direct her overgrown body, she will earn a right to her queenly name.
It is because these vanished days are so clear to me that I have put down some of the things I know for those who care to read, among whom I hope will be found the thirty grand-children of the Hathaway-Bixby couples who have figured in the narrative.
The older people who have come into my record are all gone except Aunt Margaret and Aunt Martha, both well beyond their three score years and ten. They live in Long Beach, the new city on the old ranch barley fields.
I began my book with a dedication to my father. I close it with a loving greeting to my two aunts, the remaining “Hathaway girls;” the one who welcomed me into the world and has been to me always the soul of generosity and kindness, the other for more than forty years a devoted mother to me, a woman of culture and character, whose alert mind still follows the best thought of the day, and whose big heart spends itself for the welfare of the oppressed.
My aunts, I salute you.
