I was born, as I have said, on a sheep ranch in the central part of
California during its pastoral period, but it is doubtless true that
the environment and influences about me during the first few months of
my life were very little different from what they would have been had
my Maine mother not left her New England home about a year before my
birth.
But as the months passed and the circle of my experience widened, I was
more and more affected by the conditions of my own time and place.
My first memory relates to an experience characteristic of a frontier
country in which the manner of life is still primitive. I remember
very distinctly sitting in my mother’s lap in a stage-coach and being
unbearably hot and thirsty. After I was a grown girl my father took
me with him to inspect the last remaining link of the old stage lines
(between Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez), that formally ran up and down
the state from San Diego to San Francisco, and I, being reminded of
that long ride in my babyhood, asked him about it. He told me that
on the return trip to San Juan after my first visit to Los Angeles,
instead of going north by steamer they had traveled by stage through
the San Joaquin Valley, encountering the worst heat he had ever
experienced in California. Then he added that I could not possibly
remember anything about it since I was only eleven months old when it
happened. I maintain, however, that I do, because the picture and the
sense of heat is too vivid to be a matter of hearsay alone. I was so
small that my head came below my mother’s shoulder as I leaned against
her outside arm at the left end of the middle seat. There were no other
women in the stage, papa was behind us, and opposite were three men,
who were sorry for me and talked to me.
The months went by and I came to know my home. It was among rolling
hills whose velvety slopes bounded my world. Over all was the wide
blue sky, a bit of it having fallen into a nearby hollow. This was a
fascinating pond, for water ran up hill beside the road to get into
it. Then there were many fish, none of which ever would get caught on
my bent-pin hook. It was into this water that I once saw some little
ducks jump, and, like many of the younger generation, greatly alarm
their mother, who, being a hen, had no understanding of her children’s
adjustment to strange conditions.
The ranch house was a new one, built by the three partner-cousins,
large enough to accommodate their families. It was reminiscent of
Maine, with its white paint, green blinds and sharp gables edged with
wooden lace, something like the perforated paper in the boxes of
perfumed toilet soap,--perhaps meant to remind them of icicles. The
house and all the auxiliary buildings were built on rising ground, so
that under each one, on the lower side, was a high basement, usually
enclosed by a lattice. Under the veranda that extended across the
front of the house was a fine place to play, with many treasures to be
found, among them sacks of the strange beet seed, reminders of an early
interest in sugar-making, and sweet potatoes that are very good for
nibbling, raw; they taste like chestnuts.
At the rear of this house was a low porch, without a railing, where
the carriages drove up many times a day, for, with the large family,
the wide acres, and active business, there was much coming and going.
This veranda served as an annex to the dining room. In those days fruit
came after breakfast instead of before, and it was here that we ate it,
tossing the squeezed oranges and the scalloped watermelon rinds into a
conveniently placed box that was frequently emptied.
Directly back of the kitchen was a small building containing a
storeroom where Dick and I were accustomed to climb the shelves like a
ladder for packages of sweet chocolate, while Aunt Francina, oblivious,
skimmed the many large milk pans. In the building also was a laundry,
containing a stove upon which I have seen soft-soap made and tallow
prepared for the candle moulds. In a corner, made by this house and a
retaining wall, was a large sand pile, and from the great oak on the
bank above hung a long swing. I wonder if it is any more delightful for
an old person to penetrate the sky in an aeroplane than for a little
girl to do the same when pushed by the strong arm of her father.
Down towards the pond was the horse barn, with its long rows of stalls
on one side, and its shelter for the carts and buggies beside the
hay-mow on the other. I was warned of dangerous heels and was duly
circumspect, but liked to get, occasionally, a nice, fresh, long hair
from a tail for purposes of scientific experiment. I was going to turn
a hair into a snake if possible. In a similar attempt to verify popular
statements I spent many an hour with salt in my hand, trailing birds.
On one of my ventures behind the horses I was rewarded by the discovery
of a very heavy little bottle, standing on a dark ledge. It contained
mercury. Great was my joy to get a few drops in my hand, to divide them
into the tiniest globules, and then to watch them coalesce into one
little silvery pool.
The building standing back up the hill was the one in which the
imported Spanish merino sheep were kept. I seldom went there, but in
the corral behind the barn next lower several cows stood every night
to be milked, among them Old Muley, my friend, on whose broad back I
often sat astride while the process was going on. There were large,
pink-blossomed mallows bordering the fences and this barn, and under
the latter many white geese could be seen between the slats of the open
siding. How excited I was when the day for gathering the feathers came!
The hired men occupied the original ranch house; in the usual basement
was the tool room, open to us children. I here learned to hammer,
saw and plane, and, most charming of all, bore holes with an auger in
the wooden boxes we used in the making of figure-four traps. I also
learned about gimlets, chisels, pliers, brads, rivets, and screws and
thus prepared myself to be a general handy man at college and in my own
home. It was in this shop that papa made me a fire-cracker holder,--a
willow stick with a hole bored in one end in which to place the lovely
red symbol of patriotism, so that I could celebrate without endangering
my fingers.
In front of the house was the flower garden, enclosed by a white picket
fence as a protection against chickens and other wandering ranch
animals. Ladies-delights turned up their smiling little faces beside
one walk, and nearby grew papa’s favorites, cinnamon pinks. I liked the
red honey-suckle and the dark mourning-brides that were like velvet
cushions stuck full of white-headed pins. There was one orange tree
that bore no fruit important enough for me to remember, but, in spring,
had many waxy white blossoms that smelled so good it made one hurt
inside.
In larger enclosures, bounded by the same white fencing, grew
vegetables and fruit trees. Sometimes we pulled a pungent horse-radish
root and pretended that a bite of it made us crazy, an excuse for much
running and wild gesticulation. Under a long row of loaded blackberry
vines Dick once asked me the riddle, “Why is a blackberry like a
newspaper?” Do you know the answer? It is: “Both are black and white
and red all over.” I presume the play upon the word “red” was my
introduction to puns.
The orchard contained peaches, plums, pears, apples, and apricots, but,
to my mind, the cherry trees were the chief glory. One evening while
Annie Mooney, our nurse, was taking in some clothes from the line, my
little sister and I had a feast of fallen cherries, but she ate with
less discrimination than I, for when, a few minutes later, we drank
our supper milk she had convulsions. A quick immersion in a tub of hot
water cured her, and we had learned about babies and cherries and milk,
all mixed up together.
Down in the far corner of the orchard was a spring, with marshy ground
about it, where the children were forbidden to go. But one morning,
bored by the lack of novelty in our lives, one of the Flint twins and I
boldly ventured into the tabooed region. We had hardly arrived when we
saw an enormous black snake, which drove us back in terror, chasing us,
with glittering eyes and darting tongue, over the ridges and hollows of
the new-ploughed ground that clutched at our feet as if in collusion
with the black dragon guard of the spring. I laid, during those few
minutes, the foundation for many a horror-stricken dream. The snake
was real. I wonder if the pursuit was merely the imagining of a guilty
conscience.
Beyond the summer house, beyond the fence and at the hilltop end of a
little grassy path, was the family burying ground, where, under the
wild flowers, lay a few baby cousins who had gone away before I came,
and papa’s young brother, Solomon, who, while reading poetry in a
lonely sheep camp, had been shot to death by some unknown hand.
Our home was in a little valley, with no other houses in sight, but
a mile and a half away, down a hill and across a bridge, lay the old
town of San Juan Bautista, with its post-office, store, adobe inn and
its homes, a medley of Spanish and American types. The mission church
with its long corridor, arched and tile-paved, and its garden, where
peacocks used to walk and drop their shining feathers for a little girl
to pick up, was the dominating feature of the place, its very cause for
being. Inside was dim silence; there were strange dark pictures on the
walls, and burning candles, a very large music book with big square
notes, and a great Bible, chained to its desk.
There was another church in San Juan, one that was wooden, light, bare
and small, where I learned from a tiny flowered card, “Blessed are the
peacemakers,” which, being interpreted for my benefit, meant, “Sallie
mus’n’t quarrel with little sister.” I ate up a rosebud and wriggled in
my seat during the long sermon and wondered about the lady who brushed
her hair smooth and low on one side and high on the other. Had she only
one ear?
I have been told that my church attendance involved certain
distractions for my fellow-worshippers, and that my presence was
tolerated only because of the desirability of training me in correct
Sunday habits. On one occasion my restlessness led me into disaster. My
parents had gone to the chancel, carrying my little sister Anne for
her christening, leaving me in the pew. It was a strange performance.
The minister took the baby in his arms, and then put something from a
silver bowl on her forehead, and began to pray. I must know what was in
the bowl! Everybody had shut-eyes, so there was a good chance for me
to find out without troubling anyone. I darted forward and managed to
discover that the mysterious something was water, for I spilled it over
myself.
The trip to church was made in a two-seated, low carriage, with a span
of horses, while my every day rides with papa were in a single buggy,
but with two horses, also, for we had far to go and liked going fast.
Sometimes we went to Gilroy, and sometimes to Hollister, often just
about the ranch to the various sheep camps, which were widely separated.
I began these business trips almost as soon as I was old enough to sit
up alone. When we started I would be very erect and alert at papa’s
side, but before long I would droop and be retired to the bottom of
the buggy, where, wrapped in a robe, and with his foot for a pillow,
I would sleep contentedly for hours. I remember my disgust when I had
grown so long that I must change my habit and put my legs back under
the seat, instead of lying across in the correct way. I objected to
change, but was persuaded that it would be inconvenient for me to get
tangled, during some pleasant dream, in the actualities of the spokes
of a moving wheel.
At one time papa and I were very much occupied clearing a field, a
piece of work which he must have reserved for himself, since there
were no other men about. He also enjoyed chopping wood and this may
have been his “daily dozen.” We cut down several large oak trees,
cleared out underbrush, and, piling it up against the great stumps,
built fires that roared for a time and then smouldered for days.
Sometimes I walked with mamma on the hills back of the house, and when
we were tired we would sit down under a tree and she would tell me a
story and make me a chaplet of oak leaves, folding and fastening each
leaf to the next in a most ingenious way. If our walk took us into the
lower lands she made bewitching little baskets from the rushes that
grew near the water’s edge. I also found the strange equisitum, that I
sometimes called “horse-tail,” and sometimes “stove-pipe,” which latter
I preferred, because none of the horses that I knew had disjointable
tails, while the little hollow tubes of stem that fitted into each
other so well must serve the fairies most excellently for their
chimneys.
Several spring mornings as I grew older, I got up at dawn with mamma,
went to the early empty kitchen for a drink of milk, and then went out
with her for a horseback ride, she in her long broadcloth habit and
stiff silk hat, and I, a tiny timid girl, perched on a side-saddle atop
a great horse. From the point of view of horsemanship I was not a great
success, but the joy of the dawn air, the rising sun, the wild-flowers,
the companionship of my mother is mine forever.
It was on one of these morning expeditions when we were comparing
notes about our tastes in colors, that I found she liked a strange
shade of red that to me looked unattractive. I was overwhelmed by the
thought that perhaps it did not look the same to both of us, and that
if I saw it as she did I might like it also; but there was no way for
either of us to know how it actually looked to the other! I realized
the essential isolation of every human being. However, I forgot the
loneliness when papa joined us on the road beside the pond, where the
wild lilac scattered its blue-violet lace on the over-hanging bank, and
cut for me a willow whistle that sounded the shrill joy of being alive.
On the Sunday afternoon walks when we all went up into the hills
together I learned, among other classics:
“Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make a mighty ocean
And the wondrous land.”
But it was at night when I was safely put in my bed that I heard
through the open door, mamma, at the parlor piano, singing to me:
“I want to be an angel,
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my head,
A harp within my hand.”
I suppose that neither she nor I were really in immediate haste for
the fulfillment of that wish, but it made a good bed-time song.
Another favorite was, _Shall we Gather at the River?_, and there was
occasionally a somber one called _Pass Under the Rod_.
My bed was a very safe place, for did not angels guard it, “two at the
foot, and two at the head”? I knew who my angels were,--my very own
grandmother, who had died when my mother was a new baby, the aunt for
whom I had been named, my little cousin Mary who really should have
been guarding her brother Harry, and a fourth whom I have now forgotten.
The songs were not gay, but my life was not troubled by thoughts of
death. Heaven seemed a nice place, somewhere, and angels and fairies
were normal parts of my universe.
I did have a few minor troubles. My language was criticized. “You bet
your boots” did not meet with maternal approval. Then, if I carelessly
put my sunbonnet strings into my mouth, I got my tongue burned from
the vinegar and cayenne pepper into which they had been dipped for the
express purpose of making the process disagreeable. Those sunbonnets,
with which my head was sheathed every time I started out into the airy
out-of-doors, were my chief pests. I usually compromised my integrity
by untying the strings as soon as I was out of sight. I would double
back the corners of the bonnet, making it into a sort of cocked hat
with a bow on top, made from the hated strings, thus letting my poor
scratched ears out of captivity.
My cousin, Mrs. Gibson, tells me that she also suffered the martyrdom
of sunbonnets; I suppose in those days girls were supposed to preserve
natural complexions, it not being considered decent to have recourse
to vanity boxes. Her mother was more ingenious than mine in making sure
that her child did not jeopardize her skin. She made buttonholes in the
top of the bonnet through which she drew strands of hair and braided
them outside the bonnet, thus insuring it against removal.
Papa and I went to the circus on every possible occasion. Once,
at Hollister, I saw General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, Minnie Warren and
Commodore Nutt, whose photograph--with Mr. Barnum--I have preserved.
Minnie Warren was supposed to be the size of a six-year-old, but the
standard for six-year-olds must have come out of the east. I was
several inches taller than she.
A pretty lady, dressed in pink tarleton skirts, who rode several horses
at a time, and jumped through tissue paper hoops, was my first heroine.
Dick and I kept her picture for months on a ledge under the office
desk, and there rendered her frequent homage.
The mention of this desk calls to mind other activities centering in
that office. On one occasion, when I was suitably young, the spirit
moved me to carry a shovelful of live coals out through the door to the
porch, and there coax up a fire by the addition of kindling wood. The
same spirit, or another, however, suggested a compensating action. I
summoned my mother to see my “nice fire,” to the salvation of the house.
Fire, candles, matches, revolvers, all held a fascination. It is
evident that neither my cousin Harry nor I were intended for a violent
death, for it was our custom to investigate from time to time his
father’s loaded revolver, turning the chambers about and removing
and replacing the cartridges. Our faith in our ability to handle the
dangerous weapon safely seems to have been justified by our success.
It was deemed wise to keep me occupied, so far as possible, in order
to thwart Satan, ever on the lockout for idle hands. So I was taught
to sew patch-work and to knit, to read and to spell. There were short
periods when I had to stay in the house, but like most California
children, I spent out of doors most of the time not given over to
eating and sleeping. Now-a-days even those duties are attended to upon
porches.
Under mamma’s guidance I once laboriously and secretly sewed “over and
over” a gray and striped “comfort bag” for a birthday gift to papa. It
was modelled on the bags made for the soldiers in the Union army when
my mother was a girl. We made a special trip to Hollister to buy its
contents, black and white thread, coarse needles, buttons, wax, blunt
scissors, and to top off, pink and white sugary peppermint drops. That
bag remained in service for twenty years, going always in father’s
satchel whenever he went away. It came to my rescue once when I had
torn my skirt from hem to band. As he sewed up the rent for me with
nice big stitches, first on one side and then on the other, he told me
it was a shoemaker’s stitch and had the advantage of bringing the edges
together just as they had been originally, without puckering the cloth.
Mamma used the same stitch to mend the torn pages of books and sheet
music, in those days before Mr. Dennison invented his transparent tape.
Time went by slowly, slowly, as it does when one is young. All day
there was play, except for the occasional stint of patchwork, or the
reading lesson,--every day but Sunday, with its church in the forenoon
and stories and walks in the afternoon. Mamma would say, “When I was
a little girl in Maine,” until to me Maine meant Paradise. In that
country there was a brook where one could wade, and the great river,
on whose banks in the woods children could picnic and hunt for wild
berries,--what a charm in the words, “going berrying!” Even the nest
of angry hornets with their sharp stings did not lessen my enthusiasm.
At San Justo there were no Martha and Susan, no Julia and Ella for me
to play with,--just boys, (who seemed to answer very well for little
tom-boy Sallie when Maine was not in mind).
When I heard of snow and sleighs and sleds and the wonderful attic with
its cunning low curtained windows and the doll colony who lived there,
I forgot the charms of the ranch and the boy play. It was nothing to
me that there were horses and cows, ducks, geese and chickens. It
was nothing to me that Dick and I could make figure-four traps, and,
walking beyond the wool-barn, set them on the hillside for quail; that
once we had the excitement of finding our trap upset, our captives
gone, and great bear tracks all about. The long sunny days of freedom
with the boys, the great herds of sheep that came up for shearing, the
many rides with my father through the lovely valleys and over the hills
were commonplace, just what I had always known. No, life in California
was very tame compared with the imagined joys of Maine.