Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

96 GENEALOGICAL, NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES.
But in justice to Aunt Beck, I should state that she did
for many long years contemplate making "a tub of soap."
For thirty years she saved all her beef-bones for that purpose,
depositing the same in her large kitchen fire-place and
in other places about the room. During the warm summer
of 1820, these bones became so offensive that Aunt Beck
reluctantly consented to have them removed, and Captain
Elisha Hall, who saw them carted away, says there was more
than an ox-cart load.
Of the other rooms in the house I cannot speak from
pei'sonal knowledge ; but the lady who went with me and
who is now living, informed me that in the west room there
was a bed, a shoemaker's bench, flour barrels, chests containing
valuable bedding, too good to use, and a nameless
variety of other articles scattered over the bed and chairs ;
from the walls were suspended a saddle and pillion, and
many other things preserved as rare curiosities. In time the
room became so completely filled that it was diflicult to enter
it. The kitchen, bedroom, pantry and chambers were
filled with vile trash and trumpery, covered with dirt and
litter.
This description may seem imaginary or improbable to
the stranger ; but there are hundreds now living in Barnstable
who can testify that the picture is not drawn in too
strong colors. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and
this maxim applies in all its force to Rebecca Blush. That
she was a monomaniac is true ; but that she was insane on
all subjects is not true. Early in life she was neat, industrious
and very economical, but her prudent habits soon degenerated
into parsimony. Economy is a vii'tue to be inculcated,
but when the love of money becomes the ruling passion,
and a man saves that he ma}^ hoard and accumulate, he
becomes a miser, and as such, is despised. The miser accumulates
money, or that which can be converted into money.
Aunt Beck saved not only money, but useless articles that
others threw away. These she would pick up in the fields,
and by the roadside, and store away in her house. During
the latter part of her life she seldom went from home.
During more than twenty years she thus gathered up useless
trash, and as she did not allow any thing (except the bones)
to be carried out for more than forty years, it requires no
great stretch of the imagination to form a correct picture of