“Grandma, tomorrow night is Hallowe’en,” said Pink one evening when she and Alice and Bobby had drawn their stools close to Grandma’s knee for their usual good-night story.
“Mother makes candy on Hallowe’en,” Alice added, “and we have nuts and apples and false faces and witches on broomsticks and black cats and everything.”
“And last year we had a party,” said Pink.
“And this year,” put in Bobby eagerly, “we’re going to have a great, big pumpkin to make a jack-o’-lantern of. I know how to do it. Daddy told me, and he’s going to help. You hollow out the insides of the pumpkin and cut round holes for the eyes and make a nose and a mouth with teeth and put a candle inside, and I’ll say he’ll look scary.”
“Won’t he though!” exclaimed Grandma. “To meet a jack-o’-lantern like that on a dark night would make a body shiver. I just know it would. Brother Charlie and I used to save the biggest pumpkins for Hallowe’en. In the summer we would pick out certain pumpkin vines in the cornfield and take special care of them so that the pumpkins would grow extra large for jack-o’-lanterns. We would keep the dirt loosened around the roots, and when the weather was dry we would carry water from the creek to water them. We would watch to keep the worms and bugs off the vines, and then when the pumpkins began to get big we’d measure around them every few days to see which was growing the fastest. Father said we did everything but sleep with the pumpkins.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Pink in surprise, “did you have Hallowe’en, too, Grandma?”
“Yes, indeed,” answered Grandma, “but we generally called it Hallow Eve in those days.”
And she went on to tell them how the evening of October thirty-first has for years and years in many different countries been celebrated as the eve of All-hallows or All Saints’ Day and is called Halloweven or, as we most often say, Hallowe’en, and how on this particular evening fairies, witches, and imps are supposed to be especially active.
“The young people in our neighborhood used to have parties,” said Grandma, “and they would make taffy and play games and perform tricks intended to reveal to them their future husbands and wives.
“Sometimes these parties would be broken up by a crowd of rough boys who had not been invited, for if there was a lot of fun on Hallowe’en there was also a lot of mischief done. Nothing that could be moved was safe if left outside. Gates were carried away, wheels removed from wagons, farm machinery hidden, well buckets stolen, and roads barricaded with great logs. Some people took this time to vent their spite on anyone they did not like.
“But these rough, mischievous boys had never bothered us, for between the settlement where they lived and our farm was a strip of woods in which an old woman known as Mother Girty had been buried years and years before—in pioneer times, in fact. It was said she had been a witch, and even when I was a little girl ignorant or superstitious folks did not like to pass these woods by night. On Hallowe’en they were more afraid than ever, since on this night witches are supposed to roam at will over the country.
“One year Mother said we could have a Hallowe’en party at our house. Charlie and I gave our biggest pumpkins, and Truman made jack-o’-lanterns out of them. Belle and Aggie decorated the sitting room with autumn leaves and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums and draped orange-colored cloth, which they had dyed by boiling old sheets in sassafras bark and water, around the walls. For lights they had the jack-o’-lanterns and just common lanterns with the orange cloth wrapped about the globes, and they put out baskets of apples and nuts. In the cellar were rows of pumpkin pies and pans of gingerbread for refreshment, when the guests should get tired of playing games and pulling taffy.
“When every one had come, Aggie made the taffy. But she didn’t cook the first batch long enough and it wouldn’t harden. They tried to pull it, but the way it stuck to their hands was awful, and such squealing and laughing you never heard. It kept Charlie and me busy bringing water for them to wash off the taffy.
“The girls put another kettle of molasses on right away, and while the taffy was being made Charlie and I slipped around the house to put a tick-tack on Mother’s window. When we had got the tick-tack to working and Mother and Father had both come to the window to see what it was, though I reckon they both knew very well, we started back to the kitchen.
“But we didn’t go in, for there, spread out on the porch to cool, were pans and pans of taffy. Charlie said we had better take a pan for ourselves for fear there mightn’t be enough to go around and we’d have to do without. So he grabbed a pan quickly and we ran around to the front of the house with it. We meant to go on the front portico, but just as we turned the corner we heard a noise as if some one were opening the door. So we crouched down close to the house for a little bit and then ran out to the lilac bush by the front gate.
“We sat down on the ground and began to work the cooler part of the taffy around the edge of the pan toward the center, but we had no butter to put on our hands to keep the taffy from sticking and I offered to go to the kitchen to get some. We would then start pulling our taffy and quietly slip into the house where everyone else would be pulling taffy and no one would notice that we had not been there all the time.
“I stood up. It was a pitch dark night, but as I started toward the house I thought I could see something moving in the side yard under the apple tree. I told Charlie. He saw it, too, as plainly as could be. It was white and it moved about in the most terrible way. Oh, to be safe back in the house! I clutched Charlie’s arm and trembled all over, I was so afraid. It seemed to be coming toward us, and suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer and I screamed—the most awful, blood-curdling yells—and, pulling Charlie with all my might, I ran for the house.
“The kitchen was filled with frightened young people, for no one knew what had happened. Just as we tumbled into one door three or four white clad figures burst into the other door, and it was hard to tell which was the worst scared.
“‘Ghosts!’ sputtered Charlie, gasping for breath. ‘Ghosts under the apple tree!’ Then everybody saw the joke and laughed. The ghosts turned out to be some of the big boys who had wrapped themselves in sheets to frighten the folks. The opening of the front door that Charlie and I had heard had been Truman bringing out the sheets, but my yells had scared them and they looked right sheepish and didn’t say anything when Isabel Strang asked them whether they thought Mother Girty was after them.
I screamed the most awful blood-curdling yells
“In the excitement and confusion, sister Belle, who was going down the cellar stairs backward with a mirror in her hand, in which she was supposed to see the face of the man she would marry, fell halfway down the stairs, and John Strang picked her up and sure enough he was the man she married later.
“After that Charlie and I didn’t say much, for the pan of taffy was still under the lilac bush by the front gate and we didn’t want to go into any explanations about why we happened to be out there too.
“Here, here, don’t forget your ‘apple a day.’ There now, good night, dears.”