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Like most men, my dear
father should never have married. Though his nature was one of the
sweetest I have ever known, and though he would at any call give his
time to or risk his life for others, in practical matters he remained to
the end of his days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned to
practical details at all, it was solely in their bearing toward great
developments of the future. To him an acorn was not an acorn, but a
forest of young oaks.
Thus, when he took up his
claim of three hundred and sixty acres of land in the wilderness of
northern Michigan, and sent my mother and five young children to live
there alone until he could join us eighteen months later, he gave no
thought to the manner in which we were to make the struggle and survive
the hardships before us. He had furnished us with land and the four
walls of a log cabin. Some day, he reasoned, the place would be a fine
estate, which his sons would inherit and in the course of time pass
on to their sons--always an Englishman's most iridescent dream. That for
the present we were one hundred miles from a railroad, forty miles from
the nearest post-office, and half a dozen miles from any neighbors save
Indians, wolves, and wildcats; that we were wholly unlearned in the ways
of the woods as well as in the most primitive methods of farming; that
we lacked not only every comfort, but even the bare necessities of life;
and that we must begin, single-handed and untaught, a struggle for
existence in which some of the severest forces of nature would be
arrayed against us--these facts had no weight in my father's mind. Even
if he had witnessed my mother's despair on the night of our arrival in
our new home, he would not have understood it. From his viewpoint, he
was doing a man's duty. He was working steadily in Lawrence, and,
incidentally, giving much time to the Abolition cause and to other big
public movements of his day which had his interest and sympathy. He
wrote to us regularly and sent us occasional remittances, as well as a
generous supply of improving literature for our minds. It remained for
us to strengthen our bodies, to meet the conditions in which he had
placed us, and to survive if we could.
We faced our situation
with clear and unalarmed eyes the morning after our arrival. The problem
of food, we knew, was at least temporarily solved. We had brought with
us enough coffee, pork, and flour to last for several weeks; and the one
necessity father had put inside the cabin walls was a great fireplace,
made of mud and stones, in which our food could be cooked. The problem
of our water-supply was less simple, but my brother James solved it for
the time by showing us a creek a long distance from the house; and for
months we carried from this creek, in pails, every drop of water we
used, save that which we caught in troughs when the rain fell. We held a
family council after breakfast, and in this, though I was only twelve, I
took an eager and determined part. I loved work--it has always been my
favorite form of recreation--and my spirit rose to the opportunities of
it which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first thing to do
was to put doors and windows into the yawning holes father had left for
them, and to lay a board flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls,
and these duties we accomplished before we had occupied our new home a
fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles from our cabin, on the
spot that is now Big Rapids, and there we bought our lumber. The labor
we supplied ourselves, and though we put our hearts into it and the
results at the time seemed beautiful to our partial eyes, I am forced to
admit, in looking back upon them, that they halted this side of
perfection. We began by making three windows and two doors; then,
inspired by these achievements, we ambitiously constructed an attic and
divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us four rooms.
The general effect was
temperamental and sketchy. The boards which formed the floor were never
even nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in them,
and they looked so well that we merely fitted them together as closely
as we could and lightheartedly let them go at that. Neither did we
properly chink the house. Nothing is more comfortable than a log cabin
which has been carefully built and finished; but for some
reason--probably because there seemed always a more urgent duty calling
to us around the corner--we never plastered our house at all. The result
was that on many future winter mornings we awoke to find ourselves
chastely blanketed by snow, while the only warm spot in our living-room
was that directly in front of the fireplace, where great logs burned all
day. Even there our faces scorched while our spines slowly congealed,
until we learned to revolve before the fire like a bird upon a spit. No
doubt we would have worked more thoroughly if my brother James, who was
twenty years old and our tower of strength, had remained with us; but
when we had been in our new home only a few months he fell and was
forced to go East for an operation. He was never able to return to us,
and thus my mother, we three young girls, and my youngest
brother--Harry, who was only eight years old--made our fight alone until
father came to us, more than a year later.
Mother was practically an
invalid. She had a nervous affection which made it impossible for her to
stand without the support of a chair. But she sewed with unusual skill,
and it was due to her that our clothes, notwithstanding the strain to
which we subjected them, were always in good condition. She sewed for
hours every day, and she was able to move about the house, after a
fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool which James made for her
as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a more comfortable chair
with a high back. The division of labor planned at the first council was
that mother should do our sewing, and my older sisters, Eleanor and
Mary, the housework, which was far from taxing, for of course we lived
in the simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do the work out of
doors, an arrangement that suited me very well, though at first, owing
to our lack of experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed. It
was too late in the season for plowing or planting, even if we had
possessed anything with which to plow, and, moreover, our so-called
``cleared'' land was thick with sturdy tree-stumps. Even during the
second summer plowing was impossible; we could only plant potatoes and
corn, and follow the most primitive method in doing even this. We took
an ax, chopped up the sod, put the seed under it, and let the seed grow.
The seed did grow, too--in the most gratifying and encouraging manner.
Our green corn and potatoes were the best I have ever eaten. But for the
present we lacked these luxuries. We had, however, in their place, large
quantities of wild fruit--gooseberries, raspberries, and plums --which
Harry and I gathered on the banks of our creek. Harry also became an
expert fisherman. We had no hooks or lines, but he took wires from our
hoop-skirts and made snares at the ends of poles. My part of this work
was to stand on a log and frighten the fish out of their holes by making
horrible sounds, which I did with impassioned earnestness. When the fish
hurried to the surface of the water to investigate the appalling noises
they had heard, they were easily snared by our small boy, who was very
proud of his ability to contribute in this way to the family table.
During our first winter we lived largely on corn-meal, making a little
journey of twenty miles to the nearest mill to buy it; but even at that
we were better off than our neighbors, for I remember one family in our
region who for an entire winter lived solely on coarse-grained yellow
turnips, gratefully changing their diet to leeks when these came in the
spring.
Such furniture as we had
we made ourselves. In addition to my mother's two chairs and the bunks
which took the place of beds, James made a settle for the living-room,
as well as a table and several stools. At first we had our tree-cutting
done for us, but we soon became expert in this gentle art, and I
developed such skill that in later years, after father came, I used to
stand with him and ``heart'' a log.
On every side, and at
every hour of the day, we came up against the relentless limitations of
pioneer life. There was not a team of horses in our entire region. The
team with which my brother had driven us through the wilderness had been
hired at Grand Rapids for that occasion, and, of course, immediately
returned. Our lumber was delivered by ox-teams, and the absolutely
essential purchases we made ``outside'' (at the nearest shops, forty
miles away) were carried through the forest on the backs of men.
Our mail was delivered
once a month by a carrier who made the journey in alternate stages of
horseback riding and canoeing. But we had health, youth, enthusiasm,
good appetites, and the wherewithal to satisfy them, and at night in our
primitive bunks we sank into abysses of dreamless slumber such as I have
never known since. Indeed, looking back upon them, those first months
seem to have been a long-drawn-out and glorious picnic, interrupted only
by occasional hours of pain or panic, when we were hurt or frightened.
Naturally, our two greatest menaces were wild animals and Indians, but
as the days passed the first of these lost the early terrors with which
we had associated them. We grew indifferent to the sounds that had made
our first night a horror to us all-- there was even a certain homeliness
in them--while we regarded with accustomed, almost blase eyes the
various furred creatures of which we caught distant glimpses as they
slunk through the forest. Their experience with other settlers had
taught them caution; it soon became clear that they were as eager to
avoid us as we were to shun them, and by common consent we gave each
other ample elbow-room. But the Indians were all around us, and every
settler had a collection of hair-raising tales to tell of them. It was
generally agreed that they were dangerous only when they were drunk; but
as they were drunk whenever they could get whisky, and as whisky was
constantly given them in exchange for pelts and game, there was a
harrowing doubt in our minds whenever they approached us.
In my first encounter
with them I was alone in the woods at sunset with my small brother
Harry. We were hunting a cow James had bought, and our young eyes were
peering eagerly among the trees, on the alert for any moving object.
Suddenly, at a little distance, and coming directly toward us, we saw a
party of Indians. There were five of them, all men, walking in single
file, as noiselessly as ghosts, their moccasined feet causing not even a
rustle among the dry leaves that carpeted the woods. All the horrible
stories we had heard of Indian cruelty flashed into our minds, and for a
moment we were dumb with terror. Then I remembered having been told that
the one thing one must not do before them is to show fear. Harry
was carrying a rope with which we had expected to lead home our
reluctant cow, and I seized one end of it and whispered to him that we
would ``play horse,'' pretending he was driving me. We pranced toward
the Indians on feet that felt like lead, and with eyes so glazed by
terror that we could see nothing save a line of moving figures; but as
we passed them they did not give to our little impersonation of
care-free children even the tribute of a side-glance. They were, we
realized, headed straight for our home; and after a few moments we
doubled on our tracks and, keeping at a safe distance from them among
the trees, ran back to warn our mother that they were coming.
As it happened, James was
away, and mother had to meet her unwelcome guests supported only by her
young children. She at once prepared a meal, however, and when they
arrived she welcomed them calmly and gave them the best she had. After
they had eaten they began to point at and demand objects they fancied in
the room--my brother's pipe, some tobacco, a bowl, and such trifles--and
my mother, who was afraid to annoy them by refusal, gave them what they
asked. They were quite sober, and though they left without expressing
any appreciation of her hospitality, they made her a second visit a few
months later, bringing a large quantity of venison and a bag of
cranberries as a graceful return. These Indians were Ottawas; and later
we became very friendly with them and their tribe, even to the degree of
attending one of their dances, which I shall describe later.
Our second encounter with
Indians was a less agreeable experience. There were seven ``Marquette
warriors'' in the next group of callers, and they were all intoxicated.
Moreover, they had brought with them several jugs of bad whisky-- the
raw and craze-provoking product supplied them by the fur-dealers--and it
was clear that our cabin was to be the scene of an orgy. Fortunately, my
brother James was at home on this occasion, and as the evening grew old
and the Indians, grouped together around the fire, became more and more
irresponsible, he devised a plan for our safety. Our attic was finished,
and its sole entrance was by a ladder through a trap-door. At James's
whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up into the attic, and from
the back window let down a rope, to which he tied all the weapons we
had--his gun and several axes. These Eleanor drew up and concealed in
one of the bunks. My brother then directed that as quietly as possible,
and at long intervals, one member of the family after another was to
slip up the ladder and into the attic, going quite casually, that the
Indians might not realize what we were doing. Once there, with the
ladder drawn up after us and the trap-door closed, we would be
reasonably safe, unless our guests decided to burn the cabin.
The evening seemed
endless, and was certainly nerve-racking. The Indians ate everything in
the house, and from my seat in a dim corner I watched them while my
sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they made in the
firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech as they
talked together. Occasionally one of them would pull a hair from his
head, seize his scalping-knife; and cut the hair with it--a most
unpleasant sight! When either of my sisters approached them some of the
Indians would make gestures, as if capturing and scalping her. Through
it all, however, the whisky held their close attention, and it was due
to this that we succeeded in reaching the attic unobserved, James coming
last of all and drawing the ladder after him. Mother and the children
were then put to bed; but through that interminable night James and
Eleanor lay flat upon the floor, watching through the cracks between the
boards the revels of the drunken Indians, which grew wilder with every
hour that crawled toward sunrise. There was no knowing when they would
miss us or how soon their mood might change. At any moment they might
make an attack upon us or set fire to the cabin. By dawn, however, their
whisky was all gone, and they were in so deep a stupor that, one after
the other, the seven fell from their chairs to the floor, where they
sprawled unconscious. When they awoke they left quietly and without
trouble of any kind. They seemed a strangely subdued and chastened band;
probably they were wretchedly ill after their debauch on the adulterated
whisky the traders had given them.
That autumn the Ottawa
tribe had a great corn celebration, to which we and the other settlers
were invited. James and my older sisters attended it, and I went with
them, by my own urgent invitation. It seemed to me that as I was sharing
the work and the perils of our new environment, I might as well share
its joys; and I finally succeeded in making my family see the logic of
this position. The central feature of the festivity was a huge kettle,
many feet in circumference, into which the Indians dropped the most
extraordinary variety of food we had ever seen combined. Deer heads went
into it whole, as well as every kind of meat and vegetable the members
of the tribe could procure. We all ate some of this agreeable mixture,
and later, with one another, and even with the Indians, we danced gaily
to the music of a tom-tom and a drum. The affair was extremely
interesting until the whisky entered and did its unpleasant work. When
our hosts began to fall over in the dance and slumber where they lay,
and when the squaws began to show the same ill effects of their
refreshments, we unostentatiously slipped away.
During the winter life
offered us few diversions and many hardships. Our creek froze over, and
the water problem became a serious one, which we met with increasing
difficulty as the temperature steadily fell. We melted snow and ice, and
existed through the frozen months, but with an amount of discomfort
which made us unwilling to repeat at least that special phase of our
experience. In the spring, therefore, I made a well. Long before this,
James had gone, and Harry and I were now the only outdoor members of our
working-force. Harry was still too small to help with the well; but a
young man, who had formed the neighborly habit of riding eighteen miles
to call on us, gave me much friendly aid. We located the well with a
switch, and when we had dug as far as we could reach with our spades, my
assistant descended into the hole and threw the earth up to the edge,
from which I in turn removed it. As the well grew deeper we made a
half-way shelf, on which I stood, he throw- ing the earth on the shelf,
and I shoveling it up from that point. Later, as he descended still
farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the earth into buckets
and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my sister, who was now
pressed into service. When the excavation was deep enough we made the
wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I recall that well with
calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but it was a thoroughly
practical well, and it remained the only one we had during the twelve
years the family occupied the cabin.
During our first year
there was no school within ten miles of us, but this lack failed to
sadden Harry or me. We had brought with us from Lawrence a box of books,
in which, in winter months, when our outdoor work was restricted, we
found much comfort. They were the only books in that part of the
country, and we read them until we knew them all by heart. Moreover,
father sent us regularly the New York Independent, and with this
admirable literature, after reading it, we papered our walls. Thus, on
stormy days, we could lie on the settle or the floor and read the
Independent over again with increased interest and pleasure.
Occasionally father sent
us the Ledger, but here mother drew a definite line. She had a special
dislike for that periodical, and her severest comment on any woman was
that she was the type who would ``keep a dog, make saleratus biscuit,
and read the New York Ledger in the daytime.'' Our modest library also
contained several histories of Greece and Rome, which must have been
good ones, for years later, when I entered college, I passed my
examination in ancient history with no other preparation than this
reading. There were also a few arithmetics and algebras, a historical
novel or two, and the inevitable copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose pages
I had freely moistened with my tears.
When the advantages of
public education were finally extended to me, at thirteen, by the
opening of a school three miles from our home, I accepted them with
growing reluctance. The teacher was a spinster forty-four years of age
and the only genuine ``old maid'' I have ever met who was not a married
woman or a man. She was the real thing, and her name, Prudence Duncan,
seemed the fitting label for her rigidly uncompromising personality. I
graced Prudence's school for three months, and then left it at her
fervid request. I had walked six miles a day through trackless woods and
Western blizzards to get what she could give me, but she had little to
offer my awakened and critical mind.
My reading and my
Lawrence school-work had already taught me more than Prudence knew--a
fact we both inwardry--admitted and fiercely resented from our different
viewpoints. Beyond doubt I was a pert and trying young person. I lost no
opportunity to lead Prudence beyond her intellectual depth and leave her
there, and Prudence vented her chagrin not alone upon me, but upon my
little brother. I became a thorn in her side, and one day, after an
especially unpleasant episode in which Harry also figured, she plucked
me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from her. From that time I
studied at home, where I was a much more valuable economic factor than I
had been in school.
The second spring after
our arrival Harry and I extended our operations by tapping the
sugar-bushes, collecting all the sap, and carrying it home in pails
slung from our yoke-laden shoulders. Together we made one hundred and
fifty pounds of sugar and a barrel of syrup, but here again, as always,
we worked in primitive ways. To get the sap we chopped a gash in the
tree and drove in a spile. Then we dug out a trough to catch the sap. It
was no light task to lift these troughs full of sap and empty the sap
into buckets, but we did it successfully, and afterward built fires and
boiled it down. By this time we had also cleared some of our ground, and
during the spring we were able to plow, dividing the work in a way that
seemed fair to us both. These were strenuous occupations for a boy of
nine and a girl of thirteen, but, though we were not inordinately good
children, we never complained; we found them very satisfactory
substitutes for more normal bucolic joys. Inevitably, we had our little
tragedies. Our cow died, and for an entire winter we went without milk.
Our coffee soon gave out, and as a substitute we made and used a mixture
of browned peas and burnt rye. In the winter we were always cold, and
the water problem, until we had built our well, was ever with us.
Father joined us at the
end of eighteen months, but though his presence gave us pleasure and
moral support, he was not an addition to our executive staff. He brought
with him a rocking-chair for mother and a new supply of books, on which
I fell as a starving man falls upon food. Father read as eagerly as I,
but much more steadily. His mind was always busy with problems, and if,
while he was laboring in the field, a new problem presented itself to
him, the imperishable curiosity that was in him made him scurry at once
to the house to solve it. I have known him to spend a planting season in
figuring on the production of a certain number of kernels of corn,
instead of planting the corn and raising it. In the winter he was
supposed to spend his time clearing land for orchards and the like, but
instead he pored over his books and problems day after day and often
half the night as well. It soon became known among our neighbors, who
were rapidly increasing in number, that we had books and that father
like to read aloud, and men walked ten miles or more to spend the night
with us and listen to his reading. Often, as his fame grew, ten or
twelve men would arrive at our cabin on Saturday and remain over Sunday.
When my mother once tried to check this influx of guests by mildly
pointing out, among other things, the waste of candles represented by
frequent all-night readings, every man humbly appeared again on the
following Saturday with a candle in each hand. They were not sensitive;
and, as they had brought their candles, it seemed fitting to them and to
father that we girls should cook for them and supply them with food.
Father's tolerance of
idleness in others, however, did not extend to tolerance of idleness in
us, and this led to my first rebellion, which occurred when I was
fourteen. For once, I had been in the woods all day, buried in my books;
and when I returned at night, still in the dream world these books had
opened to me, father was awaiting my coming with a brow dark with
disapproval. As it happened, mother had felt that day some special need
of me, and father reproached me bitterly for being beyond reach--an
idler who wasted time while mother labored. He ended a long arraignment
by predicting gloomily that with such tendencies I would make nothing of
my life. The injustice of the criticism cut deep; I knew I had done and
was doing my share for the family, and already, too, I had begun to feel
the call of my career. For some reason I wanted to preach--to talk to
people, to tell them things. Just why, just what, I did not yet
know--but I had begun to preach in the silent woods, to stand up on
stumps and address the unresponsive trees, to feel the stir of
aspiration within me. When my father had finished all he wished to say,
I looked at him and answered, quietly, ``Father, some day I am going to
college.'' I can still see his slight, ironical smile. It drove me to a
second prediction. I was young enough to measure success by material
results, so I added, recklessly: ``And before I die I shall be worth ten
thousand dollars!''
The amount staggered me
even as it dropped from my lips. It was the largest fortune my
imagination could conceive, and in my heart I believed that no woman
ever had possessed or would possess so much. So far as I knew, too, no
woman had gone to college. But now that I had put my secret hopes into
words, I was desperately determined to make those hopes come true. After
I became a wageearner I lost my desire to make a fortune, but the
college dream grew with the years; and though my college career seemed
as remote as the most distant star, I hitched my little wagon to that
star and never afterward wholly lost sight of its friendly gleam. When I
was fifteen years old I was offered a situation as school-teacher. By
this time the community was growing around us with the rapidity
characteristic of these Western settlements, and we had nearer neighbors
whose children needed instruction. I passed an examination before a
schoolboard consisting of three nervous and self-conscious men whose
certificate I still hold, and I at once began my professional career on
the modest salary of two dollars a week and my board. The school was
four miles from my home, so I ``boarded round'' with the families of my
pupils, staying two weeks in each place, and often walking from three to
six miles a day to and from my little log school-house in every kind of
weather. During the first year I had about fourteen pupils, of varying
ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was hardly a book in the
school-room except those I owned. One little girl, I remember, read from
an almanac, while a second used a hymn-book.
In winter the
school-house was heated by a wood-stove, to which the teacher had to
give close personal attention. I could not depend on my pupils to make
the fires or carry in the fuel; and it was often necessary to fetch the
wood myself, sometimes for long distances through the forest. Again and
again, after miles of walking through winter storms, I reached the
school-house with my clothing wet through, and in these soaked garments
I taught during the day. In ``boarding round'' I often found myself in
one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the sole partition a sheet or
a blanket, behind which I slept with one or two of the children. It was
the custom on these occasions for the man of the house to delicately
retire to the barn while we women got to bed, and to disappear again in
the morning while we dressed. In some places the meals were so badly
cooked that I could not eat them, and often the only food my poor little
pupils brought to school for their noonday meal was a piece of bread or
a bit of raw pork.
I earned my two dollars a
week that year, but I had to wait for my wages until the dog tax was
collected in the spring. When the money was thus raised, and the
twenty-six dollars for my thirteen weeks of teaching were graciously put
into my hands, I went ``outside'' to the nearest shop and joyously spent
almost the entire amount for my first ``party dress.'' The gown I bought
was, I considered, a beautiful creation. In color it was a rich magenta,
and the skirt was elaborately braided with black cable-cord. My
admiration for it was justified, for it did all a young girl's eager
heart could ask of any gown--it led to my first proposal. The youth who
sought my hand was about twenty years old, and by an unhappy chance he
was also the least attractive young person in the countryside--the
laughing-stock of the neighbors, the butt of his associates. The night
he came to offer me his heart there were already two young men at our
home calling on my sisters, and we were all sitting around the fire in
the living-room when my suitor appeared. His costume, like himself, left
much to be desired. He wore a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trousers
made of flour-bags. Such trousers were not uncommon in our region, and
the boy's mother, who had made them for him, had thoughtfully selected a
nice clean pair of sacks. But on one leg was the name of the firm that
made the flour--A. and G. W. Green--and by a charming coincidence A. and
G. W. Green happened to be the two young men who were calling on my
sisters! On the back of the bags, directly in the rear of the wearer,
was the simple legend, ``96 pounds''; and the striking effect of the
young man's costume was completed by a bright yellow sash which held his
trousers in place.
The vision fascinated my
sisters and their two guests. They gave it their entire attention, and
when the new-comer signified with an eloquent gesture that he was
calling on me, and beckoned me into an inner room, the quartet arose as
one person and followed us to the door. Then, as we inhospitably closed
the door, they fastened their eyes to the cracks in the living-room
wall, that they might miss none of the entertainment. When we were alone
my guest and I sat down in facing chairs and in depressed silence. The
young man was nervous, and I was both frightened and annoyed. I had
heard suppressed giggles on the other side of the wall, and I realized,
as my self-centered visitor failed to do, that we were not enjoying the
privacy the situation seemed to demand. At last the youth informed me
that his ``dad'' had just given him a cabin, a yoke of steers, a cow,
and some hens. When this announcement had produced its full effect, he
straightened up in his chair and asked, solemnly, ``Will ye have me?''
An outburst of chortles
from the other side of the wall greeted the proposal, but the ardent
youth ignored it, if indeed he heard it. With eyes staring straight
ahead, he sat rigid, waiting for my answer; and I, anxious only to get
rid of him and to end the strain of the moment, said the first thing
that came into my head. ``I can't,'' I told him. ``I'm sorry,
but--but--I'm engaged.'' He rose quickly, with the effect of a
half-closed jack-knife that is suddenly opened, and for an instant stood
looking down upon me. He was six feet two inches tall, and extremely
thin. I am very short, and, as I looked up, his flour-bag trousers
seemed to join his yellow sash somewhere near the ceiling of the room.
He put both hands into his pockets and slowly delivered his valedictory.
``That's darned disappointing to a fellow,'' he said, and left the
house. After a moment devoted to regaining my maidenly composure I
returned to the living-room, where I had the privilege of observing the
enjoyment of my sisters and their visitors. Helpless with mirth and with
tears of pleasure on their cheeks, the four rocked and shrieked as they
recalled the picture my gallant had presented. For some time after that
incident I felt a strong distaste for sentiment.
Clad royally in the new
gown, I attended my first ball in November, going with a party of eight
that included my two sisters, another girl, and four young men. The ball
was at Big Rapids, which by this time had grown to be a thriving lumber
town. It was impossible to get a team of horses or even a yoke of oxen
for the journey, so we made a raft and went down the river on that,
taking our party dresses with us in trunks. Unfortunately, the raft
``hung up'' in the stream, and the four young men had to get out into
the icy water and work a long time before they could detach it from the
rocks. Naturally, they were soaked and chilled through, but they all
bore the experience with a gay philosophy. When we reached Big Rapids we
dressed for the ball, and, as in those days it was customary to change
one's gown again at midnight, I had an opportunity to burst on the
assemblage in two costumes--the second made of bedroom chintz, with a
low neck and short sleeves. We danced the ``money musk,'' and the
``Virginia reel,'' ``hoeing her down'' (which means changing partners)
in true pioneer style. I never missed a dance at this or any subsequent
affair, and I was considered the gayest and the most tireless young
person at our parties until I became a Methodist minister and dropped
such worldly vanities. The first time I preached in my home region all
my former partners came to hear me, and listened with wide,
understanding, reminiscent smiles which made it very hard for me to keep
soberly to my text.
In the near future I had
reason to regret the extravagant expenditure of my first earnings. For
my second year of teaching, in the same school, I was to receive five
dollars a week and to pay my own board. I selected a place two miles and
a half from the school-house, and was promptly asked by my host to pay
my board in advance. This, he explained, was due to no lack of faith in
me; the money would enable him to go ``outside'' to work, leaving his
family well supplied with provisions. I allowed him to go to the school
committee and collect my board in advance, at the rate of three dollars
a week for the season. When I presented myself at my new boarding-place,
however, two days later, I found the house nailed up and deserted; the
man and his family had departed with my money, and I was left, as my
committeemen sympathetically remarked, ``high and dry.'' There were only
two dollars a week coming to me after that, so I walked back and forth
between my home and my school, almost four miles, twice a day; and
during this enforced exercise there was ample opportunity to reflect on
the fleeting joy of riches.
In the mean time war had
been declared. When the news came that Fort Sumter had been fired on,
and that Lincoln had called for troops, our men were threshing. There
was only one threshing machine in the region at that time, and it went
from place to place, the farmers doing their threshing whenever they
could get the machine. I remember seeing a man ride up on horseback,
shouting out Lincoln's demand for troops and explaining that a regiment
was being formed at Big Rapids. Before he had finished speaking the men
on the machine had leaped to the ground and rushed off to enlist, my
brother Jack, who had recently joined us, among them. In ten minutes not
one man was left in the field. A few months later my brother Tom
enlisted as a bugler--he was a mere boy at the time--and not long after
that my father followed the example of his sons and served until the war
was ended. He had entered on the twenty-ninth of August, 1862, as an
army steward; he came back to us with the rank of lieutenant and
assistant surgeon of field and staff.
Between those years I was
the principal support of our family, and life became a strenuous and
tragic affair. For months at a time we had no news from the front. The
work in our community, if it was done at all, was done by despairing
women whose hearts were with their men. When care had become our
constant guest, Death entered our home as well. My sister Eleanor had
married, and died in childbirth, leaving her baby to me; and the
blackest hours of those black years were the hours that saw her passing.
I can see her still, lying in a stupor from which she roused herself at
intervals to ask about her child. She insisted that our brother Tom
should name the baby, but Tom was fighting for his country, unless he
had already preceded Eleanor through the wide portal that was opening
before her. I could only tell her that I had written to him; but before
the assurance was an hour old she would climb up from the gulf of
unconsciousness with infinite effort to ask if we had received his
reply. At last, to calm her, I told her it had come, and that Tom had
chosen for her little son the name of Arthur. She smiled at this and
drew a deep breath; then, still smiling, she passed away. Her baby
slipped into her vacant place and almost filled our heavy hearts, but
only for a short time; for within a few months after his mother's death
his father married again and took him from me, and it seemed that with
his going we had lost all that made life worth while.
The problem of living
grew harder with everyday. We eked out our little income in every way we
could, taking as boarders the workers in the logging-camps, making
quilts, which we sold, and losing no chance to earn a penny in any
legitimate manner. Again my mother did such outside sewing as she could
secure, yet with every month of our effort the gulf between our income
and our expenses grew wider, and the price of the bare necessities of
exisence{sic} climbed up and up. The largest amount I could earn at
teaching was six dollars a week, and our school year included only two
terms of thirteen weeks each. It was an incessant struggle to keep our
land, to pay our taxes, and to live. Calico was selling at fifty cents a
yard. Coffee was one dollar a pound. There were no men left to grind our
corn, to get in our crops, or to care for our live stock; and all around
us we saw our struggle reflected in the lives of our neighbors.
At long intervals word
came to us of battles in which my father's regiment--the Tenth Michigan
Cavalry Volunteers--or those of my brothers were engaged, and then
longer intervals followed in which we heard no news. After Eleanor's
death my brother Tom was wounded, and for months we lived in terror of
worse tidings, but he finally recovered. I was walking seven and eight
miles a day, and doing extra work before and after school hours, and my
health began to fail. Those were years I do not like to look back
upon--years in which life had degenerated into a treadmill whose
monotony was broken only by the grim messages from the front. My sister
Mary married and went to Big Rapids to live. I had no time to dream my
dream, but the star of my one purpose still glowed in my dark horizon.
It seemed that nothing short of a miracle could lift my feet from their
plodding way and set them on the wider path toward which my eyes were
turned, but I never lost faith that in some manner the miracle would
come to pass. As certainly as I have ever known anything, I KNEW that I
was going to college! |
