This stage-coach, in our minds, meant the city,--twenty
miles off; an immeasurable distance to us then. Even our elders
did not go there very often.
In those early days, towns used to give each other nicknames,
like schoolboys. Ours was called "Bean-town" not because it was
especially devoted to the cultivation of this leguminous edible,
but probably because it adhered a long time to the Puritanic
custom of saving Sunday-work by baking beans on Saturday evening,
leaving them in the oven over night. After a while, as families
left off heating their ovens, the bean-pots were taken by the
village baker on Saturday afternoon, who returned them to each
house early on Sunday morning with the pan of brown bread that
went with them. The jingling of the baker's bells made the matter
a public one.
The towns through which our stage-coach passed sometimes called
it the "bean-pot." The Jehn who drove it was something of a wag.
Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for
a resident passenger, he was hailed by another resident who
thought him obstructing the passage, with the shout,--
"Halloo there! Get your old bean-pot out of the way!"
"I will, when I have got my pork in," was the ready reply.
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