Twice mamma took me to Maine to see grandmother and grandfather and
Aunt Martha, once when I was two-and-a-half years old and once when
I was nearly five. In each case we stayed about six months so that I
became acquainted with New England in all its varying seasons.
Perhaps it was the being there just when I was forming habits of speech
that has fastened upon me an unmistakable New England way of speaking,
however much the pure dialect may have been corrupted by my usual
western environment.
My aunt tells me that when she first saw me she could think of nothing
so much as a little frisking squirrel, my dark eyes were so shining
and I darted about so constantly. I couldn’t wait after my arrival at
the strange place even long enough to take off hood and coat before
demanding scissors with which to cut paper dolls. When the outer wraps
were removed, the interested relatives saw a slender little girl, with
straight yellow hair, brown eyes and a smooth skin, tanned by wind and
sun.
Evidently there was much excitement attendant upon reaching
grandmother’s, for when I was tucked away for a nap, with a brand new
book purchased the day before in Boston to entertain me until sleep
should come, I occupied myself with tearing every page into pieces the
size of a quarter. I have no suggestion to offer as to why I did it.
When the situation came to adult attention, papa sat down on the trunk
beside the crib and gave me the only spanking he was ever known to
bestow upon his family. The rope was behind the trunk. I saw it while
lying across his knees.
The ill-fated book was not the only purchase made in Boston. Mamma and
I had our pictures taken, and bought clothes for the cold winter ahead.
I had a bottle-green dress and a bottle-green coat to match, also
stockings and bonnet. They put me up on the counter to try the things
on me, and I was glad when mamma chose the velvet bonnet with a white
ruche and little pink roses, for I liked it best of all. Then there
were kid gloves, dark green and white, both of which I hated, because
my poor little fingers buckled when they were put on. When I was taken
to call on the cousins in Beacon Street, I was dressed up in all the
regalia, even to the white gloves. Alas, there was a coping beside the
steps, just the right height for a hand-rail for me, and unfortunately,
dust is black even in Boston. Missy was in disgrace when she reached
the front door. She was better adapted to play in mud pies than formal
calls.
Even if I liked dirt and freedom, I also liked clothes well enough to
remember those I have had, so that now I would venture to reconstruct
a continuous series of them, extending back to babyhood. An early
favorite was of scarlet cashmere, cut in “Gabrielle” style, with
scalloped neck, sleeves and hem, buttonholed with black silk, and on
the front an embroidered bunch of barley, acorns and roses. With this
dress went a little white fur overcoat, cap and muff, all trimmed with
a narrow edge of black fur. So much for clothes. They were ordinarily
buried under aprons.
Maine was a wonderful place! The leaves on the trees were red and
yellow, brown and purple, instead of green, and when the wind blew
they fell off. It left the trees very queer, but the dry leaves on
the ground made a fine swishing noise when one scuffed in them, and
when a little breeze picked them up and sent them scurrying after one
they looked like the rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Mamma
gathered some of the prettiest, pressed them and waxed them with a hot
iron and a paraffine candle. We took them back to San Justo with us and
pinned them on the lace curtains, to remind us of Skowhegan.
Whenever we went to town on an errand or to church, we crossed the
bridge, under which the great river rushed to pour over the falls
below, a never failing wonder. On the far side of the island the water
turned the wheels for cousin Levi Weston’s sawmill, an interesting, if
dangerous, place to visit.
We had not been long in Maine before the air filled with goose
feathers, only it wasn’t feathers, but wet snow. Then came sleds
and sleighs, a snow man and Christmas, with a piggy-back ride on
grandfather to see the tree at the church.
The snow was so deep on the ground and it was so cold, the chickens
had to stay in the barn all the time; every morning grandmother and I
took my little red bucket and went to feed them, out through the summer
kitchen, the wood-shed, past the horse’s stall to their house.
While I was in Maine I learned odors as well as sights. I know the
smell of snow in the air, of pine trees in winter, of a woodshed and
barn, of an old house that has been lived in for long, long years. I
came to know the fragrance of a cellar, apples and butter, vegetables
and preserves, and can recall its clammy coolness.
To have a bath in a wash-tub by the kitchen stove was a lark for a
little wild-westerner who had known only a modern bathroom. The second
time we were at grandfather’s there was a curious soft-rubber pouch
for a tub, which was set up when wanted before the fire in the north
bedroom. The bottom rested on the floor, while the sides were held up
by poles, resting on chairs. After a week-end tubbing, mamma and I
would say together,
“How pleasant is Saturday night
When all the week I’ve been good,
Said never a word that was cross
And done all the good that I could.”
I have other memories of that fire-place. Once, during the first visit,
mamma left me for a few days in the care of my inexperienced aunt, of
whom I took advantage. I assured her that my mother every night rubbed
my chest with camphorated oil and gave me a spoonful of Hive’s cough
syrup. Evidently I had recently enjoyed a cold. So every night I got
my oil rub and the sweet sticky dose, and, wrapped in an old shawl
and called a “little brown sausage,” was rocked during some blissful
minutes of story-telling. Mamma was shocked when she returned to find
the empty bottle and to know the whereabouts of its contents.
Still another fire-place memory,--papa was taking care of me in this
room, and was having so good a time reading and smoking that I thought
I would do the same. I climbed up and took from the mantel a pretty
twisted paper lamp-lighter, then seated myself beside him, put my feet
as high as I could on my side of the fireplace, adjusted my newspaper,
lighted my cigar, and in mouthing it about, managed to set my front
hair on fire. That attracted papa’s attention to his job.
Soon the time approached for us to be starting west again. Hardly had
we reached Chicago when there was a dangerous fire in the business
section; it was not so long after the great fire that people had
forgotten the terror and panic of it. So we must flee the hotel,
although papa kept saying that if men would tear up the carpets and
wet them and hang them outside the building they might save it. Mamma
dressed me and packed the trunk as fast as she could, and I went out
into the hall and looked down the elevator well, where the door had
been left open. It was the first chance I had ever had to see what a
deep hole it was, but mamma called me to come back, and I thought she
was frightened to see me leaning over and looking down. We went away in
Uncle Jo’s buggy through streets filled with pushing shouting people,
and, as we looked back, all the sky was red with fire. We went to a
small boarding house over by the lake, and all there was in it was a
red balloon, many mosquitoes and a wonderful talking doll that the dear
uncle brought me.
San Francisco came next, a few days at the Grand Hotel, a ride on the
octagonal street car that diagonaled off from Market Street, a visit to
Woodward’s Gardens, and then home by train and stage. It was good after
all to get back to California. Here was our own sitting-room, with its
white marble mantel, its dainty flowered carpet and its lace curtains.
On the wall were colored pictures of Yosemite and a Sunset at Sea, and
engravings of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, all hanging by crimson cords
with tassels. I liked the dancing girl better, but mamma preferred the
sad one.
I was also glad to get back to my old toys, my book about _Ten Little
Indians_, and the boy cousins who lived at the other end of the house.
And here, soon, came little sister, who was the cunningest baby that
ever was. They rolled her up so close in blankets that Aunt Francina
was afraid she would be smothered. I didn’t want her to be smothered.
What a long time it does take for a baby to grow up enough to play with
a person born three years ahead of her!
Two years later mamma took me and little Anne back again to Maine, for
she had had letters telling her that grandmother was very ill. It was
a harder trip with two children and so my mother planned to simplify
it in every possible way. She invented for us traveling dresses of a
medium brown serge, with bloomers to match, a whole generation before
such dresses came into general favor for little girls. With these,
fewer bags and satchels were necessary, and we looked as well dressed
at the end as at the beginning of the journey; and, moreover, I was
able to stand on my head modestly, whenever I felt like it. I am
glad that I did not have to be mother of restless me on such a long,
confined trip; I am also glad that restless I had a mother who could
cut out such fascinating paper boxes and tell stories and think of
thousands of things to do. Perhaps having two children to take care of
kept mamma from grieving so much about her mother.
I realized little about the illness, because, except for a daily
good-morning call, we children were kept out of the sick room, usually
playing out-of-doors. We rolled down the grassy slope in the south
yard, or drove about in the low basket phaeton along the winding, shady
roads. Sometimes we had a picnic,--I remember especially the one on my
fifth birthday. Georgie Hill, who helped Aunt Martha with the house
work, made a wonderful cake, which contained a button, a thimble, a
penny, and a ring; in some very satisfying way, the section containing
the ring came to me. I had always wanted a ring. I was happy, happy,
and then the very next day I lost it, making mud pies with Annie Allen.
I never had another ring until I was grown up, not even a bracelet,
which might have consoled me. But if I had had either I probably would
have had to suffer the sorrows of separation, since it was my habit to
lose my treasures. My gold pins are sowed up and down the earth; my
sister still has every one she owned. Perhaps it was in recognition of
my capacity to mislay things, and to encourage stoical acceptance of
the situation, that led grandfather to write in my autograph album:
“My little grand-daughter,
Just do as you ought to,
Neither worry nor fret
At what can’t be mended,
Nor wait to regret
Till doing is ended.”
It was on this same birthday that Elizabeth came to me, and her I have
not lost. She was a doll almost as tall as I, that had been made by
my great-grandmother, Deborah Hathaway, for her son’s little girls.
The doll came last to my mother, who was the youngest, and from her
descended to me. Elizabeth had a cloth body, stuffed with cotton, white
kid arms and hands and a papier mache head. She was so unfortunate soon
after her arrival in California, as to suffer a fracture of the skull,
due to contact with a hammer wielded by my small sister. Elizabeth
survived the grafting on of a china head, and is now eighty or more
years old, but looking as young as ever.
I possess many letters written to my father by my mother at this time,
from which I can gain ideas regarding what manner of woman she was, to
supplement my own memory of her whom I lost while still a child.
I seem to have been something of a puzzle to my gentle mother. I quote
from one letter:
“Sarah ... the strangest child I ever saw ... so affectionate, but
will not be coaxed ... super-abundance of spirits.... She tries to
remember all the new rules of life. [I was five years old] ... brown
eyes. I hope those eyes will not hold a shadow caused by her mother
misunderstanding her and crushing out in her by sternness anything
sweet and beautiful. I would not want to love her so fondly as to make
a foolish, conceited woman of her, but I don’t know that that is any
worse than to give her life a gloomy start.”
I love this letter. It delights me that my mother, a high-bred New
England lady, to whom foolishness and frivolity were anathema, should
prefer even them to harshness and a broken spirit for her little
daughter. However, her desire to give my life a happy start was not
incompatible with good discipline. She expected obedience and got it,
sometimes in very ingenious ways. On one occasion when I had been
fretful--“whining” she called it,--she suggested that as I was usually
a good girl and did what she wanted it must be that I was really unable
to improve my voice, that my throat must be rusty and in need of oil to
cure the squeak, so she proceeded to grease the inside of it with olive
oil applied on the end of a stripped white feather. Do you wonder that
it was years before I learned to like French salad dressing, with its
reminder of disordered vocal chords?
In the later summer grandmother died, but as we had seen so little of
her and were kept away from the evidences and symbols of death, it did
not make much impression upon us.
We stayed on in Skowhegan until papa was free to come to Maine for us.
In the meantime both mamma and Aunt Martha visited the Centennial and
their reports of its sights and wonders made me most anxious to go to
Philadelphia, also. When it was proposed that our return trip should
be made by way of that city, in order that my father might visit the
exposition I was delighted, but when he arrived and said he could not,
on account of the state of his business affairs, I received one of the
great disappointments of my life. I shall never forget my unavailing
efforts to persuade them that they ought not to make me miss that
Centennial, since I could not possibly live a hundred years for the
next one.
Soon after we left the old home was sold, and grandfather and Aunt
Martha moved to California, where the rest of us lived. The man who
bought the place cut down the beautiful trees, tore down the house and
built two small ones in its stead. But although the original house is
gone in fact it will live in my mind as long as I do. I could draw its
floor plan; I could set much of its furniture in the correct position.
The arrangement of the dining-room was for years very important for
me, because the only way I could distinguish my right hand from my
left was by seating myself in imagination beside grandfather at table
where I was when I first learned which was which,--left toward him,
right toward cellar door. And, being so seated, I recall another
lesson,--vinegar should not be called beginniger.
It was in the south yard that we built the big snow-man; it was there
that the sleigh upset when we turned in from the street with too much
of a flourish, and pitched Nan and me deep into a snow bank; it was
here under the apple trees that we turned somersaults; it was here that
the horse stood on his hind legs to shake down his favorite apples
from the tree. The same horse would come to the stone door-step by the
kitchen and rattle the bucket there when he was thirsty; that was the
doorstep where I placed my feet when papa made my little shoes shine
like his boots; and here Elizabeth was packed in grandfather Weston’s
old clock-case for her long ride to California,--as if she were going
in a coffin to heaven. But the San Justo heaven lacked the great beds
of lilies-of-the-valley, such as grew under the trees in the Maine yard.
These impressions were planted deep in my mind during the months I
spent in the beautiful village, with its dignified white houses, its
tall trees, its great river. But, once again on my westward way, they
slipped back into the files of memory, displaced by the renewal of
other old impressions, for I was making my fourth trans-continental
trip, my fourth stop in Chicago with my mother’s brother, Josiah
Hathaway.
What fun there was, riding a whole long week in a Pullman car with
its many friendly people, and a new routine of life. In those days
dining-cars, with leisurely meals and dainty service had not been
discovered. There were irregular stops with only twenty minutes for
refreshment, so that a child must depend largely on the luncheon
basket. The bringing of the table and opening the tempting boxes
and packages was a welcome break in the long day. There were tall
green bottles of queen olives, and pans packed with fried chicken,
and all the bread and jam one might eat. We had a can of patent
lemonade,--strange greenish sugar, needing only a few drops from the
little bottle embedded in the powder, and train water to make it into
ambrosia. Such a meal involved soiled hands, but even the washing of
them had a new charm, for mamma took with her to the dressing-room a
bottle of Murray and Lanman’s Florida Water, a few drops of which in
the alkali water made a milky bath fit for the hands of a princess.
When interest within the car failed there was the window, with its ever
new pictures. If there were no houses or people, mountains or clouds to
be seen, there might be a village of prairie dogs, and the rhythm of
passing poles carrying the telegraph wires never failed. I saw cowboys
on their dancing horses, and silent Indians, the women carrying on
their backs little Hiawathas, and offering for sale bows and arrows or
beaded moccasins.
Then night came, and with it the making of magic beds by the smiling
black genie. Once, after I had been deposited behind the green
curtains, we stopped at a way station, where, pressing my nose against
the window pane, I saw by the light of a torch, a great buffalo head
mounted on a pole, and many men moving in and out of the fitful light.
With groans and creakings, with bells and weird whistles we were soon
under way again, and, to the steady song of the wheel, in the swaying
springy bed, I was being whisked over the plains in as many days as
father had once spent in months driving the first sheep to California.
We went back to San Justo and stayed there forever; and then,
when I was almost seven, we went south to the Cerritos for a
never-to-be-forgotten summer with my cousin Harry. When fall came,
instead of returning to the ranch at San Juan we moved to Los Angeles,
a little city, and there I lived until both it and I grew up.