Our life went on serenely and happily. Daily he went down the hill to the company office on First Street, just above Broadway. We filled our home time with reading the newspapers, books and magazines especially The Forum, which at that time was very good. I made a final fruitless attempt to be musical, took a few painting lessons which I wish had been many, and for a time went to the new Throop Institute in Pasadena, for dressmaking training. I learned how to bone a basque and line a skirt, and a few other arts now unnecessary.
On Sunday I undertook to hold the attention of half a dozen lively small boys. We liked each other and had a very good time together, but how much we learned I cannot say. Perhaps my own sons have profited by my acquaintance with those other obstreperous young Americans. I never wanted to exchange them for the neighboring class of little girls whose whispers and giggles were less understandable to me than the excess of energy evidenced by punching, pin-sticking, and the tipping over of chairs.
Neither father nor I was very demonstrative, but we enjoyed being together as we always had. We went out seldom in the evening as a growing deafness made public meetings of little value to him. But we never missed a Maine Society gathering. He had not lost his interest in people from the old home state and read the Great Register whenever it came out, checking off every “Mainiac” and hunting him up when possible.
One evening when a cousin, Frank Weston from Santa Clara, was visiting us I heard him and father exchanging news of one and another relative unknown to me, so I asked how many cousins there were; they did not know; but father began naming them for me to count. He remembered one hundred and twenty-five, no seconds being listed. How many first he may have missed, I do not know. They all seemed to know him and whenever a new one came to California he made for our house. There was a certain quality about father that won people. I remember the testimony to this that I witnessed about this time when he and I had gone to a church supper together. He soon saw a strange, small baby whom he borrowed and carried about with him all evening, to the apparent satisfaction of both. It is a pity that his children came so late in life that he had no chance to be grandfather to the fifteen grandchildren that have accrued since his death.
The spring of 1896 brought a sudden dismay into our peaceful family. A telegram from New York City reported the desperate illness of Nan, who had gone there for her Easter vacation. Aunt Martha hurried to her, while we at home for six weeks lived for the daily telegram. The anxiety told on father, who was then past seventy. Even after my sister’s safe return he still seemed weary.
That was the summer of the Free Silver campaign, and he was greatly worried about the outcome and its effect upon his somewhat precarious business affairs. Even his satisfaction at the defeat of Mr. Bryan was offset by the strain of an all-night session counting ballots in a cold polling place, he having been unable to resist the temptation to accept his customary position as an election officer of his precinct. With McKinley elected and Nan well the world was saved!
And then, early in December, one Saturday evening, he failed to answer when called for dinner. I found him sitting at the old table that had come with us from San Justo, his cards spread before him in his accustomed solitaire, asleep, not to wake for us again,—a beautiful way to go, no pain, no days of helplessness.
This meant the breaking up of the home, for we young folk scattered, Nan to Wellesley to finish her interrupted course, Llewellyn to Pomona College where he had been during the fall, and I to make a new home in the East.
Since my marriage I have not lived actually in Los Angeles. For eight years, divided between Michigan, Chicago, Honolulu and Cambridge, Massachusetts, my home was outside of California; but even during that time I made several visits here so that in all my life from the first trip south from San Justo before I was a year old to the present, I have never been away from Los Angeles for a period longer than two years. Since my return to my own state, twenty-one years ago I have always been within hailing distance. I have seen a city increase and multiply in an amazing manner, even an hundred fold, a strange experience for one who has no intention of being old for a long time yet. Those who realize how this infant prodigy of a town is daily swamped with hordes of new and unrelated people have patience with some things for which she can be justly criticised; they take pride in the vigor of her life and have faith that when she really grows up and discovers a co-ordinated spirit to direct her overgrown body, she will earn a right to her queenly name.
It is because these vanished days are so clear to me that I have put down some of the things I know for those who care to read, among whom I hope will be found the thirty grand-children of the Hathaway-Bixby couples who have figured in the narrative.