“But the Carsons had no money and they didn’t like to work. If anyone mentioned work to Mr. Carson, he would begin always to talk about the misery in his back. When brother Charlie had a job he didn’t want to do, he would bend over with his hand on his back, screw up his face as if he were in great pain, and say, ‘Oh, that misery in my back!’
“Mother said Mrs. Carson had not been lazy as a girl, but that she had grown discouraged from having so many to do for and nothing to do with. Sometimes she came to visit Mother, because Mother was always nice to everybody. She was very tall and thin, with a short waist, and she wore the longest skirts I ever saw and a black slat sunbonnet.
“There was a big family of children—a girl, Maggie, older than Andy, and Willie, a boy a year younger, and four or five smaller children. The older ones came to school part of the time, but none of them ever came to church—partly because they had no proper clothes, I suppose.
“They lived on a farm left them by Mrs. Carson’s father. The land was all run down and worn out. It was covered with briars and broom sage and a stubby growth of trees. Fences were down, and the buildings were unpainted and old.
“So, though the Carsons talked a great deal about Andy’s monument, no one ever thought they would get one. But Mother said it was the first thing Mrs. Carson had really wanted for years and years and people generally got the things they wanted most if they were willing to work hard for them. And it turned out that all the Carsons were willing to work hard for Andy’s monument. It was astonishing the way they worked.
“Mrs. Carson and the children started with the house and yard. They cleaned the rubbish off the yard and raked and swept it and planted flowers. They made the stove wood into a neat pile and swept up the chips and patched the fence and whitewashed it. By this time Mr. Carson had the fever, too. He started to clear off the land, all the family helping him. All summer long they worked, early and late, cutting out the briars and underbrush, burning broom sage, building fences, and by fall you wouldn’t have known it for the same place. They worked for a number of other people, too, and made a little money, besides taking seed corn and a pair of little pigs and other things they needed in payment.
“Well, it took a lot of money for a monument like Andy’s was to be, but the Carsons worked and saved for it. It seemed as if they had set a new standard for themselves and were trying hard to live up to Andy’s monument.
“They painted the house and repaired and whitewashed the outbuildings and put a paling fence around the front yard. They got lace curtains and a store carpet for their best room, and when Father got us a piano, Mrs. Carson bought our organ for a trifle. They got new clothes and dishes and tablecloths, and every Sunday they all came to meeting and asked folks home with them to dinner just as anybody else did.
“Dave Orbison was courting Maggie, and Willie was ready to go to the academy. He wanted an education and came to our house every week to get Truman to help him with his studies or to borrow books. If it hadn’t been for the monument, people would have forgotten that the Carsons had ever been considered lazy or shiftless.