I was born in a log cabin. I came to my pioneer mother in one of
Wisconsin's bitterest winters.
Twenty-one years later I was sailing for England, the wife of a diplomat
who was one of Boston's wealthy and aristocratic sons.
The road between--well, let it speak for itself. Merely to set this
story on paper opens old wounds, deep, but mercifully healed these many
years. Yet, if other women may find here comfort and illumination and a
certain philosophy, I am glad, and I shall feel repaid.
The first thing I remember is being grateful for windows. I was three
years old. My mother had set me to play on a mattress carefully placed
in the one ray of sunlight streaming through the one glass window of our
log cabin. Baby as I was, I had ached in the agonizing cold of a
pioneer winter. Lying there, warmed by that blessed sunshine, I was
suddenly aware of wonder and joy and gratitude. It was gratitude for
glass, which could keep out the biting cold and let in the warm sun.
To this day windows give me pleasure. My father was a school-teacher
from New England, where his family had taught the three R's and the
American Constitution since the days of Ben Franklin's study club. My
mother was the daughter of a hardworking Scotch immigrant. Father's
family set store on ancestry. Mother's side was more practical.
The year before my birth these two young people started West in a
prairie schooner to stake a homestead claim. Father's sea-man's chest
held a dictionary, Bancroft's History of the United States, several
books of mathematics, Plutarch's Lives, a history of Massachusetts,
a leather-bound file of Civil War records, Thackeray's “Vanity Fair”,
Shakespeare in two volumes, and the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” My mother
took a Bible.
I can still quote pages from every one of those books. Until I was
fourteen I saw no others, except a primer, homemade, to teach me my
letters. Because “Vanity Fair” contained simpler words than the others,
it was given me first; so at the age of seven I was spelling out pages
of the immortal Becky.
My mother did not approve, but father laughed and protested that the
child might as well begin with good things.
After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care
of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found
her crying.
“Mary,” she said, with a tenderness that was rare, “if I die, you must
take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman
within eighteen miles.”