Often, thereafter, on a clear night when the thermometer stood twenty below zero, Burton and I would trot away toward the Grove to join in some meeting or to coast with the boys on the banks of the creek. I feel again the iron clutch of my frozen boots. The tippet around my neck is solid ice before my lips. My ears sting. Low-hung, blazing, the stars light the sky, and over the diamond-dusted snow-crust the moonbeams splinter.
Though sensing the glory of such nights as these I was careful about referring to it. Restraint in such matters was the rule. If you said, "It is a fine day," or "The night is as clear as a bell," you had gone quite as far as the proprieties permitted. Love was also a forbidden word. You might say, "I love pie," but to say "I love Bettie," was mawkish if not actually improper.
Caresses or terms of endearment even between parents and their children were very seldom used. People who said "Daddy dear," or "Jim dear," were under suspicion. "They fight like cats and dogs when no one else is around" was the universal comment on a family whose members were very free of their terms of affection. We were a Spartan lot. We did not believe in letting our wives and children know that they were an important part of our contentment.
Social changes were in progress. We held no more quilting bees or barn-raisings. Women visited less than in Wisconsin. The work on the new farms was never ending, and all teams were in constant use during week days. The young people got together on one excuse or another, but their elders met only at public meetings.
Singing, even among the young people was almost entirely confined to hymn-tunes. The new Moody and Sankey Song Book was in every home. Tell Me the Old Old Story did not refer to courtship but to salvation, and Hold the Fort for I am Coming was no longer a signal from Sherman, but a Message from Jesus. We often spent a joyous evening singing O, Bear Me Away on Your Snowy Wings, although we had no real desire to be taken "to our immortal home." Father no longer asked for Minnie Minturn and Nellie Wildwood,—but his love for Smith's Grand March persisted and my sister Harriet was often called upon to play it for him while he explained its meaning. The war was passing into the mellow, reminiscent haze of memory and he loved the splendid pictures which this descriptive piece of martial music recalled to mind. So far as we then knew his pursuit of the Sunset was at an end.