death she came to us, to find how often we children played that our dolls had died. We held a funeral service and buried them under the sofa in the parlor after a solemn procession through the long hall. We wore towels over our heads for mourning veils, copied not from any used in our family, but from those of two tall, dark sisters who sat in front of us in church, whose crepe-covered dresses and veils that reached the floor were a source of unfailing wonder.
As I look back it does not seem to me that the playing of funerals involved any disrespect or lack of love for our mother, but was, rather, a transference into our daily activities of a strange experience that had come to us.
We had another play that was connected with a death, but at the time I did not recognize the relationship. Just before we came south for the long visit, Harry’s five year old sister Margaret had died of diphtheria and was buried in the ranch garden. Soon after our arrival a mason came and set up a gravestone for her. Beside her grave were those of an older sister, and of a little unnamed baby. The ranch had been robbed of its children and the heart of the young mother sorrowed. Harry had been devoted to Maggie and was disconsolate without her, so that I must have been a most welcome visitor for the lonely small boy. Taking our cue from the mason we spent many hours in the making of mud tombstones for our bird and animal burial plot over near the graves of the children. I modelled them and he polished them and put on the inscriptions.
