Copyright, 1945, by Edward K. Meador; Printed in the United States of America; The Meador Press, Boston, Mass.

P5: Introduction

 

To her host of friends our mother needs no introduction and all I can add is a note of appreciation which I hope is reasonably free of bias. She has told in a simple way the chronicle of a pioneer mother, country school teacher, business woman, which amply justifies our faith in the American way of life.

The sweetness of her character was untouched by the frontier hardships of childhood or the unremitting struggle for economic independence in later years. She was an inspired teacher, who for two generations brought the light of understanding into dark places. Her gentle God-fearing counsel won countless friends and changed the course of small communities. Her home-spun philosophy, uncompromising defense of the truth and simple virtues caused us to think of her as “An Abraham Lincoln in Petticoats”.

 

She brought to the boarding house business a spirit of service which approached evangelism. The welfare of the thousands who passed her threshold was of utmost concern and this solicitude so touched the guests that they called her “Mother Scott” with deepest affection. As a crowning tribute I can truly say, that I never heard any one speak ill of her.

 

Her enthusiasm for learning is no less remarkable than her many virtues for after her 70^th year she enrolled in a University for the first time and studied with unquenchable zeal. Shortly afterward, without

p.6

                             especial musical talent and no encouragement from her two sons, she wrote a hymn, Jesus Listening In. It was surprisingly well received by the radio and it is her fondest joy to hear it broadcast frequently over the National programs.

 

At the moment, she is full of the joy of living and it is a matter of speculation, which new venture may claim her fancy. Whatever it is, we will applaud her efforts for it is a thing of the spirit and an inspiration to the earthbound.

 

Along life’s pathway she has strewn flowers and sunshine so we feel that the world is the better for her passing this way. As a tribute to her rare spirit we have cast in immortal bronze a tablet for her gravestone, which eloquently testifies that she was a beloved soul:

 

“Were everyone, for whom she did some

act of loving service, bring a blossom to

her grave, she would sleep beneath

a wilderness of flowers”                                 

                                         Ralph S. Scott

 

 

 

p.7

 

                             FOREWARD

 

This is the story of Margaret McAvoy Scott.

She and I have written it together, Mrs. Scott telling me those things which she has remembered, and answering such questions as I put to her, in order to amplify or clarify a time, a special occasion, a personality.

Mrs. Scott’s life has been singularly rich. It spans nearly eighty years – years which have seen our country’s transition from a life not so far from Colonial simplicity to a complex culture which, in our metropolitan cities, became not unlike that of Europe.

In her own experience Mrs. Scott has spanned a bridge between childhood in an unlettered mountain community, to leadership in the field of education. She has gone the long distance from a log-cabin, where one literally lived by the sweat of the brow, to the position of highly successful woman in an enterprise that has been described as “the largest private concern of its kind in the United States.” This business was conceived, initiated, built up, and carried over twenty years, to such success that, when the war crisis came, the Government acknowledged her as an authority in her field, by putting a great project under her guidance.

The personalities she has met and known range from the lovable, obscure, humble people of her youth to leaders in her land and abroad. She has become known and beloved to thousands of persons, in her school

 

p.8

                                         classes and later in her hotel. Her pupils, when they meet her, still call her “Teacher,” and the guests in her hotels call her “Mother Scott”

It has been her remarkable achievement to build two highly successful careers in one lifetime. For a quarter-century she was a teacher. In her fifties – when most women are glad to relax and sink into middle age – she began her second career: the famous Scott’s Club, twenty-five houses, each of which is like a first-class European pension, yet bearing her unmistakable American touch of being a “home” in which, somehow, a large family has gathered and lives.

While women were anxiously debating the possibility of difficulty of “combining career, marriage, children, love, home,” Mrs. Scott was proving every day that it could be done, and with ease; and it could be done not in one career, but in two. She was not even aware the debate was flourishing.

She has never set out to prove a thesis. She has seen herself always just as a wife, a mother. She undertook her jobs each time because there was an economic necessity for her earnings. She made good, because that was how one did a job.

Her simplicity is the very essence of her character. The manner, the speech, the country phrases of her mountain childhood, remain to this day. She is a tall and handsome old lady, pink-cheeked and with finely chiseled features. She has a keen wisdom, without which she could never have set up and run her big business. She still sees the world with the engaging fresh vividness of youth. That outlook is expressed in the plain, homespun verse she likes to improvise – just as her mother loved to improvise designs upon the loom, long ago. A number of Mrs. Scott’s verses, however, are excellent enough to have been put to music.

The whole world is at war now, staking untold lives to prove its belief in democracy. Is it not of high value to have the story of American men and women brought up since childhood on the philosophy of democracy, and in the democratic way of life? The story of Margaret Scott, as a piece of American history, tiny but valuable, modest but illuminating, speaks to us for those days and those people who have made this land of ours the land it is and the land we love.

                                         Eleanor Morton

 

 

p.13

MEMORIES – THE LIFE OF MARGARET MCAVOY SCOTT

 

 

Part ONE

 

I

 

On March 13, one year after the Civil War had ended, and just as a new morning was dawning, I came into the world shouting God’s praises. Mother later said they were good lusty shouts. I would have been an ingrate had I not rejoiced in my surroundings and in my welcome. About our home was surely the most beautiful country in all America. In my home was surely the happiest household.

Our house was, like all the others about us, a one-room log cabin, built on the top of one of the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia. Below, spread the beautiful valley of the Elk River. It had its name because of the wild deer abounding in the forests. The nearest neighbor was a mile away, if one went by the road across the mountain-top. The nearest town, ten miles off, was Frametown, named after my mother’s brothers and their kin, the Frames, who had settled there. My mother, Martha Jane Frame, had married James McAvoy. Scarcely anyone called him anything but “Jim Mack.”

 

 

p.14

 

My mother was a mountain girl, brought up in the wilderness. When she married, her young husband cleared for his bride a small space in the forest. He cut trees to make logs for their house. He dug out the stumps and rocks to create fields for their planting. He managed to get a cow, and in due time she had a calf; and soon he possessed an ox-team. He built a low-swung wagon which would carry the produce of his land over the mountains to town, for barter. He built a lean-to for his wife’s work. He built beds and tables; and soon he made a cradle. Two little girls were to come: Agnes and Drusilla.

Then the Civil War broke out. Father, like almost every other able-bodied man thereabouts, went to fight. Mother was left alone in her home in the forest clearing, with none to help her except an ancient man, called Mr. Haynes, and our great-grandmother (Nancy Given McAvoy, 1784-1864), who had a broken hip and therefore spent all her time in a chair.

Mr. Haynes had been with Father’s folks ever since Father could remember. He was not a servant; he did not receive charity. He could not do much for his board, but he did what he could. He was treated as a member of the household, and tried to help as one.

Through those years between 1861 to 1865, in the mountain homes about us, women had to see that their children and their aged had food and clothing, although the able-bodied men had been called to arms. Mother spent the four war years bearing the burden of work almost alone. “Grandma” could entertain the two tiny girls, and keep them under safe oversight, when necessary. Old Mr. Haynes could help Mother put in her seed and cultivate the plants which pushed

 

p.15                           from the ground; but he could assist her very little in the heavy tasks that demanded to be done.

The house was surrounded by fruit trees that Father had planted – apple, peach, plum, ox-heart cherries. There were small fields he had cleared. There was the cow, and there were the few horses. These, Father had left to provide rations for his family while he was away at war. He knew that his wife was brave and strong. He knew that if anything had to be done she could plan for it and she could face it. Nevertheless, he might never have had the courage to leave her, over the four years he did stay away, if he had known he would be absent so long. She herself never complained. She never lost courage.

 

Mail then was not the easy matter of having someone bring letters to your door. You went ten miles to Frametown, on horseback, over the mountains. If you went by night a wildcat or mountain lion, or a bear, might leap upon you from a tree branch or trunk; and perhaps you would not return home alive. You brought mail home in a saddlebag, made out of leather. Every letter was precious. Mail very rarely indeed came from Father. During one whole year our mother did not have a single word from him. She did not learn if he were alive or dead…(ed. note: Jim McAvoy was one of two Jim McAvoy’s who served with the Confederacy. It is difficult to discern whose records belong to whom…in any event, he had brothers who fought with the Federals, not unlike many families of West Virginia. It is vaguely possible they fought against one another. Isaac had moved to Illinois prior to the war, and enlisted there. William apparently was very young and found himself, willingly or not, in the Union forces. The picture below is of the 49^th Virginia Infantry, and is representative of the men of the time in the Confederate Army.)

 

 

The peace was declared. And still no news came of him. In the nation’s release from all the blood and sorrow, she did not know whether she was a widow, or whether her soldier would be among the living to return. Would Jim come home again now? Or was he dead?

 

Grandma smoked her corncob pipe.

It seemed to give the chair-bound invalid ease and contentment;

 

p.16

 

           most women smoked in those days. Mother would light her grandmother’s pipe, draw it till it lighted, and put it in between the lips of the old lady. Then the two of them would look down toward the valley. There was no manly figure to be seen coming up the mountainside.

The other women on the hills, Mother’s neighbors in their various homes, had greeted their returning husbands by now. Delilah Tolbert (who had 11 children) had her Tom back home again. (Near the McAvoys in the 1860 census is the family of William Talbert, with wife Delilah and 9 children; I found a source who said Delilah’s maiden name had been Johnson, and that William’s father was Charles Tolbert…) The Givens’ household head was home again. The Stonnakers (ed: perhaps, Stainaker, or Stonestreet?) at least had heard from their father. The community was Scotch, Irish, and Dutch. All were kind to Jim Mac’s young wife. On the rare Sunday when they could spare time from their work, they would come and take her to town, to hear the Preacher. But they could not go often.

She just did her work sturdily; and waited. She continued to care for her small daughters, five and seven by now; she cared for her land; she looked after her crippled, chairfast grandmother.

She was not one to imagine things. But years later she told this story to us, her children. How she went to sleep one summer night. She dreamt that just as the sun was setting on the mountainside, as the glory of the sunset lit the whole valley, blazed in the sky, and sparkled in the flowing Elk River itself, she heard a whistle.

She recognized it as our father’s whistling. He had never been able to carry a tune, she knew, but he was always trying to. Her dream seemed to worry her. She awoke troubled. She told “Grandma” about it, but it did not seem to impress any one except Mother herself.

 

p.17

 

Next morning, true to her dream, she heard some one whistling on the mountainside. It was Father!

She told her children years later that nobody in the Bible could have had a more wonderful vision than she had had.

And so they were united after four long bloody years. If they had lived in a mansion, and had all the luxuries of life possible, they could not have been happier. It was their second honeymoon.

Mother would describe to us later how Father walked over the sides of the hills to see every little change that had come. And he could never stop wondering, and finding joy in his two little girls whom he had left as babies, but who were now already five and seven. The birds sang sweeter and the sun shone brighter than ever before, it seemed to Mother now.

Before the year was over she was expecting a new member of the family. She was busy preparing. Her talcum-powder was scorched flour; her woolens were bits of red flannel. She knitted tiny stockings; she sewed.

She reserved no hospital room. She engaged no nurse. In her one-room house, she helped her husband see that there was plenty of fire on the hearth, and a nice warm feather-bed to tuck the expected baby in. Somehow, she expected a third daughter. They had already chosen the name – “Margaret”; naturally, Margaret would become “Maggie” throughout her youth.

 

II

 

 

Love and courage and wisdom awaited the new child from her parents. As was the custom of the new

 

p.18

 

forest-cleared country here when a baby was expected, the two older children were sent to visit the neighbors. It was a treat to visit some other children. Particularly was it fun for a youngster to go to the Givens’ home, to play with their children. Father reached the Givens’ log house with Aggie and Drusie. There was no sign of any one at home. He went indoors: no one locked doors there. Who had a bolt? The Givens’ were away, though, it was clear. They must have taken their children. He went to the bed, put his two little girls under the covers, blew out the candle, and said, “Just go to sleep.”

He added, “There is nothing to be afraid of, little girls, Father promises you.” Then he kissed them and, closing the door, which was nothing more than a quilt, called back: “Are you afraid, girls?”

Drusie piped up, “I’m not afraid. When Aggie is with me.”

He called again, “Are you afraid, Agnes?”

“No! I’m not afeard! You said there’s nothing to be afeared of, Father.”

So, he went on toward his own log house, where his wife lay in labor.

And, he himself had not fear, as he left two small girls in that empty house, a mile away from his home. His faith and courage he instilled into the hearts of the children. When I was a child, I, too, was to be given the same teaching, and that teaching was never to leave me. To the end of life, every one of his children was to say, as my small sister did that dark night, “Father says, there is nothing to be afraid of. So, I’m not afeard. What’s there to be afeared of?”

III.

 

p.19

 

During the night, Mr. Givens returned to his home and found his guests. He lit the fire for them. There really had been nothing to be “Afeard” of.

And soon their own father returned. There was something wonderful at home for them. A little sister had come to their house! He laughed at their numberless, excited, questions, and only answered, “Come home to see.”

They ran all the way home.

And there she was. They could not remember ever seeing such a fat, rosy, yellow-downy-haired baby.

“Mother, can we keep her?” cried Aggie breathlessly.

“Can we play with her?” cried Drusie.

“She will stay. And she will play with you, “ smiled Mother. And her eyes laughed to Father.

“She’s perfect in body. She’s the first, since you’re back,” Mother said to Father.

I can picture Mother lying there. She had brown eyes, thick dark hair parted in the middle, and an olive skin. I suppose her hair lay in long plaits on either side of her face, for ease in sleeping. The baby lay at her bosom.

The two older children stood near. Father was beside them. Grandma looked on from her chair. Old Mr. Haynes beamed. And outside the sun shone on the mountains, lighting up the green, starting buds on the trees.

That beauty and that love stayed with us all in our years in our parents’ home.

 

p.20

There was only a short stay in bed for Mother. Then work called her again.

Father carried on with the aid of neighbor-women, who came over a long way to help out but had to return to their own homes and their own tasks. And when they left there was no complaining, I am sure, on Mother’s part. Courage, serenity, were necessary in those times; and she was one of the bravest, gentlest, of her times. But it must have been hard to meet each day’s tasks. There were no modern devices even dreamed of. Everything was done the hard way. But all one’s neighbors fared the same. In the very hardest task neighbors helped one another – during birth, death, home-building. The women had to do their part like the men; children as they grew up took their part, too.

I was to grow up and take my share in this life. I was to spend an unforgettable, a happy, busy, childhood, as part of it.

 

IV

 

There were no trains within eighty miles of our home. There were no roads. There were only narrow trails through the forest. There were no broad acres to till. There were just little patches of ground which had been cleared for cultivation with hard, hard work. There had been stumps grubbed and rocks picked one by one. The rocks had been carried in heavy loads and were piled in rows. Later the stones were made into fences.

It was necessary – merely to be able to exist – to use every man, woman, and child who could pick a stone or

 

p.21              could drop a seed in those little fields. All things were, indeed, obtained by “the sweat of the brow” – the very hardest way. The years went on, one and three; and six and ten; but there was no change in our hard work.

The wagons, slung low for hauling logs, required the strength of the patient oxen to pull them. Every man and boy learned to drive a yoke of oxen. It was necessary for even the young to know how to help, if a family were to survive in the development of this new country. How familiar to us mountain-children was the sight of a mere youngster driving the powerful beasts! How well we knew the yell, “Gee!” if he wanted them to go to the right, or “Haw!” if he wanted them to go to the left. The fun of listening for the echoes, “Gee-ee” and “Ha-awh.”. Such vibrations as could be heard in those silent hills! For ours was truly “the forest primeval.”

(ed: a typical Virginia ox team picture, early 1900’s)

The Blue Mountains were high, rolling, hills. Rivers flowed at their foot. Our tiny bits of cleared land for farming, provided us with vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, peas, and beans – also corn for horses, cows, pigs. But, they did not provide clothing, sugar, salt, and flour. It was the forest that was to provide these – yes, the forest…

Trees were felled in winter, after the primitive farming was done, when the grain from the little fields had been garnered in. Each morning the men went forth to the woods, all through the winter. Daily, we in our house could hear the sounds made by axes felling, not isolated trees, now and then, but many. We would hear the tremendous crash as each tree toppled down, not a single one, now and then, but dozens, indeed many

 

 

p.22                                                              scores. The sounds of ax on wood, the sounds of great trunks tumbling, were part of our every-day life, all the winter through. Often we children knew every tree that we heard falling. There were hickory, ash, pig-nut trees, and our beloved maples which grew everywhere.

Our fathers cut the felled trees into logs; then they waited until spring came and loosened the snow on the mountain. Now the men rolled their logs down to the river bank, bound them together into a raft; where they were ready for rolling into the Elk River when the proper time came. They waited for the spring rains and the melting snow. The rains came down; the snow melted. The Elk River rose to overflowing.

 

All rafts were pushed into the waters at last. The men were ready to take off, to start on their semi-annual journey to market in Charleston, West Virginia.

(ed.: the pictures of this section are from a website dedicated to coverage of a recreation of a log raft journey down the Susquehanna River in 2004)

The women and children gathered to watch the men start down the river. Behind the rafts came canoes laden with necessary food and clothing for all emergencies. These canoes carried also precious commodities that the women, on their part, had gathered. The men were going to market “to trade” – to barter – the only way for them to get necessities of life. On each raft stood three men, their long poles pushing and steering the barges to keep them in deep water.

The thrill we children felt! Had not we, too, helped get things ready for this memorable trip to a magical place call “Town”?

What do the sheltered children of today, whose parents “do everything for them”, know of the joy of being truly and genuinely a part of the active work that maintains their home, and that keeps their parents

 

p.23                          and themselves alive? Our tasks were no manufactured “Projects” “to occupy” and “train” us. Our chores were the occupations of living. There were no “problems” of “maladjustments” in our little lives. We were adjusted, because we knew that we were needed. What we each did had a true, abiding value to our parents. We depended on them, in our small way; and they truly depended on us.

Had not we worked all winter, and even before? Our mothers had raised tobacco in their little patches, had cured it, made it into great “twists”. They had dried apples and peaches. They had made maple sugar. And, throughout, we children had helped. We’d carried the fruit, taken the pails of sap and “stirred it off”, gathered the tobacco leaves. Every single child in our mountain-house had gathered hops, so valuable, to be used for yeast. Our families sent forth on the rafts home-made molasses, geese feathers (if they had a flock on their farm), and we children helped make the molasses, we helped pluck the geese.

Now, as the men were about to start, we listened to the songs that our fathers sang as the rafts began to move. We watched the curve of the paddles in the water as the canoes followed. Then the raft came too. The moving rafts of bound logs would be traed, log for log, in the far-off town; but the canoes would come back, loaded, to use here.

“Good-bye! Good-bye!”

Nobody cried, “Be careful”…

 

Men were careful. It was not they alone who were concerned in their carefulness, but their wives and their children. In every household was a known and acknowledged unity upon that. What was there to be

p.24                          afraid of? Had we not been taught that since infancy? Father would take care. And surely God would look with love and care after our father; we believed that. And we knew Father had the skill needed for his journey; he knew how to take care.

 

At last the last canoe was out of sight. If the weather was favorable, it took two days to reach the city. If there were bad weather, it sometimes took three or four days to land there. Then time spent in trading. Next, time was spent returning home. Sometimes ten days passed. No wonder those half-yearly trips were “Events”. But, finally, the canoes came back up the Elk River. Each man brought home what he’d got in “Town”.

How we loved, in our home, to hear Father tell every tiny thing, every last detail, that had happened on that trip to town, in town, and from town! The songs and the jokes, the stories, the droll things said or done! Father would chuckle, telling about John, one of the green country-boys, whom they had taken on his first trip to a great city --- what the bewildered, dazzled boy did or said, when he saw a train or the steam-boats, how bemused he’d been, and the absurd questions he asked on that wonder trip to town! Father, who was a cosmopolite (for had he not seen many places, far away in large cities, in the four years he was in the Civil War?), he would laugh, as he described young John’s bewilderment. Father laughed, throwing back his handsome head, but he laughed with kindness. Next time, he knew, that green country boy John, in his turn, would be amused at another boy that had never before visited a great city.

We children, of course, had never seen the city at

 

p.25                                      all. But it was real to us, somewhat as places in fairy stories are. We seemed to see in our minds the streets, the houses, and the stores that Father so often pictured to us. We felt we shared his cosmopolitanism.

The first week or so after the men returned, however, none of us could really even listen to Father’s stories of the wonder-trip. There were such marvels to see, that had been brought back on the canoes for us! Wonderful to hear – but first, let’s see! Even Mother could barely hide her excitement. There were such beautiful things, newly bought. The calico, the shiny shoes, the big brown boots, the salt and sugar and spices, the muslins – such muslins! And, coffee! Father was surprised himself at the luxury of having coffee, each time he had it.

How well, how shrewdly, had he bartered in the city for us? How well, and how generously, had our forests provided things to exchange for the things that these poor primeval folks could not raise? How much had Mother’s dried fruits and her yarn and the tobacco been able “to buy things” for herself and the children? It was like opening a treasure-chest, opening the parcels Father had brought back.

The whole coming six months would have a sort of a romance, a richness, because of what Father had brought. A new dress, new calico for quilt-patches, new curtains, new covers for the feather beds! It was the subject of our talk for months until the next trip started.

 

Do not have the impression we felt we had all hard toil. We could play in our work. There was a joy in our pioneer life. When the men returned there were always some “play-parties” given.

 

p.26

Our parents knew how to play as part of their everyday work. Quite naturally, there would be a party, a “get-together,” when the canoes came back from town. And it is significant that we called each of these a “play-party.”

Such a play-party might be an old-time “taffy pulling.” There’d be exchange of reminiscences of the trip. And maybe there’d be trading right here between the women of articles their men had bought. Delilah would take May’s muslin for a pair of shoes; Helen would take Katie’s calico for coffee. Some men could make mistakes!

Often, though, the party would be in the form of an “apple-cutting” or “peach-cutting.” Music and fun would be blended, but in a good practical fashion.

 

V.

 

To “apple-cutting parties” one invited all the neighbors. A “neighbor” was anyone who could attend – who lived where he or she could ride over on horseback or paddle over in an hour or two down the river. Thirty was about the total we could collect from our immediate surroundings. They would come in their play-party clothes, but there was not much difference, in most cases, from their every-day clothes! The girls dressed, as did their mothers, in tight-fitting waists, well drawn in at the waist-line, and full skirts with loudly rustling starched petticoats. The men wore their ordinary jeans, made by wives or mothers by hand, and naturally, at home. They might, for occasion, put on a boiled shirt, (ed: a “boiled shirt” might just mean one recently washed!) and give their boots an extra coat of tallow, to make them shine. Occasionally one

p.27

                                                                 put on neat-foot oil, (ed: made from the fat on the shins and feet of cattle, neatsfoot oil is a well-known leather preservative, though, these days, pure neatsfoot oil is very hard to come by.) which smelled to high heaven, but “was mighty good for the leather.” The small fry, we children, were taken to all these parties with our parents. We came with aprons to enjoy that evening entertainment.

In our own house, when we were hosts, we had the greatest activity for days before a party. Mother, like all the other women, would bake ten or twelve pies; sometimes she baked twenty. There would be a dozen cakes. There would be apple-cider. And there would be also the important things: that is, three or four tubs, filled to their rims, heaped high, with the finest apples that we children had gathered in our orchards, in readiness for the guests.

Now the guests arrived. Girls and women and children rushed to the kitchen, to help in last-minute activities there. The men, of course, would be with Father, going over again the marvels of that recent trip to the city. Then finally the whole crowd would gather around the tubs.

Thirty pairs of hands would begin to pare apples and to quarter them. As fast as they were ready, they would be carried out to our kiln. There they were to be left till they were dry. The kiln had of course been fired earlier until it was at the drying stage. (ed: the heat was low, for the object was to dry, rather than cook, the fruit)

Work began! And there would be songs as we worked. We’d sing On Greenland’s Icy Mountains,(ed: In Greenland's icy mountains, On India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand…. Can anyone give me the rest of the words?) All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name, Shall We Gather at the River, and Happy Day. Stephen Foster had not begun to write then. Male and female voices made a joyful noise. The men got the apples ready, just as the women did. In about three hours the guests had

 

p.28        everything “cleared out” and were ready to begin the dance or party games.

Mother, with the help of the nearest neighbor women, and the neighbor girls and my two older little sisters, Aggie and Drusie, presently “passed out” the refreshments – home made apple or pumpkin pie and molasses-cake. If they were lucky, they might get a cup of coffee, though that was not usual. Mostly it was cider or milk. That milk was so cool and rich! The cows grazed on the beautiful blue grass that grew on the farm and among the rocks.

At the crest of the evening they started dancing. They usually preferred the Virginia Reel, and they really could “Swing their partners.” When the caller shouted, “Swing your partner and all promenade!”, all the party participated.

Then came the games. All were gay and simple. I was then of course a tiny child. I do not remember much of what happened there. But the same games, the same dances, the same songs, were enjoyed in my small girlhood, my youth, and even through my womanhood in the early years. There was no need for “new popular songs,” for “star-parade” dances, for absolutely modern parlor games. We loved our pleasures and therefore we continued to enjoy them, as they were.

One game which was very popular, a parody on marriage ceremonies, played to redeem a forfeit, had a bashful boy and girl “stood up” before a mock minister, who would chant:

           “I marry the Indian to the squaw,

           Up the Hill and down the level,

           Salute your bride

           And go to the Devil!”

 

p.29 How terribly wicked that seemed1

We children were of course part of the whole program. How we loved one highly popular kissing game, which I have not seen elsewhere. The boys were placed in one room, the girls in another which was darkened. One boy was blindfolded and led into the girls’ dark room. Near each girl was an empty chair. The blindfolded boy grooped until he found one of these chairs. It was his job now to guess who was his partner. He began to talk, seeking to learn her name. If he called her by a wrong name, all the others clapped their hands, he had a forfeit to pay, and went back to the boy’s room. The same procedure was followed, with the girls. When enough forfeits had been collected, the fun was in making girls and boys redeem them. The game was called “Clap in and Clap out.” Did we little ones love to watch the big ones giggle and blush!

Then, finally, the last guest had left. The last wagon-wheels were rolling away, the last canoe paddle splashed in the star-lit water of the Elk River. The guests had “cleared up,” of course, before they left our house.

And they had left us with enough apples cut for all winter, and some even to send to “Town” when the next trip was started by the men.

Another time “apple-cutting” would be at the Tolbert’s, or the Given’s, or perhaps, Stonnakers. It was arranged by whomever needed help in some task. We all took joy in giving the labor of our hands to our neighbors. The Givens might be having a carpet-rag party. The hostess would have ready her old white linens, sheets and white underwear, in every gaudy shade she could manage, and torn into narrow

p.30                                                        strips. The guests would arrive. Women and girls would then vie to see who could sew together most carpet rags, who could wind them into the most balls.

There were of course also quilting parties, husking bees, corn-cutting parties. We played with zest; but primarily we met to help in work. That was the occasion of most of our play. It had to be so, in that pioneer time.

Even the sweetest times, the taffy-pullings, had to be arranged for some other very practical reason. How those boys would stick that pulled taffy in our long braids! Just try to get cold taffy out of plaits of hair!

Such time, such pleasures, just as such hard work and daily toil, seem to belong to another world now.

 

VI

 

And then came the unexpected. Father suddenly decided to leave this mountainside. He had cut down the trees to clear a spot for his bride’s home. He had dug stumps to clear each little field to be cultivated. He had dug out stones for fences, milk houses, and barns. But he decided he wanted to leave all this. He wanted to pioneer again.

 

He wanted to begin once more, with more opportunity, a more ample future for his children. He was prepared to forego all he had attained. That was in his character. And from that trait, I think I may say, I have formed my own character. I have always been ready to drop everything, and begin anew. I have never once been afraid to be pioneering, in my life either. Have not I heard all my days the story of my two sisters, on the very night I was coming into the world? Did I not know it was as they had been taught: “What is there to be afraid of? What’s the use?”

We children listened, excited, entranced, expectant while our parents talked over Father’s new plan. I was only three, but I understood, too. We listened to the comments of the neighbors, whom we loved, who knew us all in work and play – and who argued intensely about Father’s unbelievable plan.

There had been coming letters, you see, from Father’s mother, and his two brothers and sister. They had gone, long ago, to the “Far West”, in Illinois. From the rare, brief, scrambled letters that Father received he had received a picture of another kind of life, a life which seemed, indeed, really unbelievable, to us in our lovely isolated hills. From Father’s relatives in Illinois, we heard such dazzling descriptions of luxury, of ease! We would listen, wide-eyed, as Father read aloud the accounts of the comfort, the abundance, which were part of the daily experience there in far-away Illinois.

The letters told of good schools, of churches, of fine roads, so infinitely better than here in our West Virginia. Mother would put down her sewing to listen as Father read. She could not help showing how fascinated she was.

A woman out in Illinois – the letters declared – could go to a store and trade her butter and eggs herself. She could select things set out on the counter in front of her. She would not have to do as all the women about her always did – trust to the selection of others. She could see, she could decide for herself, what she wanted.

And Father would put down the letter he had read

 

p.32                                      to us. He would tell us the words were not imagination but truth. He had seen for himself. He had been away those four years of the War, had he not? He had seen there were indeed better ways of getting a living. He had had a taste of a better way himself. He had traveled through broad Southern states. He had seen broad level acres. It was not hard for him to be convinced now that there could be other ways to earn a living than ours here.

However, he did not press Mother to agree to his way. He let her think and weigh and decide for herself. He was ever most tender and kind to her. She was a girl of these mountains. She had never been out of sight of the hills in her life. All her people, too, lived here. The very town nearest to her was named after her people, the Frames.

Our neighbors could not believe their ears when Father even mentioned going to Illinois. So far? That distant land? Why the Elk River even here had wild beasts along its banks! Who’d venture with a wife and little ones on such a journey? You’d take the life of your family in your hands! There were the panthers, the mountain-lions, in the forests. That place Jim McAvoy talked about was a thousand miles away! They pointed it all out to Mother, solemnly, warningly, in loving solicitude. She must not let Father…..

Father said nothing to urge her, but every letter which came from that distant, far Illinois, brought details which fired the imagination. They each brought nearer a decision.

Mother gradually found agreement with Father in her own mind. The neighbors continued to warn her

 

p.33              we would fall into the hands of Indians; we knew not what lay ahead of us. Her own folks showed how they hated to have her and her family lost to them. But one day she said to Father, “I’m going with you, Jim. It’s right for the children, and you, too.”

He had known, of course, that Martha Jane would see as he did. Theirs was a perfect union.

They announced they were leaving. Neighbors came in at all hours of the day and night to protest, to plead. But nothing could deter Father. He and Mother, he knew, were of the same mind now. It would not be easy to make the change. But they began to prepare, to arrange; they began to trade furniture, flour, and other belongings.

 

Then, something happened that did halt them after all. It was not that they changed their minds. It was Nature herself. A little boy was born to them. Embarking now must be indefinite.

But we were never a family to mourn. We took joy in what had come. The other plans would come true still – in time. There was delight and excitement in our home. Another man in the family! Everyone was overjoyed!

 

Did I say “Everyone”? Everyone but myself! I was much disgruntled. I was now past three. For a stranger to barge in and take my place on Mother’s lap – it made me terribly miserable. Mother seemed to pet him so much – too much to suit me! And he was a cross baby, too. He cried such a lot. I urged, “Let’s give him back to the neighbor!” But they never did. His name was “Emmett.”

I am writing this in the spring of 1943. We four children are all still living, Agnes is eighty-four, Drusie

 

p.34              eighty-two, I am seventy-seven, Emmet is seventy-four.

 

The plans to move had been halted, but Father had never been one to be beaten by what happened. He began to complete his arrangements for leaving the hillside and the forests. Before the baby brother was a year old we were ready to go.

To us it seemed we were going into a land like those described in the Bible, “a land of milk and honey,” where all we had to do was to scoop it up.

 

VII

As Riley says, “The frost was on the pumpkin, and the fodder in the shock,” when we started on our Westward trek. It was a cold and frosty morning as we stood, all huddled on the front porch of Mother’s brothers.

We waited for the flat boats (we had better call them canoes) that were to take us down the river. They came, and we climbed down in them. They were to take us part way on our thousand-mile journey to Illinois.

We had two home-made boats, one for household goods, which were very meager, the other for our family and a few friends who were seeing us off as far as the Ohio river. At Charleston, West Virginia, we boarded a steam-boat.

The farewells of that morning, even tiny as I was, I would never forget. “Goodbye, Uncle Mack.” “Goodbye, Grandma!” “Goodbye, Delilah!” “Goodbye, John!” To most of our loved friends, gathering from all the mountain-side that morning, we were saying our last “Goodbye.” All were weeping.

 

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But I, aged three-and-a-half, did not understand why. Was it not a wonderful adventure Father was taking us upon? I did not know how powerful a risk the journey really was. Two young parents, one of them completely inexperienced in travel, four small children, of whom the eldest was eleven, and the youngest eleven months! No belongings except bedding, quilts, feather beds, comforts. Very little money. And to go so far, from all that was known and familiar! To go to so great an uncertainty! Our neighbors were right. One could not even be sure that our little household would ever come through alive, let alone reach that far, far distant destination – Illinois.

My two older little sisters were warned by playmates, “You’ll see Indians and wild animals as you float down the Elk River.” But Aggie and Drusie were not to be scared!

The journey started. It was incredible to us, though, as we began to float down the river. How terribly disappointing! Not an Indian, not a wild cat, leaped upon us from the banks of the Elk River!

And it was tame, the whole way down. Time to say, “Goodbye” to our loving neighbors. But we children felt too cheated now to mourn. Not an adventure! Not one danger!

There was one thing that did disturb me then – big rocks, flat and terrible, hung over the edge of the river from the mountain sides. Not like it was at home! I was frightened, and clung tight to Mother.

The days following seemed dull after the vivid life at home. Two days and nights we floated down the river. We landed then at Charleston. We did not get to see the wonders of the town. We transferred, by

 

p.36                          luck, at once, to a steam-boat. I myself remember nothing of that part of the trip.(ed. note: one of her obituaries quotes her as telling tales about floating down the Ohio River on a flatboat or raft that capsized….I think the obit writer embellished) Our boat took us to Cincinnati, where we boarded a train.

This was more like it! Thrilling! Our first train! Wonderful, wonderful. But, the whistle of the train terrified me. There were horrors, in traveling to the Far West!

I was so tired now, though, that all I wanted was to get to that place which Father had told us about. I’d brave any danger, only to get there. I’d never been out of our mountain-quiet. The exhaustion of these ships and trains!

I remember clearly how glad I was to be told, “We are going to Uncle Bob’s for the night.” We were in Illinois.

The night was cold and the ground was covered with deep snow.

 

VII

There was an immense room; it seemed unbelievably big, compared to the one room of mountain homes. This one great room was one of several rooms which made up a great house.

Even in my sleepiness, I marveled. There was a fire blazing on the hearth that lighted the whole room. This was the home of my far, far away kinsman in Illinois. He was no longer far away – for – we – were – here.

My Aunt Mag (ed note: Apparently, Sarah Margaret McAvoy went to Illinois with her older brother, Robert, after the Civil war) tucked us children in. How good it was to lie snug in this feather bed! How good to stop traveling – to arrive. I remember even today how sweet it was to lie down, to end our travel. I have never remembered wakening from that sleep.

 

p.37

I only remember that there came another morning; and Father said, “We are leaving Uncle Bob’s now.” He took us to an old log house in a clearing. It was not in good repair. This was to be our new home?

I was very small, and tossed my yellow hair back, and piped out, “This is an awful-looking place after so much thrashing along, Mother!” and I never changed my mind.

But, we didn’t stay there long. Father had promised easier life, a pleasanter home, than ever we had had before. He bought fifty acres of land, and he made sure to choose land heavily timbered. He began to plan the new home that he would build for his wife and his children, here in the wild west of Illinois.

 

p.38

PART TWO

I.

 

Father and Mother walked over their new land. Where to choose the site for building? They were used to hilly country, therefore, a hill must be found upon which to put the house. There must be a spring under that hill, of course, to supply water.

The walked the length, the breadth, of their fifty acres. The two older girls, Aggie and Drusie, did not much relish that insistence on a spring at the foot of a hill! That meant, they remembered only too well, carrying water from the spring up the hill to the house. Was there to be no ease and luxury for them, in this new land?

A hill was found on the land, and there was a spring at its foot. But, where to place the house on this hill now? Where the trees were thickest, Father nodded. There was such a place, with fine large trees in a great clump.

The clump had to be cleared, Father told us. That would provide logs. The logs would be right at hand then to use on our home. Nature provided all, and at hand; but the kindness of Nature was not enough. One needed wisdom and forest-knowledge. Of these Father had plenty. Not for nothing had he spent his youth and early manhood in the mountains.

To plan the house did not take much time. It was to be one room, about eighteen by twenty feet, with a

 

p.39

                 lean-to which could be built after we’d moved in. How many logs would be needed for such a house, with attic?

Father counted the number of logs that would go into each of the four sides, the number for windows and two doors, then for the attic, overhead. One had to have an attic where could be stored odds and ends. Later the lean-to would serve as a kitchen.

His computation completed, he went out to the trees, and marked those to be hewn. Now he was ready to start.

We already had made friends with our new neighbors. In those days, neighbors were more than people who lived near you. They were next to your kin. On them – and on you – might depend life. On you, and them, rested the burden and privilege of any companionship that was enjoyed. Our new neighbors waited only until Father had his trees marked. Then they came to us, with offer of their hands.

The men’s help was, first, in cutting down his marked trees, then in “dressing” them for our house. Father was at home in any forest matters. It was soon done. Henry and George Cower (very likely “Cowser”..ed.) and John Q. Clark and their children came. And naturally Aggie, Drusie, and I were there. Work? Of course! But what happiness work was then! Often I am sorry, for young folks now – with nothing real to do, with nothing hard and joyous to do!

The trees fell, one by one. We youngsters knew where to stand, how not to get hurt. As each great marked tree fell, it was cut into its proper length for its appointed place in the house. If the special day for felling was hot (and how often did the sun burn down, that summer!) sap would come out in great drops; and

 

p.40                                            we children would race over, to stoop and put our mouths against the hot dripping wood – and lick until our tongues were sore. When another tree was to topple, Father would yell, “Look out!” and we would scamper to a safe distance.

When the raw wood screamed and cracked, how we young ones danced in exhilaration! We would not be too pious about mere work, let me admit. There would be side-trip exploring, for many different things that Nature had made for us were waiting to be found. There were wild berries to pick and streams to wade and the names of endless birds to learn.

We were taught never to put our hands on a bird’s nest. There was a sort of ethics in that which we always regarded. We were taught that if we touched a nest the mother-bird would never return, the little eggs would never hatch, if there were tiny birds they would be left to starve. What fun would there be then – without crows and hawks, blackbirds and the naughty, pretty bluejays, the wild doves, the woodpeckers, the bobwhites – and most dear of all, the redbirds?

At last the logs would be cut – ash, oak, sweet maple, hickory. For felling the ancient trees, cross-cut saws were used and broad-axes to “square” them. No longer did the men let us run our tongues raw licking the treesap dropping out! The men now began to dress the cut logs with broad axes. The lumber for our house was put into convenient piles – each piece, nearest to the place where it would have to go once the house was started.

Now, the McAvoy’s had the first party, in this new country, with new friends. Every neighbor came, with every child. They brought well filled baskets.

 

p.41

Our home did not exist yet, therefore Mother could not prepare food; nevertheless, she had managed to have cold meats, cake and even coffee. As the sun stood well up the neighbors arrived. Our “house-raising” party began.

Father had every one of his logs marked and the men began to put each in place. It seemed to me magical, the way they were putting those logs together! By the time the sun was down, the McAvoy’s had a house – a a good one.

Snippy little Maggie McAvoy – aged four – had no need now to snort, “Was this what we had been a-thrashing around so far for?” This was a house to dream about – to dream in, and to love. And that was what we did. We didn’t talk of it; no. We never talked then the way people do now, about everything. We just felt it.

 

II

 

Now, Father had to fix the inside of the house and make it Mother’s home. A woman lived in a house, and it was her right to have it after her own heart’s wish. It was typical of the times, Father’s house. Not a closet, not a shelf! It did have some forked limbs on the wall, for Father to hang his cow-horn shotpouch, and to hang his rifle, too. We could be proud of that house. Had we not a rare thing – a real storelock on the front door? This was an up-to-date edifice! Our old mountain-home that we had left had no lock on it at all. Father had put a heavy two-by-four, in front of our door there by night; that was all. I cannot remember how we kept the cold out then, in the

 

p.42                                            winter; but we did not freeze. Here, the house was snug; the door locked tight.

And Father made wonderful luxurious additions. He built a lean-to to serve as kitchen and pantry. In the old Mountain-home, we’d sleep, live, and cook in the one big room. For our kitchen here, Father made a novel sort of lock, himself. He took a thin board, and fastened it to the kitchen door, with a store-screw. Then he notched a second piece of board, nailed that to the door-jamb, and bored a hold into the floor. By tying a string to this, and dropping that string inside, he had achieved a lock. All you needed to do, was to pull the string of this latch; and you could get into the house.

It was not artistic, nor did it prove useful to lock the door. But we were very proud of it! And when Father and Mother went away, and we children “kept house” alone; it did have use, indeed. We little girls locked up by pulling the string in – and we were safe. Anyhow, what was there to be afeard of? The latchstring always hung on the outside. I can’t ever remember Father locking the door.

The town was only about two miles from our home, so Mother could go to the store, could “see on the counter” what she wanted to trade. She had a school for us children, not too far off. She had a church. She had neighbors. She had a modern house, with three rooms, an attic – and a lock.

But something was missing – a fireplace. Father, though, refused to build a fireplace in this new house. She could not persuade him. And she so wanted a fireplace. She felt lost without one. She had to have one, she pleaded, so she could dry her catnip, and her pennyroyal,

p.43

and her sweet-corn seed. She urged, how could Father himself make his bullets for hunting, if we had no fireplace?

We children listened, with puckered, questioning brow, to this question. Why there had to be a fireplace for that! We had watched him often enough to know. We’d sit very close (as close as he’d let us) as he melted the lead in a pan, and the molten lead would run into the little holes of his bullet molds. When he’d open the molds out popped the bright shiny new bullets. We’d be let near, then. We’d cut for him the bright shiny little necks that stuck out of the molds. We knew that these bullets were like shining bits of silver melted and shaped. But how to make them without a fireplace and flames on the hearth? Did he not know how right Mother was?

He shook his dark, silky head, though. “We’re not a-goin’ to have it, Marthy Jane,” he repeated, inflexibly. “You’ll not get yore fireplace. We’ve come to a new country. We’re a-changin’ our mode o’living. Thar’ll be no more dryin’ catnip and such around a fire.”

Mother folded her hands. She tried not to let us children see her puzzlement, and bewilderment, too!

Father stood up. “Yore a-goin’ to have a new cookstove,” he announced proudly, “and one of these up-to-date heaters from the store.”

You cannot imagine the thrill. We? Our family? But it was as he promised. You can imagine Mother! Maybe she missed the familiar dear fire on the hearth. But – progress! Going with the times! Being one of the most modern housewives in the country about! Wonderful! Had not Father said, back yonder in West Virginia, she’d live an altogether new life, here?

 

p.44

And she took compensation from the loss of her fireplace, in her unexpected pride. She began to fix up the inside of her home herself. She scrubbed every corner, every cranny, with soap and water.

It was spring. It was the season for burning brushheaps. That was our job, the children’s. The blaze started and sparks flew. “Don’t set your dress afire!” called Mother, to us. But she came out, to guard us, of course. When the ashes went cold, she’d have a place in which to plant her lettuce. Such tall lettuce as was never seen elsewhere was to grow there soon.

All winter long, while we lived in our new home, the first season, whenever Father took the wood-ash from our grand new heating oven, Mother would empty the ash-pails into a funny-looking box or hopper, that stood just outside her loom-house. That was what we called her weaving-room.

That funny box there, four feet high, three feet across its top, narrowed toward its bottom until it was two feet square. The bottom rested on a platform, built for the purpose. That hopper was a most important article in the beginning of soap-making.

It stood two feet from the ground, so Mother could put under it her old three-legged iron oven,

that she’d used to bake bread in when we had a fireplace. The wood-ash collected in the hopper until Spring came. Then she sent us youngsters to get a bucket of water; usually from the rain-water barrel. We poured the water into the hopper of ashes and continued pouring water so, for two weeks, every day. And presently, lye started running into the oven from the hopper-bottom.

That was a signal. Father drove two strong forked

 

p.45                                      sticks into the ground, about six feet apart. He put a strong pole on the sticks and on it Mother’s kettle swung. She could empty her lye into the kettle now.

She had been saving her lard and also what fat was left from butchering and from cooking all through the winter. That was added to the lye. She was ready now to make all the soap we’d use for laundry, for toilet, and for house.

It’s different from going out to buy laundry-flakes or a bar of face-soap. I can remember clearly the very first bought toilet-soap I ever saw. It was red, very pretty, perfumed to high heaven. When we girls got old enough to go to the store, how we longed for soap like that. But not while Mother could make ours did we get any!

The lye she made was amber-brown. If you’d put it to your tongue it bit you, just like the lye you now buy. Mother knew just how much grease to use for the amount of lye used, we children were aware. If it was too strong, she’d add more grease. If that did not make it right, she’d add water. She could tell by the mere look of the boiling soap just what she should do. By the time twilight fell she’d have the finest soap for all uses.

She let the soap remain overnight and in the morning she’d pour it into a barrel. Then she’d start all over again and make more. She continued this process until the barrel was filled and she’d made enough to last all year.

In our house, we would have stared at the complaints about “rationing” of anything, had that time been now, in this war!

 

p.46

III

We girls scrubbed and swished and wiped, right with Mother, until every piece in our house gleamed. Then she was ready for something more. She must beautify her shining, scrubbed home. She got unslaked lime, slaked it, and whitewashed the big room, wall after wall. Dazzling white!

Now one must adorn it. She set to work to make a rag carpet. That was done, at last. It was tacked on the floor close to the walls with plenty of straw under it.

When one entered Mother’s home one was greeted by the clean smell of new timber, straw, and pure lime. What tapestry walls could be more inviting?

She had had to leave all her belongings except bedding back yonder. Father bought, but more often built, new furniture here for her. She had the beds; but there were no mattresses, of course. There were none in those days for poor families; one used strawticks, made of the best white linen. Mother wove hers from her own home-grown flax. They were filled with clean straw. She had also fat beds of soft feathers, the down from her own geese. She had white fluffy blankets; she had spun the yarn and woven them. No better beds are found today!

There was not a closet, not a shelf, in the house; there were only the forked limbs near the door. Everything in the primitive house was made for use, and for immediate use. There was so much needed, the families were usually so large, and so much work was required for every object used – in clothing, food, house – that nothing could be made to be folded or wrapped

 

p.47             and put aside. Each possession was lived with daily; that was the reason for its being. Mother did not need closets or shelves, but she did need the attic with its ladder reaching from the big room to the attic-door; she needed also the lean-to, used as kitchen and pantry.

These were all put up by Father, of course. Each man was his own carpenter, as each woman was her own cook.

I did not think then how much a woman did. She was seamstress, baker, nurse, textile worker, canner, teacher, gardener, soap-maker, house-painter, farmer’s helper, dairy woman; and in addition loving wife, comrade to a man, mother of many children. Later I heard of “women’s independence,” of “equality.” I had long known these to be “women’s rights.”

In my childhood, women had the right to as hard work, as much opportunity for “expressing themselves in their work,” as any man!

 

IV

But our father did fascinating things for us to share, too. For example, there was the making of “spiles.” A spile was a foot-long, inch-thick length of young sumac.

Father would go out, when frost was still in the ground, before sap rose in the trees, and while they were still flexible. He would cut about forty spiles and put them into a heap by the stove, indoors. We children delighted to heat the pokers red-hot, and burn the “peth,” as we used to call it, or pith. We would run the poker right through the length of the wood. The lovely fragrance it made!

 

p.48

We then would follow Father into the woods, where he would select sugar-trees to be tapped. He’d bore with his augur a hole about three inches into the trunk, about 3 feet above the ground. The spile was then driven in about an inch into the hole. In the vacuum left, the sap gathered. Then it began to pour out through the hollowed spile from which we had burnt the pith.

Now to get the buckets for the sap! Every hand was needed. Every child stood by to help. How heavy were the big buckets! Sometimes it took two of us small ones on one pail. The sap ran all day; the cooler nights stopped it.

Time came, at last, to “sugar off,” as it was called. There were no tired children, then. Mother would let us each have a little paddle and scrape the pans. There was one special delicacy she allowed us. She would take the egg out of its shell and fill the emptied shell with sugar, for each child. Did anyone ever have a sweeter time?

Those sugar eggs are, even now, happy memories to me. Only we had them. Many things at our house seemed a bit different from other homes. It was because of our mother, for she had come from the wilds of West Virginia; she had learned to make all things that she could not buy. Even here, with a store just two miles away, she made many things others bought.

She would entertain, too, all the children in our neighborhood with games of her childhood. All loved to come to our house. Our mother could do things that our neighbors had never seen and done, that the mothers of other, less lucky boys and girls somehow never thought of or even knew how to do! She was like a gracious, taller, lovely child herself.

 

p.49

She could make soap, weave carpets; she made fancy coverlets with all kinds of designs; even the pretty yarn she spun herself.

Of course, I, too, helped her with the soap and carpets. I learned, as did Agnes and Drusie, how our Mother did these things. But I was never as skillful as she! Her hands had a delicate artistic deftness. I never could spin my yarn without making it lumpy. Mother could use me in all other work, but at this fine textile artistry I was finally relegated to the rear. One could not help her as she sat in her weaving-room, jus “because one felt one would like to.”

Father had made her a lovely room. All we children could do was just to look in and watch her, absorbed in her work there. We felt proud and happy, only watching. No woman around us could surpass her in this field.

Everywhere were little signs: “Don’t touch,” “Don’t touch.” That was meant for all, even Father, or “Grandma,” or the grown neighbors. It was so easy to get things out of order in Mother’s weaving-room. This one room was her separate, special place. It was as if one saw there the symbol of her life-dreams: work, beauty, usefulness.

There was her loom, all set up to weave carpet, with the pretty warp of different colors and the large balls of cloth strips, about a half-inch wide, and in varying colors. These torn strings would make the carpet. “Just look,” Mother would say, “but do not touch.” We would ask, diffidently, to wind the shuttle with rags from those balls. If she were not too busy, she’d let us try. But often she’d have to unwind the shuttle

 

p.50                                                        part-way again. It was too full or something was wrong after we wound.

I can still see her there, as she would sit on her stool, with two pedals under her feet. Just as you would play an organ, one foot went down and the shuttle would fly through; and then the second foot would go down and the shuttle would fly back. And so on, until the shuttle was empty. It was more fun to watch than to do it, I used to think.

Another of Father’s jobs we young ones loved to share, was making sorghum molasses. It didn’t come in cans from the grocery store then! We youngsters piled after Father and “skutched” the cane, knocking off the blades. We cut off the heads of the cane with our long corn-knives. We helped cut the stalks and lay them in piles to be hauled to the great mill a neighbor had.

The cane-sticks were thrust in between rollers, squeezing out the sweet juice. What glory then to be a child, and allowed to ride the horse as it went ‘round and ‘round, turning the rollers! The juice was boiled into syrup. What excitement, when a vat was ready to be taken off! There was a very special skill in knowing, precisely when the call should be shouted, “Fire Pulled!”. That was a sign the syrup was done. It needed neither more flame nor boiling.

We young ones got our paddles ready to scrape the big pans. But all we were told was “Get out of the way!” That boiling syrup was a danger to life. We got our molasses, for all that! The big men let us come, despite their shouts of “Here, you! There, you!” They had an understanding of the child’s heart and needs and joys.

 

p.51                                V.

 

There was work for Mother to do outdoors, also. Though we were not much use to her at her loom we could help get the material to color her yarn, our linsey dresses, our woolen stockings, Father and Emmett’s mittens. It was for us to find the materials out of which the colorings could be made. They were in the woods and forest, waiting to be taken.

All the neighbor children came along. We were to search out certain particular kinds of trees. Every tree had its own type of bark, Mother had taught us. We had learned from her what color this bark and that one would produce. I never learned how she manipulated her materials, how she set her color. But I did know walnut made brown, logwood made black. I knew that she made blue from indigo. By an ancient mountain-method, learned from “Grandma,” she would set it to a lasting blue, by using what Father would twinklingly call “Chamber-lye”. It was quaint and amusing, but I know it was so effective that the color remained in the last strip, finely torn, to be woven into a carpet. She used diverse devices to set the colors and also to vary them. So when we children would think of trees it was in their uses – for coloring, for making fences, for building houses – just as later, in a ship-building community, I was to find that children thought of trees in terms of ships and lumber.

With the gentle tasks were contrasted strenuous activities such as sheep-shearing. We drove the animals into the corral, and each was placed on a platform. A boy or girl held a sheep, its head down tight on the platform, while the men cut the wool from its body.

 

p.52

 

If a youngster happened to be just a little timid, or afraid, the sheep would get away. How ridiculous those sheared rams did look after shaving! But they were grateful enough, gamboling presently in the hot summer sun.

 

VI.

I have often been asked, “Had you no play without work, as a child?”

Maybe the only times of pure play that I can remember in childhood were in the visits of our neighbors, the “Cowser kids,” when Mother and Father went away to be from Saturday morning to Sunday with our uncle.

I remember one week-end when we were told we could have the Cowser children visit us, the seven of them, five girls and two boys. Aggie was living away, that year, so Drusie and I would have full responsibility for the farm, our little brother, and our guests.

Our parents gave us endless, repeated directions – how to manage the stock, how to do the watering, the milking, how to divide the beds, what to cook, to be ever careful of the fire, and again to see that the fire was properly put out. In those days we cooked with wood; fire was an ever-present danger. Didn’t we know that, though, as well as the adults?

Uncle lived almost fifteen miles away. It would take Father about three hours for his drive, with our big draft horses. He was very careful of his stock. We children, too, were fully aware of the need to look after the colts, the pigs, the sheep, the horses that were left. Those had to be cared for most guardedly.

p.53

And didn’t Father know we knew just how to do it? Father had only one boy, so we girls had always taken the place of boys.

However….no sooner were our parents out of sight than Drusie seemed suddenly to forget her wisdom. “Let’s,” she proposed, “take the little colt out of the stable, and all learn to ride.” Even then, though, she remembered not to let a larger child ride. That might hurt the colt. I, who was about eight years old, was picked.

Drusie put me on and led the little beast a way. It seemed to take this only as a matter of fact. Where, then, was the fun?

Without warning, she threw the halter over the colt’s neck and hit it with a strap that she carried.

The colt tore along like the wind, with me holding to its mane and screaming for dear life. As fast as they were able, the other children scampered after. They were sure I was going to be killed, either by falling off, or having my head knocked off on the door-frame. The colt swept into the stable. But the Lord takes care of sparrows and He took care of me. I was small; the colt was not high. We cleared the door-frame. I was alive and whole. I was scared and crying, for all that! The only one not excited was the colt.

Drusie came up, compunctiously petted me, began to bribe me, “not to tell Father and Mother.” If I “told,” they’d not let us “keep house” any more, would they?

Yet – we both were solemn. It was not the fact that I was almost killed that we both thought of. We had endangered the colt. We were expected to have sense

p.54

                                                           enough to take care of our own lives. But we were also as much responsible for our stock. The stock made our whole family’s living possible. How foolish and wicked we had been to forget that.

We turned soberly to more childish and safe games – pop, pop, pullaway, baseball. We ran ourselves down until it was dark.

There was supper to get, everybody of course knew how to cook. Everyone had to know, there. Dishes were washed. Again we played games, popped corn, used plenty of butter. Why not make molasses candy? Take plenty of butter and flour to pull it; make it into little sticks. The nasty boys of course soon started to put the candy in our hair. We had Mother’s pretty white maple kitchen floor covered with flour and butter. We girls could scrub it nice and clean, though.

Should we play “Old Bloody Tom?” That was a very destructive game indeed. A Cowser kid was blindfolded, and lay on the floor, face down. We held an object above him and said, “Heavy, heavy, hangs over your poor head!” If he did not “guess” the object, it was piled on him. He could not “guess” very well, so, the pile on him grew and grew. The fun would begin when he did guess correctly. He would jump up and everything piled on him would fly in every direction. The first one of us he’d catch would have to be next “Old Bloody Tom.”

We had piled everything loose in the house that we could put on him. Someone picked up Mother’s clock, and put it on the very top. He heard it tick and “guessed” it. He jumped up, crying, “Clock!” As he jumped, in the midst of a hillock of falling objects, the first thing to hit the floor was Mother’s clock. The

p.55                                            glass face scattered in many pieces, the hands flew in different directions.

The others could go home and not face the music. We McAvoy children would have to tell about the clock when our parents came. Yet even in the silence ensuing, I knew we did not feel the breaking of that clock as the others would, had it been their mother’s. Our father and mother would understand. He’d tell Mother he would take it to town. If it was not broken internally he would say, “It’ll not cost much to get another face and hands.” It never occurred to me we’d not tell.

We children had been taught never to be afraid to tell if we did wrong, no matter how bad. We were taught, “tell and have it over with.” What’s there to be afeared of? For all that, I never did forget how sad Mother looked, when she saw her only time-piece. Yet, as we had known, they did not punish us.

Father just took the pieces, shook his head, and said, “I will get it fixed, if it’s not beyond repair.” The matter was dropped.

Then he said, “Don’t ride the colt again. He’s too valuable to me.”

Drusie had told him of this at once.

But little children sometimes forget. I was no angel-child. None of us were.

Naturally, there had to be a return visit, on our part, to the Cowsers. Mr. and Mrs. Cowser went to visit a relative. Minnie Cowser came to invite me to her house. Their chickens, she whispered, had the cholera and “were not fit to kill.” Could we take a fowl from our roost, and cook it over there? Since it was my task to care for the chickens and gather the eggs, it did not

p.56        seem necessary to explain to Mother about this hen-business. I could select our hen, put it into a coop, and just tell Mother she was “a setting hen.” Stealing? Certainly not. Didn’t the hen belong to us? I told that to myself…

 

I’d tied its legs with a piece of cloth; we’d been taught, never tie a chicken with a cord, because it’s not good for their legs. The sun was shining brightly as I started forth through rows of corn that I hoped were high enough to hide me and the hen. But Mother, sitting in the front yard, raised her eyes.

Satan helped me frame a story, to explain the hen I held. But she knew the truth before I confessed it. She asked why I had stolen the hen. I didn’t seem to know what to say. In my heart I knew full well she gladly would have given us that hen. I just began to cry.

Suppose Father appeared on the scene? That would make matters even more terrible. When Mother got through talking with me all I wanted was to leave the hen at home. But she insisted I must take it with me. “Why were you afraid to tell me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you just ask me for the hen?” How heavy that fowl was as I carried it to the Cowser’s!

She knew how to give a reproof sternly, when needed, yet not so heavy that it would burden and spoil the joy that was a child’s right.

When I arrived at Minnie Cowser’s, the very same “directions” were being given, as to the care of the stock, the fire, and other things, that my own parents gave whenever they went away. Their old Grandfather’s clock, though, had to be wound very carefully, as the two weights were large; and they had to be

 

p.57                                      wound up high. Mrs. Cowser was telling Minnie, “There’s a little paper of poison in the bottom of the clock. Be very careful. Don’t touch it!” Mr. Cowser now said, “The well is nearly dry. Lead the horses and cows down to the creek. Do not draw any more water out of the well than you possibly have to.” Before the rattle of the wagon had died away, we were hurrying back to the house, for we had many things to do.

We must take care of the hen I’d acquired so painfully. We must put water on to boil, in which to scald her. But she was not killed yet, a hard job. Who’d do it? I held the legs; the head was nicely laid out on the block. Minnie raised the ax, shut her eyes; the ax fell. My eyes, too, were closed. The poor little thing was dead, now? I let loose the legs but away she went, the little speckled hen. All the Cowser kids and I ran a hard race; finally we killed her. We scalded off the feathers, singed her over the stove, very carefully, as we’d been told, on the fire. Now to dissect that hen. Neither of us had ever done it before. We had great faith in our ability, though.

Finally, she was in parts, anyhow. Someone suggested, when the hen was tender, have dumplings with her. We dropped in slices of dough, lifted the led every few moments, and poked the dumplings with a fork. The longer we cooked, the tougher those dumplings got. Mother explained later we should not have lifted the lid until they were done, and then take them out quickly.

The hen was good; Mother had forgiven us for her. There was nothing to spoil our enjoyment. But, when

 

p.58              we tried to feed stony dumplings to the cat, she’d only lick the gravy.

The cat, however, made passes at the Cowser’s canary. She was doomed to die, therefore.

Wasn’t there poison – in the clock? Mrs. Cowser had said “not to touch it.” But surely her bird’s life must be protected? We buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled it with poison. The cat was under the old smoke house, and there we very carefully placed our tempting morsel. She licked the bread! All five of us lay, flat on our stomachs, to watch the cat die. She came out, licking her chops instead.

 

The thing to do, was to drown her. Mr. Cowser, though, had said water was to be used for “cooking purposes” only. An “emergency” justified us in drawing two pails of water from the well? If we tipped the tub a little, the water would be deep enough. We caught her and put a stocking over her head, so she could not read her fate. We happened to recall we must put a rock in the stocking, to weight her down. Little Charlotte Cowser held the kitty, because it belonged to her. The poor child did not even know what “drowning” meant. All gathered close to the tub to witness the tragedy. Of course, we expected the cat to do the right thing and lie nice and still until she was quite dead. But the minute she struck the water she was out again. The poor thing though did not know where to go, because she could not see anything.

Charlotte ran, and the cat ran at her heels. The little girl was almost into spasms. She thought the cat had been both poisoned, and drowned, and was now a feline ghost, running after her. We had to get

 

p.59 Charlotte quieted down. We had to hunt the cat and get her blindfold off.

I wrote a little jingle, not so very long ago, recalling the childhood drama:

 

“Let me go back when alone we girls stayed –

     And the Cowser girls came, so we weren’t afraid!

Let me go back when we poisoned the cat,

     And looked in the clock for the strychnine for that…”

 

Nevertheless, and with all our childishness, never for a moment did we youngsters at our house, or at Cowser’s even think of failing to do the essential tasks entrusted to us. We were all under twelve. But our parents were justified in entrusting their valued stock and the fire, to our young selves. These were important responsibilities. They were duties never to be neglected, as the sun in his duty rose daily to make the day.

 

PART THREE

 

I.

 

Spring passed, then summer. There came the wild-fruit time. We children here learned just where to find the patches, as we had “back yonder” in the mountain forests.

Then came autumn. I was only five, but my parents said, it was time to start school. I suppose Mother wanted me to go as much to get me out of the busy house as to have me educated.

 

(ed.: a typical one-room-schoolhouse picture, ca 1900. …Warren Royer wrote a book about one-room schools in Illinois, and he noted that in one area, the photographer used his car (unusual at that time) as a prop for kids to sit in while taking the school picture…millions of these photos must be sitting around the country in the bottom of dresser drawers…local newspapers, like the Glasford Gazette, sometimes run a picture and challenge the readers to identify any or all of the students pictured.)

School was two miles away. One went over a weed-path and a dirt road. A pond lay near that road. If rain filled the pond we had just a black lake to cross, often a foot deep. Such black mud! Father had later to get me a pair of high-top boots with copper toes.

I was to attend the “Saylor School” for only two years, but I remember more about the two years in that school than any other two years of any other period of my life.

It stood in the south-east corner of the yard, nestling close to a very high hedge fence, in order, I assume, to give the children more room to play. It stood north and south, and had been painted possibly in the year one. There were still signs of paint on it, then, but only signs. The building was long and low, with about five windows on each side, and one door at the south for all to crowd through. When the bell rang we

p.61                                                        little ones had to run fast or be trampled by the big boys and girls.

In the interior, on each side of the room, ‘way up to the platform, were two long rows of home-made seats, nailed to the wall and to the floor. In the center of the room stood the old red “Cannon” stove, so red, so pretty! There were two short rows of seats, both in front and back of the stove. How hot we got, we small folks, who sat in the front rows. Some big boy would say, “I’m cold, teacher,” and urge “Fire up!” just to see us little ones burn up. To plague the tiny folks he would insist that he was cold; therefore we had to bear the heat.

Every seat held two pupils. The platform was across the north end of the room. On this platform were recitation benches in front of the painted blackboards. We could not use those blackboards very often. When the class was reciting we could not see the board at all.

Shall I ever forget my first day at school? The bell rang. There was a mad scramble for seats. I had heard vague only that, for various reasons, nobody liked to be in a “front seat.” I landed in some seat. Naturally, we little ones didn’t know that the seat we’d get into had to be ours, all year.

I found I was with my sister, Drusie. My sister was with our young Aunt Mag, just behind us. Hugh Jones was our teacher. How kind he was to me! I was so very frightened.

Mr. Jones came up, with his pad, to get our names. He took my elder sister’s name: Sarah Agnes McAvoy. Then he wrote our Aunt’s name: Sarah Margaret McAvoy. Next, came poor scared, tiny me. I stammered out, “My name is – is Sarah Margaret McAvoy.”

p.62

He stopped, looked at us four girls, thinking we were all sisters and asked, “How does it happen, that you are all named Sarah?” My sister Sarah Agnes gave me a thrust in the back, and pronounced, “She stole my name! Her name is Margaret, not Sarah Margaret!”

How scared I was!

Mr. Jones was to live to see me a teacher, and he neer failed to twit me, about “not knowing my name.”

It was not long until our teacher had all the little ones placed in the front seats, which were planned for our size. My seatmate was Cerilda McQuown. I loved Cerilda. She would bring me big red apples. What a marvelous place was school. There were so many children.

And then I met a new little girl, May. She took me with her, one day at noon, and her mother patted my little tow-head, and gave me a doll which went to sleep, and had hair that was curly, what was left of it.

I was always to love Mrs. T. May became my dearest, dearest friend. In childhood, there is a love for one’s friends that can be as deep as for one’s lover, later.

It was worth traveling a thousand miles to have a school like this one we attended. I loved everything in it. I loved to hear the big pupils recite. And when Teacher, himself, would read The Burial of Moses and Woodman Spare that Tree!

But the larger boys and girls were nearly as impressive. Going to recitation, they would step very firmly onto the platform, give their lesson or their “piece,” and then reseat themselves, as firmly.

When they had poetry to read, how beautiful it was

p.63                                            to see and hear them. Id watch for Bill Parr to get up, and read Chick-a-Dee-Dee. How sorry I was for those little birds depicted out in the cold and the snow! And Evangeline and Romulus – and tragic stories of Christian martyrs in old Rome … and Bingen on the Rhine and William Tell….

There were about 40 of us, ranging in age from five to twenty. At noon we’d divide into age-groups. The big boys would spoon, maybe, with the older girls. One huge “buck,” of twenty would whittle a ring from a silver coin for a girl if he liked her. One girl received love-letters. The boy who sent these could not even write, they were written for him. But she could read; and she’d read them aloud, at recess. Marvelous it was, to hear those lines – for a wide-eyed six-year-old like myself.

 

The big children’s names I still know: Coultis, McQuown, Louman, Forbes, Johnson, Haney, and the Lewis’ McKee, Charley, McStravick, and Lily, very nearly all gone now. I’d scamper when they chose to play “rough” games, “Ball” or “Blackman”. No one of us who was small could stand in their path! Some of them really were not boys; they were men, what we nowadays call “huskies”.

In those days, the big boys did not go to school in the fall ‘till all the corn was gathered and everything put away for winter. Then, usually, the parents wanted to get rid of them; that was why they were sent to school at all.

 

II.

 

The years passed. I was no longer one of the

p.64                                      “littlest”. I was ten. But May was still my chum. We shared our bread and meat at noon – our pie – our pickles. We walked about together. Even the Cowsers had not the special place May held in my young life.

We had, of course, no “Course of Study.” We went into any class that we wanted to. That was all right. When school closed, we all went home, and it never occurred to anyone to check and see if we had learned anything.

I must tell a story to show how our education was carried on. I was about eleven, and I decided that I wanted to go in the higher class in grammar. We were studying in the old Pineo’s Grammar, but I was tired of that book. I simply moved myself over to the “higher” pupils; I thus was promoted to Green’s Higher Grammar.

I came to visit Cerilda McQuown. Jud Cowser was there, calling on Louise, his “fiancé.” He began to ask how I was getting on in my studies. I was happy to tell him that I was now in Green’s Higher Grammar.

He queried, for fun, “How many parts of speech are there?” I puzzled over that. “Parts of speech, did you say?”

I didn’t know there were such things! But in school I stayed on, in “Higher Grammar.”

Yet, in spite of the haphazard, unsupervised way we obtained learning, several of us did manage to get a true higher education. Some were to become teachers, and one was to be a minister. We got what we could from our books and our teacher.

It was like the way we earned our living, too. We could obtain all the education possible – as we worked for it.

p.65

There came “last day.” We had “speaking.” And they gave me a piece! It was surely the finest I had ever seen. I shall always remember it. The best part for me, though, was when it was all over. Teacher had me hold out-spread my little apron, while he tumbled in all the candy sticks that were left. The whole world was mine.

 

III.

Sometimes we had a teacher who represented a true ideal in her field, but often it was the reverse. One teacher remains more firmly fixed in my memory than any of the others, probably because she did not bother about anything if it was difficult. If we understood some point she was trying to teach, that was well. But if we did not understand it, it was just the same to her.

We had a lesson in reading, conducted in the presence of the superintendent of schools. He asked us children to give the meaning of the sentence, “A little rill ran down the hill.”

What was it that ran down the hill? Not a single pupil among us knew. We children listened as the superintendent turned to the teacher and said, “These children don’t know whether an elephant or a hippopotamus ran down the hill.” It was an eye-opener to me, young though I was then.

I was only eleven; but I lost confidence in that teacher, passive and gentle, permitting us to lead her rather than leading us. I learned you cannot depend on Teacher; you must depend on yourself. That year with her was a dull stretch in what was otherwise a happy, productive succession of school terms.

p.66

I enjoyed thereafter getting all the knowledge gained both from books and from teachers – when we had good teachers. School life was one “grand sweet song!” If a teacher could not teach – we still had the books. But education, though so loved, was not a burden making one a solemn child.

One springtime heavy rains filled Copperas Creek, and wiped out the bridge. We children had a great time wading in the deep water, where under ordinary circumstances it was scarcely ankle-deep. Though we did not realize the danger, we waded where a misstep might have resulted in a drowning. But, our skirts held high to keep them from getting wet, we were so happy that danger never entered our heads.

Louise, one of the “big girls,” had unusually plump legs. She jumped, discovering on her skin something black which clung tight. It was a leech. She sprang straight into the deep water, to get the blood-sucking little creature off. Every single girl – very intelligently! – jumped straight after her, into that dangerous water. It did not occur to anyone that heavy, soaking, clothing was a help neither to Louise’s would-be rescuers nor to her. They did pull their companion to safety. The leech, by now, had had its fill, and calmly dropped off of its own accord.

How now to keep from our parents the fact that there had been that leap into the forbidden creek? Somebody had what seemed a wise suggestion. Just walk home together in Indian file! Every girl would take the tail of the dress of the girl in front of her, whipping it to and fro. There would be a line of us, each fanning the back of a dress right in front of us.

p.67 We’d be dry by the time we got home. We felt wise and delighted.

The line formed. Each girl began whipping up and down the sopping back of the dress in front of her. Little Maggie McAvoy trailed at the very end, industrioiusly fanning the huge drooping skirt of a big girl. I was so proud to be the last in the line. It was delicious fun. Not the least of it, I am afraid, lay in the fact that we felt we had disobeyed a command – and could not possibly be found out by the older folks, who always thought they existed only to make rules.

Everyone’s dress did get dry, by the time we reached our homes. But we had not known how wise my own mother was. To be sure, our dresses were dry, Drusie’s Aggie’s and mine. Yet the instant Mother caught her first look at us three she asked, “Whatever made you go into the water? I had forbidden it, daughters.”

How had she guessed? We wondered, abashed. Just by seeing Drusie’s and Aggie’s hair. They had heavy long ropes of braids. The dresses had dried, yes; but their braids had not. They were darker than ordinarily, with the water. Mother had known at once what we had been so certain would remain forever secret! But she did not spoil it. There was no haranguing, no rehearsing of the incident again. We were allowed to enjoy our misdemeanors – provided we realized we must not repeat them.

He big boys were playing “Black Man” one day. There were the bases toward which all of them ran – trying to catch the one lad singled out to be the “Black Man” The “Biggest Buck” in school – aged twenty – was “Black Man” next. I was a slight little thing,

p.68 and somehow (I never did know what made me) I ran in front of that avalanche of huge pupils.

I would have been killed, without doubt. But a little girl’s hand gave me a terrible jerk – pulling by my pigtails. I was safe. The girl who saved me was, of course, my dearest friend, my chum, May.

I was too frightened, too grateful, even to say “thanks.” With May, though, one did not have to speak. She only smoothed down her skirt. I did the same to mine.

There was just one girl in the whole school who was fashionable enough to wear the style of the time – pantalets. May, and I, wore the old-fashioned short dresses. Mother was the one woman in the whole neighborhood who still made her girls’ clothes. She’d never “buy them in the stores.”

We went – May and I – to our seat in the school. It seemed to me, that afternoon, I wanted never to be apart from my little friend; never in all the future. We’d live years and years – friends.

Susan, our teacher, who had succeeded Mr. Jones, told us two children to do our writing in the tablet. Our little heads touched as we opened McGuffey’s Reader, later, to study there. Her dark curls and my golden braids swung over our backs, and we exchanged a look again. “I was so scared,” I whispered finally. May gave my hand a squeeze, “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered. “And I will – for you,” I said, low.

Suddenly there was a commotion. Susan, the teacher, had sprung up. A huge boy, the one who had been tagged to be “Black Tom” at noon, had risen. He was snapping something to another big boy in back.

“Sit down!” Ordered Susan, stepping up.

p.69 But the big boy simply turned and snarled at her.

She was a little bit of a thing, and not more than twenty-one. She walked right to the rear bench, snatched the big rebel in both her hands, bounced him up and down, threw him over the back of a bench, and gave him a spanking with her ruler.

May and I stared from her to each other. “I’ll never be afraid again. If she can do that!” I whispered.

“Me, neither!” whispered May.

But, in less than a week, May was dead.

She died of pneumonia. In that time nobody even knew what ailed her. She just “had a bad cold.” I could not bear to go to her funeral. The whole school went, but not I.

All my life there was to be an empty little place – her place. Even now it hurts to think she’s dead. She remains a tiny girl to me. Yet I am now seventy-seven.

Almost all the others in our school are already gone to eternity, all except the four of us children, in our own home! Somehow when I think of my sisters and brothers I do not think of old people, but of children long, long ago.

 

IV.

 

It was in church that I found my other friend, Cerilda McCown (spelled McQuown elsewhere, ed.). Most of us at school went to the same church too. Often, when we had a “recitation” in school or in Sunday school, we would “give our piece” again to the other class. But we always knew the completely different feeling, of giving the same piece in public classes and in Sunday classes.

The little church was built by the labor of the men

 

p.70                                      of the community. It was a one-room frame structure with four windows on each side. The seats were divided by an aisle, which ran down the center, the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other. The rule of division continued for a long time. However, a girl who had an escort, and was brave enough, might bring him to church and march him to a seat, by her side. Oftenest, the couple would begin “going together” at school-lunches. I was myself just a child at the time, but when I’d seen two pupils I knew at school walk down together and sit together at church, I had an inkling of a great departure from things as they were, brought to the little church.

New styles and new ways of doing things also, one by one, encroached upon our little community and its church, nested there in the Illinois woods. Through all the years, however, the relationship of our minister to the congregation remained unchanged. One preacher was succeeded by another, but the established order remained. If the minister was married, the congregation would provide a home for him and his family. The members would share their income, their fruits, and their vegetables with him; he, in return, would preach the gospel, so repaying fully.

When revivals were held in the little structure, the room was crowded to capacity, many worshippers standing along the walls. None of the “elocution” at school equalled the fervor of the deeply religious prayers. The air would be so full of “Amens,” that I am sure they were all heard in Heaven! Some of the worshippers would go up and down the aisles shouting, “Praise God!” and “Hallelujah!” with all their might.

 

p. 71                                                       I was joyously thrilled, but when the shouting grew loud, I clung closer to Mother.

My parents and nearly all our friends had joined the church at the time it was built, but I was considered too young. Many years were to pass before my name was “on the church book.” Though I was too young to be formally a part of the congregation, my interest rose high when the time came for baptism of my family, and all others who had joined when the new church was built.

It was in the middle of the winter. Those who were to be baptized were taken to Copperas Creek. A hole had to be cut, in the ice, to give access to the water. As each person came forward to be baptized, he or she was immersed in the water, following the procedure of the traditional baptism of Christ by John in the River Jordan. Though the water was ice-cold, not one person seemed to have fear of physical ill effects. Some who were immersed were to find their clothes frozen stiff about them, when they reached their homes. But, to my knowledge, none took cold, not even the minister.

He presided over the service one particular night. He talked and sang with greater enthusiasm than ever. At that service, some were “sprinkled,” and others “poured.” Drusie’s turn came. I was watching very carefully. The minister raised the pitcher and poured the water over her. Not a great deal of water came out of the pitcher; and in my childish mind it did not seem the ceremony had been properly performed. Turning to a girl beside me, I burst out, “That wouldn’t wet a cat!” The significance of the baptism naturally was lost upon a child. I thought effectiveness of the baptism depended upon the amount of water that

p.72              was used. Yet even so, I felt a sacredness expressed.

There was no instrumental music of any kind in our church. Anyone who could was privileged to lead the singing. Usually the honor went to the person who could sing the loudest. Neighbor George had long qualified for that distinction. To me, it seemed a field in which youth was no handicap. His sister and I decided we would try our talents, since it was quantity, not quality, that counted in vocal performances when hymns were being sung.

George taught his sister and me to sing For You I Am Praying, a beautiful hymn. We two small girls worked hard to get quality as well as quantity into our rendition of that number. Then, at last, one Sunday we burst forth.

To our amazement, the big folks seemed to think we were fine. They let us do the “leading” at the church whenever that hymn was sung thereafter. It many be though that the great kindness and understanding of childhood inherent in that early life was the reason for the honor shown us. It made the divinity of our worship close and near to our small hearts.

An unmarried minister came to the church. Various members volunteered to “put him up,” and one evening he was to come to stay at our house. The evening service for young people at the church was finished, and all the young folks were walking home along the road, chatting gaily with the preacher. The moon was shining as brightly as it ever did, casting our shadows.

The group was to scatter in four directions. Suddenly, one of the girls cried, “Look at the shooting star!”

Our faces turned towards the sky. Off toward the horizon

p.73 was the biggest “shooting star” any of us had ever seen, and it seemed to be coming straight toward us. Each split second it grew in brilliance, until the whole sky seemed filled with stars. Then the sky returned to its normal appearance.

We young ones stood in our tracks, motionless, and for a time, speechless. Not even the minister ventured a word. In the utter stillness we heard a rumbling from the direction in which the “star” had disappeared. The aftermath of the sound served to increase the awe in our hearts and minds. It seem something that had broken through the gates of Heaven, to give mortals seeing this, just after leaving church services some idea of the magnificence of what was beyond. If there had been older ones among us they would have declared it “was heralding the descent of the Son of God upon the earth.” No one seemed able to give forth a sound. But in the silence, Drusie, five year my senior, spoke, “I guess we had better go home, I think it is going to rain.”

If the sky were always as clear as it was that night no rain would ever again fall on the face of the earth. But none of us questioned her reasons. We were glad that somebody had, finally, spoken. I learned later that many of those who formed the little audience which looked upon that tremendous spectacle then ran all the way home, casting frightened glances behind them as they raced along the road. But I was not afraid, only awed. We believed then in the nearness of God, of Divine Signs, even to us simple people. But our parents had taught us “one lived with God” – with the Church. Why fear His Signs, then?

Not until much later did we learn that a meteor of

p.74                                     unusual size had fallen, right before us. I have thought about this incident often since. My mind has dwelled upon the fact that people so often become frightened without reason when forces beyond our immediate understanding put in an appearance. If we just hold fast to the realization that nothing we see, and nothing that happens, exists of comes to pass without the direction of God, in His infinite wisdom, we know “there is nothing to be afraid of.” Yet our feeling for church and God, was a simple, realistic, interpretation into the terms of daily life. The community belonged to the church, and the church to it.

Years later, I decided to visit the place of my girlhood. When I reached my destination, I found that a nice new church had been erected, on the site of the old place of worship. All I could do, as I stood there, was to “dream’ that the old structure, and not the new one, was before my eyes. In my mind’s eye, I saw through the walls to the interior as it used to be. Over there, was where Mother and Father used to gather with the rest of the grown-ups for their Bible Class. Back there was were we youngsters had our Sunday school class. The McCowns, the Watsons, Jacksons, Vickers, Johnsons, and Addys – their faces and forms came back to my memory with a vividness that only a return to that scene cold have made possible. And then I recalled an incident upon which my thought had not settled since childhood. Mint Duff, the teacher in our Sunday school class, had done her best to get us to learn the Bible verses. To encourage us in the effort she had told us she would give a “chromo” to the one who memorized the most verses. With that as an inspiration, though without any idea of what a

p.75                                      “chromo” was, I settled down to the job of winning the prize. And, I did win it.. It was just a little picture! Great was my disappointment. I do not think that I even thanked the teacher for it! My new girl-chum, Cerilda McCown, who had been a close second in the contest, had her disappointment at not winning eased by seeing how little she had failed to win. But never for a moment did we think the prize received measured what church meant to us.

I felt no resentment. It was as if something had happened in our own dear home. In church, also, there was love, but there was a holiness in this place though one accepted rewards to be won materially. But material reward did not measure what one won here, even we small people knew.

It was not bigotry. Nor was it cant. It was pure trust and faith and love of God. As home was the house of Mother and Father, so was church the house of Our Heavenly Father.

I have tried to express it in this song: Church of my Childhood. (See appendix)

 

I have attended other, more stately, churches, since then. I go to the beautiful Church of the Pilgrims, in my country’s Capitol, where Doctor Bird

(ed note: quote from http://www.herbswanson.com/lpchistory/chapter3.php: “in January 1911, Bird took charge of Second Presbyterian Church in Washington . In that church, later renamed Church of the Pilgrims, Bird became one of the most successful and widely respected pastors in the Southern Presbyterian Church.

Many years later, Bird's son, himself a retired pastor, remembered that his father's success at that church and in Laurel grew out of three important elements in his ministry. First of all, Bird paid close attention to his pastoral duties. Secondly, he saw opportunities and made the most of them. Finally, he depended upon prayer rather than personal confrontation to solve difficult problems. Although not hinted at directly in the records of the church, Bird also reflected in his youth, his activism, and his bearing the 'manly' virtues so highly prized in the era of President Teddy Roosevelt. In those exciting years of reform, national growth, and idealism, many Americans sensed new purpose and strove to attain new goals. Bird must have embodied something of the best of the Progressive Era for his congregation. “)

gives us his spiritual leadership. But there remains for me, the same visions, the same spiritual treasure to receive and seek, that I sought and was taught to find, in the tiny wooden church amidst the trees, where Mother and Father used to take us, long ago.

 

p.76

 

PART FOUR

 

I.

 

One day everyone at Sunday school seemed to talk of one thing – something important, a “Wedding.”

The minister stopped Cassie Thompson (ed. Note: I think this is Catherine Thompson, 1862-?, daughter of Ruthama Duffield Thompson the Thomas Thompson; if so, she was 13 or 14 at this time, not 16) and me in front of our little country school and smiled, “Well, it’s not long now to the Wedding, is it?”

Cassie was a young lady; she was sixteen. I was just past ten, but she gave that sweet friendship a lucky little girl at times receives from an older one. I looked up at Cassie and asked, “What is a Wedding?”

She just dimpled and said, “It’s my cousin Billy McElhaney, that’s getting married. He’ll be married our house.”

But that didn’t explain! Bill McElhaney was a handsome man. Everyone knew his mother (Ed. Note: Nancy Duffield McIlhaney 1829-1861) had died, when he was small, and Cassie’s mother – his Aunt Rhua – who had seven children, just took him into the big brick house of the Thompsons, and “raised him,” too. One more child in her family didn’t matter. But why was Billy having a Wedding, all at once?

At our home, I heard so much about that “Wedding” that it seemed to fill the whole horizon, yet nobody would explain what it was. “It’ll be at our cousins’ – the Thompson’s. Don’t bother us!” (Ed. Note: Maggie and Billy were second cousins – their Duffield grandparents, Maggie’s grandmother (Nancy) and Billy’s grandfather (William), were brother and sister)

Agnes was nineteen now; Drusie was seventeen. I

p.77 was in their way while they fixed and sewed for the “Wedding.”

They’d just tell me, “The Infair will be here, maybe you’ll get a peek at that.” But they did not even explain what was an “Infair.”

This was the first “Wedding,” or “Infair,” to be taking place here. All the children around had so far, of course, been too young for “Weddings.” Billy was the first in our church group to become old enough. All I understood was that plainly there’d be heaps of fun. But I wasn’t to share it. I wouldn’t be at this “Wedding.” My place was home. I was just a little girl.

How heart-breaking it was to watch Agnes and Drussie “fix up” their best clothes! I was Cinderella. I’d stay home with Mother and my small brother Emmett. Ant Billy – the man involved in this mysterious wedding – was my cousin, as well as Agnes’ and Drusie’s!

He was “marrying” a “very pretty girl,” Mother consolingly chatted with me. He met that girl at a “Sunday School picnic at Pennsylvania Ridge.” For some reason, it had been called by the State name. Billy – went on Mother – had chosen “the belle of the place.” Her name was “Lydia McMein.” (Ed. Note: Aunt Maggie ‘goofed’ on this one. Lydia was not a McMeen, but, rather, an Albright, the oldest daughter of George W. and Catherine Fake Albright. She was the sister of my great-grandmother, Clara Esther Albright. The wedding took place in May of 1876) She was “loved by one and all.” They’d make a “stunning couple.”

I broke in there: “Is it a game – the Wedding? Do they march in it – in couples?” Mother just laughed at that.

Cassie Thompson ran over for a moment, from the mystery and excitement of the “preparations for Billy’s Wedding.” I tried to get Cassie to explain to me what the affair was to be.

 

p.78        She dimpled, “They’re getting married, Maggie. When you get married, you get yoked together, for life.”

I took that quite literally. I pictured a yoke, made like those I’d seen on our oxen. How it would be managed, for Billy and his pretty girl, how they’d look “a stunning couple” in that yoke, was beyond me. Cassie amplified a bit: “if one gets sick, the other one does the work, if they find they can’t have help – you see? And they keep on loving each other, until death do them part.”

She only made it more Greek to me by that!

But, I could understand one thing. There was to be a cake. She was going to town tomorrow to buy the candy-trim, for it. Buying candy was no light matter to us, there. You only bought candy once – maybe twice – a year. Cassie was to buy lovely “red candies,” too.

Next day, as I sat in the little country school, my eyes were glued to the road, which could be seen through one window. There was Cassie. I hadn’t missed her! At sight of her, up went my hand. I asked Teacher “to leave the room.” I sauntered, with studied calm, a bit up the road.

Cassie waved. Together, we both strolled back toward town. At the first fence-corner, we sat down. Cassie opened a candypoke, and showed me the contents.

They were the dearest bright red cinnamon-drops. We had to taste one. We had to take another. We tasted, until there was only a spoonful left, in the poke. Then, I remembered, this candy was to trim the cake

 

p. 79 for the “Wedding.” But, with a laugh, Cassie said, “No use keeping this little bit, left, Maggie.”

We finished it all.

She had a dime in change. She marched right back to town for more candy, and I went along.

I returned to school, and I had no excuse to give Teacher. But it was worth the punishment! Hadn’t Cassie promised, “I’ll bring you some of the Wedding Cake, Maggie!”

She did not forget. I had only a scrap of cake. But it was the cake. She described what had taken place at the Wedding: “The bride wore a white dress. She carried a bunch of flowers.” Cassie promised me, now, something more. She’d bring me cake and beer from the “Infair,” too!

They had, it seemed, ordered three kegs of beer from Peoria. Our people, who did not take liquor all year, seemed to be doing a wild, wild thing – for this mystery “Wedding” and its “Infair.”

The night after a wedding was “Infair.” Cassie tried to tell me what would happen: “They would pound tin buckets, bang things, sing, and shout.” Even if I couldn’t be at that, I could hear!

I decided firmly not to sleep a wink that night. I’d listen to the charivari! I’d not miss this event, even if I did the “Wedding.”

I opened wide our bedroom window. Aggie and Drusie shared one bed; I had a small one. They both, of course, went off early to the “Infair.” I propped myself up, in my little bed. I prepared to hear every sound of the festive racket.

Did I hear it?

 

p.80

When I woke up, the sun was shining across my bed. Agnes and Drusilla were fast asleep, in theirs.

I’d missed the Infair, too! I tried to ask them questions. But they were “tired.” What was there to tell a small sister, anyway?

Dolefully, I went about my chores and started for school. I just had to pass the Thompson’s. It was about a mile out of the way from school, but I just had to see Cassie. At least, I’d get the piece of cake and beer from last night’s “Infair!” Cassie would tell me what had happened. She’d not be snooty to a little girl.

I ran all the way, to have enough time for a chat before going on to school. It was a beautiful warm day. The sun was hot when I got to Thompson’s. She was expecting me. She had saved me some beer, though the cake was all gone, unluckily. But the beer was the coveted thing.

Cassie stood, smiling, pleased that she did have the drink promised me. There on the table, in the hot sun, was a cup about half-full. Flies were singing around the cup. That was my beer. The flies did not deter me! I was glad they’d left me a taste. Cassie was trying to explain, this was all she could save, all that had been left in the keg. But, it would give me a taste anyway.

She watched me take a sip. Did it satisfy me? Yes – and – forever!

Cassie was saying, “It would have tasted better, if it had been cold.” But she could never have persuaded me. That was my first – and it was to be my last – drink of beer.

I gasped out, “Goodness, was this what they called

 

p.81                                      fun?” Was this a sample of the whole mystery of the “Wedding,” and the “Infair,” both?

Cassie laughed, and said, “No. We had loads of fun. We all got kissed, and a few cried.”

I couldn’t see any fun in that.

Cassie said, “The bride and groom left early this morning, with some friends, in a covered wagon. To go to Kansas, or Nebraska, to farm.”

Why should they run away, as it were, right after their two parties?

Cassie couldn’t explain, except by laughing. “You’ll learn, in your time, Maggie!”

 

Sometime later, she met me and said, “Remember, how Billy and his bride rode away, Maggie? They had a fine trip. But they landed in Kansas in “Grasshopper” time. Not very long, before the grasshoppers ate everything in sight that they came across. All but the settlers! Those insects,” said Cassie, “ate the harness, pitch-fork handles, and even a team of horses, as well as the harness, and were casting lots in the street for the horse-shoes!”

My eyes were big as saucers. This was a sequence, of a Wedding and an Infair!

No wonder Billy and his bride returned again by train and went to farming nearby, here in Illinois! They commandeered a large farm, where everyone that came to them was to be always welcome, including small Maggie McAvoy. I was to see their family grow: four daughters; one son. But for years I’d wonder where their “yoke” was! “Yoked together,” Cassie had said!

Later, I told the story to their daughter; and how both of us laughed. But by then I learned what came

p.82           of a happy “Wedding” – a fine home and loyalty and children brought up in love of God and man. That was how this couple lived, too.

And then my own sister, Agnes, got her “Wedding” next. She married Thomas Fuller, at the age of nineteen. He was only twenty-one. Tom Fuller was a big, handsome boy, fearfully stylish, too. He always sang loudest at church – and so led the singing, of course. Once our mother said to Agnes, “Who’s that Sam Slick that’s leading tonight?” Agnes went pink. Tom had his hair slicked, in a smooth curved line on his forehead. There he sat, his riding-whip straight up and down in his hands, and the red tassel hanging. Nobody held a whip so debonair.

Pretty soon he was coming to our house. His horses had fly-nets in summer; his sleigh rang with bells in winter. He was a swell, and a rich farmer.

He courted the whole family! He gave me a little lantern he used to carry in his pocket. He gave Mother a Meerschaum pipe. It must be remembered, ladies smoked then, as now. The pipe won him our Agnes, perhaps.

She was like Mother, dark-haired, soft-voiced, quiet, a perfect foil to his handsome, stylish figure. And now a “Wedding” was being planned for them! This time, I was to be allowed among the guests, for sure.

Their wedding was in our home. The old preacher was there. Agnes wore a white dress all lace and ruffles, and a long veil. How lovely and mysteriously happy she looked! “She looks like you did at your wedding, Martha Jane,” the older people said to Mother. How strange to think of our mother as – part of a “Wedding,” too!

p. 83 I watched Mother and Drusie cry, just as Cassie had said they did in that “wedding” I had to miss. I saw the guests “put the newlyweds to bed,” and was then, however, sent to bed myself.

Next day, when the Infair was held, I was in that and I raised my share of the joyous racket made. I ate cake; but I took no beer!

There was to be only complete happiness for my elder sister, Agnes, in all her marriage. She was to have twelve children and a full, rich life, on her husband’s broad, abundant farm.(ed note: several farms, beginning in Illinois, thence to Nebraska, back to Illinois, Adams Co., etc.)

 

III

 

Our parents were poor and it was necessary to help earn a living. I was urged by my teachers to prepare to be a teacher myself. I had had eight grades of schooling. That was the highest attainable where we were, and I had gone so far only because I loved to “learn”. (ed note: she was still only 14 at most when she completed 8 grades and a few years later took the teaching test)

Could I really pass the examination for a teacher’s certificate, though? I told myself, “What’s there to be afraid of?” But even so, I was not too sure. All those brilliant men making up questions to ask!

I set to work grimly, to study.

The great day came. It did seem I knew an answer to each query. But who could tell if the answers were right?

It would be hard to describe how long were the days that passed. And then, finally, there did come an envelope with the letter head of the county superintendent. Suppose it said I had failed? I tore the letter

 

p. 84                         open. There was the certificate. With it was a little note from the superintendent, telling me I had done well, and to come to see her. She would see “what could be done about finding” me a school.

I ran to Mother, and tried to tell her. But I was too excited to talk coherently. I had to run to my chum. She was teaching, but she was delighted to hear my news.

I was seventeen, and I had a certificate. I could teach. But now arose a great question. Could I get a school? There was no immediate opening in our district.

My brother-in-law, Tom Fuller, took his bob-sled that very morning, and announced that he and I were going to sled right to the country. He declared, “Maggie, you’re going to apply in another district for a school. That’s all.”

We stopped before a building just outside a town. “Go in, Maggie. Talk to the school head in here!” he ordered.

Well, I did go in to see a man inside. He was in an office, behind a desk. He looked pretty formidable to me! He asked questions – my age, my experience. I frankly admitted my age, and my lack of experience.

He told me, “We’re a very trying school. Some of the older boys came to class only in winter. And they might well be too tough for a young girl to manage.” But he added, “If we hire you, we will stand back of you.”

That waked my first doubt. Did they know I had never taught? Would it be any use to see the other two directors? With only half my mind, I was hearing this man suggest I do so.

p.85 But, outdoors, Tom Fuller would not even let me tell him my misgivings. He declared, “You didn’t boost your stock enough.”

I felt I had not much stock to boost! I realized all at once I was armed with nothing but a piece of paper! I did have my precious “certificate”; but I had never taught. Why, I was only seventeen!

All Aggie’s husband would answer was, “We are going to hear what that second school director has got to say!” Again, we started on the bob-sled. It was snowing; but I hardly saw the snow falling. We were stopping, I realized, before a snug house. We had to run through driving snow now. We stumbled into a parlor, where before a lighted fireplace there sat a rosy old gentleman. It was too cold, that winter day, to do anything but keep up the fires and do the chores. The whole family, apparently, was ready to sit down to their mid-day meal.

The kindly mother appeared; she insisted, we could all talk together when we had had dinner. It was so good!

By the time we were through eating, we all knew we had become friends. I told the old gentleman my story. “I think you can manage our school,” he said. “Suppose you go to see the third director.”

Well, Tom started off on his sled again. With this man though I had a shock. He did not let me wonder if I were too young. He said so himself. But he added, he would “call a meeting” with the “other two men,” and “let me know.”

These tactics were not new to me. Father was a school director. I had seen him reply this way, promising

p.86              to see “what the other directors thought.” I felt doleful.

But outdoors Tom sledded me right back to the first director, and then to the second, to tell them I “would be glad to await results.”

It took only two days before a letter did come. But it said, I had been chosen unanimously. Was I overjoyed? I met with the whole board, and they gave me a lot of good advice. They still were not sure I could “handle the school,” but I had it, anyway.

School was to start in two weeks. They were busy ones for me. My clothes did not bother me, for in those days a girl had one good dress, and some everyday dresses; and that was the wardrobe of most of us. But I had to find a place to live. My school was ten miles from our home.

Father started out to look with me, because he was very anxious “to have a good Christian home” for his young daughter. We made call after call. Finally, we found a place in a home where there were two young folks about my age. The family was so pleased at the prospect of the teacher staying with them, that they gave me room, board, and laundry for two dollars a week. If it rained they would take me to school, and also come for me at night if it had not cleared up.

There came my first night in the new boarding house. I did not know the folks in the house. I did not know what was to happen the first day of school, tomorrow. I only knew the directors had warned me about the boys.

But I did not know then (as I did in after years) that a young and good-looking girl need have no fear as to handling the boys. I was not pretty. That is

p.87                                                  one thing I have always felt God denied me. I never had “classic loveliness.” But I made up in fun what I lacked in beauty! Would I be able to manage the boys in my school, as I had managed other boys? I could not sleep that night. Suppose, when I rang the bell, my pupils would not take their seats? I pictured everything that might happen to humiliate a “new teacher.” What dress should I wear? I had one light-blue one trimmed in gold braid that I thought very lovely. I got up at three o’clock in the morning, put it on, and looked at myself. Then I just had to try on my other, which was red and trimmed with red satin. I thought the boys might like the red one best. So I laid that out to put on.

I did not even attempt to sleep, any more, that night.

In the morning, I rose at the first call for breakfast. I was not hungry, though the breakfast was good. My new landlady put up a dainty lunch for me, in a pretty basket I had purchased for that purpose. You may be sure, I started out on time for school!

And now I faced my pupils.

And I realized, they were shy with me! I felt like a frightened bird myself. But I knew I did not show it as much as the children did. I rang the bell. They took their seats, to my surprise.

When the roll was called, there were thirteen, every one a nice, quiet child. The trouble I had been promised never came; we never had a misunderstanding.

There had been nothing, as Father had always taught us, nothing “to be afraid of.” To this day, when I return to Illinois, they are my friends, glad to greet me. There was one little boy then, who began at once to meet me in the morning, and “walk to school” with me.

p.88  His name was Oscar Sloan. He was dear, slow in speech, and with very black eyes. When lately I attended a farmer’s Institute, “back home,” and met hundreds of folks whom I had first met in my schoolrooms, one man came to me, and said, “I have been hunting for you all day, I heard you were here. I went to school to you, in your very first class, fifty-five years ago.” He was that little boy, who began to meet me every morning, to “walk with Teacher to school.” Now he had several children, and was a proud grandfather. But his wife Minnie had gone to school to me, also, in her first year. I could recall her perfectly, a fat little Dutch girl, very blonde and very pretty. Then he brought her over. Minnie was still a “doll,” with light curly hair, blue eyes, and just as sweet now as she used to be in my classroom, only there was so much more of her to be sweet.

Talking with that man and woman, I could see the early days of my teaching. Her parents and his were gone. When he, as small boy, walked to school with the ardent young teacher who had such visions about her work, his old mother would always come out, give me some warm cookies, sometimes a big red apple. She never failed to encourage me and tell me how well I was doing. Often I must have seemed to her only a little girl, needing praise and encouragement.

But I had the faculty of finding fun in my work from the start. Minnie, then a roly-poly, would bob behind her oldest sister into the school. I’d ask, “How much do you weigh, Minnie?” One morning she flew in just as the bell rang, to announce, “I know how much I weigh. Christine weighed me – on the steel-yard scales! I weigh twenty-five pounds on one end, and twenty

p.89                          pounds on the other…so how much do I weigh, Teacher?” I felt so sure of my authority by then that I could laugh with the class. I tried to do as Mother used to, to be understanding and a friend with my pupils. I tried to make them love the studies I loved. But I tried also to keep discipline, yet not to bear down on them, my children. I tried hard not to be like the listless incompetent teachers I had sometimes had, from whom I got nothing.

How strange it is now to remember, that I who felt so mature then, was really not yet eighteen years. In a short time, I had lost my uncertainty. I knew I could teach, and so did my pupils. I knew I loved my work, and I knew also they enjoyed having me do it.

I had started on the career to which I had been encouraged by my wise old teacher, John Haller, himself one of the rural schoolmasters who have made unwritten but splendid history in American education. Even as a child, I’d recognized the beacon light of his idealism, though he always smiled, when he saw me, and observed, “You were a mischievous pupil…not a good pupil…only a very bright one.” From him, I know, I learned patience and kindliness and generous understanding to the hundreds and hundreds of children I was to teach in my own years ahead. John Haller is nearly 99 years old now. (ed note: John Haller died in August of 1944 in Peoria)

 

IV.

 

It was not all teaching school, either. One evening it rained before “time to dismiss.” I sat after school, waiting for Charlie to take me to my lodging. Later,

p.90                                                        I found he had gone away, and no one else from his house could come. I owned only one pair of shoes, I knew, they would be ruined if I got them wet. So I took them off, and waded through the wet grass, walking all the way to my lodging house.

(ed. note: The family she boarded with might be the Opie’s. They had a son and daughter with them, Charles and Alice, slightly older that Maggie. Another Opie family very near by had a teenaged girl named Ella. Perhaps Maggie slightly confused names here? All this is in Trivoli Twp., about 10 miles from Maggie’s parents in Timber Twp. Minnie, mentioned above, may have been Minnie Harvey?)

There was fun those days, as well as work. Sometimes we young folks, Charlie and his sister Ella and I, would go to the hay field to eat our supper and to get a “jag” of hay for the horses. I, too, of course, would help, because I could load or make a “haycock” as well as any man. On a certain after-supper trip, Ella was driving. Charlie stood on the rack, without even holding on. Away we went, over the rough field. We hit a great bump, Charlie lost his balance, and off he fell from the wagon. Luckily, he wasn’t killed. It seemed fun – the thrill, the excitement. When we got to the hayfield, he and I began to load the hay, Ella putting it on the rack. I grew and grew, until it became so high we could not climb on top. We had to ride the horses back to the barn.

Our team consisted of a mule, and a big draft-horse. Charlie decided to ride the mule. We got on, starting for the barn.

What a wild ride that was! Even that day back home I rode the colt when the Cowser kids came, wasn’t any wilder. Ella drove as if driving to a fire. The mule stumbled; it fell to its knees. Charlie fell clear off it. That did stop us, though. I was not unhorsed, as they say.

We went gallantly on though, right to the barn. When Charlie’s father saw us riding, and Ella driving, did he give us good advice! He never did know what

p.91                                                        happened, though we did not hurt the animals, of course.

“Teaching school” was fun and “being young” was fun also.

A young man named George Scott had begun to call on me rather regularly.

 

V.

 

There were three things I had wanted since childhood. One was a gold watch and chain, another was an organ, the third was a school where I would be the teacher. I was to have all three wishes, as if gratified by some fairy godmother. However, in that practical environment which surrounded all of us, it was up to each of us to see that any fairy godmother was well helped by ourselves.

I had my school – first Wish. I received thirty dollars a month salary. Somehow I got together the great sum of thirty dollars (no inconsiderable amount sixty years ago), to be spent only on a gold watch. There was Wish Two. It was a beauty, as large as a brooch, and hung on a heavy golden chain which had a stylish slide (set with three pearls) which I could move up and down. The watch reposed in a snug pocket, added to the top of my skirt under the belt. How proud I was to take that timepiece out, again and again, as I stood before my baker’s dozen of children in the school! Be it said, Father made himself banker to the “fairy godmother,” giving me part of the price of my cherished timepiece.

The organ arrived finally too – Wish three. It was brought to our farm, all the way from Peoria.

p.92

Every child I knew had always taken piano-lessons. It used to seem so to me when I was youngster anyhow. The old music-teacher apparently hitched his buggy at every hitching-post in the country; whenever one saw that buggy one knew there was an unfortunate urchin or little girl unwillingly “fingering scales” indoors. But I had a real love for music. My organ became like a friend. Some of my happiest hours and memories were to be twined about that beloved instrument.

Nevertheless, no sooner had I my three wishes, than like any girl in a story, I wanted another, added. This one seemed beyond me, however. I wanted to go to college, to have a college education.

All my life I was to cherish that wish. I was never to realize it fully. But, because my parents, despite their poverty, had a real reverence for learning as well as a real understanding of their children’s hearts, all the money which I was earning and which I did not spend on my own needs, they put aside. When I was eighteen, I was told I could go to the Normal School, if that were my desire, and could stay there as long as my money held out.

In 1883, therefore, I entered the Normal Training School at Bushnell, Illinois. The principal, Dr. Lyons, was a man of high culture, and a fine executive. All of us young students honored him. There were many teachers of great character. One I remember was then still a young man only a few years my own senior, and always what we yhoung people used to call, “very dressy.” Even he, for all his youth, and slight dandyism, was a firm executive in class.

There was a short prayer service, in which this young

p.93                                            teacher often was leader. He showed himself to have a true gift with young folks. I was to recall in all my teaching later how he instructed us in his subject, geography. A rubber ball, with a knitting-needle, showed how the world revolved, and to explain about the meridian, the longitudinal lines, he used numerous “home-made” devices.

Our arithmetic teacher did not impress me. Perhaps it was because I was not as interested then as I was to become later in mathematics. But I think when a student is not interested in a subject there is something lacking in the teacher. This second man had not the skill which the other one possessed.

We students lived in separate dormitories, for girls and boys. When the girl’s was filled, one new dormitory was opened to house boys and girls both, with a faculty member chaperoning. I was put in that building. My roommate was a girl from western Illinois. Since I came from central Illinois, we had much the same background and had not trouble understanding each other instantly. I believe we were a good influence upon each other. Youth is pliable for good or evil. At this place we heard and were taught only the good.

In reading stories of college, one feels writers think good youngsters must be prim, colorless creatures. I haven’t found it so, as teacher or student. Fun has little to do with what one does; it comes from the way one thinks. We had fun in that little college, and it had no touch of evil.

One night, our stovepipe bent in, as we leaned against it, chatting, before going to bed. If it were not straightened a little, it would fall before morning.

p.94 Fanny Mae and I had to go get a long-handled shovel, and push it gently. It wavered, a little.

Down it came, full-length, and that was the full length of the room!

Fire spurted, from the little Cannon stove, licking our wall. The room was filled with smoke. We saw we would have a real fire, if we did not put this out. I was the one who was dressed; it was for me to get help, while Fanny hurried to get her dress on.

I raced down the hall, and started pounding on the first door, a room occupied by two boys. They would know we were in need of great help hearing me!

I gasped out our plight. The door opened. They said, “We’ll come at once.”

I dashed back; but they did not arrive. The stove had made the room black with smoke, by now. The wall was catching fire. I tore back to the boy’s dor again and begged “Won’t you come?” Then I got the explanation: “As soon as we can get our pants put on!”

The boys did come. One grabbed the red-hot pipe. He was badly burned; but the two of them did get the pipe back into place. Everytime those boys were to see me thereafter, though, they’d query, “Won’t you come?” That was the sort of teasing boys and girls gave each other then. There was a reverence, a respect, between the sexes, though.

I enjoyed the never-to-be-forgotten experience of living at college. Many whom I came to know there have remained my friends even now. Fifty-five years later, at a great farewell gathering of friends meeting in a church to bid goodbye to the congregation’s old minister, I discovered that, although I thought I did not know him, I really had memories to share with him. When they called his name, it was “Reverend A. M. Stocking.” That was my first teacher at Normal School! I sent up a note, right to the platform, asking him if he “had not taught geography at Western Normal College.” Later, how proud I was, even though I was in my seventies, to have him say he recalled me as “one of his best students,” long ago. I felt, curiously, as if it were my personal pride, to hear he planned to finish his years in writing; later he sent me his book, “The History of the Black Hawk War and the Indian Chief”, written entirely in poetry.

From this one teacher I received a whole philosophy of teaching. When I left college he gave me many of his gadgets to help me teach geography to my own students. I obtained a school again that fall, and it was not an easy one, this time. There were many difficult, big fellows in it. But I had learned how to be a teacher now. I knew that I understood how to approach even the “tough pupils” and to teach them.

One of my almost grown boys insisted he would not study grammar. I did not urge him. I only asked him to “try it for six months.” After that, he could drop it, if he chose. You may be sure, I tried to make it as interesting to him as grammar could be made. How fine it was when he said he’d continue in that class. I came out with an ideal as educator, from all my normal school classes, even those in which our teaching had not been really good. From the inadequate teachers, I learned what not to do. From the good teachers, I learned how to follow my profession. I knew that on me rested a double burden every time I entered the class room. I must first make my pupils want to learn; then I must set to work seeing that they did learn.

 

p.96

VI.

Drusie was the beauty of our family, Mother always said. I was the quickest, but I had not Drusie’s beautiful looks. It did not occur to me to envy my sister’s loveliness. It was hers – as trees in spring are lovely with blossoms, or gardens in summer are with flowers.

Drusie had glorious red hair, a milk-white skin. She had a temper to match! Some who knew her since babyhood recalled how, one day, she was punished. Mother had her bring water uphill in little pailsful, to the cucumber patch. It needed water anyhow, be it said. To make it a punishment though, Drusie had to do it right then. All the way uphill, she howled. Reaching the cucumber patch, she poured out her little pail, and howled. A neighbor heard her and stopped to ask: “You’re furious, aren’t you?” Drusie gave one great cry of rage and yelled, “I are! I are!” She was all of five, then.

Yet lovely, fiery Drusie married quiet John Walter McAlister. He was as serene as she was tempestuous. And theirs was to be a very perfect marriage, as fully so as was that of Agnes and Tom. It was at their place, in the new handsome farm house Walt built for her, that my own beau George Scott often called on me.

In my nineteenth year – after teaching two years – I became engaged to George. The same year I married him.

 

p.97

 

PART FIVE

 

I.

 

 

We did not, however, want to go to live on a farm near-by, as had my sisters. We wanted to start together, pioneering, as had my own parents after their marriage.

The West was calling to us young American married people at that time. My husband and I heard that call as if it were a great ringing bell. It summoned us constantly. At last we both knew we must answer it. It would be more than a new experience. It would be taking part in opening a new part of our land.

It would not be, therefore, simply making a future for our two young selves, but for America, too. There was adventure and patriotism in young hearts then. We decided we would begin this new life of ours in the great State of Kansas, and in Scott County. (It was only a coincidence that we had this same name.)

We started out for the West, to western Kansas.

Riding toward the piece of land which we were to stake as our own, I saw suddenly a most beautiful broad lake. I cried out, “George!”

My young husband, his eyes shining, exclaimed, “We will be able to raise ducks here!”

We rode ahead, toward that lake, shining always before us.

It seemed to be farther away than we had first

p.98                                      realized. Then, we understood. It was a mirage. There was no lake. There was only an illusion, created perhaps by the glow of sunlight on the plains.

At that time though, in the wonder of our youth and our hope and our certainty of success, even an illusion was delight to cherish. There would be enough radiant reality for us, we knew!

We rode on, and there appeared – was it not a city, shining there in the very clouds above?

I was only twenty. I was almost numb with the vision my eyes beheld. Was it just another thing we imagined – something which did not exist in fact?

I turned to George. He too was beholding, I realized, the very sight that dazzled me. I remembered a hymn we sang in our little church, The City Four Square – the city of Paradise.

George managed to say, “I see it, too, Maggie.”

Only later did we learn that we had indeed looked upon something which truly existed. It was not merely our imagination playing with our eyes. There was a real city, Garden City, lying forty miles from where we were to live, which we were beholding. It was reflected in the clouds of the sky, as westward we rode, that day.

I have often thought that two young people, going forth into their married years together, do go toward a city shining in the skies above them – that the hard times and sorrow and sacrifices, which all of us must accept, are made bearable and even sweet, by the vision of the City in the Skies young eyes behold.

 

II.

 

But we were near the place for our home now. We

p.99                                      were not the first to arrive here. We had not as hard a time as the earliest arrivals. Scott’s City (not named, of course, after us, but from the county, which was named for Gen. Zachary Scott) was a thriving community. Already three hundred families were here. About the city was the prettiest farming land in all the United States, undulating country, velvety with very short buffalo grass.

We decided on our one-hundred-sixty acres, called “a quarter-section.” What dreams we had! Here was to be our house; there would be our barn; there would stand the chicken houses. Everything would be brand-new, like this new life, in which we were starting. It was even lovely that this place was ten miles from the city.

But, meanwhile, we had to live in the “now.” There were two things to do – build a shelter and get water.

Water could only be obtained fifteen miles away, and hauled from there in kegs. That meant all water – used for washing, bathing, scrubbing, cooking, drinking.

We got it only three times a week. Then we finally tried digging a well. It was a job! Surely there had not been water taken from the earth since man was created. It was virgin country. This was the “Great American Desert.” It was rightly called by that name.

We began to dig. We chose the location for our well near that place which would some day be our orchard – when we had our dream-home realized . Digging was done by hand. No convenient electrical augur, then! The men had to use arms, backs, and spades.

We got eighty-two feet into the bowls of the earth, before we did find water. Then we had only enough to get little pailfuls. I should be added, no drink was

p.100                                                       sweeter than the water from that well. It was ice-cold.

Meanwhile we had also started building our “temporary home,” as we fondly called it. Naturally, it was a dug-out. The men dug into the ground to a depth of three feet. That made the floor of a room which was to be sixteen by eighteen feet. The earth-level outdoors was at the base of our windows, or rather, window. There was only half of one, for that matter. The foundation house was made of boards. It stood above ground only five feet. The men hauled wagonloads of sod to it. The sod was put, layer by layer, against the foundation, to the very roof. Now the place was part of the landscape; only the window and door distinguished it from the setting of natural growing things about. The door was three steps down from ground-level, so that the hurricanes which swept Kansas, and destroyed all standing above earth, would not sweep away our little shelter and haven.

I had to admit, our house was not beautiful. To the eye of anyone approaching, the sod, the tiny window, the fraction of a door showing, seemed hardly to indicate a house at all, but merely a great mound thrown into the natural formation of the country. It looked like a cave which happened to be there. It was not a decorative thing in the landscape. It was not like the “home” Father had been able to build. To George and me, though, it was a cozy place, of hope beginning. In ugly, intimate coziness, it symbolized “home” for us two very young pioneers, alone on that great open desert. It was haven, a shelter from all danger.

 

III.

 

Do not think there lacked danger! One night, as

p. 101                                    we lay asleep, there was a great sound of roaring and pounding. My husband looked out through the tiny window. There, outside our home, were literally thousands of cattle, with great horns and clumsy threatening bodies. They were butting against the walls of our tiny house, lunging against the door. My young husband raced for his revolver. He shot into the air. They didn’t pay any particular attention to the feeble shots. I seemed that our fragile shell of lumber and mud and grass must surely be stamped into the earth. But all of a sudden, the immense herd turned away. The stampede stopped. By a miracle, it seemed, our lives were saved.

There was danger when one went into the town, also. It was new country. Gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, adventurers, were part of the daily scene. On certain nights, the saloons and houses of evil seemed to spawn forth their inhabitants into the streets – especially Saturday nights, when the cowboys came from all the ranches with their money to spend.

They arrived on ponies and would go right into a store or saloon on horseback. If they had a grievance, they “shot it out.” I remember being in town, once, and seeing a great mass of men, all on their horses, go straight into a saloon, shooting as they went, looking for some woman whom, one of them said, they “had reason to kill.” Luckily, she was hiding under the bar, and escaped that time with her life.

The cowboys, young like ourselves, seemed to love the danger of the times. One of the things they liked doing was to ride along the dry bed of what seemed, in summer, only a river which had disappeared. They would go along on their ponies, mile after mile.

p.102 Suddenly, there’d be a great opening, in the very earth; within could be heard a tremendous roaring. Inside, there was a river, hidden and secret, which the Indians had named long ago in their poetic language “The White Woman.” A cowboy would go, on his pony, right into the dark bowels of the earth, toward that sound of the river, tearing, secret and dangerous, inside there. It was a hazardous thing to do.

The river reminded me of something very lovely. When spring came, the banks overflowed; “The White Woman” came flowing from her secret cave, out to the sun. She overflowed the banks of the whole dry riverbed; she took possession, with her foaming waters, of the whole length of her course. I would remember then, the Elk River of my own little girlhood, and how, in springtime, it, too, became flooded with water. It, too, then ran foaming and white. I would remember the rafts poled down, the canoes following, the parties later and our pretty warm house.

There was no snug house here, such as we’d had. Our mud-shack was set so low that snakes could crawl right in. One day, as we were finishing supper, I looked under a little board put up for the wash-basin by the kitchen stove. There was curled a little rattlesnake! (another time) When starting across a field, I suddenly heard a whiz, and rattle. George and I stopped dead in our tracks; we shouted until our friends heard us, and raced down with lanterns, rake hoe, and a pistol. We two dared not move. Snakes which are deaf, cannot hear a shout. But they strike if one moves. A great rattle-snake lay, curled and ready for a strike. Our friends shot and killed the creature.

Thrills? Living in daily danger? They were part

p.103                                     of commonplace experience to us, soon. Here I should explain that the walk we took was from the “dug-out” of friends, at twilight, after a simple game of croquet. But you took your life in your hands, every hour, every moment, in the simplest activity, in that primitive western Kansas of 1886.

Some of our tasks then might seem to primitive to fastidious ladies. There were, for example, the excursions we took to gather cowchips. These were what French people call cow-dung, and Irish peasants call peat. They were droppings of beasts, gathered and used for fuel. Here were ancient pastures, used by Indians of centuries ago, andlater by more modern tribes, and now by our cows. The stuff was as dry as dried moss and utterly clean. Dozens of years of rain, of sun, had cleansed all. We would collect it in wagons, to burn it. It gave off a curious acrid fragrance, odd and not at all unpleasant, when burned.

 

IV.

 

We had only two neighbors. They were farm boys. Each lived in his own dug-out. Yet they shared the same home, built most ingeniously.

Each of them had staked his own claim. Each by law had “to live six months on the land he had staked out.” They decided to set up a shelter at the very edge of their two claims. Each would live on his side of the line dividing their separate claims. They would live in the same house, though. They could do that by putting a “dug-out” on the dividing line; one boy would live in the corner of the “dug-out” which was his land; and the second boy would live on the side where his own land was.

 

p.104

It was perfectly legal and very convenient. It certainly solved the great problem of loneliness. Those boys enjoyed the rough adventure. Sometimes they were like children. Now and then, they had an amusing experience, at my expense. I had been informed that for snake-bite there was “only one sure cure,” whiskey. We therefore had a bottle, for an emergency. One day our younger neighbor appeared, in terror. He had been bitten! He showed me a bloody “arm-bite.” I raced for the whiskey bottle; tremblingly I handed it to him. He tottered away with it. But, shortly thereafter, the “life saver” was returned to me. It was still quite full. The “bite” had been a scratch on his skin. He had amused himself by the “tenderfoot bride’s” terror.

But I had occasion to be amused shortly. The two boys wanted to do some ploughing. They had never driven oxen in their home-farms. That was all they could get here. They borrowed a pair from an old fellow. The old man started them off, and they began to job blithely. Was it fun for me to watch them, now? Even the oxen seemed to know that they did not understand the first thing about handling their kind of animal. Helplessly, the young men came, presently, to the corner of land touching our property. I watched them! They had to turn around. One of those boys got in front of the oxen, and the other drove. They’d both yell “Gee!” and then “Haw!” Of course it didn’t work. The oxen didn’t understand a word.

They began to use other words, which only the devil could appreciate! I stood by, having a good time, and didn’t raise a hand. By the time they had that corner

p.105 turned, those boys had both oxen even out of the furrow. This went on, two days. Finally, the wind grew so strong, they had to take the oxen back home again. That time, I laughed, long days following!

But there was no meanness in any laughter. We all knew how hard it was for every other one. We knew that just to be here took sacrifice, and pluck. We knew in short enough time that the dreams we had brought must be shaded down to a sober reality. There was a school-teacher who worked ten hours daily in Scott City at a hotel. When she was through at her job she would take a revolver, walk ten miles to her staked claim, and sleep in her “dug-out,” as required by law. At half-past four in the morning, she would be starting her walk back to her job again. And she did this for six months.

We all wanted the home which we had come to find here. George and alike soon gave up the rosy pictures we had brought. We knew it would be enough to find safety and security. But in the end, George and knew we could not make “a home” here. We’d “proved our claim.” It was beautiful, undulating, country. Yet – without water, we could not, really, make a home. This was not farming-country, we realized. We were to keep the land for some time, but in the end, years later, we sold it for less than we had put into it.

We had, notwithstanding, the memory, the experience, of our stay and our claim. We had learned a whole new part of our land. We had helped in making that new part. We decided to set out anew. This time, we went to Greeley County. It was in the

p.106                                                       most western part of Kansas, just before one got to Colorado. We got there – in time – four hundred miles from our previous place. We had gone fifty miles north, to reach a railroad; there, we had boarded a train on the Union Pacific. (ed note: this is very confusing. Greeley Co., KS is just west of Scott Co., KS, about 40 miles, not 400 miles from their previous homestead…one must admit that Aunt Maggie’s memory is faulty on this point, or they went somewhere else in the interim, a place that was 400 miles from Greeley Co. I think faulty memory, almost 60 years after the fact, is to blame. I don’t think there is any problem with her memory of actual experiences while in Greeley, KS)

 

We filed a claim for a homestead. Here, we learned, we would have to remain 5 years before our claim was acknowledged.

George opened an office in the city of Tribune, and helped place people on raw government-land. Presently his brother was to come, to assist him. (which of 6 brothers, I do not know) Housekeeping was set up, a second time, in a “dug-out” much like our first one. But this time we could get our water from a nearer source, for a neighbor lived right across the road. Marvelous luxury to have water so near!

The neighbor had an almost palatial dug-out; it boasted two rooms, held an organ, had water nearby, and was large enough to permit a Sunday-class to gather, weekly. The people owning this castle moved to an even finer place, a true house, further away on their homestead. We were asked if we wished to occupy the “dug-out.” You may be sure we accepted most promptly. Two rooms!

I was expecting a baby.

In November, in the middle of the worst blizzard known in the state, a son was born to us. We called him Harry. I had only my neighbor-woman with me when he came. There was no hot water, very little heat. But I had youth and pride and happiness of motherhood to sustain me. He was the only baby for miles and miles about. My little child and I passed through the first weeks and those following, in that bitter cold, without mishap. But, with a baby, we could not remain here permanently. We admitted that we had to leave. We would return to the land from which we started, to Illinois. We had property in the West. We had both the Scott County and Greeley County land. We had also taken over a timber claim, of a hundred and sixty acres. We had to leave the Greeley County homestead before the required five years of residence were over, but, by paying a premium price on the land, we were able to keep it still. We had a large farm back yonder in Illinois. We wanted that way of life, my husband and I. We got ready to leave for Illinois.

One snowy day, in deepest winter, with baby only six weeks old, we set forth. We had been in the West over two years. But we had helped a little, even if we were unable to build our beautiful home of dreams….

We started back to our folks, in what was now to us the “East,” and we came back successful. We had done much more than two youngsters, without capital, without pull, with only the work of their hands to assist them, could have done in twenty-four months in the East.

 

p.108

PART SIX

I.

 

We had land in the West, to be sure; but we had no cash. We planned to let our land acquire increased value, as dividends for the work we had invested. We were to have small returns because of lack of rain there for farming; we were to lose money; but that we did not know when we reached “home” once more, in Illinois

To start rightly, to give our little son, in due time, an education and the opportunities we wanted for him, it was necessary to establish a good home and to find a way to earn some money. I decided it was best to go to work. I had been acknowledged a good teacher before my marriage, had I not? I must seek a school to teach. My husband also would teach.

But we both felt deeply about one thing. Though we had to teach to earn money, we must farm, too. Our little son must not be deprived of life on a farm. We rented a fine place. My young niece, “Aggie’s daughter,” came with us. (ed note: Edna Lovina Fuller was the oldest girl in Sarah Agnes McAvoy Fuller’s family, about 10 at this time, and the most likely to have been the girl mentioned as Harry’s nanny)

I have often been asked a question, much discussed, from my early motherhood, until my children were themselves grown up. It continues a debated topic even now, more than half a century later. That topic is: How can a woman combine a career, wifehood, and motherhood? I answered it, in my life. I can truthfully say, I answered it the hard way….

p.109

Every morning I rose at five o’clock. I nursed my fifteen-month-old baby, then I helped prepare breakfast. I helped “clear up,” and often did some of the baby-clothes. I was the farm-helper, and, together with Mr. Scott, discussed the day’s program on our farm. Then I got in to my school in my rig, while husband got into his. I went to my school, and he to his, which was in the other direction.

I taught from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon. Then I swept the schoolhouse, sometimes marked papers, and drove home.

There, I nursed my son again. I tended to his things. I helped prepare supper, and then to “clean-up.” I sewed, I mended; I milked the cows. I took care of the chickens I was raising. I looked at our stock, horses, cow and pigs.

My young husband was not as well as we both dearly hoped he would be again, some day. He was able to manage the farm, he could do the comparatively easy work of teaching, but he was not able to undertake heavy tasks.

In our life, the plan we followed was fine. I do not think my little son was in any way deprived of any happiness by our regime. His playtime, his feeding time, were all arranged to permit his seeing his parents as much as any normal, wholesome baby would.

I know that children today have their milk sterilized and put up by complicated formulae, and that we then had no concept of such routines. Little Harry had his milk, when I was not there to give him his nursing, from a clean spoon. It was warm, absolutely fresh cow’s milk, right from the cow herself. He was a rosy, happy, dimpled, and perfectly contented little

p.110                   child. He was for me all the reward that I needed for all that I did.

 

II.

I had been twenty-two when we returned from the West and started teaching again. I was to teach for twenty years thereafter. I began, that Spring, in a “summer term,” which lasted three months. It proved wonderfully easy. I had not forgotten how to teach.

My husband had got a school at Glasford. It was a hard one. He became its principal. To this day, people remember him as one of the great heads of the institution. I was a teacher, my friends said – “a born teacher.” George was a born administrator, in education.”

To me, everything connected with teaching was genuinely thrilling. I started, at once, to attend the County Institutes, held four weeks each summer – to “brush up my mind,” to learn all the new techniques. The discussions, lectures, question-periods, were things to look forward to, I knew. I believe my enthusiasm for my profession infected my whole class. There came to be hardly a graduation which did not find one or two of my pupils announcing they were “going to teach, like Mrs. Scott.” (Then, of course, eight grades was all one needed to qualify to take the teaching certificate test)

I counted, one summer, twenty-three former pupils of mine, in attendance at one County Institute. The State required attendance at these sessions to re-furbish the minds, to enlarge the outlook, of rural and urban teachers. I certainly need no law to require me to go.

 

p.111

Harry has always been to me as much like a younger brother in comradeship as my son. I used to arrange a little bed for him on a bench, after school, while I did my tasks. Later, he helped drive my buggy from and to the farm. My companionship and oversight of him was part of my reward for work.

When Harry was ten years old, our second son was born. I stopped teaching, but only for a time.

It is rather quaint how the older boy was given his name, ‘Harry’. My husband had an exquisite Spencerian script, which looked as fine as a work of art. Even before his first son came, the young prospective father devotedly tried one combination of letters after another, in his admirable script, to see which initials would be most beautiful for the offspring that was expected. Finally, it did seem that “H. P. S.” looked most royal together. Now what names would fit those letters? Again, George tried combination after combination. He decided at last on the perfect group – Harry Phillip Scott.

My husband’s father had had a Biblical name, Shadrack. Would that suit our second son, we asked ourselves, when he came to us? For a modern little boy, born in the midst of the Philippine War, it did seem too absurdly old-fashioned. But a good name, which one would write down handsomely, and which could not be “nick-named” either, was Ralph. Wasn’t it? Ralph it should be, then.

 

III

When Ralph was nine months old, I went back to teaching again. My niece took care of both children. Was it harder with two? Not at all. In fact, Harry

p.112                                           now had a companion.

He helped me take care of his little brother from the beginning, and had heaps of fun with the new companion.

The months I had spent away from school, I had given to hard physical work. We were both in education, but we were by now also full-fledged farmers as well. I had been fun to spend the time away from school-classes on farm-tasks. I was glad, for all that, to go back! I knew I could do both tasks again, as I had heretofore. My school was the old Saylor School, where I myself had first been sent. It was delightful to be “Teacher” to children of children I’d gone to school with, years ago. I entered with renewed zest into my work.

I went to County Institutes. I participated, eagerly, in the programs there. It was as if I had been away in another land – the period out of school! Nobody, I knew, had greater pleasure – sheer pleasure, from the lectures and discussions. And it was not only to listen, that we came. We could bring our questions, problems, opinions. People seemed to like hearing me speak. It used to make my heart fill with appreciation when they told me they did. So many brilliant persons were there. So many illuminating things were brought to us assembled, by leaders in big classes, in big County-groups of schools.

It was an enlarged opportunity on a grand scale for what our small “monthly teachers’ meetings,” back home provided. I joined in discussions with my nearby colleagues, naturally, but here, in the imposing County Institute, I always felt a bit like saying, “Pardon me” when I rose, to say something or to ask something.

I felt people were almost too kind, when they listened

p. 113                                    -- as if I, plain Margaret Scott, telling about what happened in a small school of fifty children, had a subject of real interest. Yet they showed they did want me to speak. They seemed to believe, I could see, it was truly important to have understanding of the “small rural school,” its subjects, its needed techniques.

In 1914, I was asked to take part in the State Teachers’ program. I was to give a paper on “Reading.” How thrilled, how overwhelmed, I was! And they appeared to like what I said.

Many people came to speak to me, later. My superintendent was much pleased. She had for some time been urging me to take “first-grade” examinations. Without these, one could not qualify as principal. She insisted I ought to think of being a principal some time soon. “First” grade – top grade – teachers could become principals….

I could not admit to myself that I was “principal material.” Besides, how could I prepare, I who had so many burdens, so much heavy responsibility? From before dawn, until late every night? But the urging continued.

Once, my sister Agnes’ husband Tom had urged me onward to opportunity I had distrusted myself then, because I was a diffident little girl of only seventeen, without experience. On Tom Fuller’s insistence, and because of his faith in me, I had tried then; and I got a school. I had made good as teacher, too, had I not? Now again someone believed in me, urged me to believe in myself, and to go on, to the full measure of my abilities. “Try, anyhow, Mrs. Scott,” insisted my superintendent. Simply not to offend her, whom I admired and liked, I did agree to “try.”

 

p.114

One subject I would need would be philosophy. Another would be botany. A third would be zoology. I got the required philosophy text. Every morning, I arose a four-thirty. My husband had no least inkling that I was up. I’d steal downstairs, and by the light of a lamp I studied those pages.

Then came the day of examination. I took it. I could barely wait to hear the “mark!”

At last, the expected note came. It was much like the time I had waited for my first teacher’s certificate. I had passed, and “with a mark of 82.” You can imagine how I felt. Perhaps the most wonderful part of that passing was when I laid the slip with my “mark” beside my husband’s plate. It was the first time he even knew I was preparing.

 

IV.

 

In time, I got my first-grade work completed. I received a position as principal. I was to hold it four years.

My son Harry had been growing. He was seventeen. I very much wanted him to have the experience of teaching in a country school, as background for whatever career he would select. He got a small school in a little town with German working-people in the community. He was to be glad all through his later years of the knowledge he gain of people. And it pleased me, profoundly, I admit, that I had shown the ideal, the vision, of being a teacher, not only to hundreds of my pupils who now had schools of their own, but to a son of mine, too.

I went one spring to the State Teachers’ meeting.

p.115

It seemed to be a particularly vivid program. There were famous scientists, poets, educators, who addressed us. There was especial warmth in the discussion evoked by us, the teachers. I, who loved people with fine minds, with learning, felt joy in meeting the brilliant minds, in being allowed to question, to tell a little of my own unpretentious school. Yet, now I knew that from our rural schools were sent our thousands, who made the true America – who bespoke American ideals. We country teachers did have our fine responsibility. We were not asked to give genius, of course. But, we could well give vision. And those who loved the work, could feel a little glory – a tiny share of the glory – because we helped express or evoke that vision.

I think I tried to say something like this in one small talk. People, as usual, were most kind to me, later. The institute sessions ended. There were to follow only three more days – but devoted just to elections of officers for the following spring institute. I had no interest in the politics that must be part, I knew, of running the proceedings of any great body. In ours, there were hundreds of members.

I dropped in on “nominations” because a pleasant get-together would follow. To my complete astonishment, I was nominated – to be President of the State Institute.

I could hardly catch my breath. I could only stammer, when I was able to speak, that it was “impossible.” I had my school, my farm-work, my family. They pointed out that one son was seventeen, and a teacher himself. One was seven years old, and in school. There was also my husband to see to our farm.

 

p.116                              All I’d have to do was to preside at State Institute session next spring.

I continued to say “no.” Nevertheless, I was elected President!

They printed programs, with my name announced. But – I knew I would go on refusing. Spring meant work to be planned. Like the man given a job in the Army, I said, “I resigns before I begins”

I had been elected; I just resigned. It was the first and only time a woman was ever to be elected to that post. A man was proposed now, and he accepted. He had less responsibility, I knew, than a married woman, a teacher.

There were only buggies and trains to take us to that meeting – held in a remote part of Peoria County – and the trains often did not get there. It was a long journey back for me.

That was the only time - I know – that I found it hard “to be a married woman, mother, teacher.”

Even for the four years while I was principal of a school, I continued keeping house, supervising each detail, as usual.

 

V.

I enjoyed my home and its work, as I enjoyed my school and the responsibilities there. The community, in time, came to realize this. I recall the surprise when an incident revealed this aspect of the principal’s interest and knowledge. From my office window, I could see – morning, noon and night, one March – a certain woman of whom I had become very fond. She’d stand out in the cold March wind, stirring something in a big

p.117            iron kettle, which was suspended from a pole in her barnyard. The pole, in turn, was supported by two forked sticks, driven very securely into the ground. From my vantage, I could not decide what it was she was so carefully guarding. Apparently it required her entire attention, as she shivered there in the bitter cold, stirring and stirring. It seemed to be taking one day, two, a third.

As I left school, late one afternoon, I saw the gate to her barn lot was ajar, and stepped in, to ask why she was out there alone, freezing in the cold.

She shivered, and said, “Mrs. Scott, I’ve been trying to make soap! But it won’t eat the grease at all! I’ve read the directions, I’ve weighed the ingredients, but I want to tell you right now, I’m just about ready to give it up as a bad job!”

I took the stirring stick from her hands. I gave the mess in the kettle a turn. Then, I knew what was the trouble. Had I not, from a tiny child, seen our Mother make lye, and then make her soap? I had enough experience in the art of soap-making to give a diagnosis this time.

“It’s too strong,” I told my neighbor.

She groaned, “Strong? That can’t be! It doesn’t eat the grease!”

“Would you let me try?” I asked.

She nodded, “It don’t matter. The whole thing’s spoiled, anyhow!”

I said, “Let me have a large bucket of rainwater.”

She looked blankly at me. Very doubtfully she sent her little son to fetch it. There was a resigned irony in her whole bearing.

I lifted the pail the child brought to me, I poured it,

p.118                                    all, into the mix and began to stir. I stirred until the liquid started to thicken. Then I said, “Could I have another bucket brought?” I went through my previous procedure.

I examined the mixture. It was getting thick.

“Will you get me a third bucket of water?” I asked.

The woman gasped. “Water? More water?” She thought her soap was surely and completely ruined, now. I still remember her look, as she told her boy “to bring more water for the schoolma’am.”

I emptied in that third pail, stirring all the time. Then I turned and said, “Your soap is going to be good, at least, part way to the bottom, if not all the way.”

Her thanks were more than half-hearted. But I went on home, confidently. I got into my rig, waved my little whip, reassuringly to her. She stood dolefully watching me.

Next morning, I stopped at her place. I was as interested to see her soap as she would be. There she was, in her barnyard, all wrapped in a man’s greatcoat. She was cutting her soap out of the kettle into bars, putting the blocks (they were about two by three by 5 inches) on the shelves, to dry.

You may imagine the pleasure it gave me, to see the soap – white, and as pretty as you could wish. It was coming, firm and solid, from the very bottom of her kettle.

It was nice to hear my praises sung by her! The praises though were mingled with some awe. Obviously, it had not been thought remotely possible that “the principal of a school” would “know how to make soap.”

That became a sort of little miracle of the time in the community. A very successful school-marm had

p.119            known how to make perfect soap, when a housewife had failedl!

They did not know that, in my own mind, being an educator and being a homemaker were two professions which I followed with equal love and dedication, and together.

Nevertheless, my teaching has always been an ideal of my life. To me, my little school was not just a place where I earned my part of our income. In it, I hope, I expressed through practical every-day tasks, part of the religion I believed. I tried to teach my children, not only books, but ways of life. I hope that this vision of our work was given to my staff also. The schoolhouse, as I saw it, was to supplement what the little church gave to my boys and girls, just as in my youth the church did to our old school then.

I still remember how I felt when, one evening, while I was teaching in a small “overflow school” in a factory rural community, there gathered men and women for a parents’ meeting, to discuss floating bonds to build a new schoolhouse. It was bitterly needed. There were children packed like sardines in the large school, and in mine. There was a new factory to build tractors; families had swarmed about, living in squatters’ cabins. A man, if he had twenty-five dollars, could buy himself a lot; and he could put on it any sort of shack or shelter he desired. It was a dreadful place for the children. That evening, about a hundred gathered in the “big” school; even it was only a one-room structure. There was not the least enthusiasm, I saw, when the meeting was opened, to take up floating a loan to put up a real schoolhouse. They were intent on plans for electric lighting, roads – better houses soon – and “fun now”

p.120

Suddenly, I found myself standing up. I hear my own voice speaking, as if my thoughts and heart spoke quite of themselves: “People, you have been saying you have faith in me, and believe in me, as teacher of your children. You know you can trust me when I speak. I think you know I would want to hurt none of you, when I speak. I want to say, the people who have lived around here built roads, have built factories. We know that many material advantages are being created, for you have come to build for progress, haven’t you? The tractors you help make, prove progress. And you’ve started good roads, and lighting the streets. But – can we give less to your little children than we are doing for the whole community? Can we have progress if we don’t provide a good school for our boys and girls first?”

I heard myself pleading with those men and women: “We must give your boys and girls the best that they can have. So they will be fitted for their work, when they are old as we, and it’s their world then, and we are gone. Is it really so expensive? I don’t think so. I don’t think spending money on a school an expense! It’s an investment for the life and soul of a child. You,” I said, to one man, “can’t you just smoke less for a few months? And you --,” I turned to another man, “can’t you just take a few drinks less? For, I know most of you can afford to invest in this Loan. If only you sacrifice a few of your pleasures – for your children! And it isn’t a sacrifice. It’s an investment!”

I sat down, wondering how angry those people would be with the school-marm.

You may imagine how I felt, when at the end of the meeting, the Loan for a new school building was oversubscribed.

p.121                  That schoolhouse still stands, in what is now a suburb of Peoria. I like to think of it as a sort of anonymous memorial! But I hope the teaching I gave to my many hundreds of boys and girls in my life make another sort of memorial, a more lasting one than a building, to the ideal I believed in, and tried to express. I believe my co-workers, my friends, all who have known me, understood the ideal I held, for my work. It always pleased me when a pupil came to me to say he or she meant to teach, because of what I had shown, in my happiness as teacher. Perhaps one of the most cherished things in my life is the realization that of my cluster of nieces – Fern (Ethel Fern McAlister), Melvina, Dorothy (Dorothy Louise McAvoy?), Jennie (Martha Jane ‘Jennie’ McAvoy), Nellie (Nellie May McAlister), Gertrude (Gertrude Margaret Fuller), Julia (Julia Etta Fuller), Edna (Lela Edna McAvoy or Edna Lovina Fuller), Lura, Mary (Mary Ellen McAlister), Amy, Marcia and Bertha (Bertha Ellen ‘Nellie’ Fuller) – why, thirteen! – chose my profession, teaching, as their career.

p.122

 

PART SEVEN

 

I.

 

The years passed – five and eight, and ten. Harry had taught country school for a year, now. Ralph would soon enter high school. I wanted them both to have all the education which I would have desired, had I had the chance.

Somehow, therefore, Harry had to be sent to college! He wanted to be a doctor. Therefore, plans must be made for him to study medicine.

How proud I was when he entered college. I do not think I could have been more happy at his admirable work in classes had it been I who was the student. And finally, he began his medical work.

He was an excellent student, as I had expected. He enrolled at the University of Indiana (ed. note: perhaps, Indiana State Univ.?) and found an inspiration in the medical course.

Ralph finished at Bradley Polytechnic College. His class was graduating, because of the War, in February. Later, he would go to Harvard. He wanted both Law and Business.

How I remember the day of his Harvard commencement! The ivy of Harvard, the elms, the magnificent gowns in the procession of scholars! And my son marching in his gown, with great, learned men and women before him.

War broke out with Germany in 1917. “Doc” – Harry – joined the Army. Ralph went into the Navy.

p.123

II.

I have been writing about my life. Of course it was intertwined with that of George, my husband.

Modern women talk of “adjusting their careers” – so I read, anyhow – to “the career of the husband.” In my mind there never was a question about the “relative importance” of my work and George’s work. His was the important career. Mine just helped his.

When a time came to choose between his and mine, I can honestly say, I didn’t even know there was a choice to be made. My career went by the board, and we did not so much as discuss it. He had continued his schoolwork, and the co-direction of our farm. But when war came, he felt he ought to enter government service. He received an appointment in Washington, as paymaster in the War Department. It meant that I had to resign my job as principal of my school.

Certainly, I loved teaching. It was one of the most important things in my life. I had done well in it, I knew. But if my husband had to leave our community, why – I just had to give up my career, that was all, and go along with him. I was surprised, when I was told I’d been teaching for a quarter-century, and hence was eligible for a pension. A quarter century? And every day of it I had loved….

It pleased me that my board congratulated me in my pension. But already I was too busy with new duties to have time for regrets, even for gratification over their praise. We had to go to a new city. We were leaving, indeed, for a new part of the country. I was to enter a completely changed life. I was fifty-three, my husband fifty-five. People said, I’d enjoy “retirement” from now on. But there was enough at the moment,

p.124                                                      to be done in “starting anew” in a far place.

We had been farmers all the many years of our teaching here; we had lived on and cultivated our big farm. It was as important to us as our school-jobs. We had brought up our boys in the country, ensuring them knowledge of field and wood and creek. I have always been grateful that I was able to carry out my early determination to give our sons a background of farm-life. They had a rich background, to carry through their adult years.

But now that the time had come to move, and we gathered our belongings together, we saw that it wasn’t a question of what we “wanted to take along to the city.” It was a question of how few things we could actually take.

The first few days, when we began to select – we actually could not visualize a life without some of our possessions. The lawn mower, surely that must come along? The stock-cutter? – no, it wouldn’t be useful in Washington. All the useful things that had served us so well – could one really do without them day by day? It seemed a shame, almost a disloyalty, to leave them behind.

But the saddest of all, was to leave our old horse. We sold him when we found we would need a Ford. I felt rather sick when the old beast gave us so pitiful a look, and pulled at his halter, as we said “goodbye” to him.

Even by most rigid deletion, we had so much accumulated – over twenty-seven years of marriage – that it was necessary to charter a box-car. We started at last. The box-car was choked full. But, with a glance at the one unoccupied seat of the Ford, I tried a feeble joke:

p.125      “Why not just as well sit in that car, George – and ride all the way to Washington in it, instead of buying tickets, rather than pay a big price to ride in the parlor-car?”

But I did not feel facetious. I hated to leave so many loved things! But one could not mourn. There was the train for the whole journey. In no time, we found here we were, arrived at the Union Station, in Washington. Our two sons were living in Washington, then. There was an exhilarating experience, a journey in our car, to find a place to live. The boys drove us from street to street.

It seemed most strange and queer that nobody in Washington appeared to take the least interest in our arrival. We were treated as complete strangers. There was, apparently, a perfect indifference about our “going-and-comings” in town. Coming from a small place, where everybody knew everybody else, it simply didn’t seem we could ever become accustomed to this.

Besides, “back yonder,” there were four clans of us! Really – five: The McAvoys, the Scotts, the Hallers, the McAlisters, the Fullers. Unwillingly, I admitted to myself that possibly it was lonesome to be in this city, Washington. Why, back home, wherever one went, we could meet a relative. There were seventeen nephews on spacious farms, in businesses, in professions – Alva (Scott), Therman (Thurman Scott), Howard (Scott), Boyd (?), James (Fuller), Peter (Fuller), Grover (Scott), Allan (Thomas Allan Fuller?), Earnest (Ernest Lloyd Fuller), Ted (Theodore Emmett Fuller), Harry (Harry Walter Fuller), Clarence(McAlister), Roy (McAlister), Enos (McAlister), Lloyd (McAvoy), Ray (McAvoy), Jim (McAvoy), -- and their wives, and their children, and their kin. We had been the community I’d known practically all my life. There were my nieces who, since I had no girls of my own, were like daughters to me. Why…I had twenty-three nieces!

p.126 I was amused, to catch myself once, in sudden loneliness, writing their names – they seemed all so far away from this large and empty city, empty of my familiar and loved ones. I laughed, but I knew I was homesick as I wrote the names of the girls, Faye, Grace, Helen, Edith, Lela and Minnie and Lizzie, Mary, Lida, Emma, Nellie, Addie, Walter Scott’s two girls – and there were neighbors known a half-century, and dear as kin – the Murphys, the Tappings, the Fahnestocks. Every store keeper one had dealings with, was a friend. There were the people at church. And there were my dear pupils, my teachers; too many to begin to name one by one even in memory.

But living in the city unconsciously pushes country-habits from one. Perhaps I, too, have changed in the years. Yet my heart, to this day, goes out to any boy or girl who misses country-life and small-town warmth and friendliness. There is nothing like it.

We went from street to street, in Washington, one long day. We were not successful in finding a home.

At last we did obtain one, a furnished house. The rent was a hundred a month! We had always been very economical people, and the idea of paying a hundred dollars a month seemed a monstrous extravagance to me. It simply did not give me peace of mind.

The house we were renting was very large, but who could fill a whole day, a week, a year, with just chores in a furnished house? And to spend that huge rent! It was silly. I was, already, finding I could not stand being only “a lady of leisure.” Even my husband saw I could not rest – “doing nothing.”

Why not, at least, take some people in to live with us?

We had lived all our lives with our own little family.

 

p.127                                            I knew it would be difficult to convince George that there was any other way for us to live.

One night, when we were gathered in the parlor, I drew up my chair by my husband’s and I began telling him of a call I’d made on a woman in our block. She had a very pretty home. And, “she has ‘roomers,’” I added. “If we could get some nice girls, to occupy our top floor, it would be a great help to the family budget, now wouldn’t it?”

He snorted. He wouldn’t even hear of it.

Just as we were talking, a knock came at the door and the cheerful neighbor woman entered. She joined in our conversation. She took over my subject of discussion. She rather caught my husband’s attention with her quickness and intelligence. My husband began really to listen when she said, “Mrs. J----- came from a little town in Illinois, Mrs. J----- was economical. So she took in some boarders. One day, Mrs. J----- told her husband she proposed to buy a big house, on a corner of Pennsylvania Avenue. He replied he was certain she would fail. But she just went ahead; she hired help, worked. Now after five years, she’s able to pay off her mortgage. She’s in possession of a successful business.”

I could see this narrative of Mrs. J----- was setting my husband to thinking. I said nothing.

One evening, some time later, he drew a long sigh and said, “We might try to do, as that Mrs. J----- has done, if you feel you must do something, as you insist.”

I did not want to seem too eager. I only said, “If we do try this, George, you can keep on with your work

p.128            for the government. I would take charge of all the new responsibility.”

One thing I certainly knew. It would mean hard work. But I was willing. I knew I was capable. Had I ever feared hard work? Had I not been brought up on it? It was the basis of the philosophy of life my parents had taught all us children. Nor had I ever been afraid of responsibility. All the years I had borne my share of it. And I had desired it so. The new enterprise would only continue my way and plan of living.

 

III.

In this way, and so casually, was begun what no one even remotely imagined was to become a million-dollar hotel. In this way was started the planning for an enterprise which was to change the whole outlook and all activity toward earning a living, not only for me, but then for Mr. Scott, and eventually our two sons also.

My thought was to “take in boarders” just because I was so thoroughly tired of living in ‘retirement’. I was utterly bored with retirement from the busy life in my school, from the work on our spacious farm, from the duties arising out of the years-long friendship with friend after friend “back yonder.” I was delighted and grateful to begin a new responsibility.

Above all, I was to have again the things I loved – opportunity to be and work with and see and exchange ideas with folks. I could once more do things with and for and among people.

IV.

How would we start? “Put an advertisement in the paper,” naturally.

p.129

Back yonder, my husband had written a column for the Peoria Transcript. Going to the town’s newspaper-advertising pages was the simplest way to find what we’d want to buy, or whom we wanted to hire. Everyone knew everybody else there; if not quite that, everybody knew someone who was related to, or was a friend of, that “somebody else.”

It did not even occur to us that when we’d advertise in a great Washington paper we were undertaking a rather different adventure. We did not give a thought to the possibility that those who would answer us here might not even be people one could trust, let alone receive in one’s home.

The advertisement we composed read like this; “We have a home to share with guests, but girls only.” That is how we’d have written it in Peoria.

Perhaps it was not metropolitan advertising style! But the very same day, girls began literally to pour in upon us. Pour in by the dozen! The war had just closed. There was so much cleaning up to do after the war that the city was choked with office-workers. It seemed every girl who worked at a desk wanted to share our “home” with us!

We could only accept thirteen. I laughed to George, “Do you know my first school had thirteen in it, too? It’s good luck!”

Those who came now were young, too. They ranged in age from nineteen to twenty-five. To our complete surprise, we were to find most of them came from small towns, though from states all over the Union. (One of the Indiana girls is still a guest with us.)

To me, having them come in with us was not merely “business.” It was, as our later advertisements always

p.130            put it, “making a home away from home” for them. They were strangers in the city, and we received them in our house. In the beginning, we actually shared our whole home with the “new guests.”

I found it, let me add, especially sweet to have them all girls, because I had no daughters – and here were thirteen pretty ones, every day, in my own household.

I enjoyed planning the meals. I enjoyed cooking, marketing. Every day I’d go to the market with two baskets. But in my own larder were things I’d brought from Illinois that I’d put up: all kinds of preserves, sun cherries, pickles, corn, vegetables. When my table was set and we sat down, my guests and family had roast-beef, roast-pork, fluffy masked potatoes, creamed onions, spinach, hot biscuits, celery or cole-slaw. And then came a choice of pies, or ice-cream. There was no rationing as to quantity!

Perhaps it is no wonder that, in six weeks, we did have to find the larger place!

I did not even think of getting “help” – so much did I feel, those early days of my business, I just was “having company,” day after day. I cooked, I washed, I made beds, I served the meals.

We all ate at the one table that had come with us from our farm, a long extension-table. Ours boys had grown up, as it were, around that table. My boarding-family was to grow around it, also.

I began, by “setting the table” with all six leaves inserted. I put on the best cloth and every piece of good china in my set of a dozen. I put on all the fine cut-glass I owned, gleaming as if, each evening, I had guests invited to my dinner.

The four of us in our Scott household, with the girls,

p.131                                    made seventeen at the table, every meal. It was, I suppose, a tremendous group, to mother and to cook for, but really I did not find it hard. I never thought of it as a prosaic “boarding house.” For me, then, it was a sort of immense daily “play-party,” as in the old days, with myself as hostess. I enjoyed every speck of the work entailed to prepare for “company,” a dozen-and-one lovely young girls.

But, our place did not remain dedicated to youth alone. We had hardly begun, when we realized we’d have to take another house. Older people began to arrive, to ask to be received. There were so many lonely men and women, we were to find. In six weeks we had to find a larger place. This one we’d not “rent furnished,” I insisted. I no longer thought of the enterprise, as something “to help pay rent,” or “to keep me busy” – It was a task I enjoyed – as I had my school, until now.

We found a house. We used the household furniture we had in the lower two stories. But for the third floor we needed additional things.

How to obtain them? Through advertising, again, of course. It did not seem to us there would be much difference between folks who wanted to sell their possessions in the big city of Washington and folks back home. Not that Peoria was so small – it was just large enough and small enough to have the comforts of a city and the coziness of a town.

We did get furniture. But the most usable piece was discovered by our son Harry one day in a shop nearby. Coming to our door, I saw, walking down the street, what appeared to be a pair of long legs with a box atop them. It turned out to be Harry toting home

p.132 an attractive little dresser he had bought, just as a young man, in a great emergency, might have carried such a purchase home in Peoria.

Next, we bought some double beds. These were sent us in the conventional way of Washington. We got tables and chairs. It was interesting to meet new people, new problems.

 

II.

 

But even at the very start I had to admit that I must have servants.

 

(editorial note: Please remember that Margaret McAvoy Scott was a woman of her times, a woman who found herself in an urban society where she interacted with Black Americans of the time in the same way as most White Americans did – they were considered to be only fit for servant duties. I shall wince as I type some of what comes after, but I shall forgive her because her heart was essentially pure. Still, her prejudices and ways of interacting with the people who made her business the success that it was do not always make for comfortable reading. Her vivid descriptions of the people hired to make the business go forward seem to be an attempt to entertain the reader with sterotypes rather than to credit the hard work they did for her. My mother, may she rest peacefully, never much cared for this book on that account, and because she felt that Aunt Maggie was condescendingly ‘putting on airs’ as she got older and wealthier It may be a credit to Maggie that she seems to have ‘treated people as she, herself, would have wanted to be treated’ were their situations reversed, however she spoke about them in retrospect. Yet, unfortunately, she seems to have taken the role of benevolent ‘plantation owner’ without any comprehension that something more than giving employment and treating fairly was required for Blacks to rise to a decent level in society. Apparently, during all her time in Washington, she never once encountered an educated Black person. I have, in fact, tried to dull the effect of some of her language by substituting the term “Black” or “Negro” in many instances where a more pejorative term was employed. In some cases where she imitates the dialect and phrasing of her employees, I have changed it to a more forthright expression. If a serious scholar wants to know exactly what she said, I will send them a photocopy of the pages required.

I also find it strange that the Depression is never once mentioned in her book. That’s all I have to say on the subject – get ready to wince.)

We advertised once more, for “help.” There came a Negro woman. She said her name was Minerva. She was a little, thin, Negress. Then, however, I did not even know what to do with Negro help! Back home in Illinois, anyone who helped on the farm ate at the table with us. Obviously, that would not do with this help. Not only because of the girls, but because of the little black woman herself. She would not, I realized, want to sit with my guests. How could one feed her, then, if I did hire her?

I was Harry who helped me in my dilemma; it made him laugh. “Just treat her the way you always do your help, Mother. And she’ll love you. Just the way they always have done. Don’t eat with her; give her time to enjoy her meals alone.” It was the first time in my life that a servant had not eaten at the table with us. But, plainly, Minerva appreciated the plan very much, when she was hired – and where she’d begun to have her meals, each day.

Shall I forget how surprised I was to be, again and again, by her? She was a good worker, honest and

p.133            reliable. But she revealed, bit by bit, a character that I had never expected, when I had first met that skinny, quiet wisp of a black woman. Minerva developed an unmeasured, enthusiastic religious fervor. It was to manifest itself at most unexpected occasions.

I will not forget how, one day, I told her to do the dishes. I still took part of the work myself then, and turned to another chore in the kitchen. Suddenly, at the dishpan, she began to clap her hands, in the foamy water. She shrilled, with each clap “Hallellooya!” “Hallellooya, Lawd!” The water was flying in all directions; the foam flew right and left. I was spattered from head to foot. It took persuading, to teach Minerva not to “have religion” at the dishpan again. She never did learn this, completely, either.

She remained my only servant in the first furnished house. But when, after six weeks, we went to our new unfurnished place, and began over again there, I had to admit it was impossible to go on without more help.

The next servant I took was Hannah, an immense woman, whose nationality was undetermined. She would often talk in a dialect – not Negro English, at all, particularly when she got excited. Harry and Ralph insisted she must be speaking phrases “from an ancient Negro Tribe,” taught her perhaps in babyhood by a grandmother who, “had came to this land in slavery.” Possibly, I used to think, it might have been Indian dialect of some sort, for we knew she had Indian blood.

Hannah had a way of her own, getting about our house on her various jobs. I was still working side by side with the help. I shared the cooking, baking, cleaning, laundering. I therefore had full opportunity to enjoy all Hannah’s eccentricities. For example, when

p.134 she (huge, tall, majestic, monumental) had to pass a place where stood a bench on which had been put a tray with dishes or food, she never condescended to walk around, but simply stepped over, the obstructions, regally. When she carried a tray, it was held so high in the air, both because of her height, and her manner of holding it, that nobody could see what she had, far up there.

 

III.

 

Soon, I had to get a third Negro girl to help me. Into our house came Martha. She was a jolly, motherly old soul, honest and kind. She acted as cook and laundress. She and Hannah got along beautifully, a very desirable thing in our business.

Martha, I found, had a large family which she was supporting, educating, taking care of in old age, when needed. She was so excellent a person that I decided, presently, to put her in charge of all further servants we hired, as the need for them came.

In the many years she was to be with us (twenty-three) there was never to be one of our staff who became her enemy. She showed a real talent for people. I am proud to have discovered this excellent woman, with her sweetness and loyalty, and with a genuine administrative gift, in this sphere, humble though it was, where she worked. I could not have found any white woman, I know, who could have done Martha’s job better than Martha did it. She did it as well, when the business grew beyond all my dreams, just as she did in our first place.

Every morning, Martha stuck her key in the door

p.135                                    at five o’clock, without fail. Hannah did as well as to time and reliability. They never caused me a moment’s worry.

One morning, shortly after both had come in, I heard a terrific screaming in my basement. I could not believe my ears. That would never be my sober, self-possessed servants? I ran down. Martha was in the kitchen. The screams were from Hannah, down below. Martha flew past me, to the basement, two steps at a time.

I heard both women scream, then. I went myself, now. There stood Hannah, in mortal terror. She was gibbering in that unknown dialect of hers. She was pointing, but I could see nothing. There seemed to be something that was terrifying her, near the furnace. Every time I would try to move toward there, she would grab me and scream. Martha was just as bad. Finally, I was told the reason…there was a snake in my basement! They trembled.

I tried to laugh it away, but, all at once, I saw the snake. I could not just stand there!

Someone had to do something. Had I not had experience with snakes, in Western Kansas? Had I not been taught never to fear? I would shoot, if necessary!!!

I jumped onto a stool, turning on every light and assuring the two women there was no danger….I was swiftly making plans in my own mind, how to destroy the serpent. It lay so ominous, though so quiet, black and still, curled in a menacing half-circle at the further end. Though the rest of it was straight and stiff, that curled end meant danger, as I knew from our homesteading days.

p.136

 

I took another look, to make sure where I should strike the thing…and discovered it was an old thin black poker.

The discovery of its identity did not prevent the two women from being demoralized for a little while. Trouble never comes singly. Although she was always so sensible, my good Martha seemed to have lost her whole calm. She shuddered back down to the basement as timidly as if that poker had really been a snake.

No sooner was she down, than her screams rose up to me in the kitchen. There was a snake after all, clutching her hand with its fangs!

I raced to her. There was poor old Martha, shaking in every fat part of her body, and crying aloud.

No doubt about it – her poor hand was caught! It was held rigidly by something above her head.

Again, I got up onto a stool.

There was really “something” holding Martha’s fingers. The boys had left fish-hooks on a shelf, and they were the snake-fangs clutching Martha.

The poor woman, nevertheless, had to have those hooks taken out by a doctor. She indeed was badly injured. For all that, it was like Martha to come right back home to her job, as soon as the doctor was through. Our troubles were not yet over.

Again, that day, from the basement came the ‘call of disaster.” The coils in the hot water heater had sprung a leak. Our kitchen floor itself was soon flooded. Martha put a tub under it. We began to pour out tub after tub as it filled. One person had to be assigned to the task all afternoon.

Finally, when Mr. Scott came home and he too was asked to help, he looked down and grunted, “It’s all right to have the tub there. But maybe it’s too much of a job you have undertaken. You have been trying to bail out the

p. 137                                    Potomac River.” With masculine superiority, he went downstairs, turned a valve tight, and it was all over. I was to find later that any business done with many human beings had to take into account “nerves.” You could not be just efficient, machine-like, in a place so like a home as I made my own.

What a day that was!

It was maddening. It reminded me of “Devil’s Day in Hickory Hollow School,” as we used to call those exasperating times in the schoolroom, when everything for no reason went wrong. Perhaps it is something like this that the airmen of England mean, when they say that the “Gremlins” are taking over.

The work, growing weekly beyond all our expectations, required a houseman, too, presently. We engaged a little, skinny Negro man, named Russell. But he had a big heart, and he did as good a job as any huge fellow would have done. He proved to be genuinely religious. He lived out his religion. I deeply respect him.

He, too, like Martha, was to remain with us for a quarter-century. He still is on the staff. Russell came with his bride. Both worked for us then. He was to meet great sorrow, with sweetness and fortitude that better-educated and better-advantaged people might well emulate, as Christians. His wife, who was to become not quite as well mentally as she had been, was kept by the little faithful man in an institution, each time she was ill. Russell is a good man.

Helen was the fourth to come, to help in the dining room. She was a little dark-skinned girl, aged sixteen. She never married and is with us yet.

Her task was to do the chamber work in the various

p.138                                    houses. Helen was not the kind whom one had to make a business of overseeing. She represents the fine type of worker, who accepted responsibility, without supervision. To her, there was real interest in doing the job. But with the devotion to her job, she gave me that warm faithfulness and affection that make Negro servants so lovable. (ed. : I can’t resist…”oh, my…”)

It delighted her when “Missy,” as she has always called me from the first, could never pass a piano, in any of our twenty-six houses – without taking time to play something. Once, I was playing Golden Slippers, and the slender little girl was joyously tapping time. Suddenly she gasped, “There comes Pappy Scott – I better beat it, Missy!” Even over the music, and tapped rhythm of her own feet, she had heard and recognized Mr. Scott’s footsteps. Not that she was really afraid! To her it was a delightful joke between us that illustrated how well we got along and that none of the servants have ever feared me!

I can say, candidly, the hard work of our business, growing, year by year, as if by some magic, was made possible for me only by the unfailing love and assistance of these four Negro servants. Each one gave me love and friendship unstintedly. And, I give them mine.

 

IV.

 

Nevertheless, I found not so long after I began the new enterprise (and in spite of its instant and surprising success), that somehow I did not obtain complete satisfaction in it. The truth was that my mind was not occupied – at least only the surface of it seemed to be.

p.139 I have a good mind. I had been a good teacher and a successful principal. Without admitting it to myself, I knew, for all that, that what I really wanted was to continue to be a teacher, a principal, to work with my brain as well as with my hands. I had given up my career in this field as soon as my husband was asked to go to Washington on his new job. I did not complain then; nor did I feel doleful now. Yet…it did not somehow fill a gap which I had not even guessed existed.

Quite suddenly, I decided that I would not allow it to continue. Why should not my capable servants take care of the “guests” whom we had in our house? My maids could cook and serve as well as I – indeed, much better. It came to me that if I wanted to work with my mind, all I had to do was to look for work for my mind.

There were civil service examinations, were there not? Teachers were needed in Washington, as well as in Illinois, were they not? I applied for a teacher’s position. Almost at once, indeed even before I had quite adjusted myself to the thought, I found myself offered a substitute teacher’s job.

I was directly after World War One. There was a dearth of teachers. I was told that eighth-grade students were being used in the schools to teach. They were delighted to have “a retired teacher.” I telephoned to ask where I would be assigned and what my salary would be. Without embarrassment, I admit that I put aside all thought of education as a career here when I was informed that substitute teachers received $1.50 a day. I could only answer, “Why, my cook is paid more than that!”

P140             There were still the possibilities in civil service. I took the examination and passed well at the head of the list. I received an assignment at once. But by this time our new business had begun a process which was to become increasingly potent in my life during all the years following. That process was “taking most of my time.” It was still pleasure. The pleasure, though, was tempered with very hard and unceasing work. An ocean of detail began to swallow me. It seemed that day by day more and more of my thought was demanded. Presently, I could no more have imagined leaving the business than leaving a child dependent on my constant attention. It should be added that my work, my endless responsibility, were repaid with ever growing success. I was in this activity, obviously, “to stay.”

 

PART EIGHT

 

I.

 

We had been in business five years.

I had an inspiration, one day. Perhaps it was “Doc” and Ralph and I who had it, together. We knew by now that we were owners of no one, simple place – though we continued to maintain the ample, homelike “company” meals, the friendly easy “home” atmosphere. Yet our enterprise had grown to twenty-three houses. In the houses were six hundred man and women. The inspiration that came to us, was to call all our places by the name of “Scott’s Club.”

I believe I can say, in modesty, that people throughout the city, by now, knew of our houses. People were told of them, with respect. And people who left us, I know, left to tell others about us, in friendliness. For the hundreds who were our guests were given the hospitality they would have received had they come into our farmhouse near Peoria, or to the little log-house in the mountains where my mother lived. That was the atmosphere in the very first place I opened in Washington, and I saw no reason to change my approach to my work as the years passed. It was the only way I could do the work, I was aware.

But something none of us had anticipated was to happen. I was strong enough to carry my part of the burden. Mr. Scott, though, became seriously ill. Our elder son learned that he had a weakened heart, from the War. We had to do what I had not planned. It was absolutely necessary to stop work – “to do nothing.” We sold every stick of furniture in all our houses; we sold every piece of linen. It was just as when I saw my father and mother sell all their belongings when they went out pioneering to Illinois. We started out on a new chapter of “doing nothing,” just as they had, on their new chapter. We kept not one Scott Club.

Ralph, our younger son, was taking further university work. We went up north to his college, met his friends, and participated proudly in all the final festivities that were being held. Then all of us started out in the car together, on our very first family holiday.

We camped along the way. Our destination was first Florida, and from there California. Ralph was a lawyer now. There was an opening which interested him in California. The Scotts had to have some practical purpose, even on a holiday!

But, although there was a wise reason for choosing

p.142                                    to make California our objective, the fun and simple pleasure of cooking meals in the open were, nonetheless, pure delight.

Our car had a deluxe trailer attached. In it were beds for us all and curtains for privacy. There was an oil-stove, which, when the weather was too hot, could be taken outdoors. Surely, never in the days when I picnicked with the Cowser kids, or when I went to gay church-picnics with Elmer (possibly Elmer Clark, two years older than Maggie, from the neighborhood), had I looked forward to something like this.

I wrote to Aggie, to Drusie, our brother Emmett, describing this modern trip. Have I said, Emmett had married at twenty-one, taking for his wife a sweet, wholesome country girl, Luella Griffith? By now, Aggie’s twelve children were, like my own, grown people. Drusie’s seven children were also adults. Emmett had seven, and they, too, were grown. They were all still in the old family environment. It was like looking back upon our childhood days whenever I wrote accounts of this trip and contrasted our holiday with those of the past we had all known together.

When we finally reached California, Ralph investigated the opening which he had considered there, but he did not take it, in the end. I had my doubts (when young Ralph came to us from his interview about that job) that he had really meant to consider it seriously. For, he now announced glowingly, since he wasn’t taking a job, surely he should enroll at Leland Stanford? He’d take a graduate degree in law, since we happened to be here….

Naturally, he was given his parents’ consent. Now, it was time for George, Harry, and me to go back. We had

p.143            long been calling Harry – by now a doctor – by his name which everyone uses, “Doc.”

Mr. Scott had always been in only two fields. He had been a school principal for many years. Then he had been a government worker. He could not continue in purposeless doing nothing.

He, like me, had the background of farm life, of “doing,” so he had in his very blood the habit of keeping busy. Therefore, sick though he was, he had to plan for some activity. It would be well to have that activity one in which our son, “Doc,” who also was not well, could participate. He had had to give up his practice, because of poor health. What business could we choose now – for both George and our son?

There was nothing which we knew better than the one we had given up, was there? Why not just go back to Washington, and resume the Scott’s Club?

But – and this was a large qualification – we could hereafter have ample help. We would not work too hard, ourselves.

 

II.

 

No sooner was it announced that we were back in Washington, and planning to start again at the old stand, than every blessed Negro man and woman who had worked for us come begging to be rehired.

No sooner did the news go out, that the “Scotts were at the old stand,” starting business again, than every guest we had ever had came clamoring for something to eat at once.

I had to feed some of them immediately. I just used, for the first meal back home, the card tables and dishes

P.144            we had been using throughout our camping trip. We were painting and fixing up a place. Until the floors got dry and we could begin to take people in to live, we had to feed crowds, in relays, in an improvised dining room. There would be first course, then meat and vegetables, and then desert. In sections, they all ate a meal.

We had, on beginning again this time, true capital – the good will and the trust, the friendship, that we had been accumulating all the past years.

It was necessary to engage the whole staff which we meant to use from this time on. No more working alone! No more doing the physical work ourselves – except what we absolutely could not get done for us. At least, that is what we planned. We hired all the old help that we could.

We advertised in three succeeding issues of a Washington paper for additional staff. The first issue appeared next morning. When the paper came out, still wet from the presses, Negro men and women were already beginning to swarm to our door. I seemed as if the whole Negro population of Washington had been told of Scott’s Club, and were only waiting for a chance to find employment with us.

Obviously, interviewing the mob was a man’s job. I could not undertake it. My son, “Doc,” would have to meet, question, select. There were set categories in which all candidates must fit.

There must be groups for cooking, for waiting, cleaning, laundering, painting, and so forth. In each department, from dining-room help to maintenance, particular qualifications were needed.

“Doc” therefore had to put specific questions to candidates.

p.145                                           But even so, he knew it was to be a tough job. In order to be able to get through in any time – and start those hired to work – he would have to weed out many at the very beginning.

In my childhood, we had always found our pleasures in “play-parties.” They were “parties,” to be sure, but each was arranged about some piece of work, too, that had to be done by a farming household. I have never lost the habit of finding fun, real pleasure, in work experience. “Doc” could enjoy his work, this time, in the same way.

Knowing servants, we knew that even with those whom he would hire, there would be worries for us, many times. But there would likewise be the comedy and drama of human stories, in the lives of the people he would select. The selection itself was an exciting, exhausting time, and gave material for many a hearty laugh, busy and harassed though we were.

Weeding out was not difficult. Those who do not fit seem almost to announce their own unfitness. It is so often the case with the incapable. But rejections could not be made on mere first impressions. First impressions are not always infallible, we all know. There was, for example, a big burly African-American, the first man whom “Doc” saw.

This man had thick lips, a mat of curly hair, and a heavy sepulchral voice that seemed to come from a tomb. “Doc” asked him, “Where did you come from? Where did you happen to be born?” The answer was, “My mother born me.” He continued, “Mister, does you know how it feels to be hungry? To see your mother and sisters hungry?” There were tears in that man’s eyes. Despite his unprepossessing

p.146                                         appearance, it was clear to “Doc” that this Negro had goodness and kindness in his heart.

“Doc” looked into that curious black face and said, “What’s your name?” “Mose,” was the answer. My son said then, “Mose, we have a house that’s to be torn down and rebuilt. It’s one of our buildings that we are making over. It will be hard work there, tearing down wall, carrying hods, but if you want work – there it is.”

Mose just breathed out, “When does I start?”

My son laughed, “You start now.”

Mose has been with us ever since. He worships “Mister “Doc”” as he calls my elder son. If sometimes Mose has his failing, falling under the influence of firewater, which an unfriendly friend may have given him, we know nevertheless there is no other foolishness in his makeup. He has proven himself.

Another, at first sight apparently unwise, wise choice, was Hattie. She was a frail, diminutive creature.

She lived in “Smokey Bottom,” a section of Washington which is not safe to travel in, unescorted. It seemed doubtful that she would be a suitable girl for “Doc” to hire. But she was urgently eager indeed to be given a job.

“Doc” did take her, because of her spirited eager little features and her quick movements, despite her look of not being suited for any hard work. Hattie was to prove an excellent worker. She was not at all frail, but tough as a pine-knot. We learned she had a good-for-nothing husband, as well as twin daughters, of whom she was extremely proud.

Hattie was to serve us for many years, even after her great tragedy; for one day she did not appear. We

p.147      sent a messenger to see what was the trouble. Trouble aplenty! The night before, Hattie had told her husband he must stop making love to a certain “yaller gal.” If he did not quit, and begin instead to help support their children, she promised, she would kill him or “that gal.” But he, to show her a thing or two, brought his lady-love right into their home, that very evening. Hattie stepped into the parlor with a double-barreled shotgun, and shot her rival dead. The erring husband fled.

It was several months before the police could find him. Hattie was jailed for eleven months, but after his capture she was freed by the courts. She came directly to us, told her story with as much pleasure as if she were telling a fairy-tale, and then went promptly back to her accustomed chores and duties, in the kitchen again. She had been a very good servant since, as she was before. Perhaps we, her employers, felt her drama more than Hattie did.

“Doc” was often to recall one young Negro whom he interviewed, from the great crowd. This young black fellow was from the cotton-fields. He was so timid that he seemed incapable of saying anything but “Oh, yes,” to whatever “Doc” said to him, or asked him. “Doc” finally had to send him away. He did feel sorry for the boy, perhaps applying for his first job in a city.

A different kind of candidate was a girl who tripped in and announced she could answer anything asked her. “Doc” put a question: “Can you do chamber work?” The reply was prompt: “Oh, I can do that, but, I think folks is mighty lazy, if they can’t go out and tend themselves.”

p.148

It was explained to her what was meant by “chamber-work” in a boarding house. “Doc” inquired, “Can you make beds?” She assured him she could; and without a wrinkle, too. She just used a broom handle to make the linen smooth. She volunteered a piece of information, on her own accord: “All you have to do, if you got bugs, is get some lard…and some turpentine, and some chicken feathers, daub them on the bed timbers, and in no time, the bed bugs will be dead.” Somehow, “Doc” was not persuaded to add her to our staff.

 

There was another applicant, also very sure of himself. He was, he said, a “Calcutta Negro.” He came from Bombay, India. This slender, nicely featured young man had a skin as dark as any of the other Negro people there. But he had an assurance none could match. By his own admission, he could do anything and everything, especially those things demanding skill and long experience. He could be for us a driver, a machinist, a chef, a waiter, whatever “Doc” happened to need or mention.

My son did hire the young marvel. His name was Bob. He was turned over to the housekeeping department. That night he was assigned to the dining-room as a waiter. Bob was wonderful to look at, and very swift in his movements. So swift that he turned a bowl of soup over onto one of the guests!

With all his talents, we had to take him from the dining room and put him on the painting gang. There, too, he seemed a misfit. But in the end, we found a place where he could do a job. He proved himself a splendid driver. “Doc” was to use him often, until a taste for the wine that is red parted him from us. “Doc” was

p.149                                          always fond of Bob and forgave him his peccadillo of drinking now and then. Bob proved what we all know, that servants are people too. Not only the elite can drink too much; and, you may only find that out about a person by experience.

 

One Negro girl “Doc” was to hire, I always felt might have been an artist, if she had had the opportunity. She could have been an artistic dancer. She seemed to know, instinctively, the art of make-up. But she had to be taught everything else.

She knew nothing, we were to find, about her work in our place. She had a good appearance, but she had to be painstakingly taught. It is a proof of her really likable character that we did take so much pain with her in those first busy days.

If there was a radio in any room where she was sent, she would find it and turn it on. She’d put in her time, dancing, primping.

If a guest left anything on the floor, though, she either took it casually, or put it into the trash. Once, an umbrella stuck in a waste basket to drain was taken home by her.

Yet we knew she was truly honest. She was merely and genuinely ignorant of the ways of the big city, Washington. It was a new life, far away from the backwoods where she had been brought up.

 

 

III.

 

Though this one girl was troublesome, “Doc” found she had true possibilities. Patiently he had her trained; she became a skilled waitress. Our regular guests presently would stand in the hall waiting for her table. She would know just what each liked and wanted. As soon as

p.150      she saw “her” guests entering, she would bring the desired breakfast or dessert – she knew exactly what each one would order. She became a truly skilled worker in her field.

She decided, after a time, to go to school at night, to “finish her education.” Our guests would tease her, asking her questions in history, because she boasted she was so proficient in that field. One young boy put her a query: “Who in history was a good musician?” She answered confidently, “Abraham Lincoln.”

It was good fun for the guests to have her answer questions, but it was not good for dining room discipline. Her vanity interfered with her skills, as happens to other workers. We had to put her in the pantry.

She was very happy there, though; she had become an intelligent adaptable employee. If any boy she knew wanted something special, all the waitress had to do was to tell her who was the guest involved. The special food would be forthcoming from the pantry. We did not know now where to put her. She had become so good a worker, so trustworthy a one; yet she was not sable in temperament – as, for example, Martha was.

We had in the dining room some medical students, to whom she was very devoted. They met her on the street one day, and asked her when she was starting to that school she had been saying she “was going to attend.” She told them, that the delay was due to the fact that she could not make up her mind what to study. They suggested she take up medicine. They told her she “would be a whiz at it.”

Some time later, she announced she had decided on her subject; it would be nothing less than “Epidemics.” They laughed so uproariously, that, to her indignation,

p.151 she had to admit (even to herself) she had used a wrong term to express herself. It seemed to end all her hankering for “higher education.”

Shortly thereafter, she married. She buried herself in a domestic life, on a good farm in Virginia. She was an example to us of a lovable, gifted, artistic type of person, but too easily swayed to be fully reliable.

We learned from bitter experience that one can never be too specific with even reliable help…….Even our most trusted would make the most incredible mistakes, unless everything were told them in detail, and in addition details were written out, if possible.

We had several houses, of which four had numbers ending in the numeral 6. There were, for example, 1506 – 1406 – 2106. “Doc” had engaged a couple of men, Reuben and Hollis. One morning, he looked for them, but they were to be found nowhere. He knew he had sent them, right after breakfast, to 1506, to scrape paper in a bathroom. He decided to go there himself, to discover how near they were to finishing. There wasn’t a glimpse of them.

He thought, perhaps he had sent them somewhere else, and had forgotten. He went to several of our houses, without a sight or even proof that anyone else had seen them. Then, he found them – at 2106. He had sent them to 1506. They were just finishing the last strip of paper they were scraping from the wall. All they needed was to look at “Doc”’s face to understand that something was very wrong.

“Doc” has always been kind to every one of the staff.

p.152                                    But this time he was furious. Not only the paper had been removed – but some of the plaster as well. He asked, how could the two men explain to him the reason for scraping the paper from a bathroom which they, themselves, had helped him paper, exactly two weeks ago?

Now the couple of crestfallen Negro men not only had to scrape the paper they had been sent to take off at 1506, but they had this bathroom to repaper again, here at 2106. And there was plastering to do, in addition! The result of this was that all orders at the Scott’s Club were written out thereafter.

Even that did not always insure us. In one of the rooms, which had been occupied by two girls together for years, there was a change; only a single guest was to remain with us. This one girl now required a smaller room, and we arranged that she have it, on the same floor. A few of her possessions she moved herself. But, because someone was arriving to take the large room she was vacating, we were obliged to have all her things taken out that same afternoon. She gladly took everything, except what was in the dresser-drawers. Hollis and Reuben would take these few heavy things to her new room. She went down the hall to have a bath.

“Doc” sent the two Negro men up, at once. They came into the vacated room. They surveyed it. Surely, she could not be expecting only those dresser-drawers? Must be some mistake!

They proceeded to take hold of the situation on their own. First, they went to her little new room. There were only her personal things. Oh – they now understood what to do!

p.153

They took to her small room, all the big-room furniture, except the beds. They were dismantling the beds, to squeeze them also, into that little furnished room, down the hall, when the girl returned from her bath. She gave one look at the dressers, chairs, lamps, choking every inch of space. She ran breathlessly down two flights of stairs to the office, screaming, ““Doc”! Oh, “Doc”!”

Ralph, who had just come in from his own offices, hearing the younger girl shrieking, was sure something dreadful must have happened. He flew after her, toward “Doc’s” office.

“Doc,” seeing them, could only think that the two were being chased by armed burglars. The matter was straightened out, of course. But how puzzled were those Negros, who didn’t know what it was they could have done wrong. Reuben sighed, “Dis is the las’ time I’s going a-stir a cog, till I look at de papah.”

But a “paper” we wrote, could not guarantee there would be no locking, or mixing, of the cogs. One time I was to send these two prize-tribulations to 1406, to remove a bed. The room had been occupied by three boys. One had gone home, and our Negro men were given a written order, to remove his bed. They were told to take that bed across the street, to a house we kept for storage.

This time, they got into 1416, instead of 1406. Yet it was written plainly for them. By luck, I happened to be going out to the street, and saw Hollis trudging along, toting the bed. It went to its proper place that time. Hollis Reuben represented the worker who hated responsibility, even for understanding an order. They were not like my good, wise Martha!

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“Doc” would sometimes say patiently, “Boys, you’re not as dumb as you were, but you’re getting dumber.” There was, nevertheless, nobody who had more kindly patience for the shortcoming, the mistakes, the straying from the path, of any of them. And every Negro man and woman in the Scott’s Club knew it from the day of hiring.

 

PART NINE

 

I.

 

A residence hotel seems to gather together those whose qualities are, somehow, exaggerations of the average man and woman. The generous and kindly, the greedy and demanding, seem to be more so in this environment; the oddities and misfits appear to be stranger, quainter, more exasperating, more touching.

Soon, we had over five hundred guests, then six hundred. Coming from the farm and from the school where I had for twenty-five years been a teacher and school principal, I had always lived with people who were, as a matter of daily standards, thoughtful, at least, with each other. There was not, in our simple schoolhouse, opportunity even for school politics. On our farm, my husband and I and all the help worked together, harmoniously.

I think I expected all people to be like those I had known, when I took strangers into our home. The thirteen girls who had been my earliest guests were like daughters to me. We loved and enjoyed each other. But older people, I was to find not like the very young to live with, anyhow. Older people have their qualities set.

 

There were those who did not get along with others. There were those always gossiping about each other. There were some who seemed to be happy only when complaining. There were a few who believed that

p.156                              life owed them all they could get. There were some who seemed to think that because they paid a few paltry dollars for the use of a room and bed they owned the entire house and were entitled to all the service their whim might demand.

 

II.

 

I did try to be patient with one particular group. We had a house of four stories, which I decided to fill with middle-aged people. I was possible to put twenty-three persons into the rooms. Some of the number we accepted there were people past midway in life. You will think that those people, in the prime of life, would have wisdom, patience, tolerance. I was to learn how infantile the middle-aged can be.

I should say, there were some whom we learned to love as friends. Perhaps I may add, most of these were men and women who, like us, had to work, to save, to sacrifice.

A good portion of these guests, though, seemed to feel it right to have everything arranged to suit only themselves. When they wanted a thing, they wanted it now, besides. We could not talk to folks of their age as we did to the youngsters. We could not even tell them what we thought of them. When their demands exasperated us, we had learned to sugarcoat a refusal, and to swallow their own unsugared opinion because of our delay.

Nevertheless, we eventually did learn how to “pass over” things that couldn’t be done for them. We learned the difficult art of not refusing and at the same time not acceding. For people who believe in frankness

p.157                        and directness and candor this was a very hard thing.

I had often heard people say about an experience of theirs, “I could write a book about that.” I could write a whole book about our servants, but I know I could write volumes about our roomers.

Simply to throw open your home to strangers, is in itself an interesting experience, to say the least. We had about four hundred guests, therefore a stage where many kinds of character played their parts. Some were sweet and friendly, some were embittered and difficult. Some did work that was rich and rewarding, some were idle and envious. Some were poor and gallant. Some were greedy and pitiless to others. It was like seeing humanity in miniature play the many dramas, comedies, farces, and tragedies, of our human experience.

Eccentric, middle-aged women were rather fun. Though troublesome, they always seemed to me like the “characters” one meets in one lives in small towns.

One evening, an elderly lady appeared, and insisted on having a double room all for herself, indeed “the best room in the house.” She was told it was “let only to couples.” Surprisingly, she declared herself perfectly willing “to pay the price a couple would pay.” Then, when dinner was long over, she arrived with all her belongings, and trudged upstairs, toting a heavy load of varied luggage to her room.

I was astounded, when she came down to announce that she would be unable to go to sleep up there unless the extra double bed, the extra dresser, the extra chair and lamp and rocker and desk, were all taken out. She’d feel “as if strangers were in her room.” I went up with her, perplexed.

p.158           

She insisted I must help get all the superfluous furnishings out. I could not believe my eyes when she started that instant, to dismantle the unwanted bed. She did not stoop, either, until she had every duplicate piece of companion furniture in that double-room in the hallway. That it was a fire-hazard seemed of no moment to her.

Thereafter, she would hide in her room until every man-guest had left for his office before she went to the bathroom. Be it said, she was, surprisingly enough, in charge of an office, herself. She would not drink water from the bathroom-faucet, for some reason; she carried an immense old-fashioned china pitcher, which she filled in my pantry, two blocks away. She would stumble along, the huge pitcher one-fourth her own size, spilling water, but determinedly continuing, until she had that tepid liquid in her room. It was the only drink she took.

She was always prepared for disaster. She knew that something would happen, some time, somehow, among the guests. However, she was just as sure it would happen elsewhere. She used to carry aromatic spirits of ammonia, without fail, when she went to the theatre. And one evening, she did encounter disaster. Coming home, she saw a crowd collected. A truck, backing, had broken a telegraph pole and had smashed a plate-glass window. There had been a man standing before the window. He lay still and bloody on the pavement. Our tine lady leaped forward, opened her bag, and poured the aromatic spirits on the face of the motionless man.

Coming home, she spoke quite freely for the first time, even to the men guests. She told how she had

p.159 ever been prepared for some awful thing; and, behold, it had happened, and she had been ready. Let people laugh at her now.

The effect produced may be imagined when one of the men observed thoughtfully, “I was there too. That fellow was killed instantly when the pole fell and hit him.” The only man the poor little thing had been able to meet naturally and without fear had been, it seemed, a corpse.

 

 

III.

 

A couple just beginning their life was to take that double-room, presently, when she left – one of our “bridal pairs.” The young husband came to us, fussed and eager. He was marrying a daughter of one of “the first families of the South.” He tried not to show how proud he was. He couldn’t hide his concern over the possibility that she would not really find any place as dainty as her own home had been. We tried to reassure him. The room was made quite charming. Even a bride would love it, we knew.

Then she appeared. She was an exquisite little thing, as pretty as a flower. Shortly, it was plain that she was about as practical as a flower. She had no idea of the responsibility an adult has in occupying a room. Her clothes were left wherever they happened to fall. Servants could always pick them up and hang them up. Her hair-combings lay wherever she let them fall.

She simply had no concept of a world in which one did things for oneself. She demoralized our servants. With her beguiling manner, she would persuade them to spend long hours running errands for her, doing

p.160                        chores for her, chatting with her when she felt bored and wanted to be amused.

In the end, I knew I had to go back to my old regime as “teacher.” I called the pretty little thing to my office. I gave her a firm and educational, but motherly, talking-to. Maybe she wept a little that time; but she listened to instructions.

Long weeks wee to pass, before she really did change. But when, presently, she and her husband bought a house and moved into it, she knew how the wife ought to assume her part of the burden in it.

Many a time, she has come to thank me, “for putting me in school, about being a wife and the maker of a home.” She and I today are real friends.

 

IV.

 

Of a different kind was the “Bewildered Lady,” as we have always called her among ourselves. One Sunday, just after dinner was completed, a pretty young woman was brought to me, asking if there was a room for her and all her belongings. I looked at her. I could not decide whether she were a woman or a girl. She was dressed decidedly as a girl, but there was a maturity about her which was beyond the girl stage. She chose a room and moved into it. At the time I remember how impressed I was with her big picture-hat and her immaculate neatness. She was even prettier, when one saw her a second time, with her black eyes, pretty teeth, fashionably-arranged hair. One could well call her not pretty, but beautiful.

She had a “million dollar smile,” our other guests said. She attracted all who came into contact with her.

p.161      In time, I came to know her quite well. She brought me her problems, and asked to be advised on them. She had had a very unhappy marriage. Now, she was on her own. She had gotten a government job, and was trying to start f\life over again. It seemed natural to me that she might spend, as she did, all her earnings merely on clothes and pleasure – at least, until her bruised spirit healed again.

However, her belongings were very suspicious-looking, somehow, so completely different from those of any other guests who had come to our Club. There were boxes and bundles all wrapped in newspapers. These were so different from her own personal daintiness, that one could not understand it.

She came to tell me, in confidence, that her things were very valuable. “Valuable papers,” she said. Were our maids quite honest? She was assured of that; was advised to keep her trunk open, but “put all valuables under lock and key.”

She gave me an odd look, and replied that her “trunk was full of things just as valuable.” We were obliged to tell her that she must be responsible for her possessions, since we could not be so for all our other guests. She asked in a strange, stunned way, “Would you let one stay here, that you could not trust?”

I could only reply, “All come here alike, strangers, as you are. Therefore, how am I to know them, until they prove what they are? I trust all, and expect all to take care of what they feel they cannot trust without special concern.”

I advised her to protect those valuable papers she spoke of. From her clothes, one could judge the papers were indeed of great value. She told me, presently,

p.162                                                       that she had done as I advised, boxing the papers. It happened that I was on her floor, some time later. I looked into her room – she had rearranged her papers, but they did not seem, to me, to be in any way “protected,” any more than before. Then she came home. We had a short conversation about the “Papers,” but I did not feel it was for me to interfere.

She remained a year. On leaving, she took her many odd parcels and packages with her. But she continued to take her meals in the Scotts’ Club dining-halls. For each meal, she would arrive carrying a big suitcase, setting it by her side, as close as possible to herself. The serving maids would stumble over the bag.

They would plead, “Let me put the suitcase over in the corner.”

She would invariably reply, “Oh, no! I can’t let it out of my reach. Someone might come in and snatch it, and that would be too bad for little me!”

Somehow, that troubled me. But, she was still at her government job, doing it well, apparently, without complaint from her superiors. I saw not valid reason to speak about her with anyone. Besides, to whom could one speak? After all, I only knew that she seemed queer about this bag of hers. And I did not even know her background, her people.

Then, her mother came to see her. She was a plain, elderly woman from a mid-west state. When she left, she took the girl back home, too. But she left home and was picked up by the police, before dawn, miles from her parents’ city. When she was questioned next morning in the station, she was bedraggled and cold, but she was still smiling. The police sent her home again.

p.163

The mother was too old to cope with her; the girl just went back to Washington.

She got her same job again. She took her former apartment; she dined at our place, carrying the ancient suitcase, exactly as she had been doing.

Then a tragic thing befell her. An ulcerous condition developed on her face. It became so appallingly noticeable that it made it unpleasant for her to dine at a public table with strangers, or indeed with anyone. But she could not understand that. Her beautiful features, her perfect skin, that lovely mouth of hers, became gradually hideous with the disease.

She would arrive, carrying a little box like a pen-box, and would pick her face, showing the scabs to other guests, and asking, “Does my face look worse than small-pox?” She seemed unable to understand that it had become impossible to let her continue eating in our halls.

She looked so forbiddingly sick and indeed dangerously infectious with her skin disease, that it was necessary for us to ask the social workers at last to see what they could do. The poor creature was found to be insane.

I cannot tell how I felt, the day I was called by the authorities, “to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth,” before that unhappy tragic girl. When she saw me come into the courtroom, her great, once beautiful eyes glowed with joy.

She thought a friend had come to free her from those who seemed to misunderstand her, who seemed determined to imprison her. I do not think I have ever had more pain than when the poor thing looked at me as I gave my evidence, which sealed her doom. I had

p.164 to be chosen by fate to take her freedom from her, I, whom she had thought her friend.

I went to see her, later, at the insane hospital. She was so glad to see me that I knew without being told she had taken a course toward the worse. She still, to this day, hopes that she will be free. I can only hope with her.

Shall I ever forget how we felt when that old suitcase of hers was opened by the authorities? It contained dozens of worthless old bottles, wrapped in paper. And the “valuable documents” that she had so cherished and guarded were found to be only old newspapers. A poor Bewildered Lady, so beautiful, and doomed, it seemed, even before she came to us, to so terrible a fate!

 

V.

 

We were always grateful, when luck brought happy people, like Mr. and Mrs. X, a daughter and a son. The girl was eighteen and the boy, ten. Originally from Texas, they were accustomed to wide-open spaces, and sorely missed the spaciousness, in Washington’s busy streets. Mr. X had an excellent government job, but money does not buy everything! He could not buy sunsets on the plains, a pony-gallop over long miles. However, he had a beautiful home in Washington. He had a capable and pretty and perfect housekeeper in his wife. And when he felt he must get away from the office, even here, there was one pleasure outdoors – there was fishing.

He had a trip planned, with companions, and an excellent fishing spot their objective. His wife, as usual, was

p.165            ready and helpful in all preparations he made. To his surprise she said suddenly, “Darling, do you know, I’m tired too? I think I ought to have a rest, myself. I’d like to take a vacation from this big place and the servants and the meals, and the garden. I believe I’d like to stop housekeeping, and board for a while.”

Her husband looked down at the pretty little woman and indulgently laughed, “Why not? Perhaps you can find a place while I’m on my fishing trip!”

Then he went cheerfully off, sure that he would find her right at home, as ever, when he returned.

But, someone had told her of our Club. She came to me that same hot, tiring day, saying she wanted a place for her whole family. When she told me her house address, her plan appeared to me rather preposterous. She lived in a neighborhood of spacious homes, of luxury. We had nothing even to show her, except two rooms on the third floor, where all the guests shared a single bathroom. To my astonishment, she announced, “I am moving in. At once.”

She came that very day. She came, with what seemed endless luggage, all her husband’s clothes, her own, their son’s, and those which belonged to the young daughter of eighteen. It can be imagined how crowded two small rooms soon were. In addition, the room she and her husband would occupy was to be shared with the boy.

The husband arrived, a week later. He’d gone home to find his nest empty. Entering his new abode, in our house, he discovered a new nest – as thickly populated as any crowded corner in Washington. He might adore Nature and the wide open spaces. But – his wife was in perfect bliss where she was. For the

p.166

first time, she was free of the burdens she’d been carrying.

In a week we had a large room for the older people and smaller rooms for the children. “The best of life has come,” sighed Mrs. X contentedly. “Why don’t all families board?”

But, she was as conventional as the next woman, in her heart – in spite of the plan she had to change all American family-life. A party arranged for someone who had a birthday was to be held, and all the guests – the women guests – were invited. Little Mrs. X was asked to come, with her daughter, and to bring a cake.

She arrived, with cake and daughter. The room was full – of young and older women, some of them in pajamas. Some were smoking; a few were taking cocktails. Mrs. X had come from a home much like the ones I knew. She stared at the women smoking, at the women in pajamas. It was the era when fashionable young ladies had just started to wear pajamas and to go to cocktail parties.

Mrs. X gave one long look around, at the smokers, the drinkers. She grabbed her daughter by the arm, and swept toward the door. Then, she ran to the table, caught up her cake in both hands, and breathed out in broken phrases, “If – you want to know – what I think…” She told them all what she did think of the whole affair. She grabbed her girl again, and swept out, the cake on her arm.

She “told” her husband that night. He grinned and murmured, tolerantly, “We can’t run the world.” She cried, “Ourselves we can run!”

She did not often try to reform the world, though.

 

p.167                                    She was too much the typical American woman for that. She liked to live according to her own principles, that was all. She was going to see that she, and her children, did live so.

She could enjoy a joke against herself. Later, I was to find that we women here can take a joke, and laugh at it, when we are the cause – and we could appreciate the fun of it, in a way that women in other lands could not. That was because we were sure, we all knew, that we had the respect of everyone, even while we and they laughed. Once Mrs. X saw that the Plymouth car at the curb (her daughter had a Plymouth) needed washing. She went right into the house, got water, and washed the car, then looked to see if it needed sweeping inside. She discovered it was a stranger’s car she’d carefully cleaned. She loved to tell that story on herself. “But it did need washing,” she would always conclude. “We women can’t help seeing that need.”

Her young son was a more sedate person than she. When his Ingersoll watch stopped, he took it apart; and because it then had ‘too many parts’ as he said, he sent the pieces and sixteen cents to the factory, asking that the matter of repairs be attended to at once, because “school started September first,” and “I have no time to wait.” That letter went to the company’s president, who answered it so:

“I am glad to send you a new watch so you will not be late to school on the first day. I am glad you did not wait; you might have been late the first day. A new watch comes with this letter.”

The whole family made that wholesome, friendly atmosphere which speaks for the American, and the American home, everywhere one finds them.

p.168

VI.

Some who came were far unlike Mrs. X. On a hot afternoon in July, Dolores came to me. Rarely had I seen a more magnificently beautiful young woman. Her smooth blue-black hair, her immense velvety black eyes with the faint shadows under the lower lashes, the patrician little nose with its fine-cut nostrils, the matchless unblemished skin with its warm olive undertone, seemed to make a picture about which every thing in my office was only background. She was dressed, besides, in impeccable taste. What did she want? To my amazement, she had come to ask for work, she said.

Naturally, one hesitated to hire this stunning beauty for any job available in Scotts’ Club. But she pleaded as if desperate. Finally I did yield. She was engaged, to assist one of our hostesses. She did very well from the start, showing herself willing and eager to please.

Nevertheless, I took occasion once, when she was drying curtains, to ask her if her mother – if any mother – would not miss a child. Dolores received and sent no letters. She seemed, as I had meant her to be, much moved. She began to speak of her own mother. I suggested, just as I went out, that perhaps it might be nice to let her mother “know she had a job,” and so much pleased us in it.

In a week’s time, the police were at our house. From the stamp of the neighborhood post office, it appeared the area where Dolores might be living in Washington was ascertained. She knew no work but that in a home, and therefore inquiry had been made about various new household-help, until her place was discovered.

In no time, a man appeared also. That was the husband

p.169                                          of Dolores. He was a well-dressed, sober, insurance-solicitor. It seemed, they had two children, aged fifteen and seventeen. This superbly beautiful woman had been the wife of a very modestly-paid man: but she had left her home and children and run away.

Was there another man? By no means. Dolores had quarreled with her elder sister. In spite, she had married, to get away from home. She was then only fifteen. Her husband was older. She had just gone away from him, as she had, first, from her sister.

Of course, we urged her to return home. But she seemed to become frenzied at the suggestion. It was not for us to direct the life of a woman in her early thirties. We could not honestly say she did anything but an excellent job on our staff. The husband left. She remained.

Then, imperceptibly, she became friendly with one of the guests, a very sophisticated business woman. In fact, she was the one who gave that party in brilliant pajamas, which nice little Mrs. X had fled one afternoon.

Unexpectedly, one night, entering a building in our block of houses, I was confronted with this spectacle: In the room opposite my own bedroom, there was a mass of people. The furniture had been stacked against the walls. Dolores and her friend were dancing, in the arms of very strange men indeed.

Dolores was told she must leave. She fell upon her knees, begged to be kept. She cried, “Mrs. Scott, you must understand! I’m married since fifteen! I never had a chance to be a young girl! I have had only babies and hard work! I just went crazy, I think, tonight! I just was so crazy to have some fun!

p.170

That is not the way I have lived. That is not the way I have ever sought “fun.” But I have never judged my fellow-man. I kept Dolores, only telling her this must not happen again. I went to bed. She went to her own room.

In less than a week, however, the same thing had happened again. This time it was “Doc” who found the carousing mob. They were all told to leave. Next morning, the woman who had so evil an influence on Dolores was asked to vacate our premises. And Dolores was told she must go, without fail, this time.

She wept. She pleaded. But I was sure I could not change my mind. “Doc” was as sure, also. Yet I hated to see the girl drag herself away from us!

It was lucky that I had an engagement that evening, I told myself. The girl would be gone, when I returned. But as I entered the house, the whole circle of guests in it came pouring toward me. One girl was hysterical. She had smelled gas, she sobbed to me. She had traced the odor to a certain door. She had opened it. Inside she had seen, on the bed, Dolores lying – with hands clasped over an open Bible, and the gas-jet wide open. When Dolores came to herself, she found she was in the Emergency Hospital.

Saving the girl’s life was a hard job, they found. It took weeks. But, in time, she did recover. To my astonishment, she dressed, on the day of her discharge from the ward. She packed her bag, and then sat down quietly until someone came for her.

The person who came was her husband. He just took her home. There she has remained ever since. She had an overwhelming hunger for the joy she had missed in youth. She nearly paid with her life to have

p.171                              it for a little while. In my youth, we worked hard, and from earliest childhood; but there was fun in our work. Who am I to condemn this girl, coming from another sort of home? I have never seen her since. But she knew that even when we parted, it was in friendship.

 

VII.

 

On the whole, however, our people have been the everyday folks that one knows in work, in church, in the office. Some of them have become closer than passing friendly acquaintances, who shared our houses, liked being with us, and left with warm friendly good-byes. Some have become part of our personal lives. They have been gifts, as it were, brought to us by our work – as friendship relationships are always gifts.

Among those who became nearest to me was one woman, Beatrice, a vivid, laughing, sweet-tempered person who came to live with us. Her husband and she soon were not “guests” but members of our family. She and I found early that we shared a deep interest. We both loved to play upon the piano in our living room. And after a time, she and arranged to music a song I wrote and dedicated to my elder son, a song recalling the Kansas dugout where he was born, and called Shanty Built Under the Blue. Even our dignified night-watchman, Mr. Griffith, who instructed all guests when the curfew-hour of eleven arrived, would unbend and allow Beatrice’s guests a few moments longer, so sweet and endearing was she. In her, one’s faith in middle-aged women blossomed anew!

 

VIII.

 

Perhaps the most beloved guest – to me, to all the

p.172                                    rest – has been a great lady, Madame Suzanne Johnston Oldberg. Her father was secretary to Stanton, (Edwin Stanton) Lincoln’s Secretary of War, during the exciting and troubled days of the civil War; he had known war secrets, it used to be said by the people around the President. There was a story that at one time Abraham Lincoln asked him if he knew about such and such an order. “Mr. President,” was the answer, “yes – I do know. But, they are not for you to know yet.” Suzanne was to follow in her father’s ways. She, too, has always kept a secret. That secret is her age. But we know she used to go with her Dad, at times, to the President’s office, where she would play while her father was at work. Therefore, the secret of how old, or rather how young she is may be your guess as well as it is mine.

Madame Oldberg took her honeymoon in Sweden; her husband had distinguished status in the Embassy then. At the Scotts’ Club she is always known only as “Madame.” Her title of “Madame” has been hers everywhere, because of her own high talent and position. Once she was among the leading social lights in Washington. She was, likewise, a leading light as musician, and at one time had five studios in the East. How old she is can therefore well remain her own secret. She rests on her laurels. She enjoys the love and loyalty of the many who have come to know and admire her in the rich years of her life. To me, she is not merely a guest, but my music-teacher, my dearly-loved friend, who shares our home with us.

Because every hour of my day was occupied, it was necessary – if I were to have friends at all – to find them in my own place. It was my great good fortune to

p.173                                                      find women – and men, too – whom I could indeed cherish and enjoy, over long years of friendship.

For all that, I did find most people to be of exactly the kind I had expected, considerate, courteous, and appreciative. I have thought of them, always, as I used to think of the children in my school that I loved, children grown tall. In my years of contact with countless hundreds of men and women, I believe I never did make an enemy.

 

p. 174

 

PART TEN

 

I.

 

My husband had never taken a real holiday in all our married life. Even that trip we had across country had been, in part, to get Ralph to see about an opening. Mr. Scott, however, had a gift for enjoying the beauty of the everyday.

I have sometimes thought that he was one of those men who might have done excellently well as an architect, had he had the chance for college training in that field. But like myself, he had to begin early to earn a living. When he did go to college, he went to Fort Scott Normal.

Later, after our own hard years were passed, and our two boys had completed their education – when our business was prospering and he could do it – George found pleasure in helping his relative – the young “back home,” to plan for that university training he would so much have liked to have. He expressed his love for fine houses, for fine furniture, as well as could be done, in our own Scotts’ Club.

Yet, for all his artistic strain, he was nevertheless a highly practical man. Fate had made him a schoolmaster, to be sure, for many years. But his real talent was for business. His ancestor, Seth Doane, had come over on the Mayflower, and George’s mother had come from Salem, in Massachusetts. Seth Doane was a distinguished architect – an artist. But the family had its

p.175                              heritage of practical wisdom in the veins of its descendants, for all the artistic inclinations. I am writing a book about my life. Throughout, my life and his were one. He did all the “business,” the books, the difficult work done at desk and in correspondence.

My husband never would have thought of going to bed during the many years of our business without “balancing the books” for the day, and books were meticulously kept.

He had, however, been ill for some years, albeit he would not admit it. The burden of the Scotts’ Club had lain on “Doc’s” shoulders and mine, mainly, since our return from that Western trip. My husband, nevertheless, insisted on performing those duties which he could do, with utmost punctiliousness. I know he enjoyed keeping those neat, perfectly balanced books. I know that he liked to hear, at the day’s end, the plans for changes to be made in one or more of our houses, or to be told of changes that had been made.

His love of order, his love of business detail, and his respect for beautiful things, were expressed to the full limit of his abilities. Ralph has ever said, he has never know a better business man than his father. George was the introspective person always; I was the one who would, now, be called the extravert.

Every evening, he and I would sit down together to discuss what should be done the following day. I was the one ready to make innovations; he was the careful one. Perhaps that was a wise partnership.

One night, however, we were talking of something he wished done hereafter. There had been some noisy young people who had interfered with the studies of an earnest medical student. “I think we ought to

p.176                        forbid any drinking in any of our places,” declared George to me. Then he shook his head. “This is a free country,” he added. He turned for a last look at his ledgers. “The accounts are balanced,” he said. And he gave a curious sigh. Those were the last words he ever was to speak.

The accounts were indeed balanced, forever, for him. He was gone. He was sixty-eight years old.

Somehow, despite his frail health, we had both expected to live on together – for years – for years ahead together.

 

II.

 

We took him to the old church where he used to go in Illinois. We chose for his final resting place a lovely spot on top of a hill, Maple Ridge. There both his father and mother already were buried. It was only a mile from where he had himself been born, and right back of the schoolhouse where he used to teach. The school building is standing to this day. A few steps away was the Sunday School which he used to attend as a boy.

(ed. note – I, too, attended the Maple Ridge 8 grades in a room schoolhouse as a small boy, with Ada Jeffords as my teacher. The church, still quite successful, is the LaMarsh Baptist Church. I believe the school has been deconstructed. My Uncle Vern Schoaf lived next door to the Church during his and Aunt Sally’s later years.)

Hundreds of people from all over came to do him honor. The neighbors who had known George and me in our early days, the friends we had made over forty-six years of our marriage, the pupils he had had when he was a teacher, all these made their way to the little church. It was a wonderfully perfect autumn day. He, who had so loved all that was beautiful in Nature, would have loved the beauty of that sunny gold-and-crimson landscape which made the background of that afternoon. They sang a favorite of his, Safe in the Arms of Jesus.

 

 

p. 177     

III.

 

We had to go home and pick up the broken threads. George would have wished us, we knew well, to go back to business, to the daily tasks. To continue and make a success of what we were doing, was what he would have wanted. Ralph gave up his law work and entered into our business, to help carry the burden from now on.

Here is a poem that came from my heart, when I returned to our room again:

 

THE OLD EMPTY CHAIR

The comfy old chair sits in a corner so bright.

While the sun comes streaming in there.

And Memories come flooding, as well as the sun,

When I look at the faded old chair.

 

I can see in my fancy the owner of it,

And see him nodding in there.

With his papers all over himself, and the floor,

Sometimes I wonder, O, where?

 

Will the future reveal, just why he was called,

And what is his mission today?

I’m sure he’s busy in some other sphere,

Improving his time and his stay.

 

And over the back of this ancient old chair,

Is a scarf, I made when quite young,

And gave it to him, every stitch filled with love,

And all of his praises I’ve sung.

                  

He lived many years, and he treasured it well,

And never from it would he part,

And now he is gone, it lies on his chair,

A symbol of love, from his heart.

 

 

Half a century has passed, since I made the gay scarf,

Half a century we followed life’s rules

But years can’t efface, nor memory erase,

The hard lessons we learned in that school.

 

But I’m alone now with that empty old chair,

And the scarf he cherished so well,

But time and decay will take it away,

There’ll be no one the story to tell.

 

The scarf and the old chair are now left to me,

As I sit and look far, far away,

I can see through the mist, a new life beyond this,

The dawn of a permanent day.

 

Let the scarf and chair, be a lesson to us

No matter how bright and how gay,

The things of this life are just left to us

For convenience to us while we stay.

 

So learn from the thought, of the chair and the scarf,

That material things never stay,

And start from today, put your treasures away,

In a home that will never decay.

 

Written in memory of my husband

George W. Scott

 

 

p.179

 

PART ELEVEN

 

I.

 

Here I was, a “successful business woman,” I suppose!

A whole decade passed. The Scotts’ Club had continued their success, year by year. There were thousands of people, old and young and very young, whom I had received into our houses. There were thousands whom I had come to know, who had lived with us; most of them, I can truly say, had left as our friends. I do not think I have ever had one enemy, among our guests.

My two sons, after their father’s death, had taken more and more of the physical and business burdens from my shoulders. All I had to do was to see that a home was made, somehow, for the many people whom we accepted.

It was never hard for me to create a feeling of “home.” For me, to this day, the people who come are like “company” used to be, “back yonder.” Though those who gathered together were so different, in their background, economic status, culture, even in religion, they were all alike “visitors” to be enjoyed, to be made happy in my “home.” Naturally, I had my dear personal friends, like Madame Oldberg, and Beatrice Cowan. But I enjoyed all our guests and very differences among them.

I liked them when they were from my own kind of country, from farms or small towns. But I like them

p.180       also when they came from greater cities, or foreign lands. We had Germans and Italians and South Americans; we had British and French and Scandinavians. The whole world seemed to be coming to Washington, D. C., from nineteen-nineteen to nineteen-thirty-five, and representatives of many nations found their way to our doors and were received with the same friendliness that we gave to any man or woman. We had Roman Catholics, and appreciated their piety and sincerity; we had a priest who was with us for a long time. We had Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Mormons, too. We have had Baptists. We have had Jews, and found them to be the same nice guests as all were.

We met everyone who came in the same way. And we found that everybody who came returned the same appreciation, to us.

But, after sixteen years, the business seemed to run on wheels, under the charge of my two sons.

There were more than 600 guests. We had begun “way back in 1919,” with one house. We had, in 1935, twenty-three. I had started this new venture by doing every bit of work with my own two hands. We now had nearly seventy employees in our staff, white and black – household-servants, cooks, chambermaids, chauffeurs, painters, plasterers, office workers, waitresses, and hostesses.

A man who knew the picture of business in America, said to me one day, “Mrs. Scott, do you know that your Scotts’ Club is the largest privately owned business of this type in all the United States? There is a company in New York which does own more small hotel units, but that is a corporation. Yours is all under your family ownership.”

p.181

It was nice to have this said. I hadn’t thought of how the houses seemed to accumulate, one by one. I continued to think of them as all just extensions of my first house, my first “home for people away from home.” I knew that just ass I never had changed my way of thinking of the people who came as guests, so was I, to every single one of them, “Mother Scott.” And I felt as if I were, in a way, a “mother” to all those who came to us to live – to share “my home” was how I always put it in my own mind.

To be sure, it was a big home, by now. Our houses covered about two blocks, big three-story brick buildings. When my husband was alive, we had rented the places we used. Since his passing, we were trying to buy them, when and as we could. We had changed every single one of the great, gloomy, old-fashioned edifices into bright, pretty, inviting places. We had painted the dark woodwork ivory-color. We had ripped out the whole rusted system of archaic plumbing, and had put in new pipes and tiles shining bathrooms, with tubs and showers.

Because I had myself worked as a girl, I knew that every girl (and every woman and man too!) would appreciate having running water in her room. They’d like to have the chance to take care of some of their clothing, if possible. So, that privilege was arranged, when I could manage it. The old, filthy basements of our houses were completely removed. They were turned into immaculate, cool, “lower floors,” and the rooms there were, for some reason, invariably sought by young men, who enjoyed the showers, and quiet, and a sort of masculine efficiency.

Six hundred people! Yet I knew every single one

p.182                                     of them, just as I had when there were only my first thirteen girls in the earliest house. And they now brought me their troubles, their joys, their perplexities, just as they had done in that first group.

I believe – no, I am certain – that nobody who has come to my house has ever doubted that he was “welcome.” And all of them, I know, realized soon that it was not a place where they had come for sleep and meals – but a place to love.

It is curious, but I have never known anyone who has ever spoken of ours as a big “business” – except for one person. I never did my work as if it were business, in fact. People were received as if they were company, as they’d have been in my mother’s house. I’ve never found there need be a different approach, because folks happened to come to me here, in a bigger city, in the Capitol City.

Of course, it was a tremendous job to take care of our places, no matter in what spirit one did do it. I could not have done it – in the great size it had assumed – without my two sons. A large part of the responsibility for details – office employee, purchasing – was taken from my shoulders. “Doc” had a gift with people; everyone loved him, guests and workers alike. Ralph had a talent for planning, for seeing ahead. He had a practical wisdom and judgment, which evoked respect from all who came to him.

But, too, Ralph has an artistic strain. When it was a matter of changing the architecture of one of our houses, Ralph seemed to know by instinct what had to be done. It used to amuse me, though, to see him stride into a new house, or an old one that we were remodeling. Many of the houses had hideous rooms. One

p.183                                           very common ugly feature was cat-a-corner fireplace, disfiguring many a room. Ralph strode in, sledgehammer in hand, and pounded away. Someone had built those houses with the idea every room must at all costs be as nearly a triangle as possible. Ralph grimly went about, “squaring a room,” from floor to floor.

The two boys – “Doc” and Ralph – had planned more than changes in the physical appearance of Scotts’ Club, though. They knew, as I did, how unimportant it is to have a place that “looks perfect” – when you do not feel content and at home in it. Our business was big. In a large enterprise, one needed new plans in addition to my older ones, if young folks especially were to be made to feel no loneliness as “strangers,” in the big Capitol City of ours.

Many of our people were girls and boys, employed by the government. Many of them were far from home. A good proportion came from small towns and cities. They each had a nice room, good food, to be sure. But they needed something besides, to feel they “belonged,” here.

My sons, therefore, planned parties, games, a trip on the Potomac. There was even a bus which brought the guests home to “Scotts’ Corner” after work! Later, that was succeeded by a taxi, which the youngsters shared. But the feeling of being in a place where people “knew each other,” and “had fun together” – that was remembered, for their happiness. That made “home.”

I loved all – the daily planning for meals, the arrival of “help” for their various tasks, the coming and even the happy departures, of guests, the changes made in our houses, the gracious kindness of my sons in seeing

p.184                         that I enjoyed what I did and yet never over-did. For that was something which the two of them insisted on seeing to, now!

 

II.

 

It was true – I was “no longer young.” I was seventy-one. But in my heart, I felt no more “tired” than I used to be, years before. And I hadn’t the very least desire to be “sheltered” now, to be “shielded,” to “rest,” from my job running on an established routine.

I knew I could take time off, though. I could do some of the things which I had never had had time for. I could – if I wanted to – even do something that all my life I had longed for, and all my life never had seen a chance to achieve. I could take another “college course.”

I decided there was no time better than the present. That fall of 1935 I enrolled at the George Washington University.

I was seventy-one years old. But I can honestly say my teachers found my mind was as living, as receptive, as eager, as that of many a much younger student. My two sons were amused, of course! But they were delighted at the same time. All my life I have followed my love for making poetry; just as my mother, in her spare time, used to love to weave strands of many colors and textures in her weaving room, at her loom – so have I also in every free hour loved to weave my kind of homespun words and phrases and music together. If I were to go to college now, it would be to learn how to follow more skillfully in the footsteps of the great makers of poetry, to learn how the masters wrote in this craft I very modestly attempted.

p.185

I expect there were seventy-five in our class. All seemed to me so very young! They came from the far Northwest, from the extreme Southeast, from Maine to Texas. I was the only one of my generation there. I am sure no one enjoyed the classes more than I. I believe none profited by them more than I. Our classes were concerned with the technique of writing poetry. It interested me. I must add honestly, however, that, like my mother at her loom, I have been concerned with the technique of writing my own poetry in my own way. It was interesting to learn of the way famous women and men had written their great verse. I will always be glad I took that year’s work. But after taking that course, and in spite of all the interest and pleasure I had in it, I still believe as I did before, that poets are born, not made.

Had it been “too much” for me – the college work? Nonsense!

When the year ended, I found I wanted more to study. Why not do something else I had always wanted? Why not study a foreign language!?

 

III.

 

Friends smiled, when I mentioned this new thought of mine. A woman past seventy attempting a foreign language! Why, hadn’t I ever heard that after twenty-five the brain fell into set channels? Didn’t I know that a doctor named Osler had said anyone after forty was already beginning to die? But I could only laugh in return, “Gladstone wrote a great book when he was past eighty.”

All the talk somehow simply stiffened my determination.

p.186                                     I was going to prove something. I was going to be a pioneer, if you will! Hadn’t I heard my own parents, long ago, warn that they were “foolhardy and silly to try a new land,” when they had become comfortable, and settled? They had gone on, though, to pioneer.

My young husband and I had started our married life as pioneers! I had my first baby in a dugout. I started East again, and I thought it was right to go, even with a six-weeks-old baby, and in icy winter weather. I had taken a position to teach school, though I had a husband and a baby. I had become a school-principal, though people might lift their eyebrows at a schoolma’am who was wife and mother. I had, after being “retired” as teacher, with a quarter-century of classroom work behind me, started in a brand-new business, and had made that business one of the respected enterprises in the nation’s Capitol, itself.

Was I going to be sent off from a new direction, just because a few people thought a woman of seventy-one was old, to begin learning foreign languages? It made me laugh. I enrolled, for French – and Spanish, besides. And – German, too! I went six nights a week to class. I studied every minute I could spare from Scotts’ Club during the day.

Later, when I had some grounding, I asked Madame Oldburg to become my private tutor. And in two years time, I was reading Spanish and French as well as German!

I was able to understand spoken French and Spanish – even if the answers I gave might not be so well understood!

I suppose I did prove it is possible for a woman of

p.187                                     three-score-and-ten to pioneer in learning. But that was no reason to me for any exultation. I had known it cold be done. The mind is only as old as it allows itself to be.

 

 

p. 188

 

PART TWELVE

 

I.

 

It was the warm month of August. My elder son was in New York. I was lunching with Ralph, the younger. With great gusto, I discussed a vacation I planned to have in California. Ralph turned to me and said unexpectedly, “Mother, I can’t understand your going to California so often, without ever having seen Europe. Can you?

 

That initiated a warm defense of California, on my part. I did agree that perhaps I might go across – next year, starting earlier in summer. Sailing would be smoother, and I would have more time to spend in the faraway continent.

But Ralph only repeated, “I do wish you would see the other side of the Atlantic, and now.”

Only to satisfy him, I said, “I might do it, whenever there is a good ‘tour’ going on.”

He returned, “If I get you a good tour now, Mother, will you go?” I laughed, “Yes!”

Before the sun set that night, I was on my way to Europe, so far as details were concerned! Ralph had already bought my ticket that very afternoon. He had found a “tour” of central Europe was sailing, August tenth, “embarking from New York.”

He had learned the tour had a good representation of charming people. I could not back out, now. There was no difference in the wardrobe I would need for

 

p.189                                                       Europe, or for California. We telephoned to “Doc” to meet me in New York on the ninth, so that he could see me on board ship.

 

II.

 

He was anxious about his mother taking a tour, and her first alone, at her age. But he knew I could take care of myself in Europe, as I had in America.

My adventures were to start that very evening, in New York. “Doc” showed me the sights of that fabled city. He took me to a show, A Yank at Oxford, which seemed a sort of introduction to my trip, for it showed the great college and all its lovely surroundings.

When “Doc” brought me back to my suite at the hotel, there was a huge bouquet of sweetheart roses on my dresser, to represent my son’s love for his mother. We seemed to have endless things to talk of – I in anticipation, and “Doc” in memories of his own visits abroad. And then I said “goodnight.”

What wonderful sons I had, how rich I was in their love!

 

Through my window, before I retired, I could see the great ocean, with the stars above. And next morning the sun was dancing on the waters. In a tree just outside and below my window, birds were singing. It seemed as if summer herself were putting on a holiday for my debarking.

I hurried to the dining-room where “Doc” welcomed me with his hearty greeting. We walked to the wharf, looked at all the vessels teetering on the waves. And there was the Manhattan, my ship! (ed. note: the USS Manhattan was the vessel that Roosevelt used to secretly transport 4000 Canadian soldiers from Newfoundland to England in 1939 in violation of the Neutrality Act passed by the U. S. Congress. Germany, remembering the Lusitania fiasco that was partly responsible for drawing the U.S. into WWI, was scrupulously avoiding sinking of American shipping. Churchill, supposedly, was very anxious to create a provocation to swing American public opinion away from isolationism and toward getting the U.S. to join in their defense. One writer claims to have found a communication from Joseph Kennedy (JFK’s father, ambassador to Britain prior to 1941) wherein he pleads with the State Dept. not to blame the Germans if the Manhattan is sunk while he was traveling back to America on it from Lisbon, Port., believing that Churchill was just conniving enough to sink it with a British U-Boat and to blame it on the German fleet…. It apparently returned to civilian use thereafter, as it ran aground off Palm Beach, FL in early 1941 with a full compliment of crew and passengers. The Coast Guard was unable to refloat her, and rescued the passengers and crew. A salvage company, at some great expense and trouble, was able to move her to a port for refitting. Soon, it became the USS Wakefield during WWII. The Coast Guard produced a film in 1945 “Titan Sport” that detailed the perils of transporting troops to Europe during WWII and returning with prisoners. The ship used in the film was the former USS Manhattan. Included are clips of the Manhattan’s luxury cruises in the 1930’s, including one to Nazi Germany…perhaps even the trip that Aunt Margaret was on! Apparently, in 1946, the Manhattan/Wakefield was decommissioned and not used thereafter)

I cannot describe how new and strange and thrilling

p.190                                     it was to me, who had never before seen so big a vessel. I did not, until that moment, realize I was really going on a ship. The prospect of going into that beautiful “greyhound of the ocean,” as they called it, filled my heart. My trip, for the first time, became not simply an idea, but a reality, for me.

Our baggage was to be ready by noon. The ship sailed at two. I had to hurry back to the hotel to prepare. When I entered my hotel room – there, among my roses shone a great brilliant, dazzlingly, a ring – and, it was for me. It was diamond ring, from “Doc.”…

All the world seemed made just for me that morning. I was so excited, I almost forgot to say to “Doc,” “Thank you,” or “Merci,” or “Dankeschoen,” or “Gracias” – all the languages I had proved I could learn, if I chose, failed me. But when I saw “Doc,” I gave him just one look, and he understood how I felt.

 

III.

 

There was the ship, waiting. People were rushing, onto the boat. We both hurried also. Such confusion, such milling-about, such bewilderment of questions, such excitement collecting packages of every hue and shape! There were people with swanky luggage, and there were the very poor with belongings tied up in odd looking cloths. There came dignified older people with servants, and just beyond, others unable to speak our language and frightened, eager, agitated. It was like a great play to me.

One had, however, to be part of all this. One could not just stand by, to watch and enjoy. Follow with the

p.191             crowd, listen to directions. Time soon to embark. Here was my cabin!

It was a cozy outside one. I had it all to myself. The cunning round porthole! You could see the ocean through it. Later, I was to find that as soon as a storm approached the room-steward would rush in and lock that porthole, keeping it locked too, until he was good and ready to open it again.

“Doc” tipped the room-steward, the deck-steward, the bath-steward, the dining-room steward. Let me add, I had to tip again at “journey’s end.” But the gong was ringing for visitors to leave. It made me suddenly homesick. “Goodbye, Mother. Be happy! Write !” said “Doc,” and he had to leave me then.

I hurried with the rest to the rail, so that when the ship began to move “Doc,” seeing me from land, would have as final memory, a broad smile.

The wharf got smaller and smaller. Soon there would be only water all about us. I was starting upon a new, strange world.

 

p.192

PART THIRTEEN

 

I.

 

On the way to Europe now, I felt a sudden qualm. So many miles from friends! So many miles of water! But this was childish. What difference between starting a journey on a ship, and taking one in an automobile?

I just turned to Old Liberty, to pledge allegiance to her, and I promised, without any fear or doubt, that I would be returning in due time.

As I went to find my cabin (which was to be a constant job on the whole trip), a sweet little lady touched my elbow and asked hesitantly, if I were a member of the Tour-party. Delightedly, we found we both were. Until the trip’s end, she and I were to be companions and friends. She was from New York, and like myself, loved music, so that practically at the very first moment, on this great strange floating palace I had discovered someone to share my interests, my enthusiasm, and my expectations.

There was my cabin surely? But no, I should have gone down. I’d been in it, with Doc. Surely, I could find it, easily. All the cabin doors looked alike, though. One must not admit that one was a “tenderfoot” on an ocean-liner. I wouldn’t “ask directions!” I consulted the ship-plan. My cabin was on an altogether different deck.

I retraced my steps. Surely that must be my room now?

p.193                                     I approached. It was a mistake, again. I couldn’t even see the door number of this one. Flowers and telegrams and letters were festooned over the doorknob, on the hinges, stuck in every tiny available crack possible.

Just then, the room steward appeared, and I gratefully turned to him for assistance. He laughed, “Madam, this is your cabin.” That was my number he was showing me.

He must have seen how deeply I was moved. I never had expected all my friends would make my cabin a bower of beauty and fragrance, over-flowing with messages of affection and good wishes. Hundreds had sent me messages! People in the Scotts’ Club, church members, our pastor, relatives from the East and the west, friends from all over the country, had written. It took me over an hour just to look at the various messages and gifts.

It was good to have my new-found little friend on this ship, with whom to share all this. Nothing that has ever happened to me has ever been fully a joy to me unless I could share it with a friend.

My cabin was a show-place. This occasion did show me what was in the hearts of those with whom I had been working and living all the past years. My flowers adorned our table in the dining room. Six of us were at the table. I found it exciting to make the first lap of my trip, as it were, sitting at the table where the purser had assigned me.

One couple was from England; one from Colorado; I from Washington; there was a blind man returning to Norway to visit his mother. Already we had a cosmopolitan group.

p.194

II.

 

We were traveling second-class. I had refused to let “Doc” send me first class. I shall always think it the pleasantest way to go. My new-found ship-friend and I decided to discover the other people who would be in our tour-group.

The pamphlet which gave the names of those enrolled did not tell us how to identify them. We had a fine time, for that very reason, picking out those who looked as if they might be our future companions. Somehow we knew what they would be like, since they would be in quest of the same pleasures as ourselves. We were pretty certain they would be rather like ourselves, folks going on a steamer for the first time, and full of thrill and wonder on the voyage.

And we did find some soon. Most of them, as we had expected, were traveling as we were, “tourist-class,” on “B” deck.

A few, though, were on “A” deck. There were others, we were sure, on “C” deck.

Deck “A” is just a shade different, in price, from Deck “B.” (My friend and I were not overwhelmed by the difference.) Deck “C” was less expensive than ours. We were not conscious of being superior because we had paid a little more for cabin and food on this trip.

 

On the topmost deck, “A,” was a very pretty woman, we were told, who would be one of our party. She was with her daughter. They were both really quite beautiful, we decided, when we had at last discovered who they were. We would see the two of them up there, at times. On “A” deck, passengers attired themselves in

p. 195                                          evening-clothes for dinner. This lady and her daughter made a charming picture in their fashionable dinner costumes every evening.

But since we were to be constant comrades on a trip that was to take fifty-four days, I decided it might be good for them and ourselves to meet right away, aboard ship, if feasible. I therefore persuaded my little friend, whose name was Elizabeth, to go up with me to talk with them on the top deck.

When we came to call on mother and daughter, we found them to be what I had expected, most delightful, simple, and sincere. They were true American women.

I thought it well to discover future companions on “C” deck also. There was one girl there who proved to be a fine, upstanding young person, one of the most intelligent I have ever known. She visited my cabin often and we became friends. She was a trained nurse with only a limited income. But she decided that she would not be stopped from fulfilling her dream of going abroad, just because of money; she simply went third-class.

Our fashionable first-class friends, our endearing third-class co-passenger, and we immediately had a true liking for each other. I was to learn, later, that democratic friendships of this kind can exist only among people in our land.

On the night of the “Captain’s Dinner” I was the one that gathered us all together. We dressed in our most becoming, or in the funniest, costumes. We participated in the merrymakings, rattled the gadgets, blew up our balloons to the ceiling, waved our streamers, and threw confetti. It was the first festivity I was to enjoy that I had not prepared myself! Every part of that

p.196                   ocean trip, day after day, was like some fairyland in the girlhood I had been too busy to enjoy.

I suppose it seems strange for a woman past seventy to have laughed with sheer enjoyment at childish pastimes such as miniature horse races, ping-pong, volleyball, shuffleboard, and deck pennies. But it was not only Mrs. Margaret Scott wo was taking this trip. With her was young Maggie McAvoy, aged seventeen, who had never until now had opportunity to see and share and find delight in such sweet, gay fun.

 

III

 

I felt as if folks I had made a part of my own existence left, when part of the passengers went one way, I, another, at Havre. We were to spend a day in this city, where I had my first anticipatory glimpse of the ancient continent from which had come countless immigrants to my own young, dear country. From this port in old Europe, had fled the burdened, the oppressed, and Liberty had received them and given them new hope and a new life. Here was I, from the Middle-West. I was daughter of a pioneer. I remembered in my own experience the making of new cities. As teacher, I had been able to speak for the growth of America, out of what I myself had known.

I wished, as I set foot on Europe’s soil, that I had had the opportunity to see and know the old land when I taught my children. One cannot truly understand American history unless one sees it against the background of ancient Europe, from which the first Americans came to found our Colonies.

We returned to our ship after seeing a little of

p.197                               Havre. That night, I saw for the first time what those who had left their homes, in Europe had seen – the harbor, from which one’s vessel sailed.

We were in our bunks at midnight. The ship was quivering on the water; her engines were starting. The moon shone down with almost vertical rays upon the water. The stars shone only a little more faintly. The lights of the ship glowed upon the rippling water. And, in addition, there was the beautiful arc of many lights, from house and stores on the land which we were leaving. I shall never forget it. Who could doubt there was a Divine Father, creating all loveliness, when one looked at this harbor, with its beauty made both by God and by the humbler hands of even God’s children? I wrote that night in my journal:

“When I am done with this life, may I see the light – Of God’s sheltered harbor, all shining, all bright.”

 

IV.

 

The next morning, our ship reached Hamburg. It was at Hamburg I said “goodbye” to the first of a small gallery of portraits – living portraits – that I was to collect in Europe.

I called them, in my own mind, my private collection of Remarkable Persons. This first one was a little woman, dressed most strangely. She had walked aboard ship with a cane, her costume like a German peasant’s dress. I came to feel guilty, remembering how, when I saw her the first time, I had chuckled to my table companions, “Here comes the Witch of Endor.” When later I got to know her she proved to be

p.198                                           a cultivated lady who had taught school in England. The World War closed her school; she had opened another for French, but that too had shut down for want of students. She was returning to Germany, to devote her life to helping a sick sister, who was subsisting with her husband on almost nothing.

As I watched her get off though, I knew I would see few stranger sights. On her head was a cap made of striped cloth. She wore a man’s blouse. Around her waist was a full, short apron. Her dress reached no further than her shoetops. The cane she carried, we all knew, was homemade. To complete it all, beneath her crude dress, were blue woolen trousers that came to her shoetops. But I had come to respect her, as a sincere and able fellow teacher, after I had an opportunity to know her. I was glad we had talked.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth and I enjoyed some jingles I had to write, willy-nilly, about the dear little oddity:

Upon her head she wore a cap,

Her face looked like a German map.

With inlets here, and mountains high,

Attracting all, as she went by.

She held a cane, to help her go,

Her blue wool pants hung down below.

Her face was red as an Irish rose,

What is her “Mission,” no one knows!

 

It was in Hamburg that all of us in our party got together. We went directly to the agency’s office. The welcome we received! I thought it must be a great deal like the royal delegations that one reads about in newspapers. We seemed a large crowd. A whole

p.199 group of us had suddenly assembled from everywhere. There we were, gathered in one place, not only our little crowd from the ship, but people who had been in at least a dozen other ships, or in cities from which they were arriving now to join us.

All of us were seeing Europe for the first time. You may be sure that among the eager and excited crowd there I was the most eager and excited. In years, I was the “mother” of that family which collected in Hamburg, at the office. But none was beginning our adventure, I was sure, with fresher enthusiasm, quicker curiosity, and more vivid interest. I sent a cable to my two sons, and waited for what was about to happen.

I realized I had not had fun all the past years. I had done everything for a “practical purpose” … for others. For fifty-four days, now, I was going to do things only for my own pleasure.

 

PART FOURTEEN

 

I.

 

p.200

It is, I think, proper to explain here this point, that 1938, the year of our tour, did not even remotely promise, to us every-day people war with any but one of the countries which were to be our enemies in 1941. The only land about which Americans had doubts was Germany; that was but one of seven countries included in our sight-seeing plan that summer.

I have no political or economic theories I have ever wanted to expound. I have already said, I am a mother first; I have been breadwinner next. Abstruse ideas are not my forte. When I am not working I love to write poetry, or to play my organ. I do know that I deeply abhor all the cruelty of our enemy-countries. I know that I am heart and soul with my own country. Yet, even now, I remember from our trip men and women who then lived in Germany, France, Italy; a few out of thousands and thousands that we saw. And I remember these singled-out people with affection, and even with friendship. I am greatly grieved that their nations and ours must, now, be enemies.

Neither shall I try to analyze pre-war Europe. I shall write of the thrilling and amusing and beautiful things I saw, in the spirit wherein I saw them, and in the spirit and mood which took me to see them in Europe. It would be false to have this unsaid. But, perhaps quite unconsciously and faintly enough, the

p.201                         shapes of coming things did reveal themselves to us tourists then, though we did not know it.

 

II.

 

Arriving in Berlin, we found “Tour” fellows in smart costumes, were waiting for us. Our special “Courier” greeted us. I did not guess then what he’d mean to us! We might have thought we were guests of a great national organization, even of Hitler himself, to judge by the welcome our American group received. I confess, many of us hankered for a glimpse (at a safe distance) of Der Fuehrer.

Some of us did go on a trip to his place, but he did not arrive while we were there.

We were gathered at the Grand Central, a magnificent structure, just three blocks from Unter den Linden – different from Scotts’ Club! Grandly uniformed men at the hotel greeted us, and they spoke in our own language, too. A card was given each of us, with our name, room number, directions, and rules of the hotel, in German and English. It was, in the German fashion, very regimented. At the same time, a most anxious friendliness to us as Americans was stressed, almost too heartily.

I was delighted to read my little card, for I felt prepared to burst into German fluently. At least, I knew I could show that I could Deutsch Sprechen.

I went about, looking for every sign in German I could find stuck up. To my satisfaction I could read every one of them. Was I elated! Folks back home had told me my German “would not do me any good” with the natives here. I could show them.

p.202

But, alas, when I tried to speak to Germans in my German – they could not understand. One porter called another porter, to find what I wanted. That second porter appeared to want me to talk in English, and to use English himself, to try to speak English, as I did German. A bellhop was proud of his American English. “Come into the lift,” he said. Whatever ‘lift’ might be, I followed. It was, of course, the elevator. I told him our word for it. He was so grateful! For some reason, they all desired to learn my “American” words and phrases.

Two words I did know were “Zimmer” and “Bett.” How different were the objects, however, from what my imagination had pictured. The rooms were not in the least like our rooms, of course. The bed was a four-poster. On it laid a “puff,” a down coverlet, spreading over the whole bed, and made of silk.

Breakfast, also, was different from the one I gave my guests! I remember the first experience with what Europeans can call a hearty breakfast. Rolls and jelly, three or four kinds of preserves, coffee as black as ink, and a pitcher of hot milk. That was all! There it was – take it or leave it!

I decided, though it would cost a lot extra, to ask the waiter for good old bacon-and-eggs. I ordered, in what I blissfully thought perfect German, “Eir und Speck.” He stood, puzzled. I repeated my order. He trotted off, and brought along another waiter. This one seemed as stupid about my German as the first.

Oh, well! Perhaps my German education hadn’t been so successful. Let the folks at home say it was a failure! I could still read signs. I took coffee and rolls – that was that.

 

p.203

The Courier was calling. We were to start out “seeing Europe.” The fifty-odd days following I was to spend as a member of our group, seeing strange cities, visiting great cathedrals, looking at the world’s masterpieces of art, were to be to me the culmination of all the hunger and longing for beauty and perfection in beauty that I have had. My European adventure took less than two months. But the weeks I spent, there, gave me a glance at such splendor as I could have wished to enjoy over my whole life, had I had time to take from work.

I seems to me, I can justly give what may seem a little more than its proportion of space to this short tour, in the story of my “life.” It was, to be true, only two months in seventy-two years. But whole decades I had lived before really did not surpass in meaning the gifts offered every day, to my mind and emotions and spiritual self.

I think that everyone on my tour felt as I did. All of us were taking our first trip to Europe. And I know we symbolized what the voyage into the past and its treasure meant to Americans, who by countless thousands made the trip to Europe, over the years.

 

III.

 

The Courier was gathering us into the bus. Shall I forget how, at every point we reached, he collected us into those big waiting busses, like a Sunday school teacher gathering all the little ones after a day in a grove? We were to go forth, on our first “sight-seeing.” The guide – he insisted ferociously it must be “Courier” – was saying: “We are on Unter den Linden.

 

p.204                   This fine historic street is a hundred-ninety-five-feet wide! The Lindens are gone! These trees you see have replaced them! The old Linden had roots which were growing so deep they endangered something the authorities have dug below street level!” It was like being with a traveling theatre, I thought.

He called out, “Next, we see the grave of the Unknown Soldier…..”

Certainly, the “grave” did not compare with ours, at Arlington. This one lacked the solemnity and grandeur we give to our Unknown Soldier’s grave. In Germany, the grave was put at the side of the street, with a fence around it, and a soldier on guard. To us Americans, it seemed very unimpressive. We felt a little saddened, somehow.

“You see …” the Courier shouted.

We were at another part of Unter den Linden. A large monument, as big as our own Washington Memorial, was being moved, from its place in front of the former Kaiser’s palace. It would go to another spot, where it was to stand in honor of Herr Hitler! The top was already finished by a statue of Hitler. Nearly all the Kaiser’s monuments were being replaced by those honoring Der Fuehrer, we were informed.

Soon, we were driving through a forest. It had a twelve-thousand-acre area of pine. We were on the way to Potsdam, “former home of the Kaiser.” When we reached the great mansion, a pile of felt slippers was waiting for each of us to put over one’s shoes, so that we might not scratch the gleaming floors, made of the world’s most precious marble.

Here was my first view of a “king’s palace.” I was to see endless royal palaces, throughout Europe. But

p.205             this one was really the finest. It had belonged to a greater king than Kaiser Wilhelm. The furnishings in it belonged to Frederick the Great.

In one room at a level a little higher than the wainscoting, we were asked to look up, to a band about a foot wide which encircled the entire room. We were not allowed to get very close. It consisted of an exhibit to dazzle our eyes – diamonds from Brazil, United States gold, Mexican silver, precious stones from all the world.

The chandelier above us seemed like several bushels of diamonds in a pile, just too dazzling for any of us to look at it. About us stood mahogany and teak, made into superb beds, tables and sofas.

There were over two hundred rooms in the palace. And, besides, there was in it Frederick’s beautiful church, with the pulpit behind which he is buried; his private theatre, seating five hundred; his library, with nearly all the books in French, and its portrait bust of Voltaire. Going out to the terrace, we could see a great fountain, throwing water a hundred-and-thirty feet high. Upon the palace wall, there grew queer pear trees, flat against the house. They had been planted close to the building and the trees, as they grew older, clung to the wall, just as when my mother trained her tomato plants. When a tree fruited, there were fine pears, hanging in great clusters. Near to the palace was a graveyard where Frederick’s hunting hounds were buried – put there so he could see their graves. All this had been possible for one mere man. How glad I was that I lived in a country which did things differently. My first “royal palace” made me feel grateful that I came

p.206       from a land where each man could be king, according to his ability and good fortune.

When, back in Berlin, we had lunch amidst the fragrance of flowers and near lakes reflecting the sun, we realized that, somehow, we had been shown the royal palace for a purpose which we could not just make out. But, when the tour began again, that afternoon, we noticed that the Courier repeatedly was telling us, “here are great barracks of our army,” …”Yonder is where our police have their lookout”…”over there is a former palace of the Kaiser – which Herr Hitler has decided to turn to other uses.” He seemed to know so much and to wish to tell us so much. And, everything appeared to have a military meaning….

There was one likable young fellow I talked to who said, “Well – this time next month, I will be in training-camp.” One of us asked “Do you like that sort of life?” His reply was, “Yes, we have to like it!”

It occurred to me that our boys back home would never understand people who would “have to” say that. Whether one of us liked, or did not like, a thing, we could say what we thought – even if it were about the President himself!

Then we saw the great Berlin airport. Immense ocean-planes were steaming up for a trip to Norway. Who dreamed then how Germany was to betray Norway? One plane just landed, we heard with the greatest thrill, from our own United States. The whole place was in an uproar, as is usual at a landing. We could see lights flashing, we could hear the babble of voices in different tongues. That was “our” sky-ship! We did not know then, that these German planes were some day to rain death on innocent women and children

p.207 in England, that our airships would meet German ships in war. (ed. note: some writers would hasten to add that Germany did not bomb English civilians until England began bombing German population centers. I personally don’t know enough detail to judge the merit of German motivation, except to say that it has been widely and accurately shown that the Nazi treatment of ‘inferior’ races, including Jews, was ample justification for whatever happened to the German people during the war.)

 

By some chance, that very evening, I walked with my little friend, Elizabeth, to a cathedral in the city. It was open day and night for worship. Daily the poor people then were expecting a declaration of war with France. Some mothers’ sons would be called. How heart-rending it was, to observe mothers and fathers, coming into this house of God, and falling to their knees before they entered the pews, the tears streaming down their sad faces. Perhaps my friend and I saw more clearly into the German heart that night than did Hitler and his minions.

 

IV.

 

When Sunday came, during the Berlin trip, there was rain. Some of the party went courageously on with sightseeing, but I thought I had come to understand Europe, not just to see it. I would attend a church, as the people did. Unless, however, I discovered an English church, I wouldn’t comprehend the service.

At the desk I asked “change” for all the money I had in “German coins.” I asked, “Will this pay taxi fare to, and from, services?” I was assured, “You have enough money to go, to come back, and to pay the preacher a tip!”

Outdoors, the footman asked, did I want to go to an “American church?” I was glad to assure him I did. He told the taxi man where to take me and we started forth. Neither the driver nor I spoke a common language, but I let him drive to the proper place.

We drove and drove. We drove through woods,

p.208                               under and over bridges, past beautiful lakes, and rain was pouring. I began to feel a trifle uneasy. There was nothing I could do or say, though. I could just sit still and wonder. We did not stop driving. I found I was saying to myself, “My sons, my friends may never hear of me again. May only God be with me, and take me safely to His church!” The hours passed.

Suddenly there appeared a cozy little church, by the side of the road. A smiling man came forward. He opened the taxi door. He greeted me in my own language! I opened my purse, and offered the cabman – gratefully – the largest coin I had. He became hysterical. He shrilled, “Nein! Nein!” (I knew that word.)

I offered another piece. He did the same thing again, and again – until I had given him every penny I had. Then he just climbed into his cab, to drive away, leaving me, without even telling how many miles I was from the hotel; and I was broke. I explained to the man who had welcomed me; I pleaded with him to have the driver return. I was so excited and exhausted, myself, that I did not at that moment remember where my hotel was nor in fact its name!

Of course, everything turned out all right. I was ushered into the quiet church; I had time to relax. I had opportunity to find that the most harrowing experiences fade away into their proper places in a house of God. A taxi was found for me later; and when I got to my hotel the doorman paid my fare. But it made a good story for the rest, that wild trip of mine to church!

There is no need to catalogue the sights of Berlin,

p.209                               which we were to see. It was a beautiful city. In our itinerary, we were taken only to the beautiful parts.

If there was misery in Germany (and we did not doubt, even then, that there was) we did not see it. The American tourist was shown only the sunny side. We left, almost with some regret, knowing that one could spend a lifetime admiring what had been built by scholars, artists, statesmen, and soldiers of older times.

 

V.

 

We were to see an altogether different place, “Amsterdam,” said the Courier. We got in at night.

Very early next morning, I rose, long before the rest. I wanted a look at the canals. I found a man already leaning on the railing. He told me he had stood here hours, watching the canal fill, and seeing the boats rise to their normal height. The sun was just rising, painting first one thing, then another, in gold.

I wandered alone about the canals and on the funny little footbridges. I knew, soon, I was lost. Folks who saw me knew I was not a native. One spoke to me, but in her unknown tongue; all I could do was to bow and smile.

Somehow, and without an interpreter, for all that, I did find my way back to our hotel, “Pay Bas,” which means “Below sea level.”

My companion tour members were worried. I swanked at breakfast, not hiding that I had been exploring, and alone. “I’m perfectly capable of going a few blocks alone!” (I didn’t confess that I get lost at every corner I turn, and certainly in a strange city.)

 

p.210                                                       Did they imagine because I was the oldest of us I might not be as adventurous as any?

The Amsterdam breakfast was different from our straight European morning-repast. Here, we had all sorts of cheeses added to the coffee and brioches. But I’m afraid I still preferred ham-and-eggs. “The bus is waiting!” shouted the Courier.

Over canals, over bridges, we came to the “greatest diamond-factory in the world, as we were told.” A long row of workmen, at tables bespoke every aspect of the diamond industry except the mining. One man had a very rough stone which seemed nothing more than rough rock. He worked upon it, then shunted it to his next neighbor. That man did just so much with it. In turn he sent it to the man beyond. He also did his appointed work on it. It went, from man to man.

But now one began to hear “Oh” and “Ah.” The stone was coming to be a beautiful diamond – that first diamond in the rough.

We went to another group. They had diamonds nearly finished, we thought. But much work had still to be done, we were to learn. At the end of their line, though, was one grand diamond, just completed.

Unless somebody is schooled in this branch of this business, one cannot know a real from a false diamond. This one was real. It was as large as a garden-pea. The brilliance of it!

Curious, one of us asked its cost. My heart beat. If it did not cost too much, perhaps I could buy it?

The worker looked up. “Seven hundred dollars,” he said. He tried to make me see how “cheap” it was. But I left my dream of owning that diamond in the factory as we went out.

p.211

It was at the hour people were homeward bound. We could see Hollanders coming from offices, stores, and theatres. We, in our bus, were stopoped at a small drawbridge that spanned one of the four hundred canals in the country.

I seemed to us we could never get across; we were held up so long. A perfect parade of bicycles was taking place.

Old men and women, young boys and girls, ministers, doctors, lawyers, everyone able to propel a machine seemed to be in the parade. The first division had Catholic priests, with long black coats and long beards. Then children, with tow-heads. Next were plump mamas in their bright dresses. Behind them, were ruddy-cheeked business men. And at the very end was a brass band, the instruments fastened in some way so that they could be played – and the men not touching the handles. The must have been real experts!

We did not move until the way was clear. Then the band struck up, just as they were passing us, apparently trying to entertain us. And they did!

“We passed on the way,” our Courier said, “the Queen’s summer home.” The band had so exhilarated us that it was decided we’d drive in, if the flag were not up. That would show that the Queen was not at her home. The flag was up.

Two soldiers were at the entrance. But we drove in – exactly like invited guests. We halted in front of Her majesty’s window. Two men on guard rushed up with drawn guns to demand why we were there. He was told, “We are American tourists who thought we would like to see the Queen’s palace.” Let me confess, I was the one who did the talking! Firmly, but

p.212             not unkindly, we were informed that when the flag was up, it was “against the law to enter.”

I murmured for all of us, “We are sorry.” But none of us was. What is sweeter than forbidden ground? It had almost perhaps created an “international incident.” Nevertheless, it was part of our experience in this fairy-story, child’s-book land. It belonged with people who – like those we saw in Volerdam that same day – wore the charming full skirts, aprons reaching to the bottom of the hem, and little immaculate bonnets covering the head. Even tiny girls just learning to walk were attired so. And the little boys, in big breeches and wooden shoes, had the prettiest cheeks, the rosiest color, outside a picture page. For some reason they all made me think of people in my childhood.

We were taken to see what the Courier announced as a “world-famous cheese factory.” But we stopped at a large square house where children were playing in the yard. This wasn’t a “factory.” A woman greeted us and let us indoors to a central hall, where, on the right, were stanchions for cows, cleaner and brighter than many an American house. The cows, as “contented” animals should be, were in the fields. Forty of the cows could be housed on the one side here, we were told, during winter months. On the other side a rack of swinging shelves was loaded with cheeses being wrapped, one by one, for shipping to all parts of the world.

I was not interested only in the factory; I wanted to know how people in Europe lived and worked, how they were “like folks back home.” The pretty woman – tall, slender, with beautiful straight hair, braided

p.213                   just-so, and blue dress made full and falling to her wooden, scoured shoes – seemed to understand why I wanted to see the “home.” She let me visit with her, in the various parts of the house. I have her in my small gallery of “Remarkable People” seen in Europe. Who would think of that kind person, beautiful and serene and immaculate as porcelain, as a “factory manager?” I hate to think that dear little land is under heavy German rule today.

How we resented being informed by the Courier that we must get ready to leave Holland and, of all things, prepare “to return again into Germany.” All of us felt as I did, all remembered as I did how we’d had to “count our cash” before leaving that country, and how the Germans had seen that we took out no more than just what we’d brought in. They had examined every inch of our passports. Each one of us had had to pass a long line of men who’d let us in, and then later let us out, onl if and when they decided we rang true to their ears. We could just groan, “Must we go through that all over again?” Suppose somewhere in Germany one forgot and did something “not according to Hoyle?”….and their “Hoyle,” too.

But the tour was planned. Germany was part of the plan. It would be, of course, missing a great deal, if we failed to go to such cities as Heidelberg, Cologne, Weisbaden, and if we missed seeing the Rhine River. That river, to my mind, did not belong to Germany of this day, but to poetry, music and legend.

So – we went back to Germany.

 

VI.

 

Already, doubts had begun to creep into our minds

p.214                                     about those legends of Europe. I liked one, told us when we asked why the cathedral at Cologne was called “The Four Seasons.” The Courier, as usual, had the answer ready: “The north side, for winter; south for summer; west is for spring; east for autumn.” “Why?” “Oh – just through a legend!”

But the legends of the Rhine, when we came to that river, I knew myself. We saw the lovely river at last, winding crookedly, with old castles and turrets along its banks. Lunching later on the porch of Hotel Risen (ed: “Riesen”) Furstenhof, we could see on the opposite what was not a record of legend, but of history – “The American Camp” our boys had built in the first World War. On one side of the river stood a monument two hundred feet high, honoring the Kaiser. We did not think, that day, how symbolic were the two things, one American and the other German, on opposite banks of the Rhine.

We wondered, instead, why everyone, everywhere, seemed to be eager and anxious to “show us,” as it were, how friendly they were to American tourists. We went on to Weisbaden, up and up, straight into the mist and fog of the tall Alps. The, by now, familiar, efficient – and military – German “help” met us at our arrival. With the greatest display of friendliness, they escorted us to our rooms, gave us our cards of instruction. It seemed that not effort was being spared to make us like this new Germany – provided we did not ask too many questions and did not forget rules set for us.

I was given a large room with a handsome big bed, and a private bath, strange indeed in Europe, as I now know. A few of us tried, after dinner, to beard

p.215                                           the thick fog outdoors, but had to return defeated. I decided to take a bath in my private bathroom.

There were, however, so many gadgets to pull, that I went across the hall to ask some friends to help me out. We all agreed the tub was a true curiosity – high as your head; it had two steps to go up, and two more steps to go down into the tub. I was afraid of the whole thing, and decided to use the public hallway-bathroom; but everyone else scoffed at me. A fine private bathroom, plenty of towels (and each as thick as a blanket) – and not use all this?

I agreed – but hoped I’d not drown in the huge tub. We’d found the uses of some of the gadgets – they filled the tub with waters of various kinds, salt, medicinal, hot, cold. Suppose – we pull the rope and see what it brought too?

It brought plenty. Three young men burst into my room. Seeing us women, they began to back out, apologizing in German, French, and even English – but explaining the uses of the spigots meanwhile. Everyone at last was gone. I began, carefully, to let the water run.

Next morning, I told my friend Elizabeth that it was a pity she hadn’t bathed in it too. We went out for a sight of Weisbaden, now bathed in glorious sunlight. We saw sick folk from all the world, gathered here in search of health. I went back, thanking my Creator for good health. As I entered the foyer, I heard my name spoken – in loud, stormy voices. The desk clerk and the Courier were shouting, scolding, gesticulating, in a tongue foreign to me, but – about me.

The Courier shoulted, spying me, “Don’t pay a cent more! No cent!”

I stammered something.

p. 216

The desk man shouted now, to me, “You took a bath last night?”

Was it against the law, to bathe in Weisbaden? But I answered, bravely, I hoped, “Yes. But is there something wrong in that?”

“Oh, no,” said the desk man, almost mildly. “But, you pay extra.” I understood, after a moment. I’d not been scheduled for room-with-bath. My ticket did not cover that. I was not being penalized for bathing, I was only being asked to pay for….

But our Courier was hitting the ceiling, so furious was he. “No! No!” he shrieked. “You will not pay! I say you will not! Not when I did not arrange that they put you there. You hear?” He seemed beside himself. He made it sound as if I had done something – when I just spoke courteously to the desk-man – that interfered with authority I was supposed to obey.

I felt rather as if I had stolen something and were not let to take my punishment. A little – ridiculously, I remembered it! – like the time I’d stolen Mother’s chicken to eat with the Cowser kids. Only – this time, I’d not an idea I had done anything forbidden, or questioned. The matter, I knew, must be left to the Courier to settle. Thereafter, I’d never take a private bath while in Europe.

Two things remained in my mind from that incident. The friendliness to Americans took on a suddenly different color. It was superficial, commercial – for a purpose only, apparently; it did not spring from the heart and from warm kindliness toward us. And – the Courier was a difficult person to have along all the time….

 

p.217

VII.

 

Of the many odd people – I shall not, I believe, call him a Remarkable Person, though in some ways he was that too – the one whom I was to remember all the rest of my life most clearly, I knew, was our Courier.

He had begun by instructing us ferociously that he was not a “guide.” We’d have guides in various cities. He was Courier. From some Latin country, apparently, he was a very emotional creature, indeed. He stood a half-head taller than the average man, and in spite of a head bald as a coconut, he had, because of his fair skin and blue eyes, a quite nice appearance – when he was calm. The occasions when he was calm were rare. His tongue, we found out almost at once, could chase the Devil’s imps away. He was a fiend when angry. It seemed practically impossible for an occasion to pass without one of the women in our party getting him angry.

He could become quiet almost instantly, I had noticed, when he chose. He rarely chose. Though he did not bother me, as he did all the others from the very first day he met us, even I was glad he let me alone. A few of the women were quite cowed by him. He had a sort of contemptuous way of speaking, at his best, that made the rest get red from forehead to chin, time and again. But there was no doubt he knew his business. He could be sensitive to the beauty he showed us. Great cities, old castles, towers, ancient cathedrals, each seemed to remind him of a story, a legend, a poem. I was glad I did not arouse his ire, and kept away from him. All I wanted from him was what he was here for, to tell us what we saw.

 

p.218

Shall I forget how I felt, when he announced, “We are – now – at Bingen on the Rhine!”

We’d had a poem about that in the old Saylor School. I used to hear the “big pupils” recite it, again and again. I must see the place with my own eyes. Little Elizabeth, my friend, went with me, and when we got there, I stopped and recited the whole thing for her – finding that, after all these years, I’d not forgotten one line or word.

“Mrs. Scott,” breathed Elizabeth, “listen…”

There was someone screaming to us. It was the Courier, shrieking, “You are making us miss the train, you are holding us all up!” I looked at my watch. I could read time as well as anyone. We had plenty of time. But one was not allowed to use one’s judgment, with him. He was gathering the whole party; he marched them all off.

Elizabeth and I had to get to our hotel as best we could, alone.

There, we were informed, he’d left instructions we were to go on – alone – to meet the rest at the train. He’d taken our baggage, and we could “let the porters carry what we did have along.” We were to pay the porters for this service. When we managed to reach the station, there he was, with the rest of our group. He came over, fuming. He informed us that we’d nearly made the party “miss the train.” We were all still waiting, I knew. And, he added, he’d paid the porters at the hotel for taking care of our small parcels. Would we reimburse him, now?

Poor little Elizabeth didn’t understand, as I did. She hung back, arguing with her porter about the double-payment. Not until the train pulled in did I realize

p.219                                            her absence. I called the Courier’s attention to it. But he was fussing now with another one of us, the nice young nurse who’d come third-class in order to be able to get to Europe. He was shrieking, “I told you – explicitly – not to buy clocks or jewelry until we got to Switzerland, did I not?” It appeared that she arrived here at the station with a parcel, in which, as she told him when he asked her what it contained, there was a cuckoo-clock. He thus discovered for the first time that she’d thought fit to buy a clock in Holland – and not in Switzerland. He was frothing at the mouth.

The train would leave any moment. There was not a glimpse of Elizabeth, I realized. My insides felt rather like the way he was behaving. But, in the midst of his tirade, I walked up and said, gently, “Something is wrong – my friend, Miss Elizabeth, is not here.”

He bellowed, “I did all I could! No difference if she’s not here!”

He seemed to change from a man who seemed to think it was his right to bully us women, into a tall fellow who might have been any of the men I’d hired – in Washington – to do some special service for me. Whatever he might think, why – he was employed to help and assist us, wasn’t he? He never appeared to think of that. But that was his only relationship with us, wasn’t it?

I said quietly, but very firmly, “You’d better go out to

p.220                   the station and see what’s detaining Miss Elizabeth.”

He was enjoying his fine fuss with the nurse too much to listen. I repeated, more quietly, “Please find her, or I’ll report you to the Tour Offices.”

He seemed unable to believe his ears. “Report me, report me??”

Just then, I caught sight of Elizabeth, and she was nearly scared to death, I realized. They were closing the train gates upon her. I had someone help her, after a moment. She was crying. She’d paid her porter at the hotel, she sobbed; she’d paid the Courier. And then, they had nearly shut her outside the trainstile.

I glanced up – the Courier was approaching. A minor miracle had taken place. His whole bearing had changed toward us two women. The threat to report him had been effective. He had no desire to be discharged, in disgrace. I had no desire to hold him in terror. I began to tell him, as I would tell any man in my employ, what I and the rest of us thought of his attitude toward us. I tried to tell him in a motherly, kindly way, that he was making a nuisance of himself, and that we were not used to having a man treat a woman in his way. I talked; he listened.

There was surprise, and a sort of unbelieving fear, in his face. “We expect to receive courtesy from every man that we have dealing with, either at home or in business,” I told him, firmly. The bogeyman turned into a startled, staring, bald-headed kind of boy. Quite meekly, he said he would behave differently toward us hereafter.

He no sooner turned around than he forgot what he had said. He had no respect for his word with a

p.221 woman. He strode over to the young nurse. He burst into his furious nagging again, about her clock. She announced, suddenly, “I’m taking a plane for Havre today. I’m going back to….the USA. No man’s going to talk this way to me!”

I went to her. I tried to make her realize that if she left, now, she’d be the loser. She had paid for her whole trip. I promised her, I’d talk to the man again, with special reference to her. She did board the train with us, at last. We were all exhausted, physically and emotionally. Yet, when he rose to announce the next place we were to reach, the Courier seemed refreshed by his rage. “Lucerne,” he called out, perfectly cheerful. Our anger, and my talk with him, had made not the least impression upon him, I saw.

 

VIII.

 

At Lucerne, because it was Sunday, I decided to follow the plan I held to throughout Europe, the same plan I adhered to when at home. I went to church. The young nurse agreed to accompany me. By some chance, what did the minister preach, but – from the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews: “Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. You may have angels unaware.” We both laughed, understanding what was in the words for us. But we did more than laugh. Little irritations took their proper place, against the measure of eternal things.

For all that, when we left Lucerne, and even while we were riding past the glorious panorama of hotels growing small and still smaller against the green mountain,

p.222                                                 the talk was not about what we were seeing and had seen, but about “that man.”

Quite suddenly, it came to me that only two weeks ago I had been in New York. I had been discussing with Ralph, just a few days before that, the possibility of a European trip. And here I was, letting a man of no importance to me color my enjoyment of this marvelous experience. It was no use pretending that I wasn’t like the others. He annoyed me, just as he did the rest. I wasn’t used to having a promise to me brushed aside. I was used to getting respect.

“That man” was pointing out, with his accustomed knowledge, the glories of Switzerland, on either side of us, as our bus rolled down. We came to the very top of the Alps, veiled in snow and mist. He announced, “The Chapel of William Tell!” Something in me woke up. Goodness – I hadn’t even started to think aobut how I really could enjoy this trip. I had got tangled up in a petty vexation with one person. This place – why, it was like “Bingen on the Rhine.” It was like having a magic mirror show – but in reality – the things which had been treasured in one’s mind, over years and years. Who’d ever have made me believe once I’d actually see the place where William Tell shot the apple off his boy’s head? How I’d shiver when Teacher recited that poem, long ago. Suppose – he missed the apple? But he never did! I got out, to see the very place where that apple had been shot off. And I thought the story of William Tell had meant, to us children, the fortitude of Switzerland, just as truly as the superb “Lion of Lucerne,” which we had been shown, commemorated that same courage of the tiny

p.223                                                 gallant nation. And, here I stood, where that father and child had stood once.

I had recited that poem myself when I was in Normal School. Then I had won my dearest “wish” – the wish for college education. But – why, now I had such wishes to be granted as I had never dreamed possible to realize. “Margaret Scott,” I said to myself, “you can see the Vatican. And – the Last Supper. And the Coliseum, the little gondolas sailing on the water in Venice. And Paris ----!”

I knew by now that unlike my Tour companions, I had not planned for years to take this journey through Europe. The business had needed me year after year, and I had never thought of leaving it. But at this moment I understood all my companions for the first time, I think. I had been thrilled by the adventure of a trip, a journey. Now – I realized I, like the others, was making what one could really call a pilgrimage. Each of us, of course, would want something different on the pilgrimage. But all of us wanted something that meant a kind of splendor to us, because of what we had been taught, or had read. To some of us the “Tour” was a moving picture of glorious curiosities. To others, it was a manifold museum of rarities, precious and beautiful. To me, it was an opportunity to see with my own eyes places endeared by childish memories, or made holy because of religious association.

We saw the Last Supper, that very week. I had not expected the picture to be so small, but I knew each figure in it, the very posture and the pictured features, of Jesus, sitting with His Disciples. I let the others go to sight-see at other places. I stayed a long time in the quiet room with the great masterpiece. I do not

p.224                               pretend to understand “art.” I do not say I like or admire something because it is famous. I usually kept out of the galleries when the others went with the Courier. But here I saw not “art.” I saw the work of a painter who had felt and had put down something holy, which I felt with him, so many centuries later.

Strangely, I caught sight of the Courier. The man was standing in front of the great painting. And his nervous, flaring eyes were glowing. That curious man had the same reverence which I had, I realized. Before a masterpiece, he became a different person….

 

IX.

 

The others were looking forward to seeing Saint Mark’s in Venice. But I knew there could be no painting or cathedral which would stir me as had the one in Milan – not until we came to Rome. In Venice, I meant to skip the churches, the palaces, and to see something quite everyday, but to me glowing with romance. I’d ride in a gondola. I’d learn what was the “romance” of Venice, if I could.

Unfortunately, four of us got lost when the train pulled in. Forlornly, we stood beside our luggage. It was already evening. We didn’t even know the hotel where we were to go! One of us gasped, in tears, “He went off in a gondola! Left us to shift – .” What use was there to go over it, though? I stared at a little man, a funny small creature, gesticulating and twittering near the water, a bit away. “I’ll report him, I’ll see he’s dismissed!” wept the woman. I walked toward the funny little man twittering away over there. Sudden, I cried out, “Look – we’re the Tour people – we’re

p.225                                                 on the Tour! I had guessed right. He’d been trying to speak English in his own way, and he was twittering, “Tour people? Tour people?” The office had not deserted us, even if the Courier did. I did not think that he must have asked the office to send this little man to us.

We stumbled with gratitude toward the substitute for “that man.” He indicated to us that we must get into a gondola. We scrambled into our first Venetian gondola. Gondolas? Why, the water was simply swarming with them. There were so many, it seemed that we’d be overturned every minute from our own. Not once were we bumped, however.

What a chattering breed the gondoliers appeared to be! Every minute they seemed ready to start a fight with each other, but no fight was begun. “Just a custom,” I sighed. We were dead tired, and the noise was exhausting to weary, lost women of our ages. “A nervous agency,” I sighed again, “can’t be still one minute – look at them, talking and singing and quarreling. At home we’d expect women to act that way. In a way, the Courier’s like them, isn’t he? Maybe he just can’t help himself --.”

That was a wrong thing to say. Nobody would hear a good word said for him. We all crawled to our rooms, and to our beds. But my roommate was pretty spinster of fifty. She perked up after a bath. She put on her dainty gown and a cute lace cap. I lay down, thinking of how we’d meet the Courier’s fury tomorrow, and of the chore of sightseeing after this night. The windows had no screens. Light was shining right in upon our canopy. We could see the Canal, and gondoliers chattering and bickering and singing.

 

p.226

We’d been warned to tuck ourselves in carefully under the net canopy; Venetian mosquitoes were giants. I thought of my own place … and of the quiet at home. Was this the romance of Venice?

A commotion on the Canal took me and my roommate to the window. A yacht with merry-makers was just outside on the water. A blast sounded, and every hand on deck gave my pretty, lace-capped friend a resounding greeting, “Good Morning, Signorina, good morning!”

Seeing the pretty woman, in her dainty clothes, they united in letting her know they saw her – and wanted to bid her good-morning. She stood petrified and pale with anger. She had never been so insulted in her life, she stammered at last.

But I knew, that moment, she and I had witnessed what I thought we would never see here. She had been accorded a tribute – to beauty and charm and femininity. Venice was going to be all right!

Next day, even the Courier seemed under the spell of the city. He was quite subdued, quite calm. But when he took the rest to the cathedral, I sat in Saint Mark’s Square, fed the pigeons, and watched the people. I wanted to enjoy Venice, not just the places in it.

The following morning, because it was Sunday, I announced I’d go to church, as was my custom. But I’d go by gondola. That ride was exactly what I had pictured in my mind. The gondolier received me like a cherished guest. He fluffed my pillow, tucked me under a canopy with dangling fringes. I felt like some Doge’s spouse, floating down – and the gondolier began to serenade me, as if I were some “lady of high degree.” He did stop to quarrel with a gondola he

p.227                         met, but as soon as possible he started the serenade again. With what gallantry he handed me out when we touched land! To be sure, when I entered the church the sermon had already started. But I heard part of it: “There are a million fools, for there are a million people living. And all must die, and they are not ready. Therefore, they are fools.”

It was a solemn thought. Yet I was glad to go back to my pretty, foolish, delightful gondola. Rain fell suddenly, but my gondolier wouldn’t get under the umbrella. He had me sit, safe and dry, and stood soaking but smiling, and singing all the way home. For an old lady, was not that an experience in a “romantic city?”

You may be sure that gondolier is in my gallery of “Remarkable People” I met. He had not the grandeur of – say, that couple I met on Mount Pilatus, who spent year after year, for twenty years now, alone on the bald mountain side, letting their children go to school in the cloud-hidden city far down in the valley. I will never forget the fine and selfless souls of that mother and father. He was not like the beautiful tranquil woman “factory manager” in Holland. But – he had his own qualities. He symbolized a city for me, just as the others symbolized in some way the background against which I found them.

I was to laugh when I met the next person who filled that role! We went to Florence. The rest marched past miles of paintings. I visited the silver-shops, the restaurants; I sat on the hotel piazza watching the lazy river that flowed right in front of us. The people of Florence were just like that river. A group of us went shopping. Some women wanted to buy gifts and

p.228 mementoes. But – it did seem unbelievable to an American – the merchant wouldn’t open the doors he had locked, to sell us things. He yawned; he was taking his rest. He didn’t care what “sales” he lost taking it. That man, plump and sleepy and genial, always represents Florence to me. One worked to enjoy life, and worked only enough to enjoy it. Not my way of thinking! But it amused and interested me to see it.

Curiously, it was in lazy Florence that my own crisis with the Courier finally came. I entered the hotel and found him seething. A cablegram had come for me from my sons. The cablegram was in code. The man seemed nearly dead with fear. He shrilled, “You can’t get anything in code! I can’t read it! It is a danger!”

I calmly showed him a page in my code book. There, was the translation of my cable. But he went on haranguing me, though he looked foolish: “Don’t let it happen again! You hear, don’t ….”

Very quietly, I turned away, and went out to look at the children in the street. The coded messages continued to come to me. I did not let him annoy me. Some of the rest would tell me, with wistfulness, that they wish they could treat him as I did. It was, of course, because I never let him become the important thing in our tour that I could act toward him so.

Even he, for that matter, had to treat me with a special consideration. He’d look baffled and sheepish sometimes. By now, the whole group had – in a sort of fashion – made me a special, honored person. That was, naturally, because of my age. My name had to be called first by the Courier, therefore, whenever we reached a new city and its hotel. My identification

p.229       card was given me first. Whether he would admit it or not, he had to show me the respect an older woman received from her own people. I was able therefore to adhere to my determination to brush him away from my mind, to think only of the marvelous gifts I was getting, day by day, in things to see and learn.

 

X.

 

When we got to Rome, we were taken to St. Peter’s first. As in previous places, we were told that here was a piece of the true Cross of Jesus. We had already been shown so many pieces of the true Cross that – privately – I knew we could build a fence around a Cathedral with the wood. But I did not mind the stories of bones, skulls, shrines, which seemed to be in place after place, by some unexplained scattering of sacred bodies. “Legends” had interest, I had by now discovered, as a sort of poetic way of telling what was in part history, in part, imagination. I remember how, when we were taken to a great mountain, near Interlachen, and were shown a great flood of water falling by the ton in a narrow gulch between two measureless high mountainsides, to be lost far below in some unknown place – I thought, all at one, of “The White Woman” in western Kansas. I realized then the Indians had made up a “legend” about that river – and so, even in my own land, there were “legends.” I had an interest in them often, because of what they showed people wanted to believe, as much as for what was fact.

But when the time came to visit the Vatican, and the Catacombs, it was not “legend” that thrilled me. It was history. In one was the grand story of the

p.230                                           Catholic Church. In the other was the heartbreaking and beautiful story of the Christian martyrs. I walked with reverence up the broad steps of the Vatican. I marveled at its magnificent treasures, gathered in fourteen hundred rooms. I mailed a letter from its post office, and so reminded myself that this was still a separate “government.”

And then to the Catacombs. Paul and Peter were buried here, we were told. Their bones had been removed, the guide added. One had learned that the bones were in this place and that. But what difference did it make where their mortal remains were said to be? Here had been where they stood when they were living, speaking men, who had had the privilege of hearing and knowing Jesus.

I knew that I must see the Coliseum, where the lesser men had died, but with love as great as that of the disciples, I am sure – love for Our Lord. A small group of us went by night. The galleries, the royal boxes, the arena, were lighted as if by the sun’s light. But lovers were walking, arm in arm, their heads close together. The men and women who had died there lived, for all that, I know. They lived in the Christian life of our times.

 

XI.

 

In our stay at Rome, I had made it a point to see the “yellow Tiber,” because it had been part of the Latin in college. But when we got to Genoa I wanted to see another body of water, the harbor from which Columbus had sailed.

We were shown a tiny vine-covered house where, it

p.231                               was said, he had been born. Somehow, it didn’t seem authentic to me. “A legend,” I said to myself. The harbor, however, was real – out there. I could imagine him, setting out on that voyage to end in the discovery of our Continent. How brave he had been! From a hilltop, we could see the ocean spreading wide. I had never before realized what courage he had when he started out….

It seemed to me almost unfitting that Nice, so near, was only a place of pleasure. Yet in Nice, going to church on a Sunday, I met a woman who will always remind me of the sort of women he must have seen often when he was a boy. It was a French church, not an Italian one, and the lessons I’d taken back in Washington didn’t seem to help me understand a word of the sermon. But when services closed, I walked outdoors. An old peasant woman happened to be going out, just beside me. Wearing the traditional peasant garb, she seemed to be too shy to let me see her face. I noticed how gnarled were her hands, how swollen her fingers. Her shoulders seemed bent over, as if toward the earth – or, maybe, a cradle.

With smiles, diffident yet sweet, she answered my foreign greeting. We walked side by side, down the street a piece. I showed her a postcard picture of my sons. And then she took out a picture from her own worn purse. It was a sailor, her son, I knew. I thought, there is her heart – with that boy. And I remembered the little house we’d seen yesterday, where legend declared Columbus was born. There had been sailors whose mothers were women as dear and as sacrificial as this old woman, to go with Columbus, I knew.

An American girl I knew was living at Nice; she

p.232                               had married a French Count. Because she had spent so much time here, with only French servants and friends, she had almost forgotten our tongue. We had a real French tea-party; I was kissed on both cheeks. But when I told her about my old peasant mother, and what I had thought when the sailor’s picture was shown me, the American countess smiled and said, “Yes – we in our country always …”

“We in our country …” was what she said to me.

 

That afternoon, our party was taken to a certain place, where the line was between France and Italy. I did not think then that would soon be the borderline between two countries at war. I did not imagine then that the city for which we were now bound, Paris, would some day be enslaved by Germany and Italy.

 

XII.

 

O course the Courier wanted us to visit Napoleon’s Tomb and the Louvre and Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and Versailles. We certainly did visit all these. But we women knew that our deepest interest was…in the dress shops, of course.

I had never conceived such magnificence, such elegance, as we were shown in the great ateliers. It seemed odd that while I and people I knew worked and wore nice clothes (nice enough), there were men and women who gave their whole lives to imagining and creating “styles” for women’s dresses. I believe it was as strange – to me – as I’d found the gambling casino I dropped in to see for a few minutes in Nice.

I did understand the French perfume, though. Fragrance – the essence of flowers! But when I heard

p.233       the price of an ounce of one perfume I liked – well, I was content to have had one smell. I decided to enjoy window-shopping in Paris. We looked at the magnificent exhibits of the great stores. And we went also to look at another French “market place of interesting things” … the Flea Mart.

It may seem curious to you, but Paris was the city I found I loved best in all Europe. I had no pictures in my mind about it, but I knew the great names of her history, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Josephine, Marie Antoinette. It seemed that at every corner, there was a statue to somebody about whom we had studied, or whose works we’d read.

Yet, it is really no more beautiful than Washington, of course. Paris was to be our last place on the Continent. I asked myself, as we left, was there richer material for art and poetry here than in our own land? I knew, there was not. If all our Presidents had had statues put up to honor them at every corner as Europeans have for their rulers, if we immortalized with monument our heroes and poets and writers, as they do, if we put up placards for every stirring event of ours, we’d have as good a showing as Europe has. And ours would not be tainted with bloodshed and debauchery, either.

That was what I said, when we tour members talked the subject over, one evening. But really, we hardly cared to discuss the Continent: we were going to England! Not one of us failed to be thrilled by that expectation. In a way, it was like starting the voyage back to our homes.

I asked myself, was I homesick? It had been weeks since I left Washington….

 

p.234

 

PART FIFTEEN

 

I.

 

“London!” cried someone.

 

People were talking all around us – talking in our own language. How wonderful it was to understand what was said! Even if the accent was not quite like that “back yonder,” no sound I have ever heard has been sweeter than the sound of a whole mass of men and women talking my language. I belonged, with these people.

And when we got to the hotel and received the familiar small cards to designate our rooms, we went not to a chambre, not to una camera, nor to a Schlaafrig Zimmer, but straight to our “rooms.”

“London.” The word had been in songs I knew from childhood: London Bridge. It had been in stories I read : Dick Whittington, and David Copperfield. It was in the books I studied as a young girl: “Parliament,” and “Saint James Palace,” and “London Museum.” It was part of the history of my country: “Number 10, Downing Street.” It was part of the poets and heroes that I revered: “Westminster Abbey.” It was wound into the figures of speech in our talk, as in our literature: “William Shakespeare” and “Samuel Johnson” and “Marlowe” were names as familiar to an American as the names of his family and folks.

We were to see the home of Shakespeare. We were to visit Oxford University. We would see the jewels

p.235      of Queen Victoria. We’d be shown the gowns of Queen Bess.

We’d walk down Threadneedle Street. We’d be shown Fleet Street. There were places and streets in London, as clear in the minds of an American as some streets in the hometown where one lived.

 

II.

 

When we came to Shakespeare’s countryside I realized what I never had before, that he knew flowers and trees and birds as I knew them, and for the same reason – he too had been a child brought up in the country. He had been a boy who had worked on a farm. He married a farm girl. We came into the house where he lived and died. I, who’d taught thousands of children, saw how like to my boys he’d been. For his desk, I noted promptly, was all carved and nicked, like any active boy’s desk I knew would be.

But when we left his home and drove back toward Hampton court, a royal palace in England, I noticed that the whole countryside seemed to be unified, somehow. The royal palace was not a separate and unrelated mansion. It “belonged” to the whole scene. When we came to the Court, there were grapes hanging from a vine – grapes ripe and ready to eat, just as there were grapes, I was sure, in the farmhouses all around that we had left behind us.

English friends of mine gave a party for me, later. I saw how serene and ordered the life of the English household was. There was the same quiet, the same relation to the green of country, hill, and valley that I had found first in Will Shakespeare’s home. And I

p.235       knew that was why Shakespeare had been loved by his people, not for his “greatness” only, but because he could speak of their outlook and their life and their memories out of his own life and memory.

 

III.

 

We were taken to the “largest open market in the world,” covering seventy acres of land. There was hardly a booth with a covering over it, and I wondered what it must be like when the “typical English weather” – rain and fog – came. We were in the mart all day and the sun shone brightly. We were in England a week and it rained just one day.

Everything somehow seemed arranged by chance, or luck, to help us carry from England only happiness. Even the final night kept that mood. Our Courier himself succumbed to it; he was almost agreeable. He took us, with a shade of enthusiasm, and without his ironic condescension, to Chinese dives, shipyards, strange eating places, Cleopatra’s needle. We even went to see the