Tillie: A Mennonite Maid | Page 5

discover
her bringing home a "novel"! She was not permitted to bring home
even a school-book, and she had greatly astonished Miss Margaret, one
day at the beginning of the term, by asking, "Please, will you leave me
let my books in school? Pop says I darsen't bring 'em home."
"What you can't learn in school, you can do without," Tillie's father had
said. "When you're home you'll work fur your wittles."
Tillie's father was a frugal, honest, hard-working, and very prosperous
Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, who thought he religiously performed his
parental duty in bringing up his many children in the fear of his heavy
hand, in unceasing labor, and in almost total abstinence from all
amusement and self-indulgence. Far from thinking himself cruel, he
was convinced that the oftener and the more vigorously he applied "the
strap," the more conscientious a parent was he.
His wife, Tillie's stepmother, was as submissive to his authority as were
her five children and Tillie. Apathetic, anemic, overworked, she yet
never dreamed of considering herself or her children abused, accepting
her lot as the natural one of woman, who was created to be a
child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and comfortable. The only
variation from the deadly monotony of her mechanical and unceasing
labor was found in her habit of irritability with her stepchild. She
considered Tillie "a dopple" (a stupid, awkward person); for though
usually a wonderful little household worker, Tillie, when very much

tired out, was apt to drop dishes; and absent-mindedly she would put
her sunbonnet instead of the bread into the oven, or pour molasses
instead of batter on the griddle. Such misdemeanors were always
plaintively reported by Mrs. Getz to Tillie's father, who, without fail,
conscientiously applied what he considered the undoubted cure.
In practising the strenuous economy prescribed by her husband, Mrs.
Getz had to manoeuver very skilfully to keep her children decently
clothed, and Tillie in this matter was a great help to her; for the little
girl possessed a precocious skill in combining a pile of patches into a
passably decent dress or coat for one of her little brothers or sisters.
Nevertheless, it was invariably Tillie who was slighted in the small
expenditures that were made each year for the family clothing. The
child had always really preferred that the others should have "new
things" rather than herself--until Miss Margaret came; and now, before
Miss Margaret's daintiness, she felt ashamed of her own shabby
appearance and longed unspeakably for fresh, pretty clothes. Tillie
knew perfectly well that her father had plenty of money to buy them for
her if he would. But she never thought of asking him or her stepmother
for anything more than what they saw fit to give her.
The Getz family was a perfectly familiar type among the German
farming class of southeastern Pennsylvania. Jacob Getz, though spoken
of in tha neighborhood as being "wonderful near," which means very
penurious, and considered by the more gentle-minded Amish and
Mennonites of the township to be "overly strict" with his family and
"too ready with the strap still," was nevertheless highly respected as
one who worked hard and was prosperous, lived economically,
honestly, and in the fear of the Lord, and was "laying by."
The Getz farm was typical of the better sort to be found in that county.
A neat walk, bordered by clam shells, led from a wooden gate to the
porch of a rather large, and severely plain frame house, facing the road.
Every shutter on the front and sides of the building was tightly closed,
and there was no sign of life about the place. A stranger, ignorant of the
Pennsylvania Dutch custom of living in the kitchen and shutting off the
"best rooms,"--to be used in their mustiness and stiff unhomelikeness
on Sunday only,--would have thought the house temporarily empty. It
was forbiddingly and uncompromisingly spick-and-span.
A grass-plot, ornamented with a circular flower-bed, extended a short

distance on either side of the house. But not too much land was put to
such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely bordered by a
corn-field on the one side and on the other by an apple orchard. Beyond
stretched the tobacco--and wheat-fields, and behind the house were the
vegetable garden and the barn-yard.
Arrived at home by half-past three, Tillie hid her "Ivanhoe" under the
pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded calico
school dress for the yet older garment she wore at her work.
If she had not been obliged to change her dress, she would have been
puzzled to know how to hide her book, for she could not, without
creating suspicion, have gone up-stairs in the daytime. In New Canaan
one never went up-stairs during the day, except at the