Sam Lawson is a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Oldtown Folks. Much of the novel was based on recollections of Natick, Massachusetts by Harriet’s husband, Calvin Stowe, and Sam probably bears some resemblance to characters Calvin remembered. Stowe also depicts Sam as speaking in early nineteenth-century New England dialect—something often done with comic characters.

Excerpted from Oldtown Folks by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1869

“Wal naow, Horace, don’t ye cry so. Why I’m railly concerned for ye. Why, don’t you s’pose your daddy’s better off? Why, sartin I do. Don’t cry, there’s a good boy, now. I’ll give ye my jack-knife now.”

This was addressed to me the day after my father’s death, while the preparations for the funeral hung like a pall* over the house, and the terror of the last cold mystery, the tears of my mother, and a sort of bustling dreariness on the part of my aunts and grandmother, [made me afraid and nervous]…It was a doctrine of those good old times…that a house invaded by death should be made as forlorn as hands could make it…by closed shutters, looking-glasses* pinned up in white sheets, and the locking up and hiding out of sight of any pleasant little familiar object which would be thought out of place in a sepulchre*. This work had been driven through with unsparing vigor by Aunt Lois…as she remorselessly cleared away every little familiar object belonging to my father, and reduced every room to the shrouded* stillness of a well-kept tomb.

Of course no one thought of looking after me. It was not the fashion of those days to think of children, if only they would take themselves off out of the way of the movements of grown people; and so I had run out into the orchard back of the house, and, throwing myself down on my face under an apple-tree in the tall clover, I gave myself up to despair, and was sobbing aloud...when these words were addressed to me. The speaker was a tall, shambling, and loose-jointed man, with a long, thin visage*, prominent watery blue eyes, very fluttering and seedy habiliments*, who occupied the responsible position of first do-nothing-in-ordinary in our village of Oldtown, and as such I must introduce him to my readers’ notice.

Every New England village, if you only think of it, must have its do-nothing as regularly as it has its school-house or meeting-house*…Work, thrift and industry* are such an incessant steam-power in Yankee life, that society would burn itself out with intense friction were there not...the lubricating power of a decided do-nothing,—a man who won’t be hurried, and won’t work, and will take his ease in his own way, in spite of the whole protest of his neighborhood…

Sam Lawson filled this post with ample honor in Oldtown. He was a fellow dear to the souls of all “us boys” in the village, because…he never had anything more pressing to do than croon* and gossip with us. He was ready to spend hours in tinkering a boy’s jack-knife, or mending his skate, or start at the smallest notice to watch at a woodchuck’s hole, or give incessant service to tending a dog’s sprained paw. He was always on hand to go fishing with us on Saturday afternoons; and I have known him to sit hour after hour on the bank, surrounded by a troop of boys, baiting our hooks and taking off our fish. He was a soft-hearted old body, and the wrigglings and contortions of our prey used to disturb his repose so it was a regular part of his work to kill the fish by breaking their necks when he took them from the hook.

“Why, lordy massy, boys,” he would say, “I can’t bear to see no kind o’ critter in torment. These ’ere pouts ain’t to blame for bein’ fish, and ye ought to put ’em out of their misery. Fish hes their rights as well as any on us.”

Nobody but Sam would have thought of poking through the high grass and clover on our back lot to look me up, as I lay sobbing under the old apple-tree...

Sam was of respectable family, and not destitute of education. He was an expert in at least five or six different kinds of handicraft, in all of which he had been pronounced by the knowing ones to be a capable workman, “if only he would stick to it.” He had a blacksmith’s shop, where, when the fit was on him, he would shoe a horse better than any man in the county…He could mend cracked china so as to be almost as good as new; he could use carpenter’s tools as well as a born carpenter…No man could put a refractory clock to rights with more ingenuity than Sam,—that is, if you would give him his time to be about it…

Sam could shave and cut hair as neatly as any barber, and was always in demand up and down the country to render these offices to the sick. He was ready to go for miles to watch with invalids*, and a very acceptable watcher he made, beguiling the night hours with endless stories and legends. He was also an expert in psalmody*, having in his youth been the pride of the village singing-school…Sam’s obligingness was many-sided, and he was equally prepared at any moment to raise a funeral psalm or whistle the time of a double-shuffle.

But the more particular delight of Sam’s heart was in funerals. He would walk miles on hearing the news of a dangerous illness…and when the last earthly scene was over, Sam was more than ready to render those final offices from which the more nervous and fastidious* shrink, but in which he took almost a professional pride…Sam had in fact been up all night in our house, and having set me up in the clover, and comforted me with a jack-knife, he proceeded to inform me of the particulars.

“Why, ye see, Horace, I ben up with ’em pretty much all night; and I laid yer father out* myself, and I never see a better-lookin’ corpse…Your daddy looks jest as peaceful as a psalm-tune. Now, you don’t know,—jest as nateral as if he’d only jest gone to sleep. So ye may set your heart at rest ’bout him.”

It was one of those beautiful serene days of October, when the earth lies as bright and still as anything one can dream of…and Sam’s homely expressions of sympathy had quieted me somewhat. Sam, tired of his discourse, lay back in the clover, with his hands under his head, and went on with his moralizing.

“Lordy massy, Horace, to think on’t—it’s so kind o’ solemnizin’! It’s one’s turn to-day, and another’s to-morrow. We never know when our turn’ll come.” And Sam raised a favorite stave,—

	“And must these active limbs of mine
	Lie moulderin’ in the clay?”

“Active limbs! I guess so!” said a sharp voice, which came through the clover-heads like the crack of a rifle. “Well, I’ve found you at last. Here you be, Sam Lawson, lyin’ flat on your back at eleven o’clock in the morning, and not a potato dug, and not a stick of wood cut to get dinner with; and I won’t cut no more if we never have dinner. It’s no use a humorin’ you,—doin’ your work for you. The more I do, the more I may do; so come home won't you?”

“Lordy massy, Hepsy,” said Sam [to his wife], “you don’t ought to talk so. I ain’t to blame. I hed to sit up with Mr. Holyoke all night, and help ’em lay him out this morning.”

“You’re always everywhere but where you’ve business to be,” said Hepsy; “and helpin’ and doin’ for everybody but your own. For my part, I think charity ought to begin at home. You’re everywhere, up and down and round…and here Abram and Kiah Stebbins have been waitin’ all the morning with a horse they brought all the way from Boston to get you to shoe.”

“Wal now, that ’ere shows they know what’s what. I told Kiah that ef they’d bring that ’ere hoss to me I’d ’tend to his huffs.”

“And be off lying in the mowing, like a partridge, when they come after ye. That’s one way to do business,” said Hepsy.

“Hepsy, I was just a miditatin’. Ef we don’t miditate sometimes on all these ’ere things, it’ll be wus for us by and by.”

“Meditate! I’ll help your meditations in a way you won’t like, if you don’t look out. So now you come home, and stop your meditatin’, and go to doin’ somethin’. I told ’em to come back this afternoon, and I’d have you on the spot if ’t was a possible thing,” said the very practical Hepsy, laying a firm hold of Sam’s unresisting arm, and led him away captive.

I stole into the darkened, silent room where my father had lain so long. Its desolate neatness struck a chill to my heart. Not even a bottle remained of the many familiar ones that used to cover the stand* and the mantel-piece; but he, lying in his threadbare Sunday coat, looked to me as I had often seen him in later, days…asleep on the bed. I crept to his side and nestled down on the floor as quietly as a dog lies down by the side of his master.


*croon - sing
*fastidious - overly sensitive
*habiliments - clothing
*industry - steady and diligent effort, systematic work for a useful purpose
*laid yer father out - prepared the body for burial by washing and dressing
*looking-glasses - mirrors
*meeting-house - a building that functioned primarily as a church for worship services but was also used as a Town Hall for civic functions such as Town Meetings.
*pall - 1. a heavy cloth draped over a coffin. 2. dark, gloomy covering
*psalmody - singing sacred songs and hymns
*sepulchre - tomb
*shrouded - covered, as with a piece of cloth
*stand - night stand, bed side table
*visage - face
*watch with invalids - sit with someone who is sick to care for their needs

Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Village Do-Nothing” in Oldtown Folks (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869), 28-30, 34-38. Edited by Old Sturbridge Village.