P. S. I’ve learned to make doughnuts.
P. S. (2) If you are thinking of raising chickens, let me recommend
Buff Orpingtons. They haven’t any pin feathers.
P. S. (3) I wish I could send you a pat of the nice, fresh butter I
churned yesterday. I’m a fine dairy-maid!
P. S. (4) This is a picture of Miss Jerusha Abbott, the future great
author, driving home the cows.
[Illustration: “Buttercup Daisy Birdie Bess Spotty
(I can’t draw cows!)”]
Sunday.
_Dear Daddy-Long-Legs_,
Isn’t it funny? I started to write to you yesterday afternoon, but
as far as I got was the heading, “Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,” and then I
remembered I’d promised to pick some blackberries for supper, so I
went off and left the sheet lying on the table, and when I came back
to-day, what do you think I found sitting in the middle of the page?
A real true Daddy-Long-Legs!
[Illustration]
I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the
window. I wouldn’t hurt one of them for the world. They always
remind me of you.
We hitched up the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Center
to church. It’s a sweet little white frame church with a spire and
three Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic--I always get them
mixed).
A nice, sleepy sermon with everybody drowsily waving palm-leaf fans,
and the only sound aside from the minister, the buzzing of locusts
in the trees outside. I didn’t wake up till I found myself on my
feet singing the hymn, and then I was awfully sorry I hadn’t
listened to the sermon; I should like to know more of the psychology
of a man who would pick out such a hymn. This was it:
Come, leave your sports and earthly toys
And join me in celestial joys.
Or else, dear friend, a long farewell.
I leave you now to sink to hell.
I find that it isn’t safe to discuss religion with the Semples.
Their God (whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritan
ancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful,
bigoted Person. Thank heaven I don’t inherit any God from anybody!
I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He’s kind and sympathetic
and imaginative and forgiving and understanding--and He has a sense
of humor.
I like the Semples immensely; their practice is so superior to their
theory. They are better than their own God. I told them so--and they
are horribly troubled. They think I am blasphemous--and I think they
are! We’ve dropped theology from our conversation.
This is Sunday afternoon.
Amasai (hired man) in a purple tie and some bright yellow buckskin
gloves, very red and shaved, has just driven off with Carrie (hired
girl) in a big hat trimmed with red roses and a blue muslin dress
and her hair curled as tight as it will curl. Amasai spent all the
morning washing the buggy; and Carrie stayed home from church
ostensibly to cook the dinner, but really to iron the muslin dress.
In two minutes more when this letter is finished I am going to
settle down to a book which I found in the attic. It’s entitled,
“On the Trail,” and sprawled across the front page in a funny
little-boy hand:
Jervis Pendleton
If this book should ever roam,
Box its ears and send it home.
He spent the summer here once after he had been ill, when he was
about eleven years old; and he left “On the Trail” behind. It looks
well read--the marks of his grimy little hands are frequent! Also in
a corner of the attic there is a water wheel and a windmill and some
bows and arrows. Mrs. Semple talks so constantly about him that I
begin to believe he really lives--not a grown man with a silk hat
and walking stick, but a nice, dirty, tousle-headed boy who clatters
up the stairs with an awful racket, and leaves the screen doors
open, and is always asking for cookies. (And getting them, too, if I
know Mrs. Semple!) He seems to have been an adventurous little
soul--and brave and truthful. I’m sorry to think he is a Pendleton;
he was meant for something better.
We’re going to begin threshing oats to-morrow; a steam engine is
coming and three extra men.
It grieves me to tell you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with one
horn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into
the orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate
and ate until they went to her head. For two days she has been
perfectly dead drunk! That is the truth I am telling. Did you ever
hear anything so scandalous?
Sir,