DIARY—THE NEW HOME
September 16.
I've dreamed my first dreams in Philadelphia. Such dreams as they were! Whatever it was I ate for supper it must have been richer than our Lancaster County sausage and fried mush, for I dreamed all night. My old-fashioned walnut bed with its red and green calico quilt seemed to swing before me while Mother Bab and Aunt Maria talked to me. A clanging trolley car woke me and I remembered that I had been dreaming of Phares and the tanager's nest. I slept again and heard the strains of Royal Lee's violin till another car clanged past and woke me. I woke once to find myself saying, "Braid it straight, Davie. Aunt Maria's awful mad." When I slept again I thought I heard Royal Lee say, "We'll teach you to play cards," and speared tails and horned heads seemed mixed promiscuously with little pieces of cardboard bearing red and black symbols and the words "I'll get you if you don't watch out" rang in my ears. "Ugh, what awful dreams," I thought as I lay awake and listened for sounds of activity in the house. I missed Aunt Maria's five o'clock call. The luxury of an eight o'clock breakfast couldn't be appreciated the first morning, as I was wide awake at five. I'll soon learn to sleep later. There are many things I shall learn before I go back to the farm.
This morning Virginia and I started out on a glorious adventure, looking for a boarding place. She laughed when I called it that.
"I like the uncertainty of it," I told her. "The charm of the unknown appeals to me. I do not know under whose roof I shall sleep to-night yet I'm happy because I know I am going to meet new people and see new things. Of course, if I did not have you to help me I would remember Aunt Maria's dire tales of the evils and dangers of a big city and should feel afraid. As it is, I feel only curious and gay. No matter where I find a place to live it's bound to be quite different from the farm, not better, necessarily, but different."
But my "high hopes of youth" received a jolt at the very first interview with a boarding-house mistress. She wouldn't take young ladies who were studying music, their practice would annoy the other boarders. I had never thought of that!
The second quest was equally unsatisfactory. One room was vacant, a pleasant room—at twelve dollars a week! The sum left me speechless. Virginia had to explain that the amount was a trifle more than I expected to pay.
The third proved to be a smaller house on a narrower street. A charming old lady led us into a sitting-room. All my life I've been accustomed to the proverbial cleanliness of the Pennsylvania Dutch but I'm certain I never saw a place as clean as that house. I said something like that to its mistress and she informed me with a gentle firmness I never heard before that she expected every guest in her house to help to keep it in that condition. She had several rules she wanted all to obey, so that the sunshine would not have a chance to fade the rugs and the dust from the street could not ruin things. I knew I would not be happy there. I like clean rooms, but if it's a matter of choosing between foul air without dust and fresh air with dust I'll take the dust every time. I'd feel like a funeral to live in a house where the curtains and shades were down every day, summer and winter, to keep the sunshine out of the rooms and prevent the jade-green and china-blue and old-rose of the rugs from fading.
The fourth place was in suburban Philadelphia, fifty minutes' ride from the heart of the city. It was a big colonial house set in a great yard, a relic of the days when gardens still flourished in the city and the breathing spaces allotted to householders were larger than at the present time. As we went up the shrubbery-bordered walk to the pillared porch I said, "I want to live here."
Mrs. McCrea, the boarding-house mistress, did not object to the music, provided I took the large room on the third floor and did all my practicing between the hours of eight and five, when the other boarders were gone to business. The price of the room is seven dollars a week.