Adobe Days/Chapter 3
Chapter III
Down in Maine
Twice mamma took me to Maine to see grandmother and grandfather and Aunt Martha, once when I was two-and-a-half years old and once when I was nearly five. In each case we stayed about six months so that I became acquainted with New England in all its varying seasons.
Perhaps it was the being there just when I was forming habits of speech that has fastened upon me an unmistakable New England way of speaking, however much the pure dialect may have been corrupted by my usual western environment.
My aunt tells me that when she first saw me she could think of nothing so much as a little frisking squirrel, my dark eyes were so shining and I darted about so constantly. I couldn’t wait after my arrival at the strange place even long enough to take off hood and coat before demanding scissors with which to cut paper dolls. When the outer wraps were removed, the interested relatives saw a slender little girl, with straight yellow hair, brown eyes and a smooth skin, tanned by wind and sun.
Evidently there was much excitement attendant upon reaching grandmother’s, for when I was tucked away for a nap, with a brand new book purchased the day before in Boston to entertain me until sleep should come, I occupied myself with tearing every page into pieces the size of a quarter. I have no suggestion to offer as to why I did it. When the situation came to adult attention, papa sat down on the trunk beside the crib and gave me the only spanking he was ever known to bestow upon his family. The rope was behind the trunk. I saw it while lying across his knees.
The ill-fated book was not the only purchase made in Boston. Mamma and I had our pictures taken, and bought clothes for the cold winter ahead. I had a bottle-green dress and a bottle-green coat to match, also stockings and bonnet. They put me up on the counter to try the things on me, and I was glad when mamma chose the velvet bonnet with a white ruche and little pink roses, for I liked it best of all. Then there were kid gloves, dark green and white, both of which I hated, because my poor little fingers buckled when they were put on. When I was taken to call on the cousins in Beacon Street, I was dressed up in all the regalia, even to the white gloves. Alas, there was a coping beside the steps, just the right height for a hand-rail for me, and unfortunately, dust is black even in Boston. Missy was in disgrace when she reached the front door. She was better adapted to play in mud pies than formal calls.
Even if I liked dirt and freedom, I also liked clothes well enough to remember those I have had, so that now I would venture to reconstruct a continuous series of them, extending back to babyhood. An early favorite was of scarlet cashmere, cut in “Gabrielle” style, with scalloped neck, sleeves and hem, buttonholed with black silk, and on the front an embroidered bunch of barley, acorns and roses. With this dress went a little white fur overcoat, cap and muff, all trimmed with a narrow edge of black fur. So much for clothes. They were ordinarily buried under aprons.
Maine was a wonderful place! The leaves on the trees were red and yellow, brown and purple, instead of green, and when the wind blew they fell off. It left the trees very queer, but the dry leaves on the ground made a fine swishing noise when one scuffed in them, and when a little breeze picked them up and sent them scurrying after one they looked like the rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Mamma gathered some of the prettiest, pressed them and waxed them with a hot iron and a paraffine candle. We took them back to San Justo with us and pinned them on the lace curtains, to remind us of Skowhegan.
Whenever we went to town on an errand or to church, we crossed the bridge, under which the great river rushed to pour over the falls below, a never failing wonder. On the far side of the island the water turned the wheels for cousin Levi Weston’s sawmill, an interesting, if dangerous, place to visit.
We had not been long in Maine before the air filled with goose feathers, only it wasn’t feathers, but wet snow. Then came sleds and sleighs, a snow man and Christmas, with a piggy-back ride on grandfather to see the tree at the church.
The snow was so deep on the ground and it was so cold, the chickens had to stay in the barn all the time; every morning grandmother and I took my little red bucket and went to feed them, out through the summer kitchen, the wood-shed, past the horse’s stall to their house.
While I was in Maine I learned odors as well as sights. I know the smell of snow in the air, of pine trees in winter, of a woodshed and barn, of an old house that has been lived in for long, long years. I came to know the fragrance of a cellar, apples and butter, vegetables and preserves, and can recall its clammy coolness.
To have a bath in a wash-tub by the kitchen stove was a lark for a little wild-westerner who had known only a modern bathroom. The second time we were at grandfather’s there was a curious soft-rubber pouch for a tub, which was set up when wanted before the fire in the north bedroom. The bottom rested on the floor, while the sides were held up by poles, resting on chairs. After a week-end tubbing, mamma and I would say together,
“How pleasant is Saturday night
When all the week I’ve been good,
Said never a word that was cross
And done all the good that I could.”
I have other memories of that fire-place. Once, during the first visit, mamma left me for a few days in the care of my inexperienced aunt, of whom I took advantage. I assured her that my mother every night rubbed my chest with camphorated oil and gave me a spoonful of Hive’s cough syrup. Evidently I had recently enjoyed a cold. So every night I got my oil rub and the sweet sticky dose, and, wrapped in an old shawl and called a “little brown sausage,” was rocked during some blissful minutes of story-telling. Mamma was shocked when she returned to find the empty bottle and to know the whereabouts of its contents.
Still another fire-place memory,—papa was taking care of me in this room, and was having so good a time reading and smoking that I thought I would do the same. I climbed up and took from the mantel a pretty twisted paper lamp-lighter, then seated myself beside him, put my feet as high as I could on my side of the fireplace, adjusted my newspaper, lighted my cigar, and in mouthing it about, managed to set my front hair on fire. That attracted papa’s attention to his job.
Soon the time approached for us to be starting west again. Hardly had we reached Chicago when there was a dangerous fire in the business section; it was not so long after the great fire that people had forgotten the terror and panic of it. So we must flee the hotel, although papa kept saying that if men would tear up the carpets and wet them and hang them outside the building they might save it. Mamma dressed me and packed the trunk as fast as she could, and I went out into the hall and looked down the elevator well, where the door had been left open. It was the first chance I had ever had to see what a deep hole it was, but mamma called me to come back, and I thought she was frightened to see me leaning over and looking down. We went away in Uncle Jo’s buggy through streets filled with pushing shouting people, and, as we looked back, all the sky was red with fire. We went to a small boarding house over by the lake, and all there was in it was a red balloon, many mosquitoes and a wonderful talking doll that the dear uncle brought me.
San Francisco came next, a few days at the Grand Hotel, a ride on the octagonal street car that diagonaled off from Market Street, a visit to Woodward’s Gardens, and then home by train and stage. It was good after all to get back to California. Here was our own sitting-room, with its white marble mantel, its dainty flowered carpet and its lace curtains. On the wall were colored pictures of Yosemite and a Sunset at Sea, and engravings of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, all hanging by crimson cords with tassels. I liked the dancing girl better, but mamma preferred the sad one.
I was also glad to get back to my old toys, my book about Ten Little Indians, and the boy cousins who lived at the other end of the house. And here, soon, came little sister, who was the cunningest baby that ever was. They rolled her up so close in blankets that Aunt Francina was afraid she would be smothered. I didn’t want her to be smothered. What a long time it does take for a baby to grow up enough to play with a person born three years ahead of her!
Two years later mamma took me and little Anne back again to Maine, for she had had letters telling her that grandmother was very ill. It was a harder trip with two children and so my mother planned to simplify it in every possible way. She invented for us traveling dresses of a medium brown serge, with bloomers to match, a whole generation before such dresses came into general favor for little girls. With these, fewer bags and satchels were necessary, and we looked as well dressed at the end as at the beginning of the journey; and, moreover, I was able to stand on my head modestly, whenever I felt like it. I am glad that I did not have to be mother of restless me on such a long, confined trip; I am also glad that restless I had a mother who could cut out such fascinating paper boxes and tell stories and think of thousands of things to do. Perhaps having two children to take care of kept mamma from grieving so much about her mother.
I realized little about the illness, because, except for a daily good-morning call, we children were kept out of the sick room, usually playing out-of-doors. We rolled down the grassy slope in the south yard, or drove about in the low basket phaeton along the winding, shady roads. Sometimes we had a picnic,—I remember especially the one on my fifth birthday. Georgie Hill, who helped Aunt Martha with the house work, made a wonderful cake, which contained a button, a thimble, a penny, and a ring; in some very satisfying way, the section containing the ring came to me. I had always wanted a ring. I was happy, happy, and then the very next day I lost it, making mud pies with Annie Allen. I never had another ring until I was grown up, not even a bracelet, which might have consoled me. But if I had had either I probably would have had to suffer the sorrows of separation, since it was my habit to lose my treasures. My gold pins are sowed up and down the earth; my sister still has every one she owned. Perhaps it was in recognition of my capacity to mislay things, and to encourage stoical acceptance of the situation, that led grandfather to write in my autograph album:
“My little grand-daughter,
Just do as you ought to,
Neither worry nor fret
At what can’t be mended,
Nor wait to regret
Till doing is ended.”
It was on this same birthday that Elizabeth came to me, and her I have not lost. She was a doll almost as tall as I, that had been made by my great-grandmother, Deborah Hathaway, for her son’s little girls. The doll came last to my mother, who was the youngest, and from her descended to me. Elizabeth had a cloth body, stuffed with cotton, white kid arms and hands and a papier mache head. She was so unfortunate soon after her arrival in California, as to suffer a fracture of the skull, due to contact with a hammer wielded by my small sister. Elizabeth survived the grafting on of a china head, and is now eighty or more years old, but looking as young as ever.
I possess many letters written to my father by my mother at this time, from which I can gain ideas regarding what manner of woman she was, to supple ment my own memory of her whom I lost while still a child.
I seem to have been something of a puzzle to my gentle mother. I quote from one letter:
“Sarah ... the strangest child I ever saw ... so affectionate, but will not be coaxed ... super-abundance of spirits ... She tries to remember all the new rules of life. [I was five years old] ... brown eyes. I hope those eyes will not hold a shadow caused by her mother misunderstanding her and crushing out in her by sternness anything sweet and beautiful. I would not want to love her so fondly as to make a foolish, conceited woman of her, but I don’t know that that is any worse than to give her life a gloomy start.”
I love this letter. It delights me that my mother, a high-bred New England lady, to whom foolishness and frivolity were anathema, should prefer even them to harshness and a broken spirit for her little daughter. However, her desire to give my life a happy start was not incompatible with good discipline. She expected obedience and got it, sometimes in very ingenious ways. On one occasion when I had been fretful—“whining” she called it,—she suggested that as I was usually a good girl and did what she wanted it must be that I was really unable to improve my voice, that my throat must be rusty and in need of oil to cure the squeak, so she proceeded to grease the inside of it with olive oil applied on the end of a stripped white feather. Do you wonder that it was years before I learned to like French salad dressing, with its reminder of disordered vocal chords?
In the later summer grandmother died, but as we had seen so little of her and were kept away from the evidences and symbols of death, it did not make much impression upon us.
We stayed on in Skowhegan until papa was free to come to Maine for us. In the meantime both mamma and Aunt Martha visited the Centennial and their reports of its sights and wonders made me most anxious to go to Philadelphia, also. When it was proposed that our return trip should be made by way of that city, in order that my father might visit the exposition I was delighted, but when he arrived and said he could not, on account of the state of his business affairs, I received one of the great disappointments of my life. I shall never forget my unavailing efforts to persuade them that they ought not to make me miss that Centennial, since I could not possibly live a hundred years for the next one.
Soon after we left the old home was sold, and grandfather and Aunt Martha moved to California, where the rest of us lived. The man who bought the place cut down the beautiful trees, tore down the house and built two small ones in its stead. But although the original house is gone in fact it will live in my mind as long as I do. I could draw its floor plan; I could set much of its furniture in the correct position.
The arrangement of the dining-room was for years very important for me, because the only way I could distinguish my right hand from my left was by seating myself in imagination beside grandfather at table where I was when I first learned which was which,—left toward him, right toward cellar door. And, being so seated, I recall another lesson,—vinegar should not be called beginniger.
It was in the south yard that we built the big snow-man; it was there that the sleigh upset when we turned in from the street with too much of a flourish, and pitched Nan and me deep into a snow bank; it was here under the apple trees that we turned somersaults; it was here that the horse stood on his hind legs to shake down his favorite apples from the tree. The same horse would come to the stone door-step by the kitchen and rattle the bucket there when he was thirsty; that was the doorstep where I placed my feet when papa made my little shoes shine like his boots; and here Elizabeth was packed in grandfather Weston’s old clock-case for her long ride to California,—as if she were going in a coffin to heaven. But the San Justo heaven lacked the great beds of lilies-of-the-valley, such as grew under the trees in the Maine yard.
These impressions were planted deep in my mind during the months I spent in the beautiful village, with its dignified white houses, its tall trees, its great river. But, once again on my westward way, they slipped back into the files of memory, displaced by the renewal of other old impressions, for I was making my fourth trans-continental trip, my fourth stop in Chicago with my mother’s brother, Josiah Hathaway.
What fun there was, riding a whole long week in a Pullman car with its many friendly people, and a new routine of life. In those days dining-cars, with leisurely meals and dainty service had not been discovered. There were irregular stops with only twenty minutes for refreshment, so that a child must depend largely on the luncheon basket. The bringing of the table and opening the tempting boxes and packages was a welcome break in the long day. There were tall green bottles of queen olives, and pans packed with fried chicken, and all the bread and jam one might eat. We had a can of patent lemonade,—strange greenish sugar, needing only a few drops from the little bottle embedded in the powder, and train water to make it into ambrosia. Such a meal involved soiled hands, but even the washing of them had a new charm, for mamma took with her to the dressing-room a bottle of Murray and Lanman’s Florida Water, a few drops of which in the alkali water made a milky bath fit for the hands of a princess.
When interest within the car failed there was the window, with its ever new pictures. If there were no houses or people, mountains or clouds to be seen, there might be a village of prairie dogs, and the rhythm of passing poles carrying the telegraph wires never failed. I saw cowboys on their dancing horses, and silent Indians, the women carrying on their backs little Hiawathas, and offering for sale bows and arrows or beaded moccasins.
Then night came, and with it the making of magic beds by the smiling black genie. Once, after I had been deposited behind the green curtains, we stopped at a way station, where, pressing my nose against the window pane, I saw by the light of a torch, a great buffalo head mounted on a pole, and many men moving in and out of the fitful light.
With groans and creakings, with bells and weird whistles we were soon under way again, and, to the steady song of the wheel, in the swaying springy bed, I was being whisked over the plains in as many days as father had once spent in months driving the first sheep to California.
We went back to San Justo and stayed there forever; and then, when I was almost seven, we went south to the Cerritos for a never-to-be-forgotten summer with my cousin Harry. When fall came, instead of returning to the ranch at San Juan we moved to Los Angeles, a little city, and there I lived until both it and I grew up.