came to a stop and we found we were on the brow of the hill, above the wool barn, just a few steps from the house. It was relief enough for me to have come home, what must it have been to the woman driving!
One other foggy drive I took many years later. I was fifteen and had been for several days at the Alamitos, among other things drawing the spots of several new Holstein calves on the blanks of application for registration, that being a privilege reserved for me, the wielder of the pencil among us. In order to be back in school Monday morning, I had to be taken over to Long Beach to meet the first Los Angeles train. How many times have I eaten lamp-lit breakfasts in the old ranch dining room and started off in the sweet fresh morning, to watch the dawn and hear the larks sing as we drove!
This foggy morning Uncle John was driving and as it was April there was a pearly light over every thing. Every hair of his beard and eyebrows was strung with tiny drops of water; we had a most happy hour, drawn by Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The next day came word of sudden sickness. In ten days my merry young uncle was dead. It did not seem possible. It was my first realization of death. And childhood ended. When my mother had gone I was ten, and while it seemed strange, it did not stand out from all the strangeness of the world as did this later coming face to face with the mystery. In the case of my mother I missed her more as years went by than I did at the time of the actual separation.
Aunt Martha was distressed when after mother’s
