At the rear of this house was a low porch, without a railing, where the carriages drove up many times a day, for, with the large family, the wide acres, and active business, there was much coming and going. This veranda served as an annex to the dining room. In those days fruit came after breakfast instead of before, and it was here that we ate it, tossing the squeezed oranges and the scalloped watermelon rinds into a conveniently placed box that was frequently emptied.
Directly back of the kitchen was a small building containing a storeroom where Dick and I were accustomed to climb the shelves like a ladder for packages of sweet chocolate, while Aunt Francina, oblivious, skimmed the many large milk pans. In the building also was a laundry, containing a stove upon which I have seen soft-soap made and tallow prepared for the candle moulds. In a corner, made by this house and a retaining wall, was a large sand pile, and from the great oak on the bank above hung a long swing. I wonder if it is any more delightful for an old person to penetrate the sky in an aeroplane than for a little girl to do the same when pushed by the strong arm of her father.
Down towards the pond was the horse barn, with its long rows of stalls on one side, and its shelter for the carts and buggies beside the hay-mow on the other. I was warned of dangerous heels and was duly circumspect, but liked to get, occasionally, a nice, fresh, long hair from a tail for purposes of scientific experiment. I was going to turn a hair into a snake if possible. In a similar attempt to verify popular statements I spent many an hour with salt in my hand, trailing birds.
On one of my ventures behind the horses I was rewarded by the discovery of a very heavy little bottle, standing on a dark ledge. It contained mercury. Great was my joy to get a few drops in my hand, to divide them into the tiniest globules, and then to watch them coalesce into one little silvery pool.
The building standing back up the hill was the one in which the imported Spanish merino sheep were kept. I seldom went there, but in the corral behind the barn next lower several cows stood every night to be milked, among them Old Muley, my friend, on whose broad back I often sat astride while the process was going on. There were large, pink-blossomed mallows bordering the fences and this barn, and under the latter many white geese could be seen between the slats of the open siding. How excited I was when the day for gathering the feathers came!
The hired men occupied the original ranch house; in the usual basement was the tool room, open to us children. I here learned to hammer, saw and plane, and, most charming of all, bore holes with an auger in the wooden boxes we used in the making of figure-four traps. I also learned about gimlets, chisels, pliers, brads, rivets, and screws and thus prepared myself to be a general handy man at college and in my own home. It was in this shop that papa made me a fire-cracker holder,—a willow stick with a hole bored in one end in which to place the lovely red symbol of patriotism, so that I could celebrate without endangering my fingers.
In front of the house was the flower garden, enclosed by a white picket fence as a protection against chickens and other wandering ranch animals. Ladies-delights turned up their smiling little faces beside one walk, and nearby grew papa’s favorites, cinnamon pinks. I liked the red honey-suckle and the dark mourning-brides that were like velvet cushions stuck full of white-headed pins. There was one orange tree that bore no fruit important enough for me to remember, but, in spring, had many waxy white blossoms that smelled so good it made one hurt inside.
In larger enclosures, bounded by the same white fencing, grew vegetables and fruit trees. Sometimes we pulled a pungent horse-radish root and pretended that a bite of it made us crazy, an excuse for much running and wild gesticulation. Under a long row of loaded blackberry vines Dick once asked me the riddle, “Why is a blackberry like a newspaper?” Do you know the answer? It is: “Both are black and white and red all over.” I presume the play upon the word “red” was my introduction to puns.
The orchard contained peaches, plums, pears, apples, and apricots, but, to my mind, the cherry trees were the chief glory. One evening while Annie Mooney, our nurse, was taking in some clothes from the line, my little sister and I had a feast of fallen cherries, but she ate with less discrimination than I, for when, a few minutes later, we drank our supper milk she had convulsions. A quick immersion in a tub of hot water cured her, and we had learned about babies and cherries and milk, all mixed up together.
Down in the far corner of the orchard was a spring, with marshy ground about it, where the children were forbidden to go. But one morning, bored by the lack of novelty in our lives, one of the Flint twins and I boldly ventured into the tabooed region. We had hardly arrived when we saw an enormous black snake, which drove us back in terror, chasing us, with glittering eyes and darting tongue, over the ridges and hollows of the new-ploughed ground that clutched at our feet as if in collusion with the black dragon guard of the spring. I laid, during those few minutes, the foundation for many a horror-stricken dream. The snake was real. I wonder if the pursuit was merely the imagining of a guilty conscience.