Part 2
“My big brother, Stanley, went to Clayville one cold, snowy day in February, and Aunt Louisa sent the dress goods out by him. I remember we were at supper when he came. I had the toothache and was holding a bag of hot salt to my face and trying to eat at the same time.
“Mother ran to take Stanley’s bundles and help him off with his great-coat, and Aggie set a place at the table for him. But before he sat down he tossed a package to Belle. ‘From Aunt Louisa,’ he said.
“Belle gave a cry of delight and tore the package open. Then suddenly the happy look faded from her face. She pushed the package aside and, laying her head right down on the table among the dishes, she burst into tears.
“Aunt Louisa had sent Belle a yellow wedding dress!
“When Mother held it up for us to see, I thought it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen and wondered why Belle cried. I soon learned.
“Belle had light brown hair and freckles, and yellow was not becoming to her. To prove it, she held the goods up to her face.
“‘It does make your hair look dead and sort of colorless,’ Aggie agreed.
“‘And your freckles stand out as if they were starting to meet a fellow,’ Charlie put in.
“At this Belle began to cry again, and Father said that she did not have to wear a yellow dress to be married in if she didn’t want to. She should have a white dress. But this didn’t seem to comfort Belle a bit, for she declared that she wouldn’t hurt Aunt Louisa’s feelings by not wearing the yellow.
“My tooth got worse, and for the next few days I could think of nothing else. Mother poulticed my jaw and put medicine in my tooth, but nothing helped it. I cried and cried and couldn’t sleep at night, and Mother couldn’t sleep. At last she told Father that he would have to take me to Clayville to have the tooth pulled. There was fine sledding, and early the next morning Father and I set out. The last thing Mother said to Father, as she put a hot brick to my feet and wrapped me, head and all, in a thick comfort, was, ‘As soon as the tooth is out, John, take her over to Louisa’s till you get ready to start home.’
“The roads were smooth as glass, Father was a fast driver, and it didn’t seem long till we got to town. My tooth was soon out—it hardly hurt at all—and then Father took me to Aunt Louisa’s. We all liked Aunt Louisa. She was very fond of children and had none of her own.
“After dinner we sat by the sitting-room fire and Aunt Louisa cut paper dolls out of stiff writing paper for me and made pink tissue paper dresses for them. The dresses were pasted on. I could not take them off and put them on as Alice and Pink do theirs.
“As she worked, Aunt Louisa asked me about everything at home and about Belle’s clothes and the wedding.
“‘Has she got her wedding dress made yet?’ she asked.
“‘No, ma’am’, I replied, ‘she says she can’t bear to cut into it. She hates the very sight of it.’
“‘Well, I declare!’ exclaimed Aunt Louisa in surprise.
“‘It doesn’t become her,’ I explained carefully. ‘She says it makes her look a sickly green.’ And then I went on to tell Aunt Louisa everything they had all said, and ended up with, ‘Belle says she won’t hold John to his promise to marry her until he has seen her in that yellow dress.’
“‘What does she wear it for if she doesn’t like it?’ asked Aunt Louisa tartly.
“‘Father said she didn’t have to wear it if she didn’t want to, that if she wanted to be married in white, he’d get her a white dress. But Belle said she wouldn’t hurt your feelings by not wearing it for anything in the world.’
“Suddenly Aunt Louisa began to laugh. She threw her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed. I didn’t know what to make of her.
“‘I think it’s a beautiful color,’ I said consolingly.
“‘And you could wear it, too, with your dark hair and eyes and fair skin. What was I thinking about to send a color like that to poor Belle? I’ll tell you!’ she cried, jumping up and letting my paper dolls fall to the floor. ‘I’ll buy another dress for Belle, and you shall have the yellow one, Sarah.’
“She left me in the kitchen with Mettie, the hired girl, while she went over town. Mettie was baking cookies, and she let me dust the sugar on and put the raisins in the middle and I had a real nice time.
“The second dress was white cashmere with bands of pearl trimming and wide silk lace for the neck and wrists.
“When Aunt Louisa kissed me good-by, she whispered in my ear, ‘Tell Belle the trimming is because she was so thoughtful about hurting my feelings and I want her to look her best on her wedding day. And, Sarah, tell your mother to make up the yellow for you with a high shirred waist and low round neck. That is the newest style for children. And be sure to tell her I said not to dare put it in the dye pot.’
“As soon as we got home I gave the new dress to Belle. Mother was astonished, and Belle looked ready to cry again, till Father told them Aunt Louisa wasn’t offended at all. Then Mother was pleased, and Belle was simply wild about the new dress.
“‘Take the yellow and welcome to it, Sarah,’ she said to me when I had told her Aunt Louisa wanted me to have it.
“‘I’ll have to color it,’ Mother said, ‘She couldn’t wear that ridiculous shade.’
“‘No, no, Mother, please don’t!’ I cried. ‘Aunt Louisa said not to dye it. She said it would become me the way it is.’
“‘Tush, tush!’ said Mother severely, ‘You are too little to talk of things becoming you.’ But she didn’t dye it, and a few weeks later at sister Belle’s wedding I wore the yellow dress made just the way Aunt Louisa said to make it.
“And now, ‘To bed, to bed, says sleepy head,’ and we’ll have another story some other night.”
A WAR STORY
“Well, well,” said Grandma one evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to her room for their usual bedtime story, “I don’t know what to tell you about tonight.”
“Tell us a war story,” suggested Bobby eagerly.
“Maybe I might tell you a war story,” agreed Grandma, “a war story of a time long ago.” And she picked up her knitting and began slowly:
“When the Civil War broke out I was a very little girl. Of course there had been lots of talk of war, but the first thing I remember about it was when we heard that Fort Sumter had been fired on. It was a bright, sunshiny morning in the spring. I was helping Father rake the dead leaves off the garden when I saw a man coming up the road on horseback. I told Father, and he dropped his rake and went over to the fence. In those days it wasn’t as it is now. News traveled slowly—no telephones, no trains, no buggies. And this young man, who had been to Clayville to get his marriage license, brought us the news that Fort Sumter had been fired on.
“Father went straight into the house to tell Mother, and after a while he and my big brother, Joe, saddled their horses and rode away. I thought they were going right off to war and started to cry, and then I laughed instead when our big Dominique rooster flew up on the hen-house roof, flapped his wings, and crowed and crowed. A great many men and boys rode by our house that day on their way to Clayville, and when Father and Joe came back next day Joe had volunteered and been accepted and he stayed at home only long enough to pack his clothes and say good-by to us.
“There wasn’t much sleep in our house that night, and I lay in my trundle-bed, beside Father’s and Mother’s bed, and listened to them talking, talking, until I thought it must surely be morning. I went to sleep and wakened again and they were still talking. Finally I could hear Father’s regular breathing and knew that he had gone to sleep at last. In a little bit Mother slipped out of bed and went into the hall. I thought she was going for a drink and followed her, but she went into Stanley’s room, which had been Joe’s room, too, until that night.
“Mother bent over Stanley and spoke his name softly and he wakened and started up in bed.
“‘What is it, Mother?’ he whispered, frightened.
“‘Stanley,’ Mother said slowly, ‘I want you to promise me that you won’t go to war without my consent.’
“Stanley laughed out loud in relief.
“‘Gee, Mother, you gave me a scare!’ he said. ‘I thought some one was sick or something. The war’ll be over long before I’m old enough to go.’ He was going on sixteen then.
“‘It won’t do any harm to promise then,’ Mother persisted, and Stanley promised.
“I crept back to bed and pulled the covers up over my head.
“But Stanley was mistaken about the war being over soon. The war didn’t stop. It went on and on. Two years and more passed, and Stanley was eighteen. Boys of that age were being accepted for service, but Stanley never said a word about volunteering.
“Shortly after his eighteenth birthday there came a change in him. He was not like himself at all. He had always been a lively boy, full of fun and mischief, but now he was very quiet. He never mentioned the war any more, and often dashed out of the room when every one was talking excitedly about the latest news from the battlefield. He avoided the soldiers home on furlough, didn’t seem to care to read Joe’s letters, and as more and more of his friends enlisted he became gloomy and downhearted.
“We could all see as time went on that Father was disappointed in Stanley. He was always saying how much better it was for a young man to enlist than to wait for the draft. The very word ‘draft’ had for Father a disgraceful sound.
“I think Mother must have thought it was Stanley’s promise to her that was worrying him, for one day she came out to the barn where Stanley was shelling corn and I was picking out the biggest grains to play ‘Fox and Geese’ with. Mother told Stanley she released him from his promise, but he didn’t seem glad at all. He only said, ‘Don’t you worry, Mother, I’m not going to war.’
“‘I was troubled about Joe that night,’ Mother said. ‘I thought I couldn’t bear for you to go, too. But you are older now and you must do what you think best.’
“As Mother went out of the barn there were tears in her eyes and I knew in that moment that she would rather have Stanley go to war than have him afraid to go.
“They were forming a new company in Clayville, and one day two recruiting officers came out to Nebo Cross Roads. Father let Truman take Charlie and me over to see them. It was raining, and I can see those two men yet standing there in the rain. One had a flute and the other had a drum. They played reveille and taps and guard mount and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and a new song we had never heard before, ‘Tenting on the Old Camp Ground.’ And how that music stirred the folks! They had to use two wagons to haul the recruits into Clayville that night.
“That evening when I was hunting eggs in the barn I found Stanley lying face down in the hay. He was crying! I could hardly believe my eyes. I went a little nearer and I saw for sure that his shoulders were shaking with sobs. But even while I watched him he got to his feet and began rubbing his right arm. I often saw Stanley working with his arm. He would rub it and swing it backward and forward and strike out with his fist as if he were going to hit some one a blow. He didn’t mind me watching him, and I never told anyone about it. He had broken that arm the winter before, and I had often seen him working with it after he had stopped wearing it in a sling.
“I wondered to myself why, if Father and Mother thought Stanley was afraid to fight, they did not ask him and find out. He knew why he didn’t enlist—he could tell them. At last I decided if they wouldn’t do it themselves I’d do it for them. So the next time I was alone with Stanley, I said, ‘Stanley, are you afraid to go to war?’
“‘Afraid!’ he cried angrily, ‘Who said I was afraid?’ Then his tone changed. ‘They don’t want me. They won’t have me. It’s this arm,’ and he held his right arm out and looked at it in a disgusted sort of way. ‘They claim it’s stiff, but I could shoot if they would only give me a chance. I’ve tried three times to get in, but there’s no use worrying Mother about it since I can’t go. But my arm is getting better. It’s not nearly as stiff as it was. I’ll get in yet.’ Then he looked at me scornfully and said, ‘Afraid! Afraid nothing!’
“I ran as fast as ever I could to find Father and Mother and tell them. Mother hugged me and laughed and cried at the same time and said she always knew it, and Father made me tell over to him three times, word for word, every single thing Stanley had said.
“‘He must never know,’ Mother said. ‘He must never suspect for a minute that we thought he didn’t want to go, the poor dear boy, keeping his trouble to himself for fear of worrying us.’ And she told me to get Charlie and catch a couple of chickens to fry for supper. Then I knew she was happy again, for whenever Mother was happy or specially pleased with one of us she always had something extra good to eat.
“Pass the apples, Alice, please, and tomorrow night if you’re real good and don’t get kept in at school I’ll tell you—well, you just be real good and you’ll see what I’ll tell you about.”
EASTER
It was the night before Easter. Grandma had told Bobby and Alice and Pink of the first Easter, and had explained about the egg being the symbol of life because it contains everything necessary for the awakening of new life.
“When I was a little girl,” she said, “we had lots of chickens and of course we had lots of eggs. We got so many eggs that we could not use them all—not even if Mother made custards and omelets and angel cake every day.
“Father or the boys would take the eggs we did not need to the store and trade them for sugar or coffee or pepper or rice. But for quite a while before Easter they did not take any eggs to the store.
“It was a custom for the children to hide all the eggs that were laid for a couple of weeks before Easter. Father and Mother had done it when they were little, and all the boys and girls who went to our school did it, too. We would bring them in Easter morning and count them. Each of us might keep the eggs we found to sell, and Father always gave a fifty-cent piece to the one who had the most eggs. Even the big boys and Aggie and Belle hid eggs, for money was scarce and sometimes the egg money amounted to a good deal. We were allowed to keep all the eggs we found, no matter to whom they belonged and how we hunted.
“We searched in the hen house, the barn, the haymow, in old barrels and boxes, in fence corners, and even in the wood-box behind the kitchen stove. One spring a brown leghorn hen slipped into the kitchen every other day and laid in the wood-box. You never could tell where a hen might lay, so we looked every place we could think of.
“It was an early spring. The trees were bursting into leaf, the grass was green, the beautiful yellow Easter flowers in the front yard were in bloom. Best of all, the hens had never been known to lay so many eggs before.
“It seemed that every one of us wanted something that the egg money would buy. Truman was going away to school, and he wanted books. Belle was going to be married, and she wanted all the money she could get for pretty clothes. Stanley wanted a new saddle for his courting colt. When the boys turned eighteen, Father gave each one of them a colt to tame and break and have for his own, and they were called the courting colts. I wanted the egg money for a lovely wax doll like one I had seen in a store in Clayville, and if Charlie got it he meant to spend it for a gun. Aggie wanted to buy a pair of long lace mitts to wear to Belle’s wedding. So we all hunted and hunted, each one thinking of what he would buy with the money.
“Once for three days I didn’t have an egg. Then I found a great basketful that was so heavy I could hardly carry it to a new hiding place, and the next day it was gone. So it went on till Easter.
“Charlie and I were up bright and early on Easter morning—not as early as on Christmas, of course. As we all brought in our eggs Father counted them. The kitchen floor was covered with baskets and buckets and boxes of eggs. You never saw so many eggs. Charlie had the most, and he was as happy as happy could be.
“While Mother and the girls finished getting breakfast, Charlie and I hunted for the colored eggs. Under beds, behind doors, in the cupboards, all over the house we hunted.
“‘Here they are!’ shouted Charlie from the spare chamber. And there they were behind the bureau—red eggs, blue eggs, green eggs, big sugar eggs, and eggs with pretty pictures pasted on them and tied with gay ribbons. And there were white eggs that looked just like common hen’s eggs, but when you broke a tiny bit of the shell and put your tongue to it, my, oh my! but that maple sugar was delicious!
“After breakfast there was a rush to get the work done and get ready for meeting. Dear knows how many people would come home to dinner with us. Mother always asked everyone home to dinner.
“We were nearly ready. Mother had picked the lovely, yellow Easter flowers and was wrapping the stems in wet paper to keep them from wilting till we got to the church—she meant to put them in a vase on the pulpit stand—when Father came in and said that the widow Spear’s new house had burned down in the night. There was something the matter with the chimney, no one knew just what.
“Mr. Abraham Harvey had told Father. The Spear family had taken refuge in a little old house that they had lived in before they built the new house. But of course they had nothing to keep house with, and Mr. Harvey was going around in a big wagon collecting things. There were some pieces of old furniture in the wagon, and several bundles of bedclothes and a box of dishes.
“Father gave flour and meat and potatoes and a ham. Mother emptied the shelves of our Easter pies and took the chicken in the pot right off the stove, besides giving bread and a crock of apple butter.
“Then she wrapped up a pair of blankets she had woven herself and sent Charlie and Truman to carry out some chairs and a bedstead that were up in the meathouse loft. Belle and Aggie were sorting out some old clothes to send, and I wanted to do something, too.
“As I was going through the kitchen on an errand for Mother, I noticed the eggs. Such a lot of them—nearly fifty dozen, and they brought ten cents a dozen. Just then Charlie passed the door carrying a chair, and I called to him.
“‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘would you give your egg money if I gave mine?’
“‘No,’ he said at once, ‘I won’t give my egg money. Not on your life, I won’t! Father and Mother’ll give enough,’ and he went out.
“I didn’t say any more about the egg money. I didn’t think it would be fair to Charlie, since he was the one who had the most eggs. I went upstairs to Mother’s room and took my gold breastpin out of the fat pincushion on her bureau.
“‘Here is my breastpin, Mother,’ I said. ‘Send it to Millie. Everything she’ll get will be so plain and ugly.’
“Aggie and Belle laughed.
“‘A breastpin,’ said Aggie, ‘when very likely she has no dress!’
“‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ said Mother, and she went to her bureau drawer and took out a fine linen handkerchief and laid it on the bed beside the breastpin. When she came to get them, Aggie had given a carved back comb and Belle a pretty lace collar.
“Mr. Harvey was starting his horses and Father had come inside the gate when Charlie ran around the house.
“‘Give them my egg money, Father!’ he called and ran out of sight again. Then all the rest of us said we would give our egg money, too, and it made a lot—over five dollars.
“‘I’m proud of you,’ Mother said when she had hunted Charlie up and was tying his necktie. ‘I’m proud of every one of my children.’
“We were a little late to meeting, and when we got home Belle had dinner ready—ham meat and cream gravy and mashed potatoes and hot biscuits. Mother brought out a plate of fruit cake that she kept in a big stone jar for special occasions—the longer she kept it the better it got—and a dish of pickled peaches for dessert.”
“Mm! mm! Wish I’d been there,” sighed Bobby.
“And next time,” Grandma went on, “I think—yes, I’m pretty sure—that I’ll tell you how the maple sugar got in the Easter eggs.”
AT A SUGAR CAMP
“Grandma,” said Alice the next evening, “you said you’d tell us how the sugar got in the Easter egg.”
“And so I will,” answered Grandma. “I’ll tell you about that this very evening. Where’s my knitting? I can talk so much better when I knit. There now, are you all ready?”
Bobby and Alice and Pink drew their stools closer and Grandma began:
“On my father’s farm, about half a mile from our house, was a grove of maple trees. We always called them sugar trees. In the spring, you know, the sweet juice or sap comes up from the roots into the trees, and it is from this sap that maple sirup and sugar are made. In the spring Father and the boys would tap our sugar trees. They would take elder branches and make spouts by removing the pithy centers. Then they would bore holes in the trees and put the spouts in the holes and place buckets underneath to catch the sap. These buckets would have to be emptied several times a day into the big brass kettle, where it was boiled down into sirup and sugar.
“Truman tended to the sap buckets and kept a supply of firewood on hand, and Stanley watched the boiling of the sap. He knew just when it was thick enough and sweet enough to take off for sirup and how much longer to cook it for sugar. One of the girls was always there to help, and Father or Mother would oversee it all.
“There was a one-roomed log cabin with a great fireplace in the maple grove. It had been built years and years before by some early settler and was never occupied except during sugar-making time. The girls would go up the week before and clean it out, and Mother would send dishes and bedclothes for the two rough beds built against the wall. The ones making and tending the sirup would camp up there.
“Mother would send butter and bread and pies, and the girls would boil meat or beans in a black iron pot that hung over the fire. In the evenings they would have lots of fun sitting in front of the fire, telling stories and popping corn. Sister Aggie could make the best popcorn balls that were put together with maple sirup. They would often have visitors, too, neighboring boys and girls who would come in to stay until bedtime. And there would be songs and games.
“And they would make the sugar eggs for Easter. Before sugar time came we would blow the contents out of eggs by making little holes in each end. Then we would dry the shells and put them away. When they were taking off the maple sugar, Mother or Belle or Aggie would fill the egg shells and set them aside for the sugar to cool and harden. They would fill goose-egg shells with the maple sugar, too, and when the sugar hardened they would pick the shell off, and by and by the girls would paste pretty pictures of birds or flowers on them and tie them with gay-colored ribbons for Easter.
“Neither Charlie nor I had ever been allowed to stay all night at the sugar camp, and when Mother said we could stay one night with Stanley and Truman and Belle we were wild with joy.
“Truman had shot and cleaned three squirrels that morning, and Belle cooked them in the big black pot with a piece of fat pork until the water boiled off and they sizzled and browned in the bottom of the pot. We had little flat corn cakes baked on the hearth and maple sirup, and, my, but that supper tasted good to me!