The parlor was a small square room with one window to the court and one to the front veranda. The walls were covered with a light flowered paper, and on them hung four steel engravings of the “Voyage of Life,” and the familiar picture of Lincoln and his son Tad. A large walnut book-case occupied one side of the room. Its drawers at the base were filled with blocks and toys for the downstairs delectation of the succession of babies in the home. A Franklin stove in one corner kept us snug and warm when the ocean chill crept inland. The furniture was covered with a maroon leather, a set exactly like the one in the office at San Justo. I associate the reading of many books with one of those comfortable, stuffed chairs, among them Two Years Before the Mast, and Oliver Twist.
At the table in the center of the room father and Uncle Jotham spent many a long evening over interminable series of cribbage, and my books are punctuated by “fifteen two, fifteen four and a run is eight.” Uncle Jotham’s convulsive shakings made his amusement visible rather than audible.
One night Nan was desperately ill with the croup and was wrapped up before the fire in this room while one of the older cousins rode in haste to Compton for the doctor. When he returned he tied his horse hurriedly in the stall in the barn, leaving too long a rope, with the result that somehow, during the night, the poor horse became entangled and was strangled to death, a hard reward to him for his successful effort to save the life of a little girl.
Another memory of this room—of a Sunday afternoon. We had all been over to camp-meeting at Gospel Swamp, not that we were much addicted to camp-meeting, but it was the only available service within reach, and of course we had to go to church on Sunday. We sat on wooden benches in the dust under the willows, not an altogether unpleasant change from the usual pew, at least for the children, and Aunt Adelaide, who was camping there for the week, took us to her tent afterward and gave us some watermelon before we drove the few miles back to the ranch. But Uncle Jotham had a more exciting aftermath. He and papa and I were reading in the parlor after dinner when suddenly he gave a tremendous jump and ran upstairs three steps at a time, where we soon heard a great noise of tramping. In a minute or two he came down with a dead lizard almost a foot long spread on his New York Tri-weekly Tribune. Evidently it had mounted his bootleg over at camp-meeting and lain dormant for a couple of hours before attempting further explorations. The first jump came when the little feet struck my uncle’s knees—harmless, but uncanny.
The usual gathering place for the family was the wide porch where the sun upon the rose vines flecked the floor with shadows. The bricks that paved this open corridor were laid in an herring-bone pattern and we often practised walking with our feet set squarely on them in order to counteract any tendency we might have to pigeon-toedness.
Beside the central door was a space in the wall held sacred and never touched at regular white-washing time. Here was kept a record of the varying heights of the family from year to year so that we could keep track of our growing prowess. Uncle John, at six feet, topped the list for his generation, but was ultimately passed by his son and two nephews.
A Mexican olla, embedded in sand in a high box, and a long handled tin dipper provided convenient drinking facilities, and a tin wash bowl, nearby, just outside the dining room door, was a peremptory invitation to clean hands for dinner.
At the other end of the porch, near grandfather’s room, was a very long, knotted, twine hammock, in which we rolled ourselves and held tight for a high swing. I had first known this hammock among the trees in the yard at Skowhegan, but it had come to California with grandfather and Aunt Martha. It had belonged to Uncle Philo Hathaway, who, in order to earn money to complete his college course at Amherst, had been cruising a year with Admiral Thatcher as his private secretary. He evidently contracted Panama fever while in Caribbean waters, for on his way home he died, and was buried at sea. The loss of this promising young man was a great grief to all who knew him but to his nephews and nieces who had come into this world after he left it, he was a very shadowy figure.
The already long veranda was extended at each end by an arbor, hung with bunches of the small mission grapes, which Harry and I were wont to squeeze in our grimy handkerchiefs over a tin cup for the purpose of making wine.
The garden spread before the porch, at least two acres, shut in from intruders and sheltered from the ocean winds by the high fence. It was laid out in three tiers of four beds, each about fifty feet square, with a wide border about the whole. They were separated by walks, edged with more of the imported brick. Near the house were flowers and shrubs, but further away grapes were planted, and oranges, pomegranates, and figs.