I believe I am homesick this evening. It is so dreary to go into a
strange place and meet so many people, and not one familiar face. But
I must not complain, for we are all here, not even Cæsar missing. My
heart aches so for the Kerfoots. I do not know how they can bear this
terrible bereavement under such trying circumstances.
* * * * *
Tuesday, September 6.
Mr. Curry’s folks have started to Helena. Mr. Bower’s to the Madison
Valley, and Mr. Kennedy with them, to drive his team, leaving Mrs.
Kennedy with us until to-morrow, when they will take the coach for
Helena.
We moved into our cabin this morning. It does not seem as much like
home as the wagons did, and I believe we are all homesick if we would
acknowledge it.
The boys found a checkerboard nailed on the window where a pane of
glass was broken out. We pasted paper over the place. They made
checkermen out of pasteboard, and Sim and Winthrop are having a game.
Hillhouse is reading the Montana Post. Mother is making bread, and
initiating Mrs. Kennedy into the mysteries of yeast and bread-making.
As Hillhouse was on his way to the butcher shop, he passed an auction
sale of household goods. The auctioneer was crying a beautiful
porcelain lamp. He stopped to make the first bid. “One dollar” he
called. There were no other bids and he got the lamp--his first
purchase in Virginia City. (He has it yet.)
When he brought it home, with the meat he went to get, mother said:
“What is the use of the lamp without the chimney?”
So he went to purchase a chimney after dinner and coal oil to burn in
the lamp. He had to pay two dollars and fifty cents for a chimney, and
five dollars for a gallon of coal oil, so our light is rather expensive
after all. And thus ends our first day in Virginia City, and brings
“Crossing the Plains and Mountains in 1865” to an end.
By S. R. H.