Mary Erskine

CHAPTER IX.

GOOD MAN­AGE­MENT.

When­ev­er any per­son dies, leav­ing prop­er­ty to be di­vid­ed among his heirs, and not leav­ing any valid will to de­ter­mine the mode of di­vi­sion, the prop­er­ty as has al­ready been said, must be di­vid­ed on cer­tain prin­ci­ples, es­tab­lished by the law of the land, and un­der the di­rec­tion of the Judge of Pro­bate, who has ju­ris­dic­tion over the coun­ty in which the prop­er­ty is sit­uat­ed. The Judge of Pro­bate ap­points a per­son to take charge of the prop­er­ty and di­vide it among the heirs. This per­son is called the ad­min­is­tra­tor, or, if a wom­an, the ad­min­is­tra­trix. The Judge gives the ad­min­is­tra­tor or the ad­min­is­tra­trix a pa­per, which au­tho­ris­es him or her to take charge of the prop­er­ty, which pa­per is called, “Let­ters of Ad­min­is­tra­tion.” The let­ters of ad­min­is­tra­tion are usu­al­ly grant­ed to the wife of the de­ceased, or to his old­est son, or, if there is no wife or son, to the near­est heir who is of prop­er age and dis­cre­tion to man­age the trust. The per­son who re­ceives ad­min­is­tra­tion is obliged to take a solemn oath be­fore the Judge of Pro­bate, that he will re­port to the Judge a full ac­count of all the prop­er­ty that be­longed to the de­ceased which shall come to his knowl­edge. The Judge al­so ap­points three per­sons to go and ex­am­ine the prop­er­ty, and make an in­ven­to­ry of it, and ap­praise ev­ery ar­ti­cle, so as to know as near­ly as pos­si­ble, how much and what prop­er­ty there is. These per­sons are called ap­prais­ers. The in­ven­to­ry which they make out is lodged in the of­fice of the Judge of Pro­bate, where any per­son who has an in­ter­est in the es­tate can see it at any time. The ad­min­is­tra­tor usu­al­ly keeps a copy of the in­ven­to­ry be­sides.

If among the prop­er­ty left by a per­son de­ceased, which is to go in part to chil­dren, there are any hous­es and lands,--a kind of prop­er­ty which is called in law _re­al es­tate_, to dis­tin­guish it from move­able prop­er­ty, which is called _per­son­al es­tate_,--such re­al es­tate can­not be sold, in or­di­nary cas­es, by the ad­min­is­tra­tor, with­out leave from the Judge of Pro­bate. This leave the Judge of Pro­bate will give in cas­es where it is clear­ly best for the chil­dren that the prop­er­ty should be so sold and the _avails of it_ kept for them, rather than the prop­er­ty it­self. All these things Mrs. Bell ex­plained to Mary Er­sk­ine, hav­ing learned about them her­self some years be­fore when her own hus­band died.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, a few weeks af­ter Al­bert died, Mary Er­sk­ine went one day in a wag­on, tak­ing the ba­by with her, and Thomas to drive, to the coun­ty town, where the Pro­bate court was held.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: GO­ING TO COURT.]

At the Pro­bate court, Mary Er­sk­ine made all the ar­range­ments nec­es­sary in re­spect to the es­tate. She had to go twice, in fact, be­fore all these ar­range­ments were com­plet­ed. She ex­pect­ed to have a great deal of trou­ble and em­bar­rass­ment in do­ing this busi­ness, but she did not find that there was any trou­ble at all. The Judge of Pro­bate told her ex­act­ly what to do. She was re­quired to sign her name once or twice to pa­pers. This she did with great trep­ida­tion, and af­ter writ­ing her name, on the first oc­ca­sion which oc­curred re­quir­ing her sig­na­ture, she apol­ogized for not be­ing able to write any bet­ter. The Judge of Pro­bate said that very few of the pa­pers that he re­ceived were signed so well.

Mary Er­sk­ine was ap­point­ed ad­min­is­tra­trix, and the Judge gave her a pa­per which he said was her “Let­ters of Ad­min­is­tra­tion.” What the Judge gave to her seemed to be on­ly one pa­per, but she thought it prob­able, as the Judge said “Let­ters” that there was an­oth­er in­side. When she got home, how­ev­er, and opened the pa­per she found that there was on­ly one. She could not read it her­self, her stud­ies hav­ing yet ex­tend­ed no far­ther than to the writ­ing of her name. The first time, how­ev­er, that Mary Bell came to see her, af­ter she re­ceived this doc­ument, she asked Mary Bell to read it to her. Mary Bell did so, but af­ter she had got through, Mary Er­sk­ine said that she could not un­der­stand one word of it from be­gin­ning to end. Mary Bell said that that was not strange, for she be­lieved that lawyers' pa­pers were on­ly meant for lawyers to un­der­stand.

The ap­prais­ers came about this time to make an in­ven­to­ry of the prop­er­ty. They went all over the house and barns, and took a com­plete ac­count of ev­ery thing that they found. They made a list of all the ox­en, sheep, cows, hors­es, and oth­er an­imals, putting down op­po­site to each one, their es­ti­mate of its val­ue. They did the same with the ve­hi­cles, and farm­ing im­ple­ments, and uten­sils, and al­so with all the house­hold fur­ni­ture, and the pro­vi­sions and stores. When they had com­plet­ed the ap­praise­ment they added up the amount, and found that the to­tal was a lit­tle over four hun­dred dol­lars, Mary Er­sk­ine was very much sur­prised to find that there was so much.

The ap­prais­ers then told Mary Er­sk­ine that half of that prop­er­ty was hers, and the oth­er half be­longed to the chil­dren; and that as much of their half as was nec­es­sary for their sup­port could be used for that pur­pose, and the rest must be paid over to them when they be­came of age. They said al­so that she or some one else must be ap­point­ed their guardian, to take care of their part of the prop­er­ty; and that the guardian could ei­ther keep the prop­er­ty as it was, or sell it and keep the mon­ey as she thought would be most for the in­ter­est of the chil­dren; and that she had the same pow­er in re­spect to her own share.

Mary Er­sk­ine said that she thought it would be best for her to sell the stock and farm­ing tools, be­cause she could not take care of them nor use them, and she might put the mon­ey out at in­ter­est. The ap­prais­ers said they thought so too.

In the end, Mary Er­sk­ine was ap­point­ed guardian. The idea ap­peared strange to her at first of be­ing _ap­point­ed_ guardian to her own chil­dren, as it seemed to her that a moth­er nat­ural­ly and nec­es­sar­ily held that re­la­tion to her off­spring. But the mean­ing of the law, in mak­ing a moth­er the guardian of her chil­dren by ap­point­ment in such a case as this, is sim­ply to au­tho­rize her to take care of _prop­er­ty_ left to them, or de­scend­ing to them. It is ob­vi­ous that cas­es must fre­quent­ly oc­cur in which a moth­er, though the nat­ural guardian of her chil­dren so far as the per­son­al care of them is con­cerned, would not be prop­er­ly qual­ified to take charge of any con­sid­er­able amount of prop­er­ty com­ing to them. When the moth­er is qual­ified to take this charge, she can be du­ly au­tho­rized to do it; and this is the ap­point­ment to the guardian­ship--mean­ing the guardian­ship of the prop­er­ty to which the ap­point­ment refers.

Mary Er­sk­ine was ac­cord­ing­ly ap­point­ed guardian of the chil­dren, and she ob­tained leave to sell the farm. She de­cid­ed that it would be best to sell it as she thought, af­ter mak­ing dili­gent en­quiry, that she could not de­pend on re­ceiv­ing any con­sid­er­able an­nu­al rent for it, if she were to at­tempt to let it. She ac­cord­ing­ly sold the farm, with the new house, and all the stock,--ex­cept­ing that she re­served from the farm ten acres of land around her own house, and one cow, one horse, two pigs, and all the poul­try. She al­so re­served all the house­hold fur­ni­ture. These things she took as a part of her por­tion. The pur­chase mon­ey for all the rest amount­ed to nine hun­dred and fifty dol­lars. This sum was con­sid­er­ably more than Mary Er­sk­ine had ex­pect­ed to re­ceive.

The ques­tion now was what should be done with this mon­ey. There are var­ious modes which are adopt­ed for in­vest­ing such sums so as to get an an­nu­al in­come from them. The mon­ey may be lent to some per­son who will take it and pay in­ter­est for it. A house may be bought and let to some one who wish­es to hire it; or shares in a rail-​road, or a bank, or a bridge, may be tak­en. Such kinds of prop­er­ty as those are man­aged by di­rec­tors, who take care of all the prof­its that are made, and twice a year di­vide the mon­ey among the per­sons that own the shares.

Mary Er­sk­ine had a great deal of time for en­quiry and re­flec­tion in re­spect to the prop­er mode of in­vest­ing her mon­ey, for the man who pur­chased the farm and the stock was not to pay the mon­ey im­me­di­ate­ly. The price agreed up­on for the farm, in­clud­ing of course the new house, was five hun­dred dol­lars. The stock, farm­ing uten­sils, &c, which he took with it, came to three hun­dred and six­ty dol­lars. The pur­chas­er was to pay, of this mon­ey, four hun­dred dol­lars in three months, and the bal­ance in six months. Mary Er­sk­ine, there­fore, had to make pro­vi­sion for in­vest­ing the four hun­dred dol­lars first.

She de­ter­mined, af­ter a great deal of con­sid­er­ation and in­quiry, to lay out this mon­ey in buy­ing four shares in the Fran­co­nia bridge. These shares were orig­inal­ly one hun­dred dol­lars each, but the bridge had be­come so prof­itable on ac­count of the num­ber of per­sons that passed it, and the amount of mon­ey which was con­se­quent­ly col­lect­ed for tolls, that the shares would sell for a hun­dred and ten dol­lars each. This ten dol­lars ad­vance over the orig­inal price of the shares, is called _pre­mi­um_. Up­on the four shares which Mary Er­sk­ine was go­ing to buy, the pre­mi­um would be of course forty dol­lars. This mon­ey Mary Er­sk­ine con­clud­ed to bor­row. Mr. Keep said that he would very glad­ly lend it to her. Her plan was to pay the bor­rowed mon­ey back out of the div­idends which she would re­ceive from her bridge shares. The div­idend was usu­al­ly five per cen­tum, or, as they com­mon­ly called it, _five per cent._, that is, five dol­lars on ev­ery share of a hun­dred dol­lars ev­ery six months.[A] The div­idend on the four shares would, of course, be twen­ty dol­lars, so that it would take two div­idends to pay off the forty dol­lar debt to Mr. Keep, be­sides a lit­tle in­ter­est. When this was done, Mary Er­sk­ine would have prop­er­ty in the bridge worth four hun­dred and forty dol­lars, with­out hav­ing used any more than four hun­dred dol­lars of her farm mon­ey, and she would con­tin­ue to have forty dol­lars a year from it, as long as she kept it in her pos­ses­sion.

[Foot­note A: _Per_ is a Latin word mean­ing _for_, and _cen­tum_ an­oth­er mean­ing _a hun­dred_.]

When the rest of the mon­ey for the farm was paid, Mary Er­sk­ine re­solved on pur­chas­ing a cer­tain small, but very pleas­ant house with it. This house was in the vil­lage, and she found on in­quiry, that it could be let to a fam­ily for fifty dol­lars a year. It is true that a part of this fifty dol­lars would have to be ex­pend­ed ev­ery year in mak­ing re­pairs up­on the house, so as to keep it in good or­der; such as paint­ing it from time to time, and re­new­ing the roof when the shin­gles be­gan to de­cay, and oth­er sim­ilar things. But, then, Mary Er­sk­ine found, on mak­ing a care­ful ex­am­ina­tion, that af­ter ex­pend­ing as much of the mon­ey which she should re­ceive for the rent of her house, as should be nec­es­sary for the re­pairs, she should still have rather more than she would re­ceive from the mon­ey to be in­vest­ed, if it was put out at in­ter­est by lend­ing it to some per­son who want­ed to bor­row it. So she de­cid­ed to buy the house in pref­er­ence to adopt­ing any oth­er plan.

It hap­pened that the house which Mary Er­sk­ine thus de­ter­mined to buy, was the very one that Mr. Gor­don lived in. The own­er of the house wished to sell it, and of­fered it first to Mr. Gor­don; but he said that he was not able to buy it. He had been do­ing very well in his busi­ness, but his ex­pens­es were so great, he said, that he had not any ready mon­ey at com­mand. He was very sor­ry, he added, that the own­er wished to sell the house, for who­ev­er should buy it, would want to come and live in it, he sup­posed, and he should be obliged to move away. The own­er said that he was sor­ry, but that he could not help it.

A few days af­ter this, Mr. Gor­don came home one evening, and told Anne Sophia, with a coun­te­nance ex­pres­sive of great sur­prise and some lit­tle vex­ation, that her old friend, Mrs. Forester, had bought their house, and was go­ing to move in­to it. Anne Sophia was amazed at this in­tel­li­gence, and both she and her hus­band were thrown in­to a state of great per­plex­ity and trou­ble. The next morn­ing Anne Sophia went out to see Mary Er­sk­ine about it. Mary Er­sk­ine re­ceived her in a very kind and cor­dial man­ner.

“I am very glad to see you,” said Mary Er­sk­ine. “I was com­ing to your house my­self in a day or two, about some busi­ness, if you had not come here.”

“Yes,” said Anne Sophia. “I un­der­stand that you have been buy­ing our house away from over our heads, and are go­ing to turn us out of house and home.”

“Oh, no,” said Mary Er­sk­ine, smil­ing, “not at all. In the first place, I have not re­al­ly bought the house yet, but am on­ly talk­ing about it; and in the sec­ond place, if I buy it, I shall not want it my­self, but shall wish to have you live in it just as you have done.”

“You will not want it your­self!” ex­claimed Anne Sophia, as­ton­ished.

“No,” said Mary Er­sk­ine, “I am on­ly go­ing to buy it as an in­vest­ment.”

There were so many things to be as­ton­ished at in this state­ment, that Anne Sophia hard­ly knew where to be­gin with her won­der. First, she was sur­prised to learn that Mary Er­sk­ine had so much mon­ey. When she heard that she had bought the house, she sup­posed of course that she had bought it on cred­it, for the sake of hav­ing a house in the vil­lage to live in. Then she was amazed at the idea of any per­son con­tin­uing to live in a log house in the woods, when she had a pret­ty house of her own in the mid­dle of the vil­lage. She could not for some time be sat­is­fied that Mary Er­sk­ine was in earnest in what she said. But when she found that it was re­al­ly so, she went away great­ly re­lieved. Mary Er­sk­ine told her that she had post­poned giv­ing her fi­nal an­swer about buy­ing the house, in or­der first to see Mr. Gor­don, to know whether he had any ob­jec­tion to the change of own­er­ship. She knew, of course, that Mr. Gor­don would have no right to ob­ject, but she right­ly sup­posed that he would be grat­ified at hav­ing her ask him the ques­tion.

Mary Er­sk­ine went on af­ter this for two or three years very pros­per­ous­ly in all her af­fairs. Thomas con­tin­ued to live with her, in her log-​house, and to cul­ti­vate the land which she had re­tained. In the fall and win­ter, when there was noth­ing to be done in the fields or gar­den, he was ac­cus­tomed to work in the shop, mak­ing im­prove­ments for the house, such as fin­ish­ing off the stoop in­to an­oth­er room, to be used for a kitchen, mak­ing new win­dows to the house, and a reg­ular front door, and in prepar­ing fences and gates to be put up around the house. He made an aque­duct, too, to con­duct the wa­ter from a new spring which he dis­cov­ered at a place high­er than the house, and so brought a con­stant stream of wa­ter in­to the kitchen which he had made in the stoop. The stumps, too, in the fields around the house, grad­ual­ly de­cayed, so that Thomas could root them out and smooth over the ground where they had stood. Mary Er­sk­ine's ten acres thus be­came very smooth and beau­ti­ful. It was di­vid­ed by fences in­to very pleas­ant fields, with green lanes shad­ed by trees, lead­ing from one place to an­oth­er. The brook flowed through this land along a very beau­ti­ful val­ley, and there were groves and thick­ets here and there, both along the mar­gin of the brook, and in the cor­ners of the fields, which gave to the grounds a very shel­tered, as well as a very pic­turesque ex­pres­sion. Mary Er­sk­ine al­so caused trees and shrub­bery to be plant­ed near the house, and trained hon­ey-​suck­les and wild ros­es up­on a trel­lis over the front door. All these im­prove­ments were made in a very plain and sim­ple man­ner, and at very lit­tle ex­pense, and yet there was so much taste ex­er­cised in the ar­range­ment of them all, that the ef­fect was very agree­able in the end. The house and all about it formed, in time, an en­chant­ing pic­ture of ru­ral beau­ty.[A]

[Foot­note A: See Fron­tispiece.]

It was, how­ev­er, on­ly a few oc­ca­sion­al hours of recre­ation that Mary Er­sk­ine de­vot­ed to or­na­ment­ing her dwelling. The main por­tion of her time and at­ten­tion was de­vot­ed to such in­dus­tri­al pur­suits as were most avail­able in bring­ing in the means of sup­port for her­self and her chil­dren, so as to leave un­touched the in­come from her house and her bridge shares. This in­come, as fast as it was paid in, she de­posit­ed with Mr. Keep, to be lent out on in­ter­est, un­til a suf­fi­cient sum was thus ac­cu­mu­lat­ed to make a new in­vest­ment of a per­ma­nent char­ac­ter. When the sum at length amount­ed to two hun­dred and twen­ty dol­lars, she bought two more bridge shares with it, and from that time for­ward she re­ceived div­idends on six shares in­stead of four; that is, she re­ceived thir­ty dol­lars ev­ery six months, in­stead of twen­ty, as be­fore.

One rea­son why Mary Er­sk­ine in­vest­ed her mon­ey in a house and in a bridge, in­stead of lend­ing it out at in­ter­est, was that by so do­ing, her prop­er­ty was be­fore her in a vis­ible form, and she could take a con­stant plea­sure in see­ing it. When­ev­er she went to the vil­lage she en­joyed see­ing her house, which she kept in a com­plete state of re­pair, and which she had or­na­ment­ed with shrub­bery and trees, so that it was a very agree­able ob­ject to look up­on of it­self, in­de­pen­dent­ly of the plea­sure of own­er­ship. In the same man­ner she liked to see the bridge, and think when teams and peo­ple were pass­ing over it, that a part of all the toll which they paid, would, in the end, come to her. She thus took the same kind of plea­sure in hav­ing pur­chased a house, and shares in a bridge, that any la­dy in a city would take in an ex­pen­sive new car­pet, or a rose­wood pi­ano, which would cost about the same sum; and then she had all the prof­it, in the shape of the an­nu­al in­come, be­sides.

There was one great ad­van­tage too which Mary Er­sk­ine de­rived from own­ing this prop­er­ty, which, though she did not think of it at all when she com­menced her pru­dent and eco­nom­ical course, at the time of her mar­riage, proved in the end to be of in­es­timable val­ue to her. This ad­van­tage was the high de­gree of re­spectabil­ity which it gave her in the pub­lic es­ti­ma­tion. The peo­ple of the vil­lage grad­ual­ly found out how she man­aged, and how fast her prop­er­ty was in­creas­ing, and they en­ter­tained for her a great deal of that kind of re­spect which world­ly pros­per­ity al­ways com­mands. The store-​keep­ers were anx­ious to have her cus­tom. Those who had mon­ey to lend were al­ways very ready to let her have it, if at any time she wished to make up a sum for a new in­vest­ment: and all the ladies of the vil­lage were will­ing that their daugh­ters should go out to her lit­tle farm to vis­it Bel­la, and to have Bel­la vis­it them in re­turn. Thus Mary Er­sk­ine found that she was be­com­ing quite an im­por­tant per­son­age.

Her plan of teach­ing her­self and her chil­dren suc­ceed­ed per­fect­ly. By the time that she had thor­ough­ly learned to write her own name, she knew half of the let­ters of the al­pha­bet, for her name con­tained near­ly that num­ber. She next learned to write her chil­dren's names, Bel­la Forester and Al­bert Forester. Af­ter that, she learned to write the names of all the months, and to read them when she had writ­ten them. She chose the names of the months, next af­ter the names of her own fam­ily, so that she might be able to date her let­ters if she should ev­er have oc­ca­sion to write any.

Mary Bell set copies for her, when she came out to see her, and Mary Er­sk­ine went on so much faster than Bel­la, that she could teach her very well. She re­quired Bel­la to spend an hour at her stud­ies ev­ery day. Thomas made a lit­tle desk for her, and her moth­er bought her a slate and a pen­cil, and in pro­cess of time an arith­metic, and oth­er books. As soon as Mary Er­sk­ine could read flu­ent­ly, Mary Bell used to bring out books to her, con­tain­ing en­ter­tain­ing sto­ries. At first Mary Bell would read these sto­ries to her once, while she was at her work, and then Mary Er­sk­ine, hav­ing heard Mary Bell read them, could read them her­self in the evening with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. At length she made such progress that she could read the sto­ries her­self alone, the first time, with very lit­tle trou­ble.

Thus things went on in a very pleas­ant and pros­per­ous man­ner, and this was the con­di­tion of Mary Er­sk­ine and of her af­fairs, at the time when Mal­leville and Phon­ny went to pay her their vis­it, as de­scribed in the first chap­ter of this vol­ume.