[Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and
small-capital text by =equal signs=.]
The Story of Opal
The Journal of
An Understanding Heart
[Photograph: _Photograph by Bachrach_
OPAL WHITELEY RECONSTRUCTING HER DIARY]
The Story of Opal
The Journal of
An Understanding Heart
By Opal Whiteley
[Illustration: Publisher’s logo]
_With Illustrations_
The Atlantic Monthly Press
Boston
=Copyright, 1920, by The Atlantic Monthly Company=
=Copyright, 1920, by the Atlantic Monthly Press=
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
I
For those whom Nature loves, the Story of Opal is an open book. They
need no introduction to the journal of this Understanding Heart. But
the world, which veils the spirit and callouses the instincts, makes
curiosity for most people the criterion of interest. They demand facts
and backgrounds, theories and explanations, and for them it seems
worth while to set forth something of the child’s story undisclosed
by the diary, and to attempt to weave together some impressions of
the author.
Last September, late one afternoon, Opal Whiteley came into the
_Atlantic_’s office, with a book which she had had printed in
Los Angeles. It was not a promising errand, though it had brought
her all the way from the Western coast, hoping to have published in
regular fashion this volume, half fact, half fancy, of _The Fairyland
Around Us_, the fairyland of beasts and blossoms, butterflies and
birds. The book was quaintly embellished with colored pictures,
pasted in by hand, and bore a hundred marks of special loving care.
Yet about it there seemed little at first sight to tempt a publisher.
Indeed, she had offered her wares in vain to more than one publishing
house; and as her dollars were growing very few, the disappointment
was severe. But about Opal Whiteley herself there was something to
attract the attention even of a man of business--something very
young and eager and fluttering, like a bird in a thicket.
The talk went as follows:--
“I am afraid we can’t do anything with the book. But you must have
had an interesting life. You have lived much in the woods?”
“Yes, in lots of lumber-camps.”
“How many?”
“Nineteen. At least, we moved nineteen times.”
It was hard not to be interested now. One close question followed
another regarding the surroundings of her girlhood. The answers
were so detailed, so sharply remembered, that the next question was
natural.
“If you remember like that, you must have kept a diary.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Yes, always. I do still.”
“Then it is not the book I want, but the diary.”
She caught her breath. “It’s destroyed. It’s all torn up.” Tears
were in her eyes.
“You loved it?”
“Yes; I told it everything.”
“Then you kept the pieces.”
The guess was easy (what child whose doll is rent asunder throws
away the sawdust?), but she looked amazed.
“Yes, I have kept everything. The pieces are all stored in
Los Angeles.”
We telegraphed for them, and they came, hundreds, thousands, one might
almost say millions of them. Some few were large as a half-sheet of
notepaper; more, scarce big enough to hold a letter of the alphabet.
The paper was of all shades, sorts, and sizes: butchers’ bags pressed
and sliced in two, wrapping-paper, the backs of envelopes--anything
and everything that could hold writing. The early years of the diary
are printed in letters so close that, when the sheets are fitted, not
another letter can be squeezed in. In later passages the characters
are written with childish clumsiness, and later still one sees the
gradually forming adult hand.
The labor of piecing the diary together may fairly be described
as enormous. For nine months almost continuously the diarist has
labored, piecing it together sheet by sheet, each page a kind of
picture-puzzle, lettered, for frugality (the store was precious),
on both sides of the paper.
The entire diary, of which this volume covers but the two opening
years, must comprise a total of a quarter of a million words. Upwards
of seventy thousand--all that is contained in this volume--can
be ascribed with more than reasonable definiteness to the end of
Opal’s sixth and to her seventh year. During all these months Opal
Whiteley has been a frequent visitor in the _Atlantic_’s office. With
friendliness came confidence, and little by little, very gradually,
an incident here, another there, her story came to be told. She
was at first eager only for the future and for the opportunity to
write and teach children of the world which she loved best. But as
the thread of the diary was unraveled, she felt a growing interest
in what her past had been, and in what lay behind her earliest
recollections and the opening chapters of her printed record.
Her methods were nothing if not methodical. First, the framework
of a sheet would be fitted and the outer edges squared. Here the
adornment of borders in childish patterns, and the fortunate fact
that the writer had employed a variety of colored crayons, using
each color until it was exhausted, lent an unhoped-for aid. Then,
odd sheets were fitted together; later, fragments of episodes.
Whenever one was completed, it was typed by an assistant on a card,
and in this way there came into being a card-system that would do
credit to a scientific museum of modest proportions. Finally the
cards were filed in sequence, the manuscript then typed off and
printed just as at first written, with no change whatever other than
omissions, the adoption of reasonable rules of capitalization (the
manuscript for many years has nothing but capitals), and the addition
of punctuation, of which the manuscript is entirely innocent. The
spelling--with the exception of occasional characteristic examples
of the diarist’s individual style--has, in the reader’s interest,
been widely amended.
II
Opal Whiteley--so her story runs--was born about twenty-two years
ago--where, we have no knowledge. Of her parents, whom she lost
before her fifth year, she is sure of nothing except that they loved
her, and that she loved them with a tenacity of affection as strong
now as at the time of parting. To recall what manner of people they
were, no physical proof remains except, perhaps, two precious little
copybooks, which held their photographs and wherein her mother and
father had set down things which they wished their little daughter
to learn, both of the world about her and of that older world of
legend and history, with which the diarist shows such capricious
and entertaining familiarity. These books, for reasons beyond her
knowledge, were taken away from Opal when she was about twelve years
of age, and have never been returned, although there is ground for
believing that they are still in existence.
Other curious clues to the identity of her father and mother come
from the child’s frequent use of French expressions, and sometimes
of longer passages in French, and from her ready use of scientific
terms. It is, perhaps, a fair inference that her father was a
naturalist by profession or native taste, and that either he or her
mother was French by birth or by education.
After her parents’ death, there is an interlude in Opal’s recollection
which she does not understand, remembering only that for a brief
season the sweet tradition of her mother’s care was carried on by
an older woman, possibly a governess, from whom, within a year,
she was taken and, after recovering from a serious illness, given
to the wife of an Oregon lumber-man, lately parted from her first
child,--Opal Whiteley,--whose place and name, for reasons quite
unknown, were given to the present Opal.
From some time in her sixth year to the present, her diary has
continued without serious interruption; and from the successive
chapters we shall see that her life, apart from the gay tranquillity
of her spirit, was not a happy one. Her friends were the animals and
everything that flies or swims; her single confidant was her diary,
to which she confided every trouble and every satisfaction.
When Opal was over twelve years old, a foster-sister, in a tragic
fit of childish temper, unearthed the hiding-place of the diary
and tore it into a myriad of fragments. The work of years seemed
destroyed, but Opal, who had treasured its understanding pages,
picked up the pitiful scraps and stored them in a secret box. There
they lay undisturbed for many years.
III
Such in briefest outline is the story Opal told; and month after
month, while chapters of the diary were appearing in the _Atlantic_,
snatches of the same history, together with descriptions of many
unrecorded episodes, came in the editor’s mail; and though the weaving
is of very different texture, the pattern is unmistakably the pattern
of the diary. Dates and names, peregrinations and marriages, births,
deaths, and adventures less solemn and less apt to be accurately
recollected, occurred just as the diary tells them. The existence
of the diary itself was well remembered, though for many years Opal
had never spoken of it; a friend recalled the calamitous day when
the abundant chronicle of six years was destroyed; and a cloud of
witnesses bore testimony to the multitudinous family of pets, and some
even to the multicolored names they bore. There were many letters
besides, which came not to the _Atlantic_ at all, but were part of
Opal’s own correspondence with people “of understanding,” members by
instinct of that free-masonry which, as she learned long ago, binds
folk of answering hearts and minds. Many of these letters (which rest
for safety in the _Atlantic_’s treasury) are messages of thanks for
copies of that first book of Opal’s--engaging letters, very personal
most of them, bearing signatures to delight the eyes of collectors of
autographs: M. Clemenceau, M. Poincaré, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Curzon,
members of the French cabinet, scientists, men of letters, men of
achievement. Opal has sought her friends all through the world; but
her lantern is bright and she has found them. Her old Oregon teachers
also have been quick to bear witness to her talents, and to recall
the formal lessons which often she would not remember, and the other
more necessary lessons which she could not forget. They would ask too
whence came the French which they had never taught her. An attempt
to answer that would take us far afield. All we need do here is to
recall that first time, when Opal, full of puzzlement over letters
that simply would not shape themselves into familiar phrases, turned
to her editors and was told that they were French.
“But they can’t be French! I never studied French.”
But French they are, nevertheless.
IV
If the story of Opal were written by another hand than her own,
the central theme of it would be faith. No matter how doubtful the
enterprise, the issue she always holds as certain, simply because the
world is good and God loves his children. Loving herself all created
things, from her barrel-full of caterpillars, whose evolution she
would note and chronicle from day to day, to the dogs and horses,
squirrels, raccoons, and bats which peopled the world she lived
in, she would thank God daily for them, and very early in her life
determined to devote the rest of it to spreading knowledge of them
and of their kind far and wide among little children.
To accomplish this, needed education, and an education she would
have. Those about her showed no interest; but by picking berries,
washing, and work of all rough sorts, Opal paid for the books which
the high school required. But she must do more than this. She
must go to college. To the State University she went, counting it
nothing that she should live in a room without furniture other than
a two-dollar cot, and two coats for blankets. Family conditions,
however, made college impossible for her. After the illness and death
of Mrs. Whiteley, Opal borrowed a little money from friends in Cottage
Grove, Oregon, and started alone for Los Angeles, determined to seek
her livelihood by giving nature lessons to classes of children.
The privations and disappointments of the next two years would make an
heroic tale; but she persevered, and her classes became successful.
The next step was her nature book, for which, by personal canvass
for subscriptions, she raised not less than the prodigious sum of
$9400. But the printers with a girl for a client, demanded more and
still more money, and when the final $600 necessary to make the booty
mount to $10,000 was not forthcoming, with a brutality that would
do credit to a Thénardier, first threatened, and then destroyed the
plates.
A struggle for mere existence followed, but gradually Opal triumphed,
when she was overtaken by a serious illness and taken to the hospital.
New and merciful friends, such as are always conjured up by such a
life as Opal’s, came to her assistance, and after her recovery she
soon started eastward, to find a publisher for her ill-fated volume.
The rest we know.
Yet, after all, our theme should not be Opal, but Opal’s book.
She is the child of curious and interesting circumstance, but of
circumstance her journal is altogether independent. The authorship
does not matter, nor the life from which it came. There the book
is. Nothing else is like it, nor apt to be. If there is alchemy in
Nature, it is in children’s hearts the unspoiled treasure lies, and
for that room of the treasure-house, the Story of Opal offers a tiny
golden key.
=Ellery Sedgwick.=
=The Atlantic Office=, _June_, 1920.
CONTENTS
=Characters in the Narrative= xxi
=Introduction by the Author= 1
=Chapter I=
How Opal Goes along the Road beyond the Singing Creek,
and of all she Sees in her New Home 5
=Chapter II=
How Lars Porsena of Clusium Got Opal into Trouble, and
how Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael and Sadie McKibben
Gave her Great Comfort 9
=Chapter III=
Of the Queer Feels that Came out of a Bottle of
Castoria, and of the Happiness of Larry and Jean 14
=Chapter IV=
How Peter Paul Rubens Goes to School 21
=Chapter V=
How Opal Comforted Aphrodite, and how the Fairies
Comforted Opal when there Was Much Sadness at School 25
=Chapter VI=
Opal Gives Wisdom to the Potatoes, Cleanliness to the
Family Clothes, and a Delicate Dinner to Thomas
Chatterton Jupiter Zeus 35
=Chapter VII=
The Adventure of the Tramper; and what Happens on Long
and on Short Days 47
=Chapter VIII=
How Opal Takes a Walk in the Forest of Chantilly; she
Visits Elsie and her Baby Boy, and Explains Many
Things to the Girl that Has no Seeing 55
=Chapter IX=
Of an Exploring Trip with Brave Horatius; and how Opal
Kept Sadness away from her Animal Friends 69
=Chapter X=
How Brave Horatius is Lost and Found again, but Peter
Paul Rubens is Lost Forever 75
=Chapter XI=
How Opal Took the Miller’s Brand out of the Flour-Sack,
and Got Many Sore Feels thereby; and how Sparks Come
on Cold Nights; and how William Shakespeare Has
Likings for Poems 81
=Chapter XII=
Of Elsie’s Brand-New Baby, and all the Things that Go
with it; and the Goodly Wisdom of the Angels, who
Bring Folks Babies that Are like them 91
=Chapter XIII=
How Felix Mendelssohn and Lucian Horace Ovid Virgil Go
for a Ride; William Shakespeare Suffers One Whipping
and Opal Another 100
=Chapter XIV=
How Opal Feels Satisfaction Feels, and Takes a Ride on
William Shakespeare; and all that Came of it 104
=Chapter XV=
Of Jenny Strong’s Visit, its Gladness and its Sadness 114
=Chapter XVI=
Of the Woods on a Lonesome Day, and the Friendliness of
the Wood-Folks on December Days when you Put your Ears
Close and Listen 122
=Chapter XVII=
Of Works to be Done; and how it Was that a Glad Light
Came into the Eyes of the Man who Wears Gray Neckties
and Is Kind to Mice 127
=Chapter XVIII=
How Opal Pays One Visit to Elsie and Another to Dear
Love, and Learns how to Mend her Clothes in a
Quick Way 131
=Chapter XIX=
Of the Camp by the Mill by the Far Woods; of the
Spanking that Came from the New Way of Mending
Clothes; and of the Long Sleep of William Shakespeare 138
=Chapter XX=
Of the Little Song-Notes that Dance about Babies; and of
the Solemn Christening of Solomon Grundy 146
=Chapter XXI=
How Opal Names Names of the Lambs of Aidan of Iona, and
Seeks for the Soul of Peter Paul Rubens 158
=Chapter XXII=
How Solomon Grundy Falls Sick and Grows Well again; and
Minerva’s Chickens are Christened; and the Pensée
Girl, with the Far-Away Look in her Eyes, Finds
Thirty-and-Three Bunches of Flowers 165
=Chapter XXIII=
How Opal and Brave Horatius Go on Explores and Visit the
Hospital.--How the Mamma Dyes Clothes and Opal Dyes
Clementine 177
=Chapter XXIV=
How the Mamma’s Wish Came True, and how Opal was Spanked
for it; and of the Likes which Aphrodite Had for a
Clean Place to Live in 185
=Chapter XXV=
Of Many Washings and a Walk 193
=Chapter XXVI=
Why it Was that the Girl who Has no Seeing Was not at
Home when Opal Called 197
=Chapter XXVII=
Of a Cathedral Service in the Pig-Pen.--How the World
Looks from a Man’s Shoulder 204
=Chapter XXVIII=
How Opal Piped with Reeds, and what a Good Time Dear
Love Gave Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus 212
=Chapter XXIX=
How Opal Feels the Heat of the Sun, and Decorates
a Goodly Number of the White Poker-Chips of the
Chore Boy 218
=Chapter XXX=
How Opal and the Little Birds from the Great Tree Have
a Happy Time at the House of Dear Love 226
=Chapter XXXI=
How Lola Wears her White Silk Dress at Last 231
=Chapter XXXII=
Of the Ways that Fairies Write, and the Proper Way to
Drink in the Song of the Wood 234
=Chapter XXXIII=
Of the Death of Lars Porsena of Clusium, and of the
Comfort that Sadie McKibben can Give 242
=Chapter XXXIV=
Of the Fall of the Great Tree, and the Funeral of
Aristotle 249
=Chapter XXXV=
How the Man of the Long Step that Whistles Most of the
Time Takes an Interesting Walk 253
=Chapter XXXVI=
Of Taking-Egg Day, and the Remarkable Things that Befell
thereon 259
=Chapter XXXVII=
Of the Strange Adventure in the Woods on the Going-Away
Day of Saint Louis 270
=Chapter XXXVIII=
How Opal Makes Prepares to Move. How she Collects all
the Necessary Things, Bids Good-bye to Dear Love, and
Learns that her Prayer has been Answered 275
=Postscript= 284
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
=Opal Whiteley Reconstructing her Diary= _Frontispiece_
=The Author and the Fragments of Her Diary= 1
=A Specimen Page of Opal’s Diary Written on a Paper Bag= 13
=Lumber-Camp Folk= 33
=At the Pasture-Bars= 78
=“After we were across the rivière we went in a more
slow way”= 108
=“I wonder why it is the lumber-camp folk do cut off their
overalls where they do meet the boots”= 140
=A Path to “Explores” in the Far Woods= 187
CHARACTERS IN THE NARRATIVE
=Agamemnon Menelaus Dindon=, a pet turkey.
=Adamnan of Iona=, a sheep.
=Alan of Bretagne=, a fir tree.
=Aidan of Iona= come from Lindisfarne, the shepherd.
=Albéric de Briançon=, a sheep.
=Alcuin=, a sheep.
=Alfric of Canterbury=, a sheep.
=Anacreon Herodotus=, a lamb a little more little than the other
little lamb.
=Andromeda=, sister hen of Clementine.
=Anthonya Mundy=, Solomon Grundy’s little pig sister that has not
got as much curl in her tail as has Solomon Grundy.
=Aphrodite=, the mother-pig.
=Aristotle=, a pet bat who died of eating too many mosquitoes.
=Bébé Blanche= }
=Bébé William= } two little trees by Edward III.
=Bede of Jarrow=, a sheep.
=Ben Jonson=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Brave Horatius=, the shepherd dog.
=Byron=, a fir tree in the lane.
=Cassiopée=, a neighbor’s pig.
=Cardinal Richelieu=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Charlemagne=, the most tall tree of all the trees growing in
the lane.
=Clementine=, a Plymouth Rock hen.
=Cynewulf=, a sheep.
=Dallan Forgaill=, a sheep.
=Dear Love and her Young Husband=, neighbors and dear friends.
=Edmund Spenser=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Edward III=, a fir tree near the singing creek where the
willows grow.
=Edward, Prince of Wales=, a younger tree growing near unto
Edward III.
=Edwin of Diera=, a sheep.
=Elidor=, a sheep.
=Elizabeth Barrett Browning=, a pet cow with poetry in her tracks.
=Elsie and her Young Husband=, neighbors and interesting friends.
=Epicurus Pythagoras=, a lamb.
=Étienne of Blois=, a fir tree in the woods.
=Felix Mendelssohn=, a very dear pet mouse.
=Felix of Croyland=, a sheep.
=Francis Beaumont=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Geoffroi Chaucer=, a little squirrel that was hurt by the
black cat.
=Godefroi of Bouillon=, a fir tree in the woods.
=Good King Edward I=, a fir tree growing in the lane.
=Grandpère=, Mrs. Whiteley’s father.
=Guy de Cavaillon=, a sheep.
=Gwian=, a sheep.
=Homer Archimedes Chilon=, a little lamb more big than all the
other lambs.
=Hugh Capet=, a fir tree growing in the lane.
=Isaiah=, a plain dog.
=Jean de la Fontaine=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Jean Molière=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Jean Racine=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Jenny Strong=, a visitor with an interesting bonnet.
=John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster=, a tree growing near unto
Edward III.
=John Fletcher=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Keats=, an oak tree in the lane.
=Lars Porsena of Clusium=, a pet crow with a fondness for collecting
things.
=Lionel, Duke of Clarence=, a tree growing near unto Edward III.
=Lola=, a little girl in school, who had wants for a white silk
dress.
=Louis II, le Grand Condé=, a wood-mouse with likes to ride in the
sleeve of my red dress.
=Louis VI=, a grand fir tree in the woods.
=Lucian Horace Ovid Virgil=, a toad.
“=Mamma, The=,” Mrs. Whiteley.
=Marcus Aurelius=, a lamb.
=Mathilde Plantagenet=, the baby calf of the gentle Jersey cow,
that came on the night of the coming of Elsie’s baby.
=Menander Euripides Theocritus Thucydides=, a most dear lamb that
had needs to be mothered.
=Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael=, a grand fir tree with an
understanding soul.
=Nannerl Mozart=, a very shy mouse.
=Napoleon=, the Rhode Island Red rooster.
=Nicholas Boileau=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Oliver Goldsmith=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Orderic=, a sheep.
“=Papa, The=,” Mr. Whiteley.
=Peace=, a mother hen that has got all her children grown up.
=Periander Pindar=, a lamb.
=Peter Paul Rubens=, a very dear pet pig.
=Pius VII=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Plato= }
=Pliny= } twin bats.
=Plutarch Demosthenes=, a lamb.
=Queen Eleanor of Castile=, a fir tree in the lane growing by
Edward I.
=Queen Philippa of Hainault=, a fir tree growing by Edward III.
=Raoul de Houdenc=, a sheep.
=Raymond of Toulouse=, a fir tree in the woods.
=Sadie McKibben=, a comforter in time of trouble.
=Saint Louis=, a fir tree growing in the lane.
=Samuel Taylor Coleridge=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Savonarola=, a sorrel horse.
=Shelley=, a fir tree growing in the lane.
=Sir Francis Bacon=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Sir Philip Sidney=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Sir Walter Raleigh=, one of Minerva’s baby chickens.
=Solomon Grundy=, a very dear baby pig.
=Solon Thales=, a lamb.
=Sophocles Diogenes=, a lamb with a short tail and a question-look
in his eyes.
=Theodore Roosevelt=, a fir tree in the lane.
=Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus=, a most dear velvety wood-rat.
=Tibullus Theognis=, a fuzzy lamb with very long legs.
=William Makepeace Thackeray=, a little bird that was hurt.
=William Shakespeare=, an old gray horse with an understanding soul.
=William Wordsworth=, an oak tree in the lane.
The Story of Opal
The Journal of
An Understanding Heart
[Photograph: _Photograph by Bachrach_
THE AUTHOR AND THE FRAGMENTS OF HER DIARY]
THE STORY OF OPAL
INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
Of the days before I was taken to the lumber camps there is little I
remember. As piece by piece the journal comes together, some things
come back. There are references here and there in the journal to
things I saw or heard or learned in those days before I came to the
lumber camps.
There were walks in the fields and woods. When on these walks, Mother
would tell me to listen to what the flowers and trees and birds were
saying. We listened together. And on the way she told me poems and
other lovely things, some of which she wrote in the two books and
also in others which I had not with me in the lumber camps. On the
walks, and after we came back, she had me to print what I had seen
and what I had heard. After that she told me of different people and
their wonderful work on earth. Then she would have me tell again to
her what she had told me. After I came to the lumber camp, I told
these things to the trees and the brooks and the flowers.
There were five words my mother said to me over and over again, as
she had me to print what I had seen and what I had heard. These words
were: What, Where, When, How, Why. They had a very great influence
over all my observations and the recording of those observations
during all the days of my childhood. And my Mother having put such
strong emphasis on these five words accounts for much of the detailed
descriptions that are throughout my diary.
No children I knew. There were only Mother and the kind woman who
taught me and looked after me and dressed me, and the young girl
who fed me. And there was Father in those few days when he was home
from the far lands. Those were wonderful days--his home-coming days.
Then he would take me on his knee and ride me on his shoulder and
tell me of the animals and birds of the far lands. And we went for
many walks, and he would talk to me about the things along the way.
It was then he taught me _comparer_.
There was one day when I went with Mother in a boat. It was a little
way on the sea. It was a happy day. Then something happened and we
were all in the water. Afterward, when I called for Mother, they said
the sea waves had taken her and she was gone to heaven. I remember
the day because I never saw my Mother again.
The time was not long after that day with Mother in the boat, when
one day the kind woman who taught me and took care of me did tell
me gently that Father too had gone to heaven while he was away in
the far lands. She said she was going to take me to my grandmother
and grandfather, the mother and father of my Father.
We started. But I never got to see my dear grandmother and
grandfather, whom I had never seen. Something happened on the way
and I was all alone. And I did n’t feel happy. There were strange
people that I had never seen before, and I was afraid of them. They
made me to keep very still, and we went for no walks in the field.
But we traveled a long, long way.
Then it was they put me with Mrs. Whiteley. The day they put me with
her was a rainy day, and I thought she was a little afraid of them
too. She took me on the train and in a stage-coach to the lumber
camp. She called me Opal Whiteley, the same name as that of another
little girl who was the same size as I was when her mother lost her.
She took me into the camp as her own child, and so called me as we
lived in the different lumber camps and in the mill town.
With me I took into camp a small box. In a slide drawer in the bottom
of this box were two books which my own Mother and Father, the Angel
Father and Mother I always speak of in my diary, had written in. I
do not think the people who put me with Mrs. Whiteley knew about the
books in the lower part of the box, for they took everything out
of the top part of the box and tossed it aside. I picked it up and
kept it with me, and, being as I was more quiet with it in my arms,
they allowed me to keep it, thinking it was empty. These books I
kept always with me, until one day I shall always remember, when I
was about twelve years old, they were taken from the box I kept then
hid in the woods. Day by day I spelled over and over the many words
that were written in them. From them I selected names for my pets.
And it was the many little things recorded there that helped me to
remember what my Mother and Father had already told me of different
great lives and their work; and these books with these records made
me very eager to be learning more and more of what was recorded in
them. These two books I studied much more than I did my books at
school. Their influence upon my life has been great.
CHAPTER I
_How Opal Goes along the Road beyond the Singing Creek, and of all
she Sees in her New Home._
To-day the folks are gone away from the house we do live in. They
are gone a little way away, to the ranch-house where the grandpa
does live. I sit on our steps and I do print. I like it--this house
we do live in being at the edge of the near woods. So many little
people do live in the near woods. I do have conversations with them.
I found the near woods first day I did go explores. That was the
next day after we were come here. All the way from the other logging
camp in the beautiful mountains we came in a wagon. Two horses were
in front of us. They walked in front of us all the way. When first
we were come, we did live with some other people in the ranch-house
that was n’t all builded yet. After that we lived in a tent, and
often when it did rain many raindrops came right through the tent.
They did fall in patters on the stove and on the floor and on the
table. Too, they did make the quilts on the beds some damp--but that
did n’t matter much because they soon got dried hanging around the
stove.
By and by we were come from the tent to this lumber shanty. It has
got a divide in it. One room we do have sleeps in. In the other room
we do have breakfast and supper. Back of the house are some nice
wood-rats. The most lovely of them all is Thomas Chatterton Jupiter
Zeus. By the wood-shed is a brook. It goes singing on. Its joy song
does sing in my heart. Under the house live some mice. I give them
bread-scraps to eat. Under the steps lives a toad. He and I--we are
friends. I have named him. I call him Lucian Horace Ovid Virgil.
Between the ranch-house and the house we live in is the singing
creek where the willows grow. We have conversations. And there I
do dabble my toes beside the willows. I feel the feels of gladness
they do feel. And often it is I go from the willows to the meeting
of the road. That is just in front of the ranch-house. There the
road does have divides. It goes three ways. One way the road does
go to the house of Sadie McKibben. It does n’t stop when it gets to
her house, but mostly I do. The road just goes on to the mill town
a little way away. In its going it goes over a hill. Sometimes--the
times Sadie McKibben is n’t at home--I do go with Brave Horatius to
the top of the hill. We look looks down upon the mill town. Then
we do face about and come again home. Always we make stops at the
house of Sadie McKibben. Her house--it is close to the mill by the
far woods. That mill makes a lot of noise. It can do two things at
once. It makes the noises and also it does saw the logs into boards.
About the mill do live some people, mostly men-folks. There does
live the good man that wears gray neckties and is kind to mice.
Another way, the road does go the way I go when I go to the
school-house where I go to school. When it is come there, it does
go right on--on to the house of the girl who has no seeing. When
it gets to her house, it does make a bend, and it does go its way
to the blue hills. As it goes, its way is near unto the way of the
_rivière_ that sings as it comes from the blue hills. There are
singing brooks that come going to the rivière. These brooks--they
and I--we are friends. I call them Orne and Loing and Yonne and
Rille and Essonne.
Near unto the road, long ways between the brooks, are ranch-houses.
I have not knowing of the people that do dwell in them. But I do
know some of their cows and horses and pigs. They are friendly
folk. Around the ranch-houses are fields. Woods used to grow where
now grows grain. When the mowers cut down the grain, they also do
cut down the cornflowers that grow in the fields. I follow along
after and I do pick them up. Of some of them I make a _guirlande_.
When the guirlande is made, I do put it around the neck of William
Shakespeare. He does have appreciations. As we go walking down the
lane, I do talk with him about the one he is named for. And he does
have understanding. He is such a beautiful gray horse, and his ways
are ways of gentleness. Too, he does have likings like the likings I
have for the hills that are beyond the fields--for the hills where
are trails and tall fir trees like the wonderful ones that do grow
by the road.
So go two of the roads. The other road does lead to the upper logging
camps. It goes only a little way from the ranch-house and it comes to
a rivière. Long time ago, this road did have a longing to go across
the rivière. Some wise people did have understandings and they did
build it a bridge to go across on. It went across the bridge and it
goes on and on between the hills--the hills where dwell the talking
fir trees. By its side goes the railroad track. Its appears are
not so nice as are the appears of the road, and it has got only a
squeaky voice. But this railroad track does have shining rails--they
stretch away and away, like a silver ribbon that came from the moon
in the night. I go a-walking on these rails. I get off when I do
hear the approaches of the dinky engine. On this track on every day,
excepting Sunday, comes and goes the logging train. It goes to the
camps and it does bring back cars of logs and cars of lumber. These
it does take to the mill town. There engines more big do take the
cars of lumber to towns more big.
Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus has been waiting in my sunbonnet a
long time. He wants to go on explores. Too, Brave Horatius and Isaiah
are having longings in their eyes. And I hear Peter Paul Rubens
squealing in the pig-pen. Now I go. We go on explores.