To this day windows give me pleasure. My father was a school-teacher from New England, where his family had taught the three R's and the American Constitution since the days of Ben Franklin's study club. My mother was the daughter of a hardworking Scotch immigrant. Father's family set store on ancestry. Mother's side was more practical.
The year before my birth these two young people started West in a prairie schooner to stake a homestead claim. Father's sea-man's chest held a dictionary, Bancroft's History of the United States, several books of mathematics, Plutarch's Lives, a history of Massachusetts, a leather-bound file of Civil War records, Thackeray's “Vanity Fair”, Shakespeare in two volumes, and the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” My mother took a Bible.
I can still quote pages from every one of those books. Until I was fourteen I saw no others, except a primer, homemade, to teach me my letters. Because “Vanity Fair” contained simpler words than the others, it was given me first; so at the age of seven I was spelling out pages of the immortal Becky.
My mother did not approve, but father laughed and protested that the child might as well begin with good things.
After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found her crying.
“Mary,” she said, with a tenderness that was rare, “if I die, you must take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman within eighteen miles.”
I was ten years old.
That night and many other nights I lay awake, trembling at the possibility of being left the only woman within eighteen miles.
But mother did not die. I must have been a sturdy child; for, with the little help father and his homestead partner could spare, I kept that home going until she was strong again.
Every fall the shoemaker made his rounds through the country, reaching our place last, for beyond us lay only virgin forest and wild beasts. His visit thrilled us more than the arrival of any king to-day. We had been cut off from the world for months. The shoemaker brought news from neighbors eighteen, forty, sixty, even a hundred and fifty miles away. Usually he brought a few newspapers too, treasured afterward for months. He remained, a royal guest, for many days, until all the family was shod.