Charlie and I gave our biggest pumpkins, and Truman made jack-o’-lanterns
out of them. Belle and Aggie decorated the sitting room with autumn
leaves and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums and draped orange-colored
cloth, which they had dyed by boiling old sheets in sassafras bark and
water, around the walls. For lights they had the jack-o’-lanterns and
just common lanterns with the orange cloth wrapped about the globes,
and they put out baskets of apples and nuts. In the cellar were rows of
pumpkin pies and pans of gingerbread for refreshment, when the guests
should get tired of playing games and pulling taffy.
“When every one had come, Aggie made the taffy. But she didn’t cook the
first batch long enough and it wouldn’t harden. They tried to pull it,
but the way it stuck to their hands was awful, and such squealing and
laughing you never heard. It kept Charlie and me busy bringing water for
them to wash off the taffy.
“The girls put another kettle of molasses on right away, and while the
taffy was being made Charlie and I slipped around the house to put a
tick-tack on Mother’s window. When we had got the tick-tack to working
and Mother and Father had both come to the window to see what it was,
though I reckon they both knew very well, we started back to the kitchen.
“But we didn’t go in, for there, spread out on the porch to cool, were
pans and pans of taffy. Charlie said we had better take a pan for
ourselves for fear there mightn’t be enough to go around and we’d have to
do without. So he grabbed a pan quickly and we ran around to the front of
the house with it. We meant to go on the front portico, but just as we
turned the corner we heard a noise as if some one were opening the door.
So we crouched down close to the house for a little bit and then ran out
to the lilac bush by the front gate.
“We sat down on the ground and began to work the cooler part of the taffy
around the edge of the pan toward the center, but we had no butter to put
on our hands to keep the taffy from sticking and I offered to go to the
kitchen to get some. We would then start pulling our taffy and quietly
slip into the house where everyone else would be pulling taffy and no one
would notice that we had not been there all the time.
“I stood up. It was a pitch dark night, but as I started toward the house
I thought I could see something moving in the side yard under the apple
tree. I told Charlie. He saw it, too, as plainly as could be. It was
white and it moved about in the most terrible way. Oh, to be safe back
in the house! I clutched Charlie’s arm and trembled all over, I was so
afraid. It seemed to be coming toward us, and suddenly I couldn’t stand
it any longer and I screamed—the most awful, blood-curdling yells—and,
pulling Charlie with all my might, I ran for the house.
“The kitchen was filled with frightened young people, for no one knew
what had happened. Just as we tumbled into one door three or four white
clad figures burst into the other door, and it was hard to tell which was
the worst scared.
“‘Ghosts!’ sputtered Charlie, gasping for breath. ‘Ghosts under the apple
tree!’ Then everybody saw the joke and laughed. The ghosts turned out to
be some of the big boys who had wrapped themselves in sheets to frighten
the folks. The opening of the front door that Charlie and I had heard had
been Truman bringing out the sheets, but my yells had scared them and
they looked right sheepish and didn’t say anything when Isabel Strang
asked them whether they thought Mother Girty was after them.
[Illustration: _I screamed the most awful blood-curdling yells_]
“In the excitement and confusion, sister Belle, who was going down the
cellar stairs backward with a mirror in her hand, in which she was
supposed to see the face of the man she would marry, fell halfway down
the stairs, and John Strang picked her up and sure enough he was the man
she married later.
“After that Charlie and I didn’t say much, for the pan of taffy was still
under the lilac bush by the front gate and we didn’t want to go into any
explanations about why we happened to be out there too.
“Here, here, don’t forget your ‘apple a day.’ There now, good night,
dears.”
MEASLES
Bobby and Alice and Pink had the measles. First Bobby had taken it with a
headache and a sick stomach. Then Alice had got sick with what seemed to
be a cold, and at last Pink took it. She just wakened up one morning all
covered with tiny red spots, and of course she knew right away that she
had the measles, too.
They had all been awfully sick, but now they were better, though they
still had to stay in a darkened room, which they didn’t like a bit.
“It’s the worst part of the measles,” complained Bobby bitterly. “Just
like night all the time.”
“Well, then,” said Grandma, who was making them a call, “let us pretend
that it is night and I will tell you a story about when I had the measles
a long, long time ago.
“In those days measles was considered a necessary evil for children. That
is, people thought that all children must have it one time or another,
and the younger you were when you had it the less it would hurt you. All
our family had had the measles except Charlie and me. We had never had
the measles, and Mother was quite worried about it. She said she wouldn’t
expose us on purpose, but she did wish we’d get it before we got much
older and have it over with. There had been no measles epidemic in our
neighborhood for several years, and this is how one came about.
“One Saturday, late in June, Father took Charlie and me to Clayville with
him. We were to visit with Aunt Louisa while he attended to his business.
He let us out at Aunt Louisa’s street and said when he got ready to go
home he would come after us.
“Charlie and I started up the street, but neither of us had ever been
there alone and all the houses looked alike to us. We couldn’t decide
which was Aunt Louisa’s.
“Finally we selected one that we were sure was hers and went around to
the side door and knocked. Instead of Aunt Louisa or Mettie, a little
girl opened the door and told us to come in. This was queer, because Aunt
Louisa had no children. But I supposed she had company and stepped into
a sitting room that was so dark I could hardly see a thing at first. We
sat very still for a while, and I wished that Aunt Louisa would come. In
the dim light I made out a bed in one corner, but I didn’t know there
was anyone in it until a boy, who had evidently been asleep, raised up
his head and looked at us in surprise. And we looked at him, too, for he
certainly was funny looking with his face all covered with little red
spots.
“‘By, golly!’ he said. ‘What you doin’ in here?’
“I replied with dignity that we were waiting for Aunt Louisa.
“‘She doesn’t live here,’ he said crossly, and lay down again. ‘She lives
in the next house. Must have been my little sister let you in. This is
our house and I got the measles.’
“Charlie and I got out as quickly as we could and hurried to Aunt
Louisa’s, but we decided that we would not tell her or anyone else we had
had such a glorious, accidental chance for the measles.
“‘We mightn’t take the measles after all,’ Charlie pointed out, ‘and then
Mother would be disappointed.’
“‘I hope we don’t take them on the way home,’ I said anxiously. I didn’t
know then that it takes the measles germ nine days to mature and that we
were in little danger of taking it before that time.
“The next day, being tired from my trip to town, I imagined I was sick
and I was sure I was taking the measles. Charlie examined my face
carefully, though, and said he couldn’t see any red spots. In a day or
two Charlie thought he was taking the disease, but there were no red
spots on his face, either.
“‘And if they’re in you Mother says they’ve got to come out,’ I told him
wisely. ‘So as long as it doesn’t show on the outside we haven’t got it.’
“A week passed, and after several more false alarms we came to the
conclusion that we were not going to take the measles after all.
“Sunday the Presiding Elder was to be at our church and there were to
be two sermons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a
basket dinner in between. Mother and the girls were very busy cooking and
baking, or maybe some of them would have seen that Charlie and I were
not well on Saturday. I ached all over, my head most of all, and Charlie
said he felt sick from his head to his toes. We slipped out to the barn
and crawled up in the hay loft and lay down on the hay. Nanny Dodds
almost found us there when she came out to hunt some eggs for an extra
cake—Mother had already baked three cakes, but she said she had better
bake four to make sure there’d be plenty.
“Charlie and I had been eating green apples. Mother always allowed us to
eat green apples if we put salt on them. But we had been in the orchard
and the salt was at the house, so we hadn’t bothered to wait, but had
eaten the apples without salt. We thought it was the green apples that
were making us sick. As we didn’t want to be dosed with castor oil and
maybe have to stay home from preaching next day, we didn’t tell a soul we
felt sick.
“Anyway, we were both better by Sunday morning, for who wouldn’t have
been better with a new white dress to wear and a leghorn hat with a
wreath of daisies around the crown?
“But in church even my new clothes couldn’t help me. The sermon seemed
very, very long, the air was hot and close, and I felt terribly sick. I
wanted more than anything else in the world to take off my hat and lay my
head in Mother’s gray silk lap, but of course I was much too big to do
that. I looked across to the men’s side where Charlie sat beside Father,
and there he was all slumped down in his seat, holding his head in his
hands.
“Neither of us ate much dinner, but there were so many people eating with
us that Mother didn’t notice. And right after dinner we went down to the
surrey and climbed in, Charlie on the front seat, I on the back.
“We covered ourselves, heads and all, with the lap robes, and there we
lay and slept the live-long afternoon, until Father came to hitch the
horses up to go home.
“‘These youngsters must be all tired out,’ Father said when Mother and
Aggie and Belle came out to get in the surrey. I raised my head up, but I
was so dizzy I lay right down again, but not before Mother had seen me.
“‘Let me see in your throat, Sarah,’ she demanded, and then to Father she
said solemnly, ‘I knew it! The second I saw her I knew it. Sarah has the
measles.’ Father thought surely she must be mistaken, but she examined
Charlie, and would you believe it? He had the measles, too.
[Illustration: _I looked across to Charlie and he was holding his head in
his hands_]
“On the way home, with my head in Mother’s lap and Charlie leaning on
Belle, we told them all about going to the wrong house when we went to
see Aunt Louisa, and the boy who had the measles, and everything.
“‘Just exactly nine days ago today,’ Mother fairly groaned.
“‘Aren’t you glad, Mother, that we surprised you with the measles?’ I
asked, puzzled, for she didn’t seem a bit glad that we had them, though
she had always talked as if she would be.
“At this Father and Belle and Aggie and even Mother laughed.
“‘If I don’t miss my guess,’ said Father, ‘you’ve surprised a good many
other people with the measles, too, and I bet a lot of them won’t be very
glad.’
“Of course a lot of folks did take the measles from Charlie and me, but
the weather was warm and they all got along nicely, so there was no great
harm done.
“Some of the folks wondered where in the world Charlie and I could have
caught the measles. But old Mrs. Orbison, who came to see us right away,
settled that by announcing, ‘I always say that things like that are in
the air. No one knows where they get them or how.’”
SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR
It was the evening before Thanksgiving. Grandma had told Bobby and Alice
and Pink about the first Thanksgiving, celebrated so long ago by the
Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony to show their gratitude because their lives
had been spared in spite of many hardships and because their crops had
been plentiful enough to support them through the coming winter.
And she had told them how that now, on recommendation of the President,
the last Thursday of November is set apart by proclamation of the
governors of the different states as an annual Thanksgiving Day.
“Thanksgiving at our house was a wonderful time,” Grandma said
thoughtfully. “Next to Christmas, it was the best day of all the year, I
think. And it always began weeks before the real Thanksgiving Day—when
Mother made the mincemeat and the plum pudding and the fruit cakes.
“All day Mother and the girls would work, crumbing bread for the
puddings, washing currants, slicing citron, beating eggs, measuring
sugar and spices, chopping suet and meat in the big wooden chopping bowl,
and seeding raisins. I helped seed the raisins. I liked to seed raisins
until I got all I wanted to eat. Then after that I didn’t like the sticky
things a bit.
“When everything was all mixed and ready, the pudding would be packed in
muslin bags and the cake put in pans lined with writing paper and they
would be steamed for hours and hours. When they were done and cool they
would be put away, beside the big stone jar of mincemeat, to ripen for
Thanksgiving.
“Father said that Thanksgiving came at just the right time of the year.
All the fall work was done by then, the corn husked, lots of wood cut,
and the butchering was over. The meathouse was filled with hams and
sausage and side meat, and there was always a jar of pickled pigs’ feet.
The apples had been picked and the potatoes dug and both buried out in
the garden alongside the cabbage and beets. The nuts had been gathered
in, and the popcorn was ready to pop. The finest pumpkin had been set
aside for the pies, and the biggest, proudest, young turkey gobbler was
fattened for the Thanksgiving dinner.
“And then, on Thanksgiving morning, what delicious smells came out of
our kitchen! You know what they were! You’ve all smelled the very same
kind of smells coming out of your kitchen, I know you have. Mm! mm! and
the dinner! And every one of the family at home to enjoy it and lots of
company, too.
“But we didn’t think of just things to eat, either. Father said folks
were likely to do that. We seldom had services at our church on
Thanksgiving because the minister was usually off in another part of the
circuit holding a meeting. But at the breakfast table, after Father had
asked the blessing, to preserve and foster, as he said, the real spirit
of the day, each one of us would tell something we had to be thankful for.
“And one Thanksgiving morning Charlie said he couldn’t think of anything
to be thankful for except, of course, Father and Mother and good health
and Sport, but nothing special, he said. I knew what was the matter with
Charlie. He had asked Truman to lend him his gun to take along when he
went to look at his traps. Truman had refused because he had just cleaned
it, and Father had said Charlie could carry a gun when he was twelve
years old and not before.
“Afterward when I went with him to his traps he told me he was tired
being thankful for ordinary things like those everybody else had. He
wanted something different, such as a silver watch, or a Wild West pony,
or a magic lantern.
“He said he could be the thankfulest boy on Sugar Creek if he had any of
those things, and he thought Thanksgiving ought to come after Christmas
anyhow—then a fellow would have more to be thankful for.
“We were down at the hole under the willows where we fished in summer and
the boys set traps for muskrats in winter. It was getting colder, and I
told Charlie I thought I’d go on to the house instead of going with him
to the cabin in the sugar grove where he and Truman were keeping their
skins that winter. The cabin was convenient to the traps, and Truman had
put a good lock on the door and he and Charlie each had a key. I wanted
to go to the house to play with brother Joe’s baby and see whether
anyone else had come and to find out how the dinner was coming on. So
Charlie told me to go ahead and he would come as soon as he skinned a
couple of muskrats he had caught in his traps.
“There were so many of us and so much confusion that I did not notice
until dinner was nearly over that Charlie was not there. When I called
Mother’s attention to it, she said he was probably around somewhere and
would eat presently. It took a long time to serve dinner that day, and
afterward a sled load of neighboring young folks came in and there were
games and music and a general good time. No one missed Charlie but me,
and I didn’t miss him all the time, either.
“But about four o’clock in the afternoon Mother came out to the kitchen
where some of the girls were popping corn and asked anxiously if anyone
had seen Charlie. Belle said he hadn’t come in for any dinner.
“‘I can’t imagine where he is,’ Mother said. ‘He never did a thing like
this before. He may have met the Orbison boys and gone home with them,
but I can’t understand it at all. It isn’t like Charlie.’
“Just then Truman came up from the cellar with a big basket of apples we
had polished the previous day.
“‘What about Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Where is he? What’s the trouble?’
“Mother explained that Charlie had gone to his traps early that morning
and hadn’t been at the house since, nor been seen by any one since he had
started for the cabin with two muskrats to skin.
“Truman just stared at Mother.
“‘You say Charlie went to the cabin this morning?’ he repeated slowly as
if he couldn’t believe it. ‘Well, then, by jingoes, Mother, that’s where
he is right now!’ And he went on to tell how when he was coming from
feeding the stock on the upper place he had noticed that the door of the
cabin was shut, but the lock was not snapped. He supposed Charlie had
forgotten to tend to it as he had one other night, and so he had snapped
it shut and come along home. Charlie had evidently been busy and had not
heard the lock click.
“‘Oh, the poor boy!’ cried Mother. ‘Go see about him at once, Truman.’
And she began putting things in the oven to heat.
“And, sure enough, that was where they found Charlie—he had been locked
up in the cabin all day. When he found he was locked in, he had tried to
pry the windows open, but they were securely nailed down. He had shouted
himself hoarse and had even attempted to climb up the chimney and get out
that way.
“A little later, when he was thoroughly warmed and had had a good wash
and sat at the kitchen table eating his dinner, with Mother piling up
good things on his plate and Charlie eating as if he were afraid some one
would snatch it away before he got enough, Father came out of the sitting
room and stood looking down at him.
“‘Well, son,’ he said, ‘have you thought of anything special to be
thankful for yet?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ Charlie answered, grinning. ‘I’m thankful for something to
eat and a fire.’
“Well, well, if it isn’t bedtime already!”
TAKING A DARE
The next evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room,
she was astonished to behold an ugly black-and-blue lump on Bobby’s
forehead, right over his eye.
“Why, what’s this?” Grandma asked, laying down her knitting and examining
the bruise. “Wait till I get the arnica, and then you can tell me all
about it.”
And while she bathed Bobby’s swollen forehead with the arnica, Bobby
told her how another boy had dared him to hang by his toes from the
scaffolding of a half-finished house and how his feet had slipped and he
had had a fall.
“He said I was afraid to try,” said Bobby, “but I showed him!”
“And you got hurt into the bargain,” remarked Grandma, taking up her
knitting again. “Don’t you know, my dear, that it is sometimes braver to
take a dare than not? There is a time to say ‘no,’ and the boy or girl
who doesn’t know when to say ‘no’ is often foolhardy rather than brave.
I didn’t always know that, though, and I’ll tell you how I learned it.
When I was little I played so much with brother Charlie that in many ways
I was like a boy. One of Charlie’s codes was that he would never take a
dare, and so of course it became my code, too.
“One Friday night Betty Bard came home from school with me to stay until
Saturday afternoon. It was in the fall, and the nuts were ripe. On the
meathouse floor, spread out to dry, were chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts,
hickory nuts, and butternuts. Betty’s grandfather was our preacher. There
were no nuts of any kind on the ground belonging to the parsonage, so we
had been giving Betty some of our nuts. She had already gotten hickory
nuts and chestnuts, and this evening we had gathered a bag of walnuts and
we were out in the wood lot shelling them.
“We each had a flat stone to lay the nut on and another stone to hit it
with. We wore old leather gloves to protect our hands, for the walnut
juice makes an ugly brown stain. We would lay a nut on the flat stone,
hit it hard with the other stone, and the green outer covering or shell
would come off easily, leaving the walnut, which would then have to be
dried.
“Not far from us Charlie sat cracking walnuts, left over from the year
before, for the chickens. He would crack a nut and throw it to the
chickens and they would pick the meat out with their beaks. Mother said
walnut meats were good for the chickens and made the hens lay, and we
often had to crack walnuts for the chickens. But this evening Charlie
did not want to do it. He wanted to go on the hill to look at some traps
he had set for rabbits, and he offered to give me his new slate pencil
if I would crack the walnuts. Any other time I should have jumped at
the chance of getting a new slate pencil so easily. But this evening, I
wanted to help Betty shell her nuts so we would have time the next day to
play and go down to the persimmon tree.
“‘Very well,’ declared Charlie. He said that if I wouldn’t help him,
he wouldn’t go with us to the persimmon tree. And without him to shake
the tree, how would we get the persimmons? We had an especially fine
persimmon tree that my great-grandfather had planted, and Betty and
I wanted to get the fruit that was in the top branches. Charlie had
promised to climb the tree for us, but now he said he wouldn’t do it
unless I would finish cracking the walnuts.
“‘All right, you needn’t,’ I replied. ‘We don’t want you. I’ll climb
the tree myself. But really I did not think for a moment I would do any
such thing, for, of all the trees around, grandfather’s persimmon, as we
called it, was the hardest to climb.
“Charlie laughed mockingly.
“‘I dare you!’ he cried. ‘I double dare you!’
“I jumped up, and so did Betty, and we threw our gloves to the ground and
started for the persimmon tree.
“‘Are you sure you can do it?’ whispered Betty.
“I had my doubts myself by this time, for, though I could go all over
the gnarled old apple tree in the side yard and climb the cherry trees
and the peach trees and any reasonably high tree, to climb to the top of
grandfather’s persimmon was a different undertaking.
“Charlie saw us talking and thought I was weakening.
“‘If you can’t do it, Sarah,’ he said, ‘of course I’ll let you off.’
“‘I can do it all right,’ I answered grimly, but I wished with all my
heart I hadn’t said I would do it in the first place.
“The lower limbs of the persimmon were so high from the ground that for a
while it looked as if I shouldn’t even get into the tree at all. Charlie
offered to boost me, but I scorned his help. When finally, with the aid
of a fence rail and by ‘cooning,’ I reached the lowest branch, my hands
were scratched and swollen and hurting dreadfully. But after that it
wasn’t as hard. As I went up, slowly and carefully, Betty and Charlie,
under the tree, watched me.
“‘Be careful, Sarah,’ Betty cautioned every little bit. ‘Do be careful.’
“‘Higher, higher!’ Charlie kept calling.
“At last I reached the top and looked down, and then the most dreadful
thing happened: I got awfully sick—sick and dizzy. I closed my eyes
tight and held to the trunk of the tree and felt as if I should fall any
minute. If I should fall to the ground and be killed, then every one
would say it was Charlie’s fault. And it wouldn’t be at all, for I should
have known better than to try to climb the old tree. I thought about
the new blue delaine dress which I had never worn—they could bury me
in that. And then I tried to say my prayers, but I was so dizzy, oh, so
dizzy, that I couldn’t remember a single word of them.
[Illustration: _I tried to say my prayers but I was so dizzy that I
couldn’t remember a single word of them_]
“I told Charlie and Betty I was dizzy and that I was afraid I’d fall.
“At first they thought I was fooling, but they soon saw I was in earnest.
“‘Hold on tight!’ Betty screamed. ‘Keep your eyes shut. Don’t be afraid,
Sarah, we’ll save you.’
“Charlie ran around as if he were crazy, crying and shouting, ‘It’s my
fault, it’s all my fault! Hold on tight, Sarah. I’ll bring Stanley. He’ll
get you down. Hold on!’