desirable and profitable slave market.
But it was not only the English and Dutch who brought negro slaves to America, for it is stated that the earliest Swedish settlers brought slaves with them as laborers. So we may say that slavery and freedom were planted together in this country of ours; one to be pulled up afterward like a weed, the other to be left to grow and flourish.
When Berkeley and Carteret acquired authority over New Jersey, they did everything that they could to induce settlers to come to the new country; and, as they were anxious to have the lands opened up and cultivated as rapidly as possible, they encouraged immigrants to bring as many slaves as they could afford. They offered one hundred and fifty acres to every one who would settle, and another one hundred and fifty acres for every full-grown able-bodied male slave, and seventy-five acres each for those not grown up. Afterwards, when slaves became more numerous, the bounties given on their account were diminished, and in course of time they ceased altogether.
A great many slaves must have been brought direct from Africa to New Jersey, for at Perth Amboy there was established what was then called a barracks; and in this, negroes who had been brought in the slave ships were confined until they were sold and sent out into the country.
Not only were there negro slaves in the State, but there were also Indians who had been enslaved, and were regularly sold and bought. How these red men happened to be slaves, we do not certainly know; but we may be very sure that the whites did not make war upon Indian tribes, and capture prisoners, for the purpose of making slaves of them. It is far more likely, that, when one tribe of Indians made war upon another, the conquerors found it a very profitable thing to sell their prisoners to the whites. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the natives made war on purpose to capture and sell their fellow-countrymen, as was the case in Africa.
The early records, however, prove that there were Indian slaves. When the House of Representatives for the Province met at Burlington in 1704, an act was brought before that body for the regulating of Indian and negro slaves.
Negroes were then considered to be such legitimate articles of merchandise, that English sovereigns thought it very necessary to see to it that their loyal settlers were sufficiently supplied with slaves, and at prices not too high. When Queen Anne sent out Lord Cornbury as governor of the Province, she recommended the Royal African Company to the especial attention of the governor, that New Jersey might have a constant and sufficient supply of merchantable negroes at moderate rates in money or commodities. In consequence of the fostering care of the Proprietors and the English sovereigns, slaves rapidly increased in New Jersey.
The English themselves were not at all averse to the ownership of a good serviceable slave; and about the middle of the eighteenth century a young gentleman in England wrote to his father in New Jersey, begging that he might "be favored with a young negro boy to present to the brother of the then Duke of Grafton, to whom he was under obligations, as 'a present of that kind would be very acceptable.'"
Of course, the existence of slavery made the state of society in New Jersey and the other Colonies very different from what it is now; and this difference is strongly shown by the advertisements of runaway negroes, which we can find in some old newspapers. It seems very strange to see in a Boston paper of one hundred years ago a picture of a black man running away with a bag over his shoulder, and under the picture the statement of the reward which would be given for his capture; and in the New Jersey papers there were frequent advertisements of runaway slaves and of negroes for sale. One of these, published in Burlington two years after the Colony had declared itself free and independent, reads as follows:—
"To be Sold—For no fault—but a saucy tongue for which he is now in Burlington jail—A negro man about 39 years of age. He is a compleat farmer, honest and sober. For further
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