Perhaps I would have gone farther and mounted higher as a selfish solitary bachelor, but that did not trouble me then, and does not now. Concerned with the problem of providing a comfortable winter home for my family, and happy in maintaining the old house in West Salem as a monument to the memory of my mother, I wrote, committed carpentry and lectured.
My frequent absences from home soon made a deep impression on my daughter's mind, and whenever she was naughty I had but to say, "If you do that again Papa will go away to New York," and she would instantly say, "I'm doodie now papa, I'm doodie——" and yet my mention of going to New York could not have been altogether a punishment for I always brought to her some toy or book. Nothing afforded me keener joy than the moment when I showed her the presents I had brought.
The fact that she loved to have her heavy-handed old Daddy near her, was a kind of miracle, a concession for which I could not be too grateful.
"You shall have a happy childhood," I vowed, "no matter what comes later, you shall remember these days with unalloyed delight. They shall be your heaven, your fairyland."
Each month I set down in my diary some new phrase, some development, some significant event in her life, and when she found this out she loved to have me read what she had said, "When I was a little baby." She listened gravely, contrasting her ignorance at two with her wisdom at five. "Was I cute, Daddy? Did you like me then?" she would ask.
She early learned the meaning of Decoration Day, which she called "Flag Day," and took pride in the fact that her grand-sire was a soldier. Each year she called for her flag and asked to be taken to the cemetery to see the decorations and to hear the bugles blow above the graves, and I always complied; although to me, each year, a more poignant pathos quavered in the wailing cadence of "Lights out," and the passing of the veterans, thinning so rapidly—was like the march of men toward their open graves.
Happily my daughter did not realize any part of this tragic concept. For her it was natural that a soldier should be old and bent. Waving her little flag and shouting with silver-sweet voice she saluted with vague admiration those who were about to die—an age about to die—and in her eyes flamed the spirit of her grand-sire, the love of country which will carry the Republic through every storm no matter from which quarter the wind may spring.
So far as I could, I taught her to take up the traditions which were about to slip from the hands of Richard Garland and his sons, "She shall be our representative, the custodian of our faith."
For four years she remained our only child, and yet I can not say that she was either spoiled or exacting, on the contrary she was a constant, joyous pupil and a lovely appealing teacher. Through her I rediscovered the wonder of the sunrise and the stars. In the study of her face the lost beauty of the rainbow returned to me, in her presence I felt once more the mystic charm of dusk. I reaccepted the universe, putting aside the measureless horror of its recorded wars. I grew strangely selfish. My interests narrowed to my own country, my own home, to my fireside. Counting upon the world well lost, I built upon my daughter's love.
That my wife was equally happy in her parentage was obvious for at times she treated Mary Isabel as if she were a doll, spending many hours of many days designing dainty gowns and hoods for her delight. She could hardly be separated from the child, even for a night and it was in her battles with croup and other nocturnal enemies that her maternal love was tested to the full. I do not assume to know what she felt as a wife, but of her devotion as a mother I am able to write with certainty. On her fell the burden of those hours of sickness in the city, and when the time came for us to go back to the birds and trees of our beloved valley she rejoiced as openly as her daughter. "Now we shall be free of colds and fever," she said.