CLARA BARTON FAMILY PAPERS King, George and Edith Riccius "Childhood Memories," 1934CHILDHOOD MEMORIES. by Saturday, Oct. 20, 1934. [Edith Riccius King] When old people begin to prattle of the days and doings of their youth they are generally accused of being feeble minded or having entered the state of second childhood. Perhaps, at the age of fifty-three, I have entered this sad state of mind, for truth to tell, I find myself constantly dwelling, of late, upon all the little incidents and events of the days when my sister, brothers and myself were children and lived in the little town of Millbury, Massachusetts, where, in fact, we were all born and brought up. Just to amuse myself, (and possibly my family) I am going to jot down all the little inconsequential happenings, sayings and impressions as they occur to me, without any attempt to weave them into a connected story. I shall adhere strictly to the truth of each incident acted, seen or heard by myself, bearing in mind the other members of my family may have an entirely different version of the tales I shall tell. And, inasmuch as this little booklet is to be absolutely only for home consumption, I shall not feel at all embarrassed because of faulty English, phraseology or sentence construction, for my family, being well aware of my limitations, will make allowances for all errors, and will appreciate the fact that is written merely to amuse and entertain and to freshen the memories of by-gone days. Being a methodical person, and given to love of detail, I shall, no doubt, ramble along like nobody's business, in my own sweet way, without any rhyme or reason for so doing except that it is my way of doing things. Therefore, any member of my family wishing to be bored to death in short order, can easily gain the desired end by reading the whole or even a small part of this. First of all should come a little history of both my father and mother, for they will figure in this picture quite as much as any one. Our mother and her twin sister, were the oldest children of Julia Ann Maria and David Barton, who lived in North Oxford, Massachusetts. Mother's name was Ida Adelia and her twin sister was Ada Idelia Barton, and they were born Jan. 18., 1847. A brother, Stephen Emory, came next on Dec. 24, 1848; then a sister, Mary Anna, or Mamie, as she was always called, was born Dec. 11, 1851. My grandparents lived on a farm and my grandpa David and his brother Stephen also owned and operated some mills where they manufactured cloth. I believe they also raised thoro-bred horses at one time. The Bartons' were an industrious, energetic and active family, mentally and physically, and my grandpa's brother and three sisters were all exceptionally well educated and had taught school and engaged in other literary pursuits. My mother and her sisters and brother were privileged to mingle feely with the Aunts and Uncle and absorbed many ideas and much learning they might not otherwise have obtained in the schools of the little town, altho' I have heard my mother say that she had many excellent teachers in her youth. I could fill a book telling stories my mother has told me of her youth. I could fill a book telling stories my mother has told me of her youth and the experiences of her family, but this is not to be a tale of her life so I'll push on. After the civil war, when my mother had grown to young womanhood, her Aunt Clara Barton, who was the youngest sister of her father, procured a position for her in the Printing and Engraving Department in Washington, D.C. Her Aunt Clara Barton had become a famous nurse during the war and later became the founder and President of the American Red Cross. After the war Aunt Clara was instrumental in obtaining positions for quite a number of relatives in Washington and mother went to #2 live with Aunt Clara's sister, who was her Aunt Sally Barton Vassall. Mother had a very nice position and made many friends. After a time her sister Mamie joined her and they had jolly good times together. However, as the years sped on, mother's health broke, the climate not agreeing with her, and she developed a stomach disorder which became so troublesome she was obliged to resign her position and return to her N. Oxford home to recuperate. Mother was always small and slight, never weighing more than around one hundred and ten or twelve and most of the time about one hundred and two. She was about five feet two or three and was small of bone. Her hands and feet were small and well shaped and she had a wealth of dark brown curly hair, lovely dark grey eyes under well defined dark eyebrows; a prominent but well shaped roman nose, and a sweet, sensitive mouth. Her teeth were white and even and her face was rather long, ending in a determined chin. Her skin was a clear ivory without much color except when she was excited, then two little spots of pink appeared in her cheeks. While she might never have been termed beautiful, her face was so full of intelligence, her eyes so keen and humorous, her manner so quiet and shy - those who loved her and knew her best never thought of her as anything but beautiful. Her loyalty to her friends, her smiling courage and her great determination to carry on thru odds that would have floored most individuals, won for her a love and respect well merited. She carried a heavy load of sorrow and responsibility for many years, yet she was always cheerful and was never known to lie down on the job for a second, even when she was almost too ill to stand. She was a wonderful woman and a splendid mother and no poor words of mine could do justice to all her noble, unselfish acts, nor describe her attainments. Grandpa David's old farm house stood not far back from the main highway of the little town of North Oxford, as it curved on it's way to Oxford Plain, a couple of miles south. Across the road from the Barton farm stood a large square house always called the Salt Box. It was a Tavern and was presided over by a short, stout old lady, with a round, German face, whom we all called "Old Lady Riccius". Her husband, who was dead, had been a relative of my father, an uncle, I believe, and it was to this house my father had come to do some carpentering for his Aunt, and subsequently he met my mother, just home from Washington. My father, Gustav Adolph Julius Riccius, was born March 18, 1841 in Peitz, Prussia, Germany, and came to this country October 1st, 1856. His father had been a prosperous manufacturer of cloth in Germany but his mill had burned and he had lost his property, so he decided to come to America, taking his eldest son, Gustav, with him. They found work in the New England mills and soon had earned enough to send for the two next oldest children, my father and his sister Selma. It was not long before the son Otto and daughter Emily were sent for and last came the mother and youngest daughter Frances. Both my father's parents died before I was born so I have no recollection of them, naturally. The name Riccius is pronounced as tho' spelled Rick-see-us. It was originally an Italian name - Ricci - the family having fled from Italy to Germany during one of the many disturbances of the old days in Europe, and the name had been given a final "us" flourish after awhile. In a little book belonging to my father is a letter copied by him from a letter sent him by his father relating to his passage over, or rather directing him what to bring, how to act and where to go. It is as follows: (It is written in German and some of the old German script words are undecipherable and cannot be translated.)Peitz, August 11, 1856. Adolph Riccius. The following will be needed for the journey on the ship. Bacon and ham, bread, baked, cut in slices, or biscuit, 3m sugar, 3m coffee, ground, (for which you shall have a tin box, otherwise it will spoil), 1 bottle raspberry vinegar, rum, a few bottles of wine, vinegar, some bacon fat or butter, some kind of sausage that you like, some Dutch cheeses, 1/4m pepper, 1m salt, in two packages, some preserved plums. Also ("Madratze"?) of seaweed, and a covered tin dish, a tin water flask, for each a drinking cup, as well as an eating dish, a wash bowl, pot, butterbox, knife, fork and spoon for each, a can in which your coffee, etc. can be brought, night and morning, a coffee rack, a piece of good soap, a piece of salt water soap and some strong cords, brushes, a cap that fits snugly, a good supply of boots and shoes, leather and ?, a good purge, a small flask of peppermint, or Hoffmann drops, as much as one can ? ? ? ?. Do not forget anything or leave it behind. Do not give away any of your provisions. Let no one see them. When you know when you are leaving, and on what ship, then write me the name of the Captain and ship. Give your names carefully. The dollar in Hamburg has 40 shillings. Exchange some there, otherwise you will pay more. If you bring money to New York bring no silver "groschen". You can exchange them in Hamburg into dollars. Carry very little money in your purse. Guard the other very securely, or in a sewed-up pocket. Look out for falls on the ship. Be careful about everything. Your trunk you place in or in front of your cabin or sleeping rooms. Be friendly but not too sociable, and the locks to your trunks must always be fastened. When you come to New York don't take off your cap in any house or room, only in a church. That is custom here. Otherwise you show foolishness and simplicity. Having arrived in New York you will be landed like all incoming passengers from ships in Castle Garden, which is near the German Society to whom the latter belongs. There enquire whether there are not letters and money for you. Give your names carefully - Selma - Adolph Riccius. If they are not there then they are with P.A. Loescher, Broadway 182, New York. Remain in New York or Castle Garden and don't go out of the Revier. Perhaps your cousins' will look for you there and journey from there directly by steamboat to Norwich, pronounced N O R V I T C H. From there by railway train to Centre, pronounced S E N T E R. Now you must see that your things are brought from the station, or leave the things, at any rate the trunks, on the platform, and go to the left from the water toward Norwich, to the square or marketplace and enquire for a German Hotel. There you will see a German sign, "Deutcher Gatshoff." It will be a small market place, neither is the city a large one. If you don't find a marketplace, then enquire of some man or woman exactly like this: - "Let mi noh a dschermen hohtel, ei want it. Wie kom from Dschermine." You will find this all in my letter in New York. In the evening you will journey from New York, at about 7 o'clock you are in Centre, pronounced SENTER. From there it is a short half hour to Moosup. The #4 trunks you will leave in the station. I will get them. There you will merely say, "Ha is mei baggidsch. Ei kom bach wit mei vadher." In the centre you will see near to the station a large bird-pole. From there continue through the village until you have on one side a foot path and on the left right ahead of you a red wall, which continues toward Moosup. You continue and there will be water on your right. Don't turn at the first crossing on the left, but only at the right, until you are over the hill, then you will see the railroad and factory at the right. When you have come to the latter, then you are here, and go to the left into the village and on the left side, without any exception, the seventh house, the last two story house before the church, then go up some high stairs and say, "Wie art schildren of Riccius. Let kom mei vahder tu hier." He will know and send after me. Monday, 1st of October, 1856 we landed from ship at Castle Garden and were there booked. ---------------------------------------- The history of the intimate family life of my father and his people after they reached America is unknown to me. I dare say they moved from town to town where there were mills in which they could work and that is probably why my father happened to be settled in the little town of Millbury, Massachusetts, which lies only a few miles northeast of Oxford. He had built a four apartment house and there were four rooms besides, finished off, in the attic. In these attic rooms my father lived alone at the time he met my mother. On the large lot next to this apartment house he had built a stable which he operated himself, not very successfully, I have been told, as his patrons were too careless with the horses and carriages they hired and father was too easy with them when he asked for his money. My father was also a very good carpenter. It is rather difficult to give an accurate description of his appearance because after all these years the memory of his form and features have somewhat dimmed as I was only ten when he died. He was tall - about six feet, I think, and slender. His hair was brown and wavy and his moustache was reddish brown. His eyes were blue, his nose slightly retrousse; a wide but well shaped mouth and very nice teeth. His complexion was inclined to be florid, as tho' the blood lay near the surface of his skin. He was rather delicately featured and not very robust in appearance. He had been well educated by tutors in Germany and was naturally very studious, and altho' he never had a day of schooling in America he had somehow acquired a very fair knowledge of English and read, wrote and spoke it amazingly well. I do not recall that his German accent was very marked but he did get the cart before the horse many times when talking and always laughed when it was brought to his attention. He was passionately fond of music and played both the violin and zither very well indeed. His brothers and sisters were all married and settled in homes of their own in towns and cities nearby, at the time he met my mother. Whether their courtship was long or short I do not know, but my Grandmother at first objected to my father as a son-in-law because he was a foreigner and would rather her daughter married a dyed in the wool New Englander. Grandma's objections were soon overcome however, for as soon as she knew my father better she became and always remained his ardent admirer and they were great pals. On the 22nd of March, 1879 my father and mother were married in Oxford, and at the same time mother's sister Mamie was married to an Oxford boy named John Stafford. Mother once told me it rained in torrents the day they were married. My father wore a high silk hat (probably the only time in his life he was so adorned) and white gloves which were pretty well soaked thru after the drive to and from the minister's house where they were married. Years afterward#5. we children used to take the silk hat and gloves out of a box in the attic and dress up in them and play getting married. My father took my mother at once to Millbury where they started housekeeping in a four room, up-stairs, "tenement" in Dan Naughton's four apartment house which was just like my father's house and was next door to the stable. As soon as there was a vacancy in his own house my father moved, and on Feb. 13th, 1881 I was born in the tiny bed room of their little four room home. Dr. Booth, who lived in the house next to Naughton's, brought me into the world, almost dead from strangulation, the cord having become tightened around my neck until I was black all over and nearly gone. The Dr. and nurse, Mrs. Pickett, gave all their attention to Mother and so my father picked me up and began to slap the breath of life into me. When my cries attracted the Drs. attention he was furious. He told my father he had made a mistake to bring me back to life for I would never be anything but a weakling. Father was delighted with his days' work, I am sure, for he wrote my Grandmother thusly: "Joy to the world for I have come all thogh half chocked and bruised on the head, am very well to do. I want to tell my Grandma, Grandpa & Auntie that I apeared half past 12 Sunday noon. This makes me a lucky child - a sunday child. I consider myself well off considering friends and beauty. I'm just boas & mama says even prettier as Mamies bab, but girls generly ar you see. Picket has sayed too that she does & will like and love me. About myself I have beautiful golden curls, a face as pretty & round as you could wish, with a complexion the most ripe, tho I weigh but about 7 lbs., have a dimple in my chin and peep with a pair of bright blue eyes in the world expecting to see grandma and others soon. Baby (mine)". All of which goes to show that my father seemed to love me in spite of the dismal future the Dr. had cast for me, and in spite of hell and high water, I am still here, going strong. My father said I weighed seven pounds at birth but my mother told me it was nearer five and that I was rather fragile for quite a long time. Every time I cried my mother also cried, she was so nervous and worried, and being a first child she did not understand caring for a baby very well. I soon began to improve in health and at nine months was walking and worrying my poor mother because I refused to nurse and cried for meat and vegetables which I saw on the table. It was not then customary to feed infants vegetables and broths as it is now, but I became such a problem mother was forced to feed me some of the food I craved lest I starve. The golden curls my father mentioned to my grandma when I was born, must have disappeared, for even when I was a year old I had no hair on my head worthy of mention and the neighbors used to tease mother about her bald headed baby. Just a wee tuft in the nape of my neck. My nose was an exact duplicate of my dad's. The first sentence I put together sounded like "Zee de boogey", and no one ever discovered what it meant as I pointed at everything when I said it. I was very active and quick on my feet and mother had her hands full keeping me out of mischief and in her sight as I'd vanish the moment her back was turned. One day when I was left alone with my father a few moments I vanished completely from sight while he was busy, and search as they did, not a trace of me could be found. Everyone in the neighborhood joined in the search. Mother was sure someone had stolen me and father was positive I had legged it to the river - quite a distance away - and fallen in. The excitement was intense. Several hours passed and mother was nearly insane. Going thru the house once more and into the cellar she heard a scraping noise under the dark stairs and investigated. There I sat, covered from head to foot with the slime of eggs. A hen had stolen a next under the stairs and I had found it, climed in and broken all the eggs over my head and then gone to sleep. #6. My father owned a horse that was vicious with children. One day we had all been driving and upon reaching home father lifted me out of the carriage and mother gathered up some packages. Father went to the back of the carriage to get some grain he had purchased and during the short interval I was left alone I toddled toward the horse. The moment he saw me he made a lunge toward me with mouth open and hoofs lifted. Mother saw what was happening and jumped from the carriage while my father ran as fast as he could and scooped me out of harms way just in the nick of time. That horse was sold immediately. My father's stable business was so unsuccessful he decided to abandon it and rebuild the stable into a two family house - we to occupy the lower apartment and rent the upper. Father supervised and worked with the men who were building the house. Mother came out one day to call him to dinner, with me in her arms. My father took me and soon I was passed around for inspection and praise. One man in particular held me quite a while and caressed me. The next day this man did not appear on the scene and father went to the village, found where he lived and discovered he was very ill with small pox. There was an epidemic of the disease in town and my parents spent many anxious hours watching for symptoms of it to develop in me, but I escaped. Then there was the day much anxiety was felt because my Grandma Julie had been to see us and had given me a large silver dollar to play with which suddenly could not be found and it was feared I had swallowed it. What sort of a sword swallower I must have been to perform such a trick without making any outcry, I do not know, but finally someone remembered a little child had been in to see me and had probably taken the dollar, for it was never found, not even in me. Grandma gave me and my cousin Steve Stafford, who was Aunt Mamie's son, about my age, a pretty gold ring. Grandma told, in my presence, how Stevie had taken off his ring and pounded it flat on a stone and ruined it. The idea must have entranced me for the moment I reached home I lost no time getting to the big stone at the corner of the house and finding a smaller stone to pound my ring into a shapeless mass. The new house was finished and we moved in. Mr. and Mrs. Gene Wood and their son Genie rented the upstairs apartment. Genie was five years older than I and used to walk out with my mother when she took me for an airing. I was often wheeled out in my cousin Myrtis Barton's doll carriage when she came to visit us. Intelligence must have fairly radiated from my countenance for one day when mother was wheeling me about with Genie at her side, as usual, he suddenly draped himself over the foot of the carriage and staring hard at me a moment, looked up in my mother's face and said, "Why, Miss Rixey, she don't look like she knows nothin' at all, does she?" Our name was so hard to remember, everyone called us Rixey. In the confusion of getting myself born I have neglected to state that I was named Edith Julia Riccius. Edith was the name of my Uncle Stephen Barton's little daughter who had died before I was born and I had been named after her, and Julia, after my Grandma who was always called Grandma Julie. When I started to go to school I formed a very violent dislike for my middle name, Julia, simply because nearly every Irish family in town had a Julia, and so my mother told me to call myself Juliet, which I did. There were no Juliets and I was happy. On Oct. 4, 1883, two years and eight months after I was born, my brother, Hermann Porter Riccius arrived. He was a fine, fair boy and Mother always maintained he was the best natured, most easily managed child she had. He surely was her pride and joy to the day she died.#7. He never gave her cause to worry and he was always a little father to us all as he grew up and had to assume the responsibilities of the head of the house. About the first remembrance I have of him is the day I finally succeeded in pushing and pulling him to the top of a stone wall which separated our property from Ben Boyd's field. Being an explorer of parts and never happy unless I could climb to the top of everything, it seemed always most necessary to take Hermann with me, and as he was not much of a climber nor as spry as I, he was often yanked and dragged hither and yon by me, for I had little patience and never could wait to set my pace to his. He had suffered a severe illness, rheumatism, in his legs, when he was about two years old and had learned to walk nicely, and when he had to learn the art all over again at four it was not so easy. He was twice my size and his poor little legs would not carry him so fast. After getting him on top of the wall he sat there like Humpty-Dumpty until I got up and over on the other side. There were tin cans and broken glass and weeds on the other side and I stood in the midst of all the rubbish and holding out my arms commanded Hermann to jump into them. At that period of his life he had implicit faith in me and followed my instructions to the letter. He lunged forward my arms and altho' I caught him, he was too heavy to hold and down we both went in the rubbish, cutting ourselves and getting somewhat scratched, but really more frightened than hurt. Our cries brought Mrs. Reilly to her window and she came to the rescue at once. It is a wonder Hermann has any arms or legs today, for I dragged him everywhere I went, and when I say dragged, I mean dragged, for he seldom kept his feet after the first few steps. Another day when my father was shingling the roof of the four family house, which was two stories and a half high, and had left a shaky old spliced ladder leaning up against the house, I decided to take Hermann up on the roof to visit my father. By advising him how to grasp the rungs of the ladder, I boosted him from the rear and saw to it that his little feet were placed on each rung as we ascended, and up we went, to the very top. The eaves stopped our further progress, so I yelled for my papa at the top of my lungs. He was hammering and did not at first hear us and when he did he could not determine where we were. He came over the ridge of the roof and slid down to the ladder and saw us. He was terrified. He told us to stay right where we were and not move. He climbed back up the roof and shouted to my mother and others to come and hold the ladder and help get us down. My father held Hermann's hands while I climbed down, and then someone came up and lifted Hermann out of the way so my father could get on the ladder and finally they got him down. I dare say I was given a medal for my brilliant idea - anyway, I probably got something to remember it by. Then came the day Clara Bellville and I took Hermann up in Carter's field to pick blue-berries! Thru a swamp we lugged Hermann and a big tin pail which we intended to fill with berries, altho' there were not two quarts in the whole field. On, over a hill covered with sweet fern, to a big stone wall, on the other side of which lay the Garden of Eden, the berries, and other things, as we soon discovered. Hermann was quite a load to handle and it took the combined efforts of Clara and myself to get him to the top of the wall. Clara boosted and I stood on the wall and pulled. As soon as he was safely hoisted I turned and jumped down the other side of the wall. While in mid air I saw the darnedest big black snake lying right in my path, that I had ever seen in my life, and I very nearly landed on it, but it wiggled out of my way just before I struck the ground. If Hermann's feet hit the ground at all during the retreat, it wasn't until we were half a mile down the road, looking fearfully back to see whether the snake was gaining on us. #8. I shall never forget the day we were playing over in Florence Rich's yard, in the store house where her father kept large bales of rags, ready to take to his West Millbury Mill. Hermann had his beloved boy doll along and it was the cutest thing. We had boosted Hermann on top of some of the bales of waste and in trying to get him down forgot to take the doll from him and in some manner it slipped from my grasp as I tried to catch it and fell to the ground, breaking in a hundred pieces. We all loved that little doll and the mere thot of never being able to play with it again caused us all to cry most bitterly. Mother thought something terrible had happened to us when we came home wailing and sobbing as tho' our hearts would break. Hermann had such a sweet, pensive little face and was always so good natured and patient - well, when he cried it always broke my heart. Naturally, I do not remember when my sister was born, but she arrived the 28th of December, 1886, and was named Saidee Frances Riccius. Mother said she arrived before my father could get Dr. Booth over to our house, altho' he lived but two doors away; and she has been in a hurry ever since. Mamie and Julia Naughton, who lived next door to us, used to play with me and I would be their little child. They used to call me Sadie, as that seemed to be their favorite name, so when a sister came to me I wanted to call her Sadie, but I believe my cousin Myrtis considered this name too common and having heard the name "Saidee" suggested it instead of Sadie, and the Frances was after my father's sister. Saidee was not a very robust child and had a blue tinge to her skin, so she was called the blue baby. She had large blue eyes, light hair and a round, serious, rather frightened little countenance. She was very nervous, would scream if anyone came near her and was absolutely her mama's baby from the start. I was occasionally called upon to wheel her up and down the street in front of the house, but she always cried so hard for her mama I was soon relieved of the task. When she was a tiny baby she developed an ulcer beneath her arm - the left one, I think. You may be sure I was right on deck when the Dr. came over to lance it. When Mother had removed Saidee's clothes and sat holding her in a position so the Dr. could work on her, I wedged myself into the picture and as the sharp, bright knife cut unto the flesh of my little sister I thought the Dr. was killing her and began to shriek. That set Saidee off, and the Dr. and Mother had two hysterical children to quiet. Trust me to complicate matters. Then, later on, when Saidee was just beginning to toddle around by herself a little, she met with another misfortune. Father's brother, "Uncle Otto", came to see us and brought us a bag of peanuts. While our Mother was bidding him good-bye at the front door, Hermann and I ran back to the kitchen with the bag of peanuts and as fast as we could shell them we fed Saidee a goodly share of them. She stood with her little arms resting on father's big chair and as fast as we laid the peanuts on the seat she would swallow them. She was only a bit over a year old and had no idea how to eat peanuts. Before very long she began to be ill and in no time at all was in convulsions. A bird could not have flown much faster than I flew over to Dr. Booth's - up the old stairs, into the kitchen where he was shaving, standing by the sink in his shirt sleeves. Incoherently I babbled something about Saidee having a fit and to come right away, so he followed after me with all haste, rubbing the lather off his face as he ran. Mrs. Wood, who lived upstairs, and who only washed her dishes at infrequent intervals, had decided she would get at the task that day and consequently had a large pan of hot water on the stove. Otherwise, it being summer, there would have been no hot water available. She had been summoned and when the Dr. arrived and asked for hot water it was forthcoming and probably was the means of saving Saidee's life, as she was very sick.#9. To this very day, when any of us want to get Sade's goat all we have to do is mention in the presence of others the fact that she used to have fits when she was small. Does she blow up! As Sade grew older she lost some of her shyness and we three had a great deal of fun playing together with our toys in the old kitchen or in the attic or cellar or yard. Father made us wonderful playthings and our Aunts and Uncles and cousins kept us supplied with toys, so we had plenty to keep us amused. Father made me a dish cupboard, painted blue; a cradle which mother lined with blue sateen and covered with lace, very grand; a table, a doll's chair, a sled and many other nice things which I treasured and played with for many years. Nearly every night Hermann and I washed and wiped the supper dishes. The pump and sink were in the pantry and we used to stand on a box to do the dishes. While we were doing the dishes Mother put Sade to bed and busied herself about the house setting things to rights. Father usually sat in the middle of the kitchen with his music rack before him and played his violin to us. He played very nicely and his whole heart and soul were in his music. He taught us many songs and always played us to sleep. He would also dance with us and sometimes would play the zither for a change. We would sing until we dropped to sleep exhausted. To complete the family circle I'd best be about getting the last but not the least member of the little circle into the picture. On a bright, crisp Sunday morning, May 5th, 1889, Walter Harold Riccius arrived with a lusty cry to announce his coming. How well I recall the day! Clara Bellville had come over to see if I was going to Sunday School and as I wasn't she had remained to play. In a very short time after she arrived Mother and Mrs. Wood herded Clara, Hermann and me up to the nice, sunny attic room on the third floor, with our arms full of tissue paper and other trimmings, to make May Baskets. Mrs. Wood gave us a wonderful assortment of everything that went into the making of May Baskets and we were very happy and industrious for quite a spell. Finally I finished what to me appeared to be a particular work of art in the line of May Baskets, and went down the stairs to show it to Mother. Before I could enter the bedroom, which led directly to the hall and attic stairs, I was headed off by Mrs. Wood who evidently was standing guard about the premises. Just then I heard a small baby crying in the bed room and Mrs. Wood told me I had a new brother but I could not go in as he was not quite ready for exibition. I was persuaded to go back to the attic again. The news I conveyed seemed to disturb Hermann and Clara as well as myself and we were unable to become interested in the making of more May Baskets, but kept running down stairs every few moments, hoping to be allowed to go in and see the baby. I suppose Mrs. Wood had Saidee in her charge and undoubtedly she also took Hermann in tow after awhile, for Clara and I were given our wraps and told to go find some violets down in old Tyler's field. We were very indignant as we strolled down thru the field to the brook, where we found a few early violets- indignant because we had not been allowed to see the baby before we were sent away. When we returned to the house we saw several of the neighborhood children and told them the news. We rounded up everyone of the children in the neighborhood and then, forming a line with myself at the head, we all marched up the back stairs into the kitchen. Before Amy Cummings, the nurse, could get from the bed room to the kitchen and gather her wits enough to realize what it was all about we were on our way into the bed room to view the new baby. Weak as Mother was, she had to laugh at the reception that had been so unceremoniously planned, and we were all allowed to have a good look at the little, red-faced infant. #10 While Hermann had been my charge for a number of years, I had never been obliged to wheel him in his carriage as I was then too small; Sadee was so frail and such a Mother's baby, she was seldom in my charge when a baby, so when Harold came along it was quite a novelty to wheel him all over town in his carriage. He, like myself, walked when he was nine months old and spurned his carriage, so active was he; but when it was time for his nap he would let me wheel him and not try to get out of the carriage. A more beautiful little boy never existed. His skin was like a rose leaf, so velvety and delicate, and his eyes were dark blue with such long, silky lashes. His hair a mass of golden curls and his features very beautiful. Everyone stopped to look at him and praise him. He was nervous as a witch and at a very early age showed signs of having a high temper. I bathed him and combed his hair, which was some task, as it was so curly he would cry and wiggle away unless great care was used in the performance of the task. By gently using the comb on the snarls and stopping every few seconds to rave over a lovely little curl that nestled in the nape of his neck, and to hold him up to the mirror to see it, I usually got him thru the ordeal without disaster. He loved to hear stories and many a weird tale was concocted for his benefit and if it varied the next time it was told there was the dickens to pay. The story of the three little pigs was read many times each day and never failed to interest him. Mother used to read to us a great deal and so did Mrs. Wood, and the story of Poor little Nellie the beggar girl used to make us all cry so hard Mother had to hurry and think of a very pleasant ending for her (different from the ending in the book, which was sad) or we'd all have wept our fool heads off. Harold would play by the hour with his string of little wooden cars. He could see the trains from the kitchen window and had his train on the window sill, tooting, backing, switching, etc. in as exact imitation of the trains he saw and heard, as he was able to do. Cars always fascinated him. He did not like to stay in the yard and play and would run away every time he got out. Mother used to tie him to a tree but he howled and screamed so hard she was afraid he would injure himself, so stopped doing that. He could run like a gazelle when he was a mere baby. I was no slouch of a runner myself, but if he got a little head start he put my accomplishment to a severe test. Clara's father, Pete Bellville, used to rush out of his drug store when he saw Harold coming, and try to head him off but Harold was quick as a flash and the little rascal would dodge him every time, so that by the time I caught him he would be half way to Bramanville. One day while engaged in the pursuit of wheeling Harold about for an airing, I suddenly decided to go and see Polly Foster, Mother's friend, who I knew was visiting Lizzie and Elijah Buckley who lived way up in Cooginsville on the road to Worcester. It must have been all of three miles to the place. I stopped at the Post Office as I went thru the centre of the town and was given two letters for Mother - one from Aunt Clara and one from Aunt Mamie. I put them under the pillow in the carriage and together Harold and I started on our way. I ran as long as the tar sidewalks held out for Harold loved to ride fast and that was the only way I could keep him in his carriage contentedly. We soon struck the old, dusty, rutty country road and as I plowed along I suddenly noticed it was getting very dark and the wind was beginning to blow hard. I went on, going just as fast as I could, for Harold seemed to be enjoying the swift, thrilling ride to which he was being treated. Finally, pretty well exhausted, I wheeled him into Elijah's farm yard, rushed up to the door, hoping to get in before the storm broke, for it was blowing furiously now and starting to rain. No one answered my calls or poundings on the door and I learned later that all hands had gone with Elijah while he peddled his milk to his customers. A big dog came out of the barn and barked at us and followed me around, scaring the living day lights out of me. It was dark as night#11 and I became panic stricken when I realized my mother did not know where we were and would be worried to death. Instead of staying quietly on the porch until the storm was over, or until the Buckley's came home, I had an insane desire to get back home with my precious charge as fast as my legs would carry me. Harold by this time was screaming at the top of his lungs and I was weeping bitterly as the wind swayed the big branches of the huge elms that lined the side of the road, and the thunder and lightning made such a crashing, terrific noise it seemed as tho' every moment was to be our last. The rain came down in torrents and the dusty road was a swamp of mud all of a sudden, so that I could scarcely push the old baby carriage thru it. There were very few houses along that lonely old stretch of road and it was so dark I suppose no one saw us - I am sure if anyone had seen us we would have been halted and taken inside for shelter. My strength was nearly gone when I at last gained the tar side walks of the town, but much of my courage that had vanished, at once returned when I saw the familiar houses and streets of the town. Eventually I reached the Square and hoping to save a little time decided to take a short cut across the common instead of going way around it. The ground was soggy and wet and I had a high curb to negotiate - the carriage was top heavy and all of a sudden came a terrific blast of wind and rain and over went carriage, baby and myself, all in the mud. My heart stood still, for Harold, who had been screaming at the top of his lungs suddenly just absolutely ceased to make a sound of any sort and I thought I had killed him. Sobbing convulsively I gathered him into my arms and sat there rocking back and forth with him when a man under an umbrella rushed out from Goddards shoe store and righted the carriage, put the baby back in the rain soaked interior and started me on my way again. Our home was not so very far from there and a good part of it down hill, so it was not long before I sighted my dear mother with a shawl over her head walking up the street and in a few moments we were safe in her arms. She was so relieved to see us I do not think she even scolded me, richly as I deserved it, but I do remember she admonished me never to take any more long trips with the baby and to always tell her where I was going in the future. The letters had fallen out of the carriage when it upset, but the kind man who helped us must have discovered them and put them back in the post office where they were found next day, much the worse for rain and mud. And Mary Clifford, who was post mistress and who never failed to say to me when I called for the mail, "Child, will you please wipe your nose down and not up - it is pug enough as it is without wiping it up in the air any more" - well, she gave me a lecture for losing the letters and thus ended the interesting and thrilling trip to Elijah's. Every night in summer the four of us were allowed to go as far as the bridge but we could not cross the tracks, and there we would stand and wait for father to get off the train as he came from his work in Worcester. He would come scooting across the tracks on the run, kiss us all as we surged around him, reach down and take Harold "the little man" as he called him, in his arms, Hermann would ride pig-a-back and Saidee would hold his free hand if he had one to spare, if not his coat, and she usually carried the dinner pail which always had a gift of some sort in it for us - blocks of pretty wood, bananas, candy or peanuts - never empty- and I would hang on to his legs as he walked, or tried to, with this load, then mother would come to the front door and we'd all go in to supper. In the winter it was too dark and late for us to go and meet him so we'd watch and listen for his train to come in and when we heard his step on #12 the stairs we'd scamper in all directions to hide from him. When he came into the kitchen he would stand still a moment and look at mother who'd be sitting in the rocking chair by the stove with her apron over her head, crying out loud. Then father would ask in a stern voice, "Where are my children, mama?" Mother would sob, "Oh, an old awful man came along today and wanted them, so I sold them all to him and I'm so sorry!" Sometimes father would scold her for selling us and sometimes he would cry, too, and when we couldn't stand the suspense another moment one or all of us would "hoo-hoo" and father would turn like a startled fawn and say, "For goodness sakes, that sounds like one of them - maybe they have come back" and tired and hungry as he was he would start searching for us. As we always hid in the same places it was somewhat of a task for him to think of a place in the room where we were not apt to be, for it was fatal to find us too quickly. Our favorite hiding places were the closet in the bed room, behind mother's clothes; the wood box, under the kitchen table, under the beds and under mother's skirts. It was so thrilling to be found, and we'd squeal with delight when we were discovered, dragged out and kissed and fondled. We'd all eat supper off the old red table cloth in that cozy old kitchen and sometimes, if we were not too sleepy and father not too tired, he would try to teach us some German words and how to count, and the alphabet. Then after the dishes were washed he would play us to sleep with sweet music from his violin. Usually, about twice a year, Aunt Clara Barton would send us a barrel of old clothing from Washington, D.C. and it was some event in our young lives when it arrived. To Aunt Clara's careful, frugal soul the assortment of old clothes, bedding and odds and ends of his and that, constituted a real treasure box, but as I look back on it now I can see that the contents of that barrel were not worth much to mother, but did give us children a real thrill. There would be several basqued, moth eaten, faded civil war period dresses of no earthly use to anyone except us children to use to dress up in. Mother was very clever with her needle and made all our clothes from garments given by the relatives and when I think of the endless work she had, ripping, washing, pressing, making patterns to fit the odds and ends of cloth she had - I wonder how on earth she did it. She could make something out of nothing if anyone on earth could, but even her ingenuity was stumped when she came upon some of the garments in the barrel Aunt Clara sent, and if she could not possibly use them they were given to us to play with. I recall perfectly a royal purple faded cashmere dress, badly moth eaten, with tight sleeves, tight fitting basque, a draped skirt with yards and yards of fluting at the bottom, and a small black folding carriage parasol, also full of holes and ragged lace around the edge, which turned out to be a wonderful rig to dress up in and parade all over the neighborhood. But once mother did find a pretty blue china silk dress with a little red spray of flowers in it and it was so nice that mother had Mary Jane Noonan come and help her make it over into a dress. It was so pretty on mother and sometimes she would wear it on Sunday afternoons when we all took a nice long walk up the back road to gather flowers and call on the German friends who lived up that way. It was made with rather a tight fitting waist which buttoned down the front and sometimes mother would have to open a few buttons across her stomach, as she suffered with indigestion and could not stand any pressure there. This used to distress me, to see those buttons unfastened and mother used to look so relieved when she got home and got out of that dress and into something more comfortable. Father once discovered something in the barrel he could wear and which he needed when the spring floods overflowed our premises. A nice pair of rubber boots that came way up high. In due time the flood came but before father had a chance to get into the boots Mr. Hermann Porter#13. Riccius, his esteemed son, decided to try them out and see how far he could wade into the water without going over the top of them. Alas and alack, careful as he meant to be, he slipped and fell after he had waded in all the deepest places where the rest of us couldn't go, and the poor boots were filled with water and the interior ruined so that father never could get them on. We used to paddle around in them after that every time we had a flood, but usually they were wet inside the first crack out of the box, for someone would try to see how far he could go with out going over the top and never succeeded in coming back dry. There were usually one or two cotton and woolen blankets in the barrel and they came in handy as our winters were very cold and we needed lots of bedding. Occasionally Aunt Clara would come to see us in Millbury, and when she did the whole town was astir for she was a renouned woman, having been a famous nurse in the civil war and also founder and first president of the American National Red Cross. She was always sought after by the Dignitaries of the town and invited to speak in the town hall or at some church, and a reception was always held afterward to afford the people an opportunity to meet her. She usually had her Secretary, Dr. Hubbell, with her, and sometimes two or three other important Red Cross Officials. Our modest home was the scene of much excitement on these auspicious occasions for people were coming and going all the time and all of us children had a chance to ape the dress and manners of the people who came to see Aunt Clara - we got many good ideas for our shows in the cellar or attic later on. The thing about these visits that impressed me most, at this early stage of my existence, was the manner in which Aunt Clara adorned herself for these public occasions. She had many medals and all sorts of ingignia which had been bestowed upon her for the fine services she had rendered her country, and the townspeople were always curious and eager to see all this array, so Aunt Clara in her eagerness to please them was plastered thick across her bosom with all these badges of honor. She was a small lady, not very tall, with black hair parted in the middle and drawn down over her ears and then rolled back into a big bun at the back of her head. She had dark, kindly, but shrewd and intellectual eyes; a prominent, well shaped nose, a very large, expressive, sensitive mouth which she seldom opened when she spoke, and her voice was low and cultured. Altho' she was such a quiet, modest little lady, she did love gay colors, and red was her favorite. I was too young in those early Millbury days when she visited us, to take note of any particular color or style of dress she affected, but the bright ribbons and bows and medals made a lasting impression upon me. One night when she was visiting us and was about to depart from our house to lecture somewhere, andour house was full of men and women who had come in carriages to escort her and our immediate family to the proper destination, Aunt Clara and mother stood for a moment together in the bed room while my father went to round me up as I was among the missing. My father found me in my bed room all dressed up like a circus horse. He took me where Mother and Aunt Clara were and I shall never forget my indignation because of the laughter my appearance provoked. Every finger of mine was laden with candy prize rings, every pin, chain and do-dad I could beg, borrow or steal was fastened on to my small person somewhere, and I must have been a most grotesque appearing little creature. Aunt Clara patted me and called me Pocohantas, which meant nothing on earth to me, having never heard of the lady, but after a lot of persuading I was denuded of most of my finery and the night was spoiled for me. I looked with envy all evening at the medals on Aunt Clara's bosom and wondered why I couldn't have been allowed to wear my jewelry, too. #14 The first letter I wrote to Aunt Clara when I was seven years old, is a work of art. It is written in pencil and Aunt Clara evidently was so amused she decided to save it. It was found among her possessions and given me a few years ago by my sister. Aunt Clara had written on the outside of the envelope: "R. Oct. 29 - 31, '88. Little Edith - Her first letter to "Clara". In those early days I never called her "Aunt Clara", just plain "Clara", which seemed to amuse her very much. Here is the letter: "Dear Clara I bike to go to school. Herman is 5 years old. He is goiing to school. Sadie is a little mischief. I did. not write the lines straight it was dark when I was writeing this letter. I have not much to say to you this time. do not show any one this letter. it is not good writeing Florence Rich and I sit together I can not write much this time I guess you are not sick it not a bad plass out there is it. good biye ant Clara tell me what your box is I do not no what to write out side. I think it will get there all right. the same night I was writing this letter mama got a letter from ant Ada and ant Mamie write to me. be sure and ansuer my letter. Have the sick folks goot all over the yelleufeer I hope you do not get the yelleufeer. it is a bad thing to have. I do not no much to tell you. excused my writing it is not very good writing I was up to Worcester last Sunday and sau my aunt fo Fannie Edith Riccius Clara " As far back as I can remember, I loved to pick out tunes on the old organ in our parlor. Either mother or father would play them over for me and try to show me how to play them but I had my own method and an ear for music so could not have the patience to be taught. To the family my so called accomplishment was old stuff but I think my mother and father were secretly pleased because I had this natural aptitude for music and so, whenever we had company I was called upon to play my tunes. Uncle Steve loved music and would praise my efforts and sing with me, but Aunt Clara, who had neither an ear or any particular love for music, would sit with such a distressed expression on her face when I was asked to perform, that even I noticed it, small as I was, and disliked very much to play for her. It probably was awful. When she could stand no more of it she would interrupt me all of the sudden and tell me it was very nice but hadn't I better run out and play awhile as she wanted to talk to "Dida", her pet name for my mother. My pride was wounded but I consoled myself with the thought that she couldn't play at all and it was too bad she didn't like music. She surely didn't like my brand. Aunt Clara was very fond of my father whom she called "Doll", short for Adolph, and she used to correspond with him regularly. She thought he had done very well to learn to read, write and speak English as well as he did, without any schooling whatever, in this country. Our Uncle Steve was a prime favorite in our home. He would sometimes appear for a short call with his second wife, Aunt Lizzie, and we'd all stand about, open mouthed, gazing at her. Uncle Steve's first wife, our Aunt Joyce, had died when I was a tiny baby, and his little daughter Edith for whom I was named, had died before I was born, and little Retta had been killed in an accident a few years after my mother died, so Uncle Steve had only one child left, his daughter Myrtis who was eight years my senior. Myrtis had lived with my parents after her mother died but was taken away just before I arrived. After awhile he married Lizzie Walker#15. Tracy, a young widow, and she not only made life miserable for him, but for every member of the family and all friends of the family, for she was, without any exception, the most narrow minded, arrogant, insolent, ill tempered, jealous individual any of us had ever met. She was merely tolerated by our family because of the love we bore Uncle Steve and there were times galore when even our great love for him was not enough to cause us to bear with her and take her insults. She was a small, short woman and held herself very straight and her figure was good. Her hair was dark and very coarse and curly and made a frame for her discontented face which helped soften it a trifle, but did not have the same effect on her disposition, unfortunately. Her eyes were green and small and venomous and set far back in her head. Her nose was large and inclined to be hooked - as she grew older she resembled a parrot, even to her croaking voice. Her mouth was well shaped but always turned down at the corners and her chin was so short that her mouth almost fell off of it. It really hurt her to smile and she was happy only when she was making someone miserable. She rarely opened her mouth without criticising someone or something or insulting one or the other of us. We all detested her. She had been a dress maker and was always well dressed but she had a passion for jewelry and veils and she plastered such great, heavy chains about her neck and had so many veils dangling off her hats, she always appeared to be carrying too much weight for her size. Her feet were small but she squeezed them into shoes still smaller and her face betrayed the agony she suffered consequently. Her hands were ugly and never clean and they were usually laden with rings. Her voice was husky and croaky and the moment she appeared on the scene trouble began. If she discovered Uncle Steve was coming to see us she'd come along, too, and often when she was not sure he was going to visit us, she would appear at our door unannounced, saying she thought he was coming and so she decided to come, too. He left her behind every chance he could for we always had so much more fun when she was not along, altho' when she began her tirade he usually kidded her and then we would all laugh and she would get so furious she would storm around awhile and then leave the room when no one paid any attention to her. Aunt Clara always said, "Lizzie is a little bit of a woman with a little bit of a mind". That described her. Uncle Steve was a very handsome man all his life. He was not a large man, about five feet ten, perhaps, and well built, but not heavy. His hair must have been a medium brown and very wavy and heavy, and he wore a moustache when a young man. His eyes were very blue and very kindly and very humorous and intellectual. His features - mouth and nose, were handsome and he was always dressed in the finest clothes and in the best of taste and had a very aristocratic bearing. His voice was splendid and his manner most charming. Everyone like him and he would tell us one funny story or experience after another until we laughed so much we were tired out. When he came to see us he always brought us candy, fruit or toys and when he left he stopped at the grocer's and ordered all sorts of provisions for us. He loved mother very dearly and always called her "Jane". He would go in the kitchen and make oatmeal, omelets, toast and other things, and sometimes when he had been fishing he would appear with some fish and fry it for us. He adored music and would teach us songs and sing with us until we were hoarse. He was an Insurance man and had a business of his own in Boston for many years, but he travelled a great deal of the time because he was much happier away than at home. He was a fine old scout all his life. Myrtis, his daughter, came frequently to see us and as she was a young lady when we were little children, we all adored her and thought her very beautiful with her fine clothes and aristocratic manners. She had been #15. 1/2 given every advantage. A governess had taught her French and German and she had a very nice voice and had studied music, had travelled quite a lot and she seemed like a fairy out of a book to us. Mother and Myrtis were very fond of one another, too. Aunt Joyce and my mother had always been great friends, so there was a great bond of love between Uncle Steve, Myrtis and our little family. It was great fun to have her come to visit us. We went to the depot to meet her when she arrived, altho' it was only a stone's throw from our house, but she always rode over from the depot to our house in Ben Boyd's old hack and we were allowed to ride with her, and that was a great treat to us. Her steamer trunk would come along on top of the hack, and after it had been carried into the house and the hilarious greetings were over, we stood around Myrtis, in the bed room, while she unpacked her finery. Such wonderful clothes, and such elegance! Then her beautiful French doll, Marguerite, and the grand wardrobe belonging to the doll, would be unpacked and how I used to wish I might be allowed to hold that doll just once, but I never touched that doll in my life. I was dumb with gratitude because I had a chance to look at it, and I gazed upon it with as much reverence as the three wise men must have gazed upon the infant Jesus. Myrtis did not devote much time or attention to us when we were little, that I can recall. She did not play with us or amuse us as Josie Clark did. She dressed in her finery and called upon the daughters of the town's best people. Laura and Lillian Whitney, daughters of L.L. Whitney, the Banker, and the Stratton and Joslin and Streeter girls were her friends. Once I did go with Myrtis to call upon the Joslin girls and I must have misbehaved in some way and was corrected. It didnt' set well with me so I crawled under the big square piano and stayed there all the time we were in the house and had to be dragged out when it was time to leave. I remember it perfectly. Undoubtedly I wasn't the most desirable creature in the world to take along when one went calling. Myrtis sang all her songs to us and tried to play on the organ, but she either did not know how to play very well or else was not accustomed to an organ, for she made hard and ugly work of it, altho' she sang very well. She corrected our conversation and table manners and laughed and joked with father and mother and slept with one or two us in her bed every night., so she probably had her fill of us. She used to write me nice letters and gave us all pretty Christmas and birthday presents, but I do not recall she ever brought us presents when she came to see us. Many of her dresses were sent to mother after she was finished with them, and mother would make them over into things for us. The pride of my life was a little fine checked blue and silver silk dress that Myrtis sent to be made over for me, and mother made a blue velvet bolero to piece it out as there was not enough good material left to make a whole dress of it, and across the front, fastening the jacket effect across my slender frame, were two big pearl ornaments on each side with silver chains holding them together. And I wore a leghorn hat, white, with a band of blue velvet ribbon around it, which had streamers hanging down over my curls, and my black shoes had tassels on them. Oh Boy, was I grand or was I grand! There used to be a lot of talk about taking me to live with Uncle Steve and be a little sister to Myrtis, but years later I found out it was all talk and no sincerity in it whatever. What a break for me - I would be in jail now for murder had I been forced to live with Aunt Lizzie. We were never, any of us, ever invited to Uncle Steve's home and not one of us ever entered the portals of their door. Aunt Lizzie was probably responsible for this, but in spite of the deprivation we all lived to grow up and did not realize what we had missed, I fear.#16. Josie Clark, who was mother's twin sister's daughter, was a great favorite of mine, and as far back as I can remember I spent my vacations with her - part of the time we were together at her home in Webster and part of the time at our home in Millbury. Josie was also about eight years older than I but she took me everywhere and treated me as tho' I were her own age. When she came to our house she always brought along a lot of pretty cloth and ribbons and lace and helped me make doll clothes. Then she would teach us how to make all sorts of interesting things out of tissue paper and wherever she went we went with her. When I went to visit her in Webster I had the most wonderful time a child ever had. Josie had an Uncle Lyman and Aunt Josie Eddy who owned a cottage, a very nice one, on an island in Lake Chaubunagungamaug which was not far from Webster. Josie's father and mother were great favorites of this Aunt and Uncle and spent a great deal of their time helping the Eddy's during the summer, at the cottage. Uncle Lyman had a pair of fine horses and a splendid carriage and many a fine ride we had all over the surrounding country, for Aunt Ada was a fine horsewoman and often she would exercise the horses for Uncle Lyman, and if I were there I always went along, too. Josie and I spent a great deal of our time at the lake with the Eddy's and I learned to fish and row a boat very well during those years. Uncle Charlie, Josie's father, was a tall, slim, curly headed blond man with crossed eyes, so we could never tell when he was looking at us. He was very stern and rather hasty tempered and irascible but he was very good to us just the same and took us on fishing expeditions and boat rides and picnics and made life one sweet song for me. The little red house with four small rooms is the first home belonging to the Clarks' that I can remember. It was over in the East Village of Webster and Uncle Charlie worked in Slater's Mills and the Lake was just a short distance from the house, so that we used to go for a boat ride every night after supper. We walked thru the woods until we came to the place where the boat was padlocked and got the oars out of a locked box, then began the task of getting the boat thru "Stump Pond", a body of water filled with old tree stumps. After a good deal of swearing and directing Uncle Charlie would get out into the lake proper and we would have a nice time fishing. I was always asked to sing all the German songs my father had taught me. They seemed to tickle Uncle Charlie and I would sing them over and over with all my might. Sometimes Harry and Bart Clark would go with us, but they were usually off on a sail boat or an old steamer, by themselves, for they could run anything that would stay on top of the water. Harry build many toy sail boats and would let me go with him to try them out on the lake sometimes. Bart was older and not around so much, but sometimes he would lift me up on his high bicycle and hold me while he rode me around the street and gave me a thrilling ride. Bart and Harry occupied one small bed room and I do not think they ever entered that room thru the door but always thru the window. It was full of junk - engines or parts of them and all sorts of tin and iron and tools and so on. And when Aunt Ada called them to breakfast in the morning there was generally a third head in the bed that did not belong there. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Ada occupied the other small bed room and Josie and I slept on a couch that opened up to make a full sized bed, but which in the day time was a single couch in the parlor. There was a large, high chest of drawers in one corner of the parlor and on top of it was a wonderful music box that played about six tunes when wound up. I had to climb on a chair to reach it but I kept it playing most of the time I was in the house and Aunt Ada did not seem to mind. Josie kept her ribbons and finery in one of the deep drawers and used to let me wear the big, baby blue beads that belonged to her, and dress up in all the ribbons and lace I found in the drawer. Gee, how I loved those beads! And Aunt Ada allowed me to go to a pail of maple sugar that stood in a closet in the wee hall, and help myself any time. #17. Aunt Ada was a spendid cook and everything tasted so good to me. I remember the apricots she used to have and the doughnuts. I was always allowed to go and get a doughnut any time I wanted one. Uncle Charlie was very cross sometimes when the butter was passed and someone would cut a piece off of the side which had not been mutilated, thus spoiling the looks of the pat of butter. One night while I was sitting by the window waiting for Uncle Charlie to get washed at the sink before he sat down to supper, I busied myself twirling Josie's pretty red comb thru my long curls, the final result being a complete tieup of comb and curls. Such a mess. No one could get the comb out of the curls and the harder Uncle Charlie swore the more he tugged and pulled, and altho' he pulled my hair so that it hurt like the dickens, I was more afraid of the fate of the comb than what was happening to my poor hair. Aunt Ada, who had more patience, finally got the comb and the hair separated without cutting off my hair - something I was fondly hoping they might have to do, for how I hated those curls. And then Uncle Charlie took two warts, small ones, off the back of my hand with some acid he put on them every night. That was wonderful to me. The small back yard was full of the most beautiful flowers Aunt Ada had planted. Morning glories ran all over the high board fence and every kind of old fashioned flower grew in every nook and corner. And the Kerry girls lived in the other part of the house and I played with them sometimes. Little black "Mischief", the spaniel, was the cutest thing and slept with Josie and me every night. If Josie and I did not go to the lake to be with Uncle Lyman and Aunt Josie during the week, we always went on Sunday and stayed all day. Uncle Lyman would come for us at Union Point or Point Breeze or some other place agreed upon, in his launch, and take us over to the cottage on Goat Island. It was beautiful over there. A lovely large screened in porch ran about the house and there was a fire place in case it was cold and we needed heat, and every convenience was at hand. The Island was quite large and we would wander over it, picking flowers and berries and listening to the birds sing, and then we'd go in bathing and go rowing and have the most wonderful time. And in the afternoon Josie would take me over to Point Breeze where there would be a band concert and we would see all the people we knew and have ice cream and candy and fun. Josie and I most always stayed two or three days at a time but Uncle Charlie and Aunt Ada had to go home Sunday night as Uncle Charlie worked and had to get up early. I can feel those cool, sweet breezes on my cheek now, as Josie and I used to lie in one of the big beds upstairs and listen to the sound of the water and people going by the island, singing and playing. Aunt Josie was a fat, pudgy little woman, with coal black hair and eyes, and a smile on herface all the time. She shook all over when she laughed and always wanted to know all the gossip of the town, which Aunt Ada so well knew. Uncle Lyman was as light and ruddy as Aunt Josie was dark, and he was also fat. He used to be bustling about the place, fixing this, that and the other thing and Uncle Charlie helped him, not getting much rest when he went there. But the Eddy's were well to do and were very generous and gave the Clarks' a great deal. Uncle Lyman used to make me talk like the Frenchman I heard jabbering in their native tongue. He thought my imitation was good and he would laugh his fool head off when I started. When I came home from my vacation I could swear like a trooper because Uncle Charlie swore all the time and it did not take me long to catch on. Maybe one reason Josie never married is because I was always present when ever she had a beau and he never had a chance to make love to her. Aunt Josie's and Uncle Lyman's house in Webster was another place where we went frequently after the summer season at the lake was over. The long, old fashioned sitting room and Aunt Josie in her favorite chair by the window, with her dog in her lap, watching the people parade up and down the Main street of the town. The Eddy's owned the block in which they lived and had their apartment upstairs over a drug store. I loved to roam thru the house and look at the treasures in it.#18. Josie worked sometimes, in Dobbie's Dry Goods Store and I used to go and meet her and knew all the girls in the store who made a great fuss over me and gave me odds and ends of ribbons and finery. And it was so much fun to walk up and down the streets summer nights when the stores were open and everybody stopped to talk and visit. Webster was a lively town. Many a good time I have had in that little town. Sometimes when Aunt Ada would go up town for the afternoon Bart and Harry would rig up a belt arrangement and attach it to the facucet in the kitchen sink, turn the water on and with the other end of the belt attached to the wheel of Aunt Ada's new sewing machine they would race it as fast as it could go by water power. And this was not only excellent for the sewing machine, but also kept the kitchen floor nice and clean where the water slopped over. It used to thrill me but also make me very nervous for fear Aunt Ada would come home suddenly and catch them. I don't recall what punishment they received for doing this but I'll bet my last dollar Uncle Charlie gave them a sound whipping. I also had many a good time in Oxford at Aunt Mamie's and Uncle Johnnie's where my two cousins, Gertrude and Stevie Stafford hung out. They lived with Grandpa and Grandma Barton on the old farm and there we played and quarreled and loved each other according to the mood we were in. Once when my mother had taken me to visit my grandma and the others, the store man left a package of pepper on the table which Steve and I at once appropriated. We tore it open and before anyone got to us to stop us we had nearly blinded each other. Grandpa used to make belly bumpers for us to slide on, out of barrel staves, and then he would go out in the orchard and slide with us. He would push us when we got on the big swing in the barn, so that we would go so high we'd swing way out of the big barn door. One day Steve and I got a little neighbor boy into the swing and pushed him so hard we pushed him right out of the swing and he had a terrible fall. Grandpa came running from another part of the barn and revived him and took him home and afterward took Steve and me out in the front yard under the maple trees and gave us a lecture on being more gentle and careful. Grandma was very lame from rheumatism and walked all bent over. She made wonderful pies, cakes and cookies which were kept in a jar in the old buttry or pantry which was down along passage from the kitchen to the barn. We could enter this passage from the barn unobserved, and many a pie and cake had mysteriously disappeared from the shelves of that old buttry. Grandma always had peppermints in her petticoat pocket and she used to tell us lots of stories about her girlhood in Maine. Once when her mother was very ill with a fever and not expected to recover, Grandma was sitting up with her for a spell and was told not to give her mother any water if she asked for it, nor anything to eat, as it would be fatal. The poor mother did ask for it and Grandma at first would not get it for her fearing it would kill her, as she had been told it would, but her mother pleaded with her and said she was going to die anyway, so she might as well have it and die happy, so Grandma got her a nice cool drink of water and a piece of mince pie, and instead of killing her it cured her. Then once when Grandma went to the well to get some water she had to crack the ice which had formed in the pail and it was rather dark. As she straightened up there stood a great big black bear, ready to drink the water as soon as the ice was taken off the top. He had all the chance in the world to drink unmolested for Grandma ran to the house as fast as her legs would carry her. How I used to love to hear her stories and wish I could recall more of them. We used to play all over the farm - in the lovely woods where the horses and dogs belonging to the family were buried - in the meadow below the house where the small pox victim was buried under some pine trees - and we were told to keep away from the grave because we'd get small pox if we didn't - and under the big chestnut tree, and over in the pine grove - oh, there were so many lovely places to play and to wander. #19. We wandered down to the old cemetary which was not very far from the farm, and stopped to play in the brook by the side of the road where the farmers drove their teams to water, and then there were all the people we knew in the village, relatives and friends, whom we called upon and visited frequently. Cousin Vira Stone was Postmistress and every night we made a call at her house for the mail and she came to the door, tall and stately and serious and asked us to come in and sit down while she sorted the mail. She sat on a high stool, or it looked high because she was so tall, maybe, and when she had given us the mail we ran out as fast as we could for her little house seemed like a prison and she never made any friendly gestures so we did not feel very welcome. Then we would stop at Uncle Sam Barton's on the way back and Mrs. Hunt would ask us in and give us some cake or cookies and we'd play with the dog and run thru the barn and Mrs. Hunt would give us some flowers or vegetables to take home. We loved to stop there for we always were welcomed gladly. Then if we had time we'd skip up the hill from Uncle Sam's to Polly Foster's house and see dear old Grandma Smith and hear Mrs. Foster and her husband and Grandma talk in their funny English way, dropping their h'es and putting them back on in the wrong place. And Polly would give us berries and walk a way back home with us. Grandma slept in a small bedroom off the sitting room and one could go from her room thru a closet right into the parlor, and was that parlor a wonderful place to get into? I'll say it was. Aunt Mamie was no mean artist and had studied abroad and in Washington before she had married Uncle John, and many of her paintings were in the old parlor. All the shades were carefully drawn and the place was about as cozy as a morgue would be, but it was interesting because it was so rarely we had a chance to sneak in there. I cannot remember much that was there beside the paintings except a horsehair sofa and some chairs and an old mellodian and a gay carpet. The room was so small it probably did not contain much more furniture, and as it was never used there was no need of more. I believe Aunt Mamie used to paint in there as the light was good, but I am not sure of this. The old kitchen had a hogshead of water up over the sink which ran out of a wooden spiggott when it was turned. But the best place of all was the barn where the cows and horses and pigs were kept and the hay mows where we jumped around and played until we were so tired we nearly dropped. Once when Steve, Gert and I were going thru a field of wheat I deliberately told Steve that I had seen a tassel of wheat drop off the stalk and start crawling - that was the way the worms came. He swallowed my story, much to my surprise and wanted to stay there and watch and see if any worms would crawl down off the stalks that day but I told him they were not ripe enough. I was much elated to think he believed what I had told him for he told me so many lies it was a real pleasure to get even with him once in awhile. Steve had a lot of sweet fern and lilly stems stowed away in a tin box up in the pine woods across the drive way and we three kids used to sneak up there and try to smoke them. Gert and I usually choked so we had to desist, but I believe Steve was quite expert at the game. Once he climbed a tree, a tall pine, to get to the nest of a crow which had some eggs in it and Gert and I were to stand underneath and catch the eggs as he threw them down. He wasn't going to take all of the eggs, just a few. Those that did not hit the ground hit me and Aunt Mamie had a job cleaning me up after the bird nest robbery. We three usually all slept together and told fairy stories to each other until we fell asleep. Gert was such a dear little thing. She was her dear mama's girl, like Saidee, too, and never wanted to get very far away from her. Steve waw like myself, all over the place, and had to explore the top of every tree, climb onto everything that would hold him and see everything for miles around. What a life we led our poor parents.#20. Mr. Everett Eugene Wood and Mary Bates Wood, his wife, and their son, Owen Eugene Wood, always called "Genie", lived upstairs, over us, in my father's house. Mr. Wood, or Gene Wood, as everyone affectionately called him, was of medium height, rather portly and his head was large and his face rather long. His eyes were kindly and always twinkly beneath his bushy eyebrows. His expression was serious, but he was very humorous indeed and loved to tease and joke with everyone, especially with us children, and he never cracked a smile when he joked but looked very stern. He was very neat in his habits and always immaculately dressed in black with a large gold watch chain across his abdomen. A large masonic emblem dangled from the chain, and he always carried a quill tooth pick in his vest pocket which he used to pick his teeth after a meal, as he strolled out of the yard to the street on his way to the drug store he owned and presided over. His drug store was on the ground floor of John Rich's old house, five houses up the street toward Bramanville from our house. He always left his home by the back door and had to pass thru our back entry to go down the stairs to the yard, and usually he encountered one of all of us on this trip to the street. In the morning we would be assisting mother by getting coal or wood from the cellar or running errands, and it was hard to escape us. If we heard him coming down the stairs we all ran out into the entry to greet him, and if none of us appeared he would stop and rap on the kitchen door and then open it and say, "Well, how is Taidee Bicky, the pot walloper, this morning? Sade had the job of emptying the slops every morning and it distressed her very much to have Mr. Wood catch her at this dismal task, for he kidded the life out of her, and so she would run when she heard him coming if she was engaged in this task. We used to walk to the store with him if we had time, before school, and usually got some candy for our pains. He would tell us the most absurd stories which we knew very well were not true, but as he never laughed when he told them, we were not sure just how much was true and how much kidding. He had a horse, Foxy, and a nice two seated democrat, and we were always going places with him. His drug store was a dingy, over-crowded old place, full of all sorts of wonderful things. The old building itself was almost ready to fall down and when the Riches who lived upstairs, walked around, the whole structure would groan and creak and wheeze and every sound could be heard. Four of five old rickety broad stairs led one up from the street onto a caved in old porch and a double door opened into the dark interior of the store. In winter a big stove stood in the center of the store but it was removed in summer. There was a partition in the back of the store, and back of this partition Mr. Wood compounded his prescriptions and entertained his friends, for he sold liquor to his cronies. The walls of the store were lined with bottles and boxes of all sorts and description, and there were show cases on each side of the room filled with the usual array of candy, perfumes, powders, pipes, cigars, tobacco and all the other drug store articles. Two large glass colored bottles, one red, one green, stood in the windows at the front of the store. There was a small soda fountain at one end of the store but it was nothing like the soda fountains of today. No ice cream - just plain soda water with some vanilla or chocolate in it and not cold, either. We thought it was grand, however, and when we had a few pennies saved it was wonderful to go in and buy a soda. Mr. Wood was very generous and so was Mrs. Wood, so were frequently treated when we had no pennies. Harold walked in with a penny one day and after gazing into the candy case for some few moments Mr. Wood thought he would assist him in making up his mind which kind he wanted, so he said, "Well, Harold, these are two for a cent and these are four for a cent, which will you have? Quick as a flash Harold answered, "I'll take em boof" And he did. Harold was a great favorite with Mr. Wood and everywhere one went the other also went along. Mr. Wood was always going to find a nice goat for #21 Harold and would drive all over creation, presumably looking for one, but it never was found, somehow. Mr. Wood was rather short and stout, with a mass of coarse, dark, curly hair. Her eyes were grayish green and her nose large but her face was very kindly and she was a good looking woman when she was dressed in her best. She was not very neat in her personal appearance about the house but she had nice clothes and when she took time to put them on properly she made a very nice appearance. She was very fond of my mother and of all of us. The moment Mr. Wood departed for the store she came down to see mother and usually stayed until it was nearly time for her husband to come home to his dinner, which he had at noon. She would suddenly realize it was time for him and away she would fly upstairs and she could be heard racing madly back and forth from kitchen to pantry. The store man and butcher called at the house every day so she would have her provisions on hand. The sink and table and stove and dish pan were always full of soiled dishes and her house looked like a cuckoo's nest. She was a terrible housekeeper but a very fine cook and many a nice piece of pie and cake she handed out to us. Her house was always in greatest disorder and every so often she would ask me to come up and straighten it out for her and would give me a dime or some trinket for assisting her. I used to think it great fun to work in her home as there were so many nice things in it which we did not have in our home. There was a full length mirror in the parlor between the two front windows and one day old Carroll, a nice old Irishman who lived near us and who used to do odd jobs for the neighbors, was laying a carpetin Mrs. Wood's parlor. He was a very ugly looking old man - misshapen to such an extent that it amounted to a deformity, and his face looked just like an ape's - he resembled an ape or a big frog as much as anything and the poor old fellow must have realized it for suddenly he looked up from his task of carpet laying and there he was right under the mirror. On his knees he gazed at himself a full second or two, not aware of Mrs. Wood's presence in the doorway, and then in a rich Irish brogue he said aloud, "Begorra, the likes of yez would sckair the very divil himself, but yeer bethur then ye looks." And went on with his work. Once mother asked him if he would clean the privy vaults out for her and with his face all screwed up into a terrible look of dismay he said, "It do be a most disgustin' job but I'll do it for ye, Mis. Ricksey." To get back to Mrs. Wood again. She was second mother to us and rocked us to sleep, feduus, bound our wounds, took us everywhere and made life mighty pleasant for us. She had a very quick temper and flared up easily, but it was all over in a few moments and she was as placid as ever. Most of her flare ups were over Genie, her son, who was sometimes as good as gold and sometimes very hateful and mean. He was an only child and had his own way most of the time, so when he was corrected or asked to do something he did not care to do, there was trouble right away. He was very insolent and his mother could not handle him at all, but his father managed him better. He was five years older than I and very strong and husky, and many times he was very rough with us children and hurt us painfully. He was just enough older than I to look upon me as of no particular account and many times we went to the mat over some problem and I usually came out second best. It was my delight to keep the back yard raked and clean and orderly, and the flower gardens looking nice, as I had great pride in our home and worked hard to keep things in order. As soon as I had raked the yard Genie would deliberately drag the chopping block out of the cellar and chop kindling wood all over the yard. I'd cry and pitch into him and then he would just laugh and get hold of my skinny little wrists and nearly twist them off. I would fight and scream and bite and kick until someone came to my rescue. If his mother came out he would pay no attention to her, but if my mother or father came, he would run like a coward. He laughed when we hurt ourselves and had a very cruel streak in him at times which used to infuriate me. He had a habit of tripping Hermann up when he ran across the floor and#22. one day when he did this Hermann fell and cut himself badly over the eye as he hit a sharp corner of the stove. Hermann bears this scar to this day. I well remember how furious mother was that day and how she shook Genie and told him what she would do to him if he ever dared to do any more such stunts to any of us. He was decent to us for a long time after that. We used to play base ball out in Tyler's field a great deal and girl fashion, I used to bat the ball with a flat board instead of a round, boy's bat. This disgusted Genie and so one morning he undertook to show me how to use a boy's bat. We were in the cellar, near the well, I remember. I stood close beside him while he tossed the ball in the air and swung around with all his might to smite the ball as it came down. Instead of hitting the ball he hit me a terrific blow in the head, about a quarter of an inch to the right of my left temple. That was not his fault, of course, as I had no business to be right under his nose, but I did not know he was going to swing about and thought I was standing at a safe distance. When I came to I was in bed and my head all bandaged and the Dr. and neighbors standing over me. Several stitches had to be taken and I was laid up with a sore head for some time, and how I cried every time the Dr. dressed the wound. I still have the ugly scar on my forehead. I never had any claims whatever to beauty, but that scar, together with a small birthmark about the size of the end of my little finger, which was under my right eye, on the lid, in fact, when I was born, forever put me out of the running. The Woods' used to drive to Milford or Hopkinton where relatives lived, very frequently, and I was always taken along to keep Genie company. They went on many excursions to Providence, Watch Hill, Newport, Block Island and other places, and I always went along, altho' after we started I was seldom in Genie's company as he was as much of an explorer as I and as our tastes and ideas were not the same we went our different ways. I recall the time all of the children in the neighborhood came to our yard and we worked like beavers making a boat and sealing the seams with some tar we found in a barrel. When it was done we dragged it to the river and launched it. Genie, who was the oldest in the crowd, got in and poled his way along the bank of the river for a few rods, but the thing leaked so fast he got out and dared me to go across the river in it. He said I was so light it would not leak with me in the boat. Promptly I took the dare and with a pole, started across the river which had a very swift current, and the moment I reached it, away I sailed, down stream, toward the dam. I was terrified, and so were the others on the bank as they ran along trying to help me, but I was too far out for them to lend any assistance. Finally I was swept under some low hanging branches of the trees on the opposite bank and had presence of mind enough to grab them and pull myself to shore while the boat sailed merrily down stream. I was none the worse for my experience, but my danger had not passed entirely, for on the side of the river where I landed lived a gang of little fighting French kids who engaged in the most awful warfare with those of us who lived on the other side, every time we invaded their territory or they invaded ours. I had to pass thru their domain to get home and my safety lay in the fact they did not know I was anywhere about. I sneaked along by the bushes as carefully as I could until I came to the place where I simply had to show myself in order to get home, and then like a deer I bounded thru their yard and ran for my life, with about a dozen of them following me. When I got to Spooner's and Mary's house I yelled like a wild Indian and Mary came out and shooed them off just before I was too winded to run any more. Then there was the time Minnie Riccius, one of my German cousins, visited us and made life one grand sweet song for mother, first by getting lice in her hair, playing with some children who were not clean, and of course before mother discovered it, we all had them in our hair. That was not enough, it would seem, to fill mother's cup of joy to over-flowing, so #23. one night, about dusk, Genie started a game of tag, just before we were called in for the night. Minnie was tagged and she started to chase Genie who ran behind the house where the cess pool lay. It was being cleaned out by old Gover, but he had not finished the job and had left the cover off, expecting to come early in the morning and finish the job. Rank, high grass grew all around the cess pool and we never played near that spot, and Minnie was not aware of the pitfall, so when Genie skirted it she ran right into it and went out of sight. Either her screams or Genie's terror brought someone to the rescue - I think it was my father who was near by, and after Minnie had been fished out and plentifully watered in the yard, and scrubbed again in the house, she was put to bed and next day packed up and sent home. It seems she had never been invited to our house in the first place, but just dumped onto mother so her mother could have a bit of a rest. Once when the school house was to be given a new slate roof and the slate was all neatly piled up in the school house yard ready for the workmen to begin the task, we decided to take some of it one night after school, and lay some walks around our premises. We made many trips to the school yard and had carried away a goodly amount of it and stacked it behind our barn. My father suddenly appeared from nowhere and wanted to know what we were doing and where we got all that slate. When we told him our plans to build walks around the house it did not seem to appeal to him at all and we were told we had stolen that slate and must take every single bit of it back to the school house yard where we found it. Good Gosh, were we tired! The trip back to the school was all up hill and not so easy, so we decided to dump the slate over the rail of the bridge into the river, instead of taking it up to the school yard, for we were out of sight of the house when we got that far, and father could not see us. Into the river, then, the slate went, and as no one ever complained of the loss of it, father never knew what we had done, and the slate reposes there to this day, I presume. The Woods' took me to a masquerade ball with them one night, down in Fairfield's Hall. I was dressed as a Chinaman, with a rather heavy costume and a home made wig supposed to resemble a queue. It was a hot room, that ball room, and I had a severe case of the hives. After I had danced and pranced around the ball room floor, getting in everyone's way and making couples dodge me and so forth, I became very much over heated and the hives began to itch to beat the band. The dressing room was full of women, so I crawled off behind some chairs in the corner of the ball room proper and had removed most of my clothes and was indulging in a good, all time scratching match when I was discovered. Mrs. Wood had a habit of sitting in her kitchen window when she peeled her vegetables, and being always in a hurry, she seldom took the trouble to empty the parings in a pail and carry them down stairs, but would, instead, remove the screen and toss the whole soggy mess out the window. This slovenly habit infuriated my father and mother who were neatness itself, but it was embarrassing for them to have to tell her not to do it, so they tried to bear it and grin. One day she was in a greater hurry than usual, getting dinner, and after paring the potatoes she ran to the old kitchen window, yanked the screen out, and without looking, tossed the big pan full of dirty water, parings and all out the window just in time to land squarely on her husband's head. She did not even know what she had done, but mother happened to see it and rejoyced, for it would teach her a lesson. Up the stairs flew Mr. Wood, like a shot out of hell, and the fur flew as soon as he entered the door. Such a tirade of words and weeping and rushing about. She never threw her garbage out of that window again, altho' she did throw it out the back window occasionally but she looked before she let fly.#24 When Mrs. Wood's nieces, Mabel Scott, Jennie and Mamie Bates and Gertie and Irma Bates would come to see her, we had great fun and sometimes we would sleep in the attic rooms together. Once Mamie Bates and I got in a folding bed which belonged to Mrs. Wood and it closed up on us and we yelled until someone came to the rescue and let us out. These girls used to sing all the popular songs of the day and play on our organ. Beatrice Smith, a little girl Mrs. Wood's sister Josie had adopted, used to sing a song about "The Bibel, the Bibel, God's Hold Book, the Bibel", and Genie would mimic her and make her cry. Old Grandma Bates, Mrs. Wood's mother used to be with her a lot and was always making rag rugs. She was a very sweet old lady and we all loved her. Mr. Wood's Aunt Cora Mansfield, an old maid, very prim and proper, used to come for visits and clean Mrs. Wood's house until it shone. She would drape all the lace curtains about the floor, under the windows, in a rose pattern, as she called it, and woe betide any one who stepped on the curtains or disarranged them. I used to surprise Mrs. Wood by dropping out of the attic front window on to the tin roof below, which was on a level with her parlor windows. If her windows were closed or I could not make her hear I had to shinny down the post onto our porch below where my mother would most likely see me and give me the dickens for dropping out the window, which was dangerous, of course. In the winter we used to make molasses candy and pop corn, and father made us a nice black board to write on, and the closet was full of toys and games, so we had plenty to amuse us. In spite of the severe cold we used to slide and skate nearly every day and whenever we could hitch our sleds onto someones sleigh and ride thru the village we did so. We had a bath every Saturday, whether we needed it or not, and it was taken in a big wooden tub in the old kitchen in front of the stove, with the oven door open, and the clothes horse and father's big chair forming a barricade, with Mother's gray shawl thrown over it. One after the other we would be called in and scrubbed and put into clean nighties and put to bed. Once I stood on the rocking chair in front of the stove, after I had been given a bath, and while teetering around I lost my balance and fell on the stove, cutting a big gash in the back of my head. Once when father went on a sleigh ride with a party of Germans, to Webster, Polly Foster happened to be visiting us, and as the party had to go within a couple of miles of North Oxford, where Polly lived, she decided she would go home that way. I must have been on vacation for I went with her. It was a very cold night, with deep snow covering the ground and the moon was very bright. We were all bundled up and rode thru the woods, the horses floundering along in the snow so badly that often the men had to get out and help them make a path. When we finally got to the old North Oxford Depot where Polly and I were to get out and walk to her house, it was quite late and very still and lonely. I was frightened, but the party drove on and we had nothing to do but go on our way thru the woods and moon light, wading thru deep, deep snow. Polly helped me and often we had to stop and rest, the going was so hard. It was very late when we finally got to the little house on the hill where Polly's folks lived. Her father was a sound sleeper and her mother very deaf and we had a hard task waking them and they were scared to death when they saw us, fearing something terrible had happened to bring us out in the cold and snow that time of night. I shall never forget how cold I was in that old bed of Polly's which had not been slept in all winter. And the old mill bells which rang so loud and long at six o'clock in the morning. Old Grandma Smith from England talked to me and told me stories, otherwise it would have been pretty lonesome for me and I was glad to get back home where I had some play mates and toys to play with. #25 Dr. Booth, who lived two doors from us, owned his house but rented it to Pete Bellville and his wife and two sons and daughter and the Dr. lived with them. Dr. Booth had his office on one side of the ground floor of the house and the front and other side of the ground floor was given over to Pete Bellville for a drug store. And Pete sold liquor on the side and had a back room where his cronies used to gather. The two upper floors of the house were the home quarters of the family. The Bellvilles were French and Dr. Booth was Scotch-Irish. Clara Bellville was a year or two older than I but we went to the same school and played together a lot. Clara was a stocky child, with brown-black hair, very straight, worn in a tight, fat braid, with bangs on her forehead and earrings in her ears. She was swarthy and had small beady eyes and was near sighted. She was a very generous girl and often gave me candies and goodies which she simply took from her father's drug store. He never cared what she took. Mrs. B. spoke English seldom and not very well and she always had a gentleman friend up in the parlor when we came into the house. She was quite stout and had little to say to us but the dishes were always waiting for Clara to wash when she got home from school and I used to help her so we could get out to play sooner. Mrs. B. was a fine cook and got very nice meals for the Dr. and often when I helped Clara with the dishes there would be lovely fruit, out of season, on the table, and nice pieces of steak and pie and cake, and Clara and I would eat anything that was left as her mother did not seem to care and never told us not to. Often we would go up on the third floor and make the beds in the four bed rooms. The Dr's. bed room was over his office and had a tube in the wall so that when any one came for him at night they could call up to him thru the tube. Mrs. Bellville had little to do with any of the neighbors or townspeople but went often to Worcester and Providence. She dressed very, very flashily and sailed down the street to the depot like an Indian Princess. Her own private bed room was on the second floor, off the kitchen and she would often call Clara and me in when she was getting dressed to go somewhere and together we would get her into her corset. She would put the corset on and then hold on to the bed post while Clara and I pulled on the strings with all our might and she would hold her breath and squeeze her waist and yell, "Pull, pull, Klaara, pull - you, Edie, pull lik everting". We'd pull like everything and finally get her into the corset and help her get her waist buttoned and her skirt fastened. She used to wear a bright red cloak which fitted her like the paper on the wall. It had a lot of black braid on it and was a noble garment. A big red hat with an enormous black plume on it, hung down her back, and her high heels went clickety click as she walked grandly to the train. Pete Bellville was a short, fat, dark, red cheeked man and full of fun and always good to all the children. He always wore a linen duster. Bessie, the cross, female pug dog, was always hanging around the store and usually had some puppies and she would chase me and nip at me so I was scared of my life to go in the house without Clara. Dr. Booth drove a very spirited black horse and Clara and I were a little afraid to go into that part of the barn where the horse was stalled for he would kick at us if we got anywhere near him. One day this horse was taken ill and the Dr. led him out back of the barn under the big cherry tree where he and some other men tried to administer some medicine to the horse, but with apparently little success, as the horse rolled over and over on the grass in great agony. Clara had summoned me at once when she discovered the horse was ill, so I was there with bells on, you may be sure. After awhile the Dr. went into the house and came out with a pistol and shot the poor horse. Some men came out of the drug store and dragged the horse way down to the lower part of the meadow.#26. They dug a deep grave, but before the grave was quite finished the Dr. came out again and began to cut the horse open to ascertain the cause of it's illness, I suppose. It was a horrible sight, and I don't understand why we were not sent away, but perhaps the Dr. was so upset he did not see or care who was there, so we stayed right on to the bitter end. It was a long drawn out affair as the horse had to be dismembered after the autopsy, in order to get it into the grave, but after it was all over and the grave covered and tramped down, Clara and I went into the field and gathered some wild flowers and put them on the grave. After doing this some one came along and told us a pig was being slaughtered over at Maloney's, so over we all went to see that, but we were too late to see anything but the finish of that performance. Mother had been calling us and running all over the neighborhood trying to locate us, for we were scheduled to get cleaned up and dressed and go to the train to see our beloved minister, Dr. Bloss, depart for Evansville, Ind. where he had been called to another pastorate. We had all been heartbroken when we learned he was leaving and had talked for days about going to the train to say good bye to him, but the horse and pig episode had put his departure entirely out of mind. We were much dismayed when we found he had gone and we had not been there to say farewell. Mother was too disgusted for words when we told her the long story of the death and burial of the horse and the dressing of the pig, but when we had frankfurters for supper that night and Hermann asked her if they came out of Dr. Booth's horse, well, that was the last straw. My mania for having things clean amounted to an obsession. I drove the family wild with my everlasting cleaning and desire to have every article of furniture always in it's exact place, but I was not satisfied to confine my habits of order and cleanliness to my own home - I wanted to clean up the whole town. Every home had it's out door toilet and some of the old places I happened to enter from time to time did not meet with my approval in regard to their state of cleanliness. Our toilet was a work of art as my father had built a large grape arbor in front of it so it was hidden from view, and we walked thru a charming summer house before entering the toilet. The back of it was also covered with morning glory vines and the garden was beyond it. (By the way, when my father was building this new privy he laid the boards with the holes in them for the seats, down where they were to be fastened, and while his back was turned I came along and stuck my head thru the smallest hole and father had to split the board to get my head out) Pardon the digression. Clara and I decided some of the neglected palaces needed a good scrubbing, so one Saturday we found some pails, soap, brushes and brooms and cloths and started right up the line to wash all the toilets. We had given about three of them the best cleaning they ever had when we wandered into Mrs. Cotter's and suddenly my mother appeared on the scene and our activities in the line of privy cleaning were over. Some one had seen us and reported to mother and that was the end of of clean toilets for the town of Millbury. A career nipped in the bud and no wonder the town stood still for many years. However, othermatters took up our attention. Clara's French priest died and a great funeral was planned. Clara's father was to be a pall bearer and came forth from his drug store in a uniform most magnificent and a big beaver hat with an immense pom pom on it. A sword at his side. Never had I seen Pete so wonderfully arrayed. He drove off with some other men likewise attired. I yearned to go to that funeral and stood dressed and all ready to spring in case Clara came out and invited me to attend. Presently she came out the front door with her mother who had yards of black veiling floating all over her person. Clara promptly asked her mother if I could go to the funeral and Mrs. B., giving me the once over, decided #27. I was dressed all right for the occasion and would keep Clara company, I dare say, so she said, "Oui, oui" and into the waiting hack we climbed and were directly driven off to the church where I never did behold such a fine and wonderful funeral in all my life. Candles and priests and chanting and marching and what not and finally a chance to go up the aisle and view the corpse and kneel before the casket. When we came out it was raining great cats and little fishes but we were driven to the cemetery with the rest of the mourners. Clara's mother did not get out of the hack but we did, and raced over to the grave, knelt down in the mud and went thru all motions the others went thru and observed every ceremony, altho' it meant nothing whatever to me, but it was a novelty, at any rate. When we had the old fellow all covered up and the sod planted on his grave, Clara and I went to find the hack we had come in, but it was gone, so we had a nice, long walk, soaking wet, back home. Another day Clara and I were walking thru the cemetery when we saw a funeral, so we stayed to see that thru, altho' we did not know the people. A baby was being buried and the mother had asked to have the casket opened again before the child was buried, so we surged forward and saw the baby It had a gold ring on it's finger and was very pretty. We cried and remained to the end. If anyone died in town and we heard of it, we, Clara and I, always went to see the corpse or if we did not get around in time for that we usually managed to get to the cemetery to see the person buried. When poor Hannah Reardon who lived next door to us in Naughton's house, was drawing her last breath - she had "consumption" - one of the O'Leary kids came out of the house and told us the sad news and about a dozen of us children decided to go up and say good bye to Hannah, which we did. Lord, I don't know why her sisters let us in, but they did and poor old Hannah was sitting in a chair and blood was running out of her mouth and she died before we all got out of the room. We also went to see Kate Reilly's grandmother when she died and she had some letters - I.H.S. - across her breast which we were told meant "I have suffered". Such a terrible old dirty dump she lived in. It makes me shudder to think of it now. We knew where everyone in town who had died was buried, and after school we often went home in a round about way, thru the cemetery and often we would gather flowers on the way and place them on someone's grave. We'd walk down the railroad tracks, thru the bridge and plan what we would do if a train came along before we got thru the bridge. We were going to hang to the ties until the train passed over us. We never were caught, however, as we knew pretty well when to expect trains. We were not allowed to play around the depot or on the tracks, but we did, occasionally, when no one was looking. Jim Cotter, Jim Welch, Dennie Horrigan and Mary and Spooner kept an eye on us and if they saw us playing around that vicinity would send us home. One day when we had all been after nuts we came home down the railroad tracks and there was a freight train way up in the yards switching. The men on the train did not know us and so we were not sent away. The train moved very slowly as it was being switched from one track to another and Timmy O'Leary said he thought we could crawl under it and get over on the other side while it was moving. No sooner said than done. We had to crouch down and run in between the wheels of the train and out again on the other side the same way, but both Timmy and I did it and for a wonder did not fall down and get run over. Sometimes we would run and jump on the steps of the caboose of a freight train if it was going slow and ride a little way, or until we got put off. When we went into the dept Agnes DeVere, the telegraph operator, would let us come into her office and watch her send wires. And I often went with Mamie Buckley while she delivered the telegrams. Sometimes she had to go a long way with a wire.#28. John and Maria Rich lived in the fifth house from ours, up the road, toward Bramanville, in a dilapidated two and a half story white house. Mr. Wood's store was on the ground floor and the Riches occupied the upper floors. John and Maria were typical New England farmer folk who had never bothered to cultivate themselves inany way after they had married and left the real rural district where they were born and came to Millbury to live. They had plenty of opportunity to improve themselves but didn't care to. They both spoke with a nasal whine and gave evidence of having little education, but nevertheless they were both naturally shrewd and sharp and the person who could put anything over on them was not to be found in Millbury, at least. John Rich was a short, stout uncouth man with a thick red neck and a cruel, crafty face. He walked with a limp due to a wound he had received in the civil war. He was never pleasant but always snarled at every one. He scared me out of a year's grouth every time he spoke to me. Mrs. Rich was a tall, large framed woman, awkward in movement of feet and body, but her hands were lovely and graceful. She had a nice feet- rather sad - but kind and sweet. Her eyes were dark and so was her hair which she wore parted in the middle and twisted in a french roll at the back of her head. It was arranged in a different manner than most of the woman wore their hair - strained into an unbecoming knot at the back of the head. Mrs. Rich was always gentle and kind to me and I know she really loved me. A son named Channy had died years before I was born and she used to talk about him as tho' he had just passed away, and the tears would stand in her eyes when she mentioned him. Then there was a son John who was a young man when I was a very small child - in fact John was married to Mary Small when I was not more than eight or nine years old. Next came a son named Everett, then Florence, then Sadie. Florence was three months younger than I, and Sadie was a few weeks younger than my sister Saidee. My mother took me over to see Florence when she was born and put me on the bed beside her, and we were constant companions as long as I lived in Millbury. When Florence and I were five years old, Nellie Cotter, and lovely Irish girl who lived next door to Florence and who was eight or ten years older, took us to school for the first time, as it was difficult for either Mrs. Rich or my mother to go with us, both of them having a small baby to attend to. We were too small to cross the tracks and go to school alone, so Nellie volunteered to take us. I remember the day very perfectly - bright and beautiful and rather chilly. I must have risen at day break to be ready for the occasion for I was washed and dressed and combed and had my breakfast eaten hours before it was time to go. I walked up and down the street, sat on the steps of the front porch and was nearly frantic because Nellie and Florence did not come. I was sure we were going to be late. At last I could stand it no longer and broke away and ran up towards Nellie's house but dared not go in. I hung on the fence and finally she came out, and as usual, asked me for one of my curls. She could have had them all as far as I was concerned for I loathed them. They were always in snarls and I wished I could have two braids, like Florence. Florence came down the front stairs of her house and joined us and we all went down the street to the school house. Nellie took us in and gave us into the care of the teacher, Nellie Nye. Miss Nye was nice to us, kissed us and put Florence and myself together at one desk, right down in front where she could watch us. I recall how brightly the sun came in the window - it nearly blinded me. After school began the teacher wrote some words on the blackboard and I jumped up and hollered "c-a-t --cat". Teacher told me to sit down and not speak until I was spoken to. That took the wind right out of my sails for I had felt so smart. #29. That is all I recall except that Nellie took us home at noon and I wanted to go back in the afternoon but a half day was all the time we were allowed to be in school at first. Florence and I always sat together in every grade where there were double seats and next to each other after we got into the higher grades. Florence was a small girl, with features very much resembling her mother. She had the same dark eyes and olive skin and brown black hair which was very heavy and always worn in two long braids, and her little face had the same sweet, sad expression, half frightened, her mother's face wore. Her hands were lovely and graceful but she was not at all graceful when she moved, being rather clumsy with her feet, for some reason. She would climb and run but not with graceful agility. Many miles of territory we covered during vacation and even after school, for we both loved to roam thru the woods and fields and we had a play house in every favorite spot. We usually had our dolls with us when we went on these long walks and would stop at frequent intervals to play. Generally we played near a brook or pond so we could wade in the water and sail boats made out of leaves and flowers. Our favorite spot where we had the most fun playing with our dolls and house furnishings, was down in the orchard of apple trees back of the Rich barn. No one ever disturbed us there and we had an up and down stairs - the trees being our upstairs. We seldom quarreled, but when we did Clara was usually the cause of the battle. Clara would sometimes bribe one or the other of us to go with her, but it took a lot of candy or some other coveted piece of finery to persuade Florence and myself to forsake each other. Florence's father had an old cotton mill - a crude affair - way up in West Millbury and it was at least three or four miles from our home and on a very rough, lonesome old road. We very often walked up to the mill after school and would ride home on the bales of waste in the rickety old wagon which either John Rich drove or Mike Reilly. If Old John was cross and gave us the dickens for being around under his feet, we would not dare to ride home with him - that is - we would not start with him but hide behind a wall or some trees until he came jig jogging along with his old wagon and the old white horse, then when he had passed us we would sneak out and climb onto the back of the wagon and ride along and he would not know the difference, for we would get off before he drove into the yard and Florence would scamper into the house and her mother would not tell where she had been even if the old crank asked. Florence and I played in her attic a lot, too, altho' it was not a nice attic like ours, but it was a change. There were two rooms in her attic which were crudely finished off for bed rooms and when I sometimes stayed all night with Florence we would sleep in one of these rooms and usually the bed would fall down before morning, it was so old and rickety. Mrs. Rich had a green checked silk dress and a red striped silk dress hanging under some sheets on hooks in the wall and would dress up in them occasionally. They were probably dresses Mrs. Rich had when she was a young girl for she never wore them. There were some old hats and a muff and other things we also dressed up in and then we would go in the unfinished part of the attic which was a terrible jumble of all sorts of old trash, and dig out things to play with. We usually played with the remains of an old melodian and altho Florence could not carry a tune to save her soul, we'd sing and pretend to play and strut about in our glad rags and have oceans of fun. Sometimes old Jim, the dog would follow us up there and how he would howl when we sang. Florence was a very good mathematician and I was the world's worst. Figures were the bane of my school existence and poor Florence found history and spelling equally as difficult to master. We#30. assisted each other in these studies every day. Florence would allow me to copy her arithmetic problems on to my paper, which was fine except when the teacher asked me to go to the board and explain the problem to the class in which case I couldn't do it and there was suspicion in the teacher's eye and I would be kept after school. No amount of after school seances ever made a mathematician out of me, I may add. Florence sweat blood over her spelling and history but when I could whisper the answers to her without being caught I did so. Miss Welch was one of the teacher's we loved the best and she was very fond of us and asked us to her home, in Worcester, to remain over night, on a number of occasions, while Miss Annie Marden, or Monkey Marden as we all called her, was not a favorite with any of the pupils. When we were in Grammar School we had two very lovely teachers, Emma Cartland and Milton Fisher. We also had a Miss Shevelton for a short time, and liked her very well, too. In the lower grades, when we were very small, our class mates were a queer lot. Some of the freaks would not be allowed to go to public school in this day and age. Mazie Danforth and Bertha Hayward both were of the epileptic variety and gave an exhibition in the class room or school yard nearly every day; Willie and Fred Gover were not right mentally and Walter Searls had an impediment in his speech and drooled all the time and was not very bright - some had st. Vitus dance and some had nothing worse than lice. We were a great bunch, but as we went along from year to year the real misfits dropped out of the running and by the time we reached Grammar School there was a very nice assortment of girls and boys in our class. Annie Welch, Mamie Buckley, Fannie Wood, Annabelle Barrett, Fannie Greenwood, Nellie Van Ostrand, Willie Welch, Everett Rich and Gussy Eddie are a few of the old bunch I recall. Many more whom I knew well came into the high school later on. There were schools in both the lower and upper parts of the town and we lived in the center of town, so when we were all ready to enter high school the pupils came from all the other schools as there was only one high school. John Rich had an old aunt who lived on a farm in Sutton and when she died she left John the farm with all the old furnishings in the old house, just as she left them. The Riches did not go there to live and did not at that time work the farm very extensively - just cut a little hay and that is about all. An old lady lived in two of the front rooms of the farm house, just to protect the place, I guess. When Florence and I were about nine years old this farm had just been left to Florence's father and I had ridden up there with Mr. and Mrs. Rich once to see the place. Florence and I decided it would be a wonderful place for us to spend our March vacation and how we ever mananged to get the consent of our parents to go to this lonely place with only the old lady to be in the house with us, I do not know, but we did. We packed our own and our dolls paraphernalia and our mother's made cookies bread and pies and gave us other food, and old John and Everett drove us up to the farm and left us to occupy the big barny kitchen down stairs, in the rear of the house, and we had access to two bed rooms up stairs. The other rooms were locked and a great mystery to us. We fancied we saw the old Aunt in one room, as we peeked thru the key hole. A room off the kitchen was also locked and strange sounds came from it at night. The old lady lived in the front of the house and a hall separated her from us and her door was locked at night, so we were shut away by ourselves in the cold, bare floored room up stairs. A pane of glass was out of one window and two tall pine trees out side whistled and moaned and groaned all night. The only heat we had was the stove in the kitchen which smoked and "went bad" on us every time we tried to make a fire. We got along all right in the day time for we roamed all over the place, but at night it was a different matter. Mrs. Rich had made the remark we would not stay two days so we decided to stick it out to show her she was wrong. #31. The old road by the house was little used and almost no one passed. One evening a shabby looking man went by the house and hesitated as he sauntered past. We saw him from the window and thought he was a tramp and we were almost scared out of our wits. We had been there about a week and had anyone come for us we'd have been ready to go home at once. It was a long journey home and the stage did not come anywhere near the farm, so we decided one morning to start home on foot. I should say it was at least five or six miles, maybe more, but it seemed about a hundred. We left all our own clothes at the farm for Mr. Rich to take back when he drove up, but we would not leave our doll clothes there so packed them in our bags and started out. Harold was a wee baby at the time and I somehow got the notion in my head that he was dying, and I must get home at once. My things were packed in an old white canvas bag, home made, which mother used for clothes pins, and the bag was trimmed with black braid. We liked the feel of the dust on our feet after it got warm so we walked a long distance in our bare feet but when we passed thru a portion of any burg where they were houses we put our shoes and stockings on again. Sometime in the early afternoon we came to Briarly's Pond and decided to stop and wash our feet there. Just as we'd become nicely settled and was greatly enjoying ourselves, some mean little boys came along and made fun of us and threw stones at us, so I had to chase one and lick the tar out of him. They still threw stones at us so we moved on down the road to Paines Blacksmith shop and the pond back of it looked good to us so we waded in there for awhile. A number of years afterward Florence and I walked by this same pond and the water had been drawn out of it for some reason, and we saw that just a few feet out from where we had waded that day the bank fell away to a great depth, and we wondered how we ever escaped being drowned. In our hurry to get home we probably were not as venturesome as usual and therefore did not meet with disaster. Well, we finally arrived home and I shall never forget how good the house, the food, the family, all, everything, looked to me. And such a relief to find my baby brother alive. Sometimes Florence and I would go to Worcester on the train and did we feel important! We never had more than ten or fifteen cents to spend after we got there but we went in all the stores and looked at everything and I dare say drove the clerks wild, roaming around handling things. In winter we did a lot of skating and sliding. The Germans my father knew often went sliding on a big double runner, on the Old Common Hills, and sometimes my father would take me along and hold me tight in front of him while we dashed madly down the long, steep hills. It was very thrilling. One night after school a lot of us children went way up to the Old Common Pond to skate, without getting permission from our parents. The ice was fine but at one end of the pond there was a spring and the water had not frozen over this hole so someone had put a pole up and a sign reading "Danger". We played snap the whip and skated together and tagged each other and had so much fun; then Timmy O'Leary thought he would see how near he could skate to the hole in the ice without getting into trouble. He soon found out and in he went. I happened to be near when the accident happened and grabbed a long pole we had been playing with which was near me, and getting down on my stomach I pushed the pole toward him and he finally got hold of it. The other children came up and formed a line, each one holding on the legs of the other and someone holding mine, and we finally pulled Timmy out. No house was near but someone had some matches and built a fire in the woods and dried Timmy off a little before he started on the long walk home. He was very sick with pneumonia for a long time, but finally recovered and we did not skate there again that I remember. One morning before school I took my sled and went out in Tyler's field to slide on the crust. Mother told me not to go near the river or the brook.#32. Genie and Florence and Clara and some of the O'Leary kids were there so we made a double runner of our sleds and walked over to Maloney's hill to make the sliding worth while. We had to cross over the brook on a bridge to get to the hill, and when we were ready to slide down hill, Genie said he would steer, and take us right over the bridge. Well, Genie wasn't so hot as a steerer and instead of going over the bridge we all went into the brook. It wasn't deep but Oh, Golly Gosh, was it wet and cold! We were all soaked thru and our clothes froze to us, immediately, so that we could scarcely walk that long distance thru the field to the house. Most of us were crying with the cold and thoughts of what would happen to us when we got home, and poor Florence realized what would happen to her before the rest of us did, for her father had come down to the fence of his pasture and was calling to Florence to come home and go to school. She wailed louder than ever when she saw and heard him, and went off across the field toward home, walking like a wooden soldier in her wet drawers and petticoats. I suppose she got a whipping, altho' I don't remember that part of it for I had troubles of my own. At last I managed to get into the house and Mother was sitting by the stove with the oven door open, bathing Saidee, who had not been well. When she saw me she laid Sade in the cradle and covered her carefully, then with a swift movement which I was not anticipating, she grabbed me, pulled my wet clothes off, sat down in the rocking chair again and yanked me over her knee and gave me a spanking I never forgot, for mother did not spank us very often. I dare say my father and mother had to spank me many times but this is the only time I ever can remember getting spanked by my mother. I received a good spanking from my father one day which I well recall. We had a new carpet on the parlor floor, with straw under it to make it nice and soft to walk on. Uncle Otto and some of the other German relatives came up from Providence to call and Mother made lemonade for them. I had a little wicker rocking chair with arms on it, which had belonged to Myrtis. In this chair I sat, holding a glass of lemonade in one hand and with the other hand I held on to the arm of the chair and with my feet hitched myself all over the room on the slippery new carpet. My father and mother both told me to stop but my Uncle Otto laughed at me and I thought I was funny, so I kept right on. Suddenly, without any warning, my father's hand shot out and grabbed me by the back of the neck and before I knew it I was thrust between his legs and my too agile sit-down was being spanked in none too gentle a manner. This procedure so enraged me I went out in the kitchen and sat on the end of the old lounge and every time my father hove into sight I stuck my tongue out at him, but not when he was looking at me, you may be sure. This stunt seemed to relieve my feelings somewhat. Speaking of whippings reminds me of the night after school when Monkey Marden, my teacher kept me there for some offense I had committed. Only one other pupil kept me company and that was James Cunningham. Monkey Marden lived in Worcester and took a five thirty train home so she was in no hurry and sat at her desk correcting papers. Evidently James felt he had stayed long enough to atone for his sin and so he asked Monkey rather curtly when she was going to let him go. She told him he could go when she got ready to go and not before. He said, "Is that so - well, I'm going now." She grabbed a heavy ruler from her desk and started toward him and he met her half way, yanked the ruler out of her hand and shoved her over a desk. She screamed to me to come and help her and to hand her the ruler, but I was so darned glad to see her getting what she deserved I merely got up and stood there and James said he would break my neck if I helped her. He need not have worried as I had no intention of doing so. When he got thru with her she looked like an old worn out rag doll and James and I did not wait to see what she did or where she went - we beat it out of there at once. He never came back to school, but he had one last revenge and most of us #33. who had to spend a couple of years in her room wished we might say farewell to her in much the same manner James did. One recess it was stormy and we did not go out doors to play. Just a few moments before recess ended I started to eat an apple and had not quite finished masticating the last bite when I reached my seat. Monkey happened to look down and see me and forewith gave a dissertation upon the rules she had made regarding eating and talking after recess. I tried to explain but she would not listen and as a punishment said I should come up on the platform and eat an apple before the class, core and all. She gave me an apple which lay on her desk and I told her I couldn't eat another apple. She threatened me with a whipping so I took a bite and threw the skin in the waste basket. I was told to eat skin, core and all. My dander was up, so I very defiantly threw the whole apple in the basket and walked to my seat. The children all laughed and she was furious. She made me stay after school and I thought I was going to get a whipping (something I never did get in all my days of school) but I guess she got cold feet because she did not whip me. She was very unfair in many ways. Never would let us in the hall out of the cold or heat but would go in and lock the door after her. And when we wanted to go to the toilet or get a drink and raised our hand for permission, she would not look our way and we dared not go without her permission. No other teachers we had did these things. We had many nice Sunday School teachers. Our church was the Unitarian Church and when I was real small the services were held in the town hall, but after awhile a nice little church was built just up the hill, near the school, not far from our house. Our church was more liberal than any other church in town and we had lots of splendid suppers and entertainments and there were many nice people who belonged to that church. The Winters, the Duntons, the Woods, the Livermores, the Rices, the Perrys, the Heywoods, the Newdecks, Spooner and Mary, the Lovells, the Waters and ever so many more whose names do not at this time come to my mind. Mr. Anthony was the organist and he was a sort of ladylike person, so mother and Mrs. Wood always called him Mrs. Anthony. The Newdeck girls led the singing and also the Perrys were singers and had a lot to do with the music in any entertainment which was given. Helen Rice was one of our dear teachers and she was the sweetest thing on earth. She was very frail and often too ill to come to church but she would never forget to send us letters and valentines and gifts and ask us to her house for tea. She died before many years had passed. Emma Wilcox was another fine teacher of ours and we had great fun going to see her in the great big house she lived in down in the center of the town, across from the post office and town hall. She would let us romp all over the house and give us pretty beads and paper dolls. I have some of the beads she gave me and have always treasured them and memories of her. Anna Sears was another nice teacher and we all loved her dearly. Every time there was an entertainment at the church we had to speak a piece and one of the first, if not the very first that I "spoke" was the famous "Night Before Christmas" It made a great hit as mother had taught me to speak it well, with the right inflections at the right place, and I did not seem to be at all frightened to get up and do my stuff. If only that courage had remained with me as I grew older and had to declaim in school. I was so frightened then that I was almost speechless when I rose. Harold was once assigned the part of Little Lord Fauntleroy in a play to be given at the church and altho' I had no part in this play I had to go on the stage with him because he would not perform without me. He was so cute, dressed in his Fauntleroy suit, with his golden curls and big blue eyes - and he brought down the house when he came out on the stage after me and said, "Thereths an earrl thsitten on your cracker barrel." And then he got stage fright and ran off the stage.#34. When Harold was a baby I used to rock him to sleep by throwing myself across the cradle and with my feet on one side and my hands on the other I could get up a fine swaying motion that pleased the baby but still there was no danger of tipping over for I balanced the cradle nicely with my hands and feet. A very dignified manner of doing things, but my way. Harold was subject to croup and one day when he was very ill with it and the Dr. had told mother he could do nothing more for the child, I threw myself across the cradle, while mother was at the door with the Dr., and began to rock Harold violently. Harold was so weak he could not cough up the phlegm which was choking him to death but the rocking started him coughing and a lot of mucus came up and almost instantly he was better. Mother said for once my crazy actions had saved his life, probably. Then there was the day Florence, Hermann and I were plaything together and Florence sent Hermann up the stairs to her house to ask her mother for a handkerchief. Mrs. Rich came to the door and Hermann looked at her and lisped, "Pontie wanths a nackie." Mrs. Rich asked him over and over again to repeat but couldn't understand what he wanted so she called out the window to ask Florence what he was trying to tell her. When she discovered he was trying to say, "Florence wants a hanky" she laughed and laughed and never forgot the phase. A rusty black silk shawl which was in one of the boxes Aunt Clara had sent to us, offered great possibilities of entertainment. Going into conference with Florence, whose ideas seemed to blend nicely with my own, we dug up another black shawl in the attic and draped ourselves so that we looked like a couple of little nuns. Then we sneaked out of the house unseen by anyone and ran up to Mrs. Healy's front yard and kneeling in front of her door we began to sing one of the Hail Mary's we had heard the O'Leary children chant, and after that we became very silly and attempted to imitate the priest as he said the prayers and our voices were high and shrill, each screaming something different, but both using a lot of Gods, Mary's and Jesuses in it. Mrs. Healy came to the door and sent us away. What we thought we were doing is beyond me, for we certainly had never seen any nun perform in this fashion, but I suppose it was our idea of what a nun should do. We did not realize how insulting we were but thought we were vastly entertaining. We went on up to Mrs. Cotter's and repeated the performance. She was most indignant, as of course she should have been, but before she had time to voice her displeasure, Mr. Wood, whose store was next door, heard the commotion and came out and stopped us in short order. What he said to us was aplenty and we slunk home like a couple of whipped pups, greatly ashamed of ourselves. Most of the fun we had with the old clothes that came in the barrel was in the cellar at our house. My father's work bench made a wonderful stage and the boxes Mr. Wood had stored in the cellar made fine dressing rooms and scenery and furniture and seats. After Uncle Tom's Cabin, East Lynn, Way Down East, or any other show had been given in the town hall we immediately reproduced it in the cellar if anyone of us had been fortunate enough to see it, so we could tell the story to the others. We also did a lot of acrobatic work in our spare moments, as we had a trapeze and a tight rope fixed up in the cellar. There was also trapeze out in the clothes yard between the clothes posts. I recall one fine morning when I was performing on this outdoor trapeze and had learned to hang by one foot, the other leg sticking out as far as possible to show it wasn't needed to assist me in this difficult feat. My skirts were over my head and my hair streamed wildly about beneath the skirts. My white drawers slipped down on my thin legs and became mere tights, barely covering my nakedness. My hands waved grandly back and forth and I was greatly pleased with myself and wished someone were near to witness my clever #35. stunt. I looked thru my matted hair from beneath my skirts toward the street which was visible between our house and Naughton's, and Oh Joy of Joys! I beheld Mr. Cooley, the tall, big framed school superintendant, passing. He didn't know me from a bar of soap but I knew him well and with a lusty yell I sang out, "Hey, Mr. Cooley, hoo, hoo, look at me -- one foot." He stopped, draped himself over the fence rail and began to praise me in glowing terms. I did all the stunts I ever heard of for him, some successfully, some not so good, and I'll bet he never saw such an array of amazing and difficult trapeze stunts before. My cup of joy was full to overflowing, for usually Genie pushed me off the trapeze and ridiculed my expert activities with great gusto, but here was one who stayed to look and praise. Mother came out on the porch and he stopped awhile longer to talk to her and the great show was over. Mr. Cooley remembered me the next time he came to visit school and asked me to read aloud to the class, but alas, my pride was severely wounded for he corrected me when I pronounced the word "instead" as my Irish playmates did, namely - instid and could not be convinced I was wrong. My father, being born and reared in Germany, undoubtedly had been accustomed to hearing all the music of the most famous and finest composers, for he played all these lovely, tuneful compositions on his violin and zither and they were as much a part of our life and education as our A-B-C's were. Many, many times in all the years since I was a little child, I have heard these beautiful pieces of music my father used to play, and altho! I have frequently been unable to to name the composition, the melody was as familiar to me as any hymn I learned in our Sunday School. My father used to also teach us little songs which he found in our books and Miss Anna Welch, one of my teachers, discovered the fact that I knew quite a number of nice little songs and had a fair voice, so she always asked me to stand up on the platform and sing the songs to the class once or twice and then the class would join in (the words having been written on the blackboard by the teacher) and we'd have a new song every so often. One catchy little tune I sang had words that ran thusly! "Twenty froggies went to school, Down beside the rushy pool, Twenty little coats of green, Twenty vests all white and clean, "We must be in time," said they, "First we study, then we play; That is how we keep the rule, When we froggies go to school" Aunt Fannie and Uncle Willie Medieke lived in Worcester and in summer they used to walk to our house very often on Sundays and have dinner with us. Aunt Fannie was a wonderful cook and always had a big cake or "Kuchen" and other articles of food in a basket when she arrived, and father would kill a chicken and get plenty of vegetables from the garden and we'd have a great feast. Aunt Fannie played the organ very nicely and after dinner we'd all sing until it was time for our guests to depart. Mother used to get provoked sometimes when the whole German outfit came to the house and immediately began to talk German and she couldn't understand a word they said. She would call their attention to the fact, and they would laugh and talk in English awhile but before they realized what they were doing, back into German they would go. As soon as Aunt Fannie arrived at our house she would go in Mother's room and take off her false frizzies and put them in the bureau drawer and then when she was out in the other room I would try them on, along with her hat.#36. Aunt Fannie had been married before she married Uncle Willie and had a daughter by the first marriage whose name was Ida. She was so small when her own father died she was always called Ida Medieke - taking her stepfather's name. She was eight or ten years older than I but always very nice to me when ever she came to our house or I went to hers. It was a great treat to go up to Aunt Fannie's house as she lived on a busy street in the city and had a big yard filled with flowers and a lovely grape arbor and there was a catholic convent back of the house and it was fun to sit in the grape arbor and watch the nuns as they walked around their nice grounds. Then Aunt Fannie had a basement all finished off like a room or big kitchen and in summer we all used to eat down there as it was nice and cool. Such quantities of food and such wonderful three layer chocolate cake! And scalded milk with great gobs of cream in it and we could have all we wanted. There were always a lot of people at Aunt Fannie's house we did not know - some were friends, a few were boarders I presume. Every room in the house was immaculate. The windows and floors just glistened and the stove was a show piece. The front room with its lovely plush furniture and all the knick-knacks was a work of art and it would take days to see all that was in that room but we were allowed to examine everything and to make ourselves at home. The basement had a swing, or rather a hammock in it, and we could swing out out into the room without hitting anything. All the beds had feather beds on them and when Aunt Fannie made them she used a broom handle to smooth them down by rolling it across the bed, until the bed was straight and smooth as could be. When they sat down to the table to eat there were so many different kinds of food it would have taken a week to pass them all to each person present, so they had the unique arrangement of each person for himself and as soon as they hit the chairs they all started to rise again with a fork in the hand and proceeded to spear whatever they cared for and conveyed in this fashion to the plate before them. No one passed anything but everyone reached and speared or dished with a spoon. Beer was the beverage used as a drink, but as we never had beer at home we did not like it and preferred the scalded milk. Once after cousin Ida Medieke had visited Uncle Otto's home she very earnestly told my father what a terrible experience she had gone thru while there. She had not been given the same sort of food she had at home and she said, "And lard on my bread, Uncle Adolph, lard, and a glass of water, Uncle." That was unheard of in her home. Aunt Fannie was a tall, well built woman, rather stout but not too much so for her height. She had blond hair which was always curled tight - or at least the frizzies, (false) were, and her cheeks were always red and her eyes blue and a smile was always on her face. When she cut bread she always rested the loaf on her stomach and sliced the bread from that angle. She was fond of heavy jewelry and it was not cheap stuff either. A big breast pin and a long, heavy gold watch chain that hung way down below her waist and a very nice gold watch attached to it and tucked into her belt - these pieces were as much a part of her as her hands and feet. On her fingers she wore a heavy wedding ring and a big amethyst ring and sometimes a ring with a big ruby in the centre and diamonds all around it, sometimes an opal ring. And heavy bracelets and diamond earings. And her dresses were tight fitting, basque affairs with lots of beading trimming down the front and the skirts full and long and sometimes ruffled at the bottom. The materials were not gaudy in color, however; I can never recall her in anything but black or blue or deep raisin color. She was jolly and full of fun and loved mother and all of us children very dearly and always brought us toys and goodies. I used to go up and stay overnight very often and often we were taken to the lake, to a German club where we had oceans of fun. Aunt Fannie would dance the waltz for hours, whirling around and around and never bobbing up, so that if a plate were on her head it would not fall off, so steady was she. #37. Aunt Fannie spoke English with scarcely any German accent as she came to this country when she was four years old and had schooling in this country. She didn't always know the exact meaning of words she used but she made no more mistakes than the average person of limited education. Once after I was grown and had obtained a position in the Court House she was greatly pleased and told Uncle Willie when he came in that Edith had just got a prominent position. She meant permanent. Uncle Willie was a short, pudgy man with a flat, bland face which very seldom gave evidence of any emotion stirring from within his body. He had dark eyes and wore glasses and his cheeks were as red as roses and his face must have been washed with soap and rubbed until it looked as tho it were polished, so highly did it shine. Just like a polished apple. He spoke English with great difficulty but understood it better than he spoke it. Ida was a fat, dull appearing girl with small eyes and little intelligence in her countenance. She married young, had a baby within a year and died in childbirth. The baby died a year afterward. Aunt Selma Dasen, father's oldest sister, used to come and see us once in awhile, but she spoke almost no English and it was hard for mother to entertain her if father was not home. Aunt Fannie and Uncle Willie took me to Providence when I was a small girl, to attend the wedding of Aunt Selma's daughter Laura. I met all the german crew down there and it was a wedding of parts, believe me, with a big ball after the ceremony in the home, and a round of feasts and calls for several days afterward. All our german cousins were much older then we were and so we had little contact with them as they were either married or at work when we were small, and it was only one or two of Uncle Gus's younger children who were anywhere near our age. Oh, yes, I forgot, Uncle Otto's youngest daughter, Clara, was a trifle older than Saidee and looked very much like her when they were children. Aunt Emily Roberts only came to see us once a year or so and I can only recall one incident connected with her. She came with Aunt Fannie, whom she was visiting, and Aunt Fannie told mother afterward that she had made Emily buy some peaches to give to us children, altho' Emily did not particularly want to do this. Peaches were no treat to us as we had plenty of fruit in our orchard, so we had scarcely made a dent in the bag and it stood on the table where she had placed it when she came. When she was ready to go she picked up the bag and she guessed she'd take it back home and Aunt Fannie said "I guess you won't take it home: you gave those peaches to the children now don't be so tight - they only cost ten cents." It used to make Aunt Fannie furious because Aunt Emily was so tight fisted. Emma Roberts, one of Aunt Emily's daughters, used to come and see us often. She was much older than we were, but we all liked her. She was a little bit of a person and very neat and clean and old maidish. There were other cousins who used to come to see us occasionally, but they came to see us oftener after they were much older and we were grown up, too. Uncle Otto and his family lived across the river from us for awhile but must have moved to Providence when I was a very small child for I only vaguely remember then in the tall red house near the railroad, and Tilda and Oscar, the two oldest children who were a great deal older than Clara, I do not remember at all in Millbury, but do recall seeing them in Providence at cousin Laura's wedding. Tilda was married then and had a child of her own. She was very frail and did not live very long after she was married. Oscar married and then disappeared and no one ever heard of him again. Uncle Otto's first wife, Aunt Pauline, died when I was a baby, I guess, for I do not recall her at all. He married again in a few years, a widow with two sons, and they came to Millbury to live in the old house they had lived in before. But they came just about the time we left Millbury so we had little contact with them.#38. When Aunt Ada and Uncle Charlie Clark were first married - in 1869 - they lived on the old farm with my grandpa and grandma Barton but after a number of years had elapsed they moved to another town where Uncle Chas. had work in a mill. Ten years after Aunt Ada married, Aunt Mamie and mother married, and Aunt Mamie and Uncle Johnny Stafford stayed on at the old farm and lived there until grandpa died; then they bought a house in Oxford Plains and grandma went there to live with them and was with them until she died. Grandma Julie Barton must have been a tall woman but I can never recall seeing her when she was not bent almost double. She had rheumatism and her poor hands, legs and back were badly crippled. She had sparse white hair and always wore a lace cap with a bow of either black or lavender ribbon on it and I do not remember ever seeing her with glasses on altho' she may have worn them. Her face was rather long and her mouth sunken in somewhat as most of her teeth were gone and if she wore false ones I never saw her with them in her mouth. Her eyes were blue and she whistled to herself the greater part of the time as she sat in her rocking chair. She was full of funny stories and jokes and always had a big, deep pocket in her petticoat and in that pocket were always to be found a few pennies and a bag with peppermints in it. She distributed both the pennies and peppermints to us all very liberally when we went to see her. She was always dressed in black and usually wore a black and whit calico apron, or when she was all dressed up she wore a white muslin apron. She always smelled of arnica for that was in the liniment she used to rub her poor aching legs and back. She worked around the house for years after she was bent over with rheumatism but in the latter part of her life when she lived with Aunt Mamie, she was only able to work at such little jobs as she could do sitting down, such as peeling vegetables, etc. She was a wonderful cook in her younger days and the table always groaned under the weight of food it carried. When the meal was all on the table and everyone seated, grandpa would look into every dish and then search the table with his eyes and finally wind up by saying: "Julie, were there some of them old beans left from last night?" "Yes, David" she would say and painfully and laboriously she would rise and get her cane and hobble way out to the buttry for the beans. Grandpa forever wanted some darn thing that was not on the table and why, no one knew for there was so much to eat before his very eyes he needn't have eaten left-overs. Grandpa David was a very handsome old gentleman and had been a very handsome young one, also, from all reports. He was of medium size and his figure was straight and youthful even when he was old. His head was very beautiful to me. A round face with a pink and white skin and eyes as blue as violets and features cameo-like. His hair was white and lay in ringlets all over his head. I can see him now as I last saw him in life, sitting under the old maple tree in the front yard at the old farm house. Grandma slept in the little bed room off the sitting room down stairs which I have elsewhere described, because she could not climb the steep stairs, but Grandpa slept in a little room upstairs which was over the ell of the house, I believe. It was just a cubby hole but he seemed to like to have that room for his own. As I was only seven when Grandpa died I cannot remember a great deal about him but these few things I have related remain very clearly in my mind. I remember helping grandpa pick apples down in the orchard once. He was on a ladder and would throw them down into an apron I held up to catch them and he told me not to drop them and get a bruise on them or they would rot. And that same day he took me to see a litter of cute pigs back of the barn and the old sow didn't like it when grandpa disturbed her so we could see the little babies. We used to follow him about the barn as he fed the horses and cows and chickens and he would let us jump in the hay when we went up to push it down thru the holes into the stalls. That is about all I can remember of him until the day came when we were summoned to bid him a last farewell at his funeral. #39. Grandpa David died the 12th of March, 1888 in North Oxford, Mass. at the old farm house. The terrrible blizzard of 1888 is well known to everyone in the east and even in other parts of the country as one of the worst in history. It was right in the midst of this blizzard Grandpa was taken ill and died. There were only about two trains each day from Worcester to Oxford in those days and of course the trains did not run when the snow piled up so high, so there was no way to get to the little town. I am not aware of the manner in which Uncle Steve, Grandpa's only son, was informed of his illness, but probably someone managed to get to the station and send a wire. That is how we were informed of grandpa's death. I have heard mother tell how Uncle Steve and some Dr. from the city finally got part way out by train, I think, and were hours wading thru the drifts and finding their way to the farm but too late to assist Grandpa. Mother said it was pneumonia. How many days it was after he died that he was buried, I do not know, nor have I the least recollection of our trip to Oxford and the difficulty, if any, we had getting there, but I can remember the funeral perfectly. Great vast drifts and mounds of white, glistening snow were everywhere and Steve Stafford and I could not play outside at all and the barn was cold and dark and gloomy. We played in the big kitchen with some of Steve's toys and then I remember Aunt Ada came to me and asked me if I wanted to go with her into the parlor and see Grandpa before the funeral. I took her hand and we went into the small, cold room. The casket stood against the inside wall of the room between the door leading to the hall and the door leading to grandma's bedroom. Aunt Ada lifted me up in her arms and held me while I looked at grandpa and he was very white and small and cold. Aunt Ada put her hand on his forehead and stroked it and asked me if I wouldn't like to do the same. I shook my head and squirmed in her arms. She still held me and told me there was nothing to be afraid of and that grandpa would like it, so I, too, stroked his forehead and found out how hard and cold it was. After a little while we went back in the sitting room and there were a lot of people there and all over the house. Presently we were all in the little cold parlor with grandpa and I sat on the old black horse hair sofa next to Josie Clark who was a girl of fifteen then. My mother and father sat a few paces away from us and across the room sat Uncle Steve and Aunt Lizzie and, as usual, Aunt Lizzie had her hat on altho' no one else did and she wasn't going anywhere, either, but she looked better in her hat, she thought, so she always wore it, indoors and out. There were the usual number of veils trailing around her and she was dressed in deepest black. She was the chief mourner and as she sniffed and cried while old Rev. Tyler preached, she smelled something in a little bottle she held in her hand, first from one nostril, then the other. I did not know it was a smelling salts bottle until afterward, as I have never seen one before. I was so greatly interested in Aunt Lizzie's performance I failed to notice that the minister had made some remark which had caused the little group to burst into tears; but my inattention to this little detail was soon brought to my notice by a sharp punch of the elbow of Josie into my ribs, which brought me back to earth for a second, and then Josie bent down slightly and in a stage whisper she hissed, "Cry, you little fool, cry!" Instantly I saw that every one was crying but not being an accomplished actress I couldn't squeeze a tear out try as I did, but I did have the grace to cover up my snicker with my handkerchief. All eyes were on Josie and me and I was glad when the services were over and I could escape to the other room and presently watch some men carry the casket out the door to a big bob sled and put it in a box and very slowly fight their way thru the narrow path which had been snow plowed out as far as the cemetery, and that was not very far, and there they left grandpa in the tomb by the side of the road until he could be buried. It grew dark and presently a large sleigh came to the door to take#40. us all to the old North Oxford Station to get the train for Worcester. We were all packed into the sleigh like sardines and my father stood on a step in the back, hanging on, for there was no seat for him, and as the horses started up, floundering in the deep snow, my father either fell off the step or jumped off and ran back to the house for something. I screamed bloody murder for fear her was going to be left behind and was not able to control myself until he was back again. He told me he could run faster than the horses could go in the snow and I didn't have to cry because he was going to be left. That's all I recall until we were back home and having a grand time wandering around in the narrow paths all over town. That was a famous snow storm and people are still talking about it. After Grandpa died, I do not think the Staffords and Grandma remained on the farm very long, but bought the Oxford Plain house and moved down there where Uncle Johnny had more work as a house painter and the children had better schools to attend. Loren and Jessie Barton, Uncle Sam Barton's son and his wife, lived on the old farm awhile after the Staffords moved away, Uncle Steve owned the farm - he had helped grandpa and grandma for years and paid interest and taxes and so on and it was his after grandpa died. The Staffords home in Oxford Plain was a lovely large square white house with great big airy rooms and plenty of ground all around the house. Aunt Mamie was a small, slight woman with very delicate features and coloring. She had been a very beautiful girl and was always a pretty woman, for her white, soft skin never seemed to grow old and wrinkled and her figure remained slim and girlish to the last. Her hair was blond and she wore it always the same way - a knot at the back of her head and some soft "frizzies" across her forehead. Her eyes were blue and had an inquiring expression in them, due to the fact that she was quite deaf and had been thusly afflicted from the time she was eighteen, when she had measles which affected her hearing. She used an ear trumpet but seldom listened when anyone tried to talk to her for she had a habit of asking so many questions she never had time to listen to the answers and finally no one even took the trouble to tell her anything for she didn't hear it, anyway. She was an artist and had been to Europe with Aunt Clara and also studied in Washington, D.C., before she was married. She painted beautifully but the smell of the turpentine and paint caused her to have a serious stomach disorder which made it impossible for her to paint as much as she would like to have done. She had the reputation of being the most particular housekeeper and dirt fighter of any member of the family, and whenever anyone came to see her she was sure to be taking a bath. Uncle John was a dear soul - very mild disposition and always calm and serene. He loved Aunt May dearly and was so thoughtful and kind to her. He helped her do the work when he came home from his hard day's labor and was never cross or irritable. He was not a large man but seemed to be strongly built. He was as dark as Aunt Mamie was light and I was very fond of him. Aunt May was well educated but Uncle Johnny was not. He was always a little shy and diffident when anyone came to call. Steve Stafford was called "Teety" for years - a name he had undoubtedly bestowed upon himself because he couldn't say Stephen. He was like his father, dark haired and dark eyed and dark skinned, but his features were inclined to be more like his mother - fine and delicate. His hair was curly, too, like the Bartons - altho' Aunt Mamie had straight hair. Steve was a nervous youngster and full of the very devil every moment. He was not still a second but ran and jumped and climbed and played all day long. Gertrude, his sister, was about two or three years younger and she was a gentle, little mother's girl. She was blond, with heavy hair and looked like the Stafford side of the family. She, too, was very agile and quick on her feet and liked to romp and play but in a quieter way as a rule than Steve played. She loved her dolls and playthings and we had many hours #41. of enjoyment together when I visited at the Stafford home. Gertrude was such a quiet, sweet little soul and never lost her temper, while Steve was quite a tease and rather bossy, and sometimes when Gert and I were playing peacefully Steve would appear on the scene and try to bedevil little Gert and make trouble if he could. He would say and do all sorts of things to make her mad but she would never answer back nor act as tho' she heard him and this used to make me so disgusted I would ask her why she didn't hit him or give him sharp words in reply to his insulting remarks. Gert would look at me with an expression of mild astonishment in her eyes, as much as to say, "Why can't you understand?" and then she would reply, drawling the words out in a rather sing song voice, "Well, it make him madder when I don't say anything." And it was the truth, for he used to become furious when she paid no attention to him and finally he would give up in despair and leave us alone. Mother used to wish I might be as gentle and ladylike as Gert and often quoted her as an example of all that was sweet and lovely. One day I was out riding with Mr. and Mrs. Wood and we happened to drive thru a porion of Oxford that was unfamiliar to me. As we lazily jogged along we suddenly saw a lot of children on a lawn and in an instant there was great commotion among them. It looked like the pile-up in a football game and there was a lot of wild yelling and screaming and legs and arms and bodies flying about in every direction. Mr. Wood was amused and stopped to witness the battle. All of a sudden a little figure emerged from the bottom of the heap and with a scream of delight threw itself, like a wild tiger, into the fray again, kicking and fighting like one possessed. "Why, that's my cousin Gert", said I, and forthwith I began to call her by name, at the top of my lungs. Mrs. Wood also called, but so great was the battle Gert did not hear and we simply could not gain her attention for as soon as she came up for air, back she went again, into the fray. We waited for quite a long time, watching the event, but Gert never did hear or see us and we finally had to drive on. Mother would not believe me when I told her about Gert, but Mrs. Wood upheld me, and when Mother asked Aunt Mamie whether Gert had been at this place it developed she had, and that it had been a very fine birthday party given by someone in town who was supposed to be a top notcher. Well, Gert turned that party into a free for all and she was the most bedraggled looking youngster I ever saw when we drove away. So even Gert had her moments, you see. One day Gert and I were strolling thru a field where cranberries grew. We ate quite a number of the berries and were thirsty, so Gert suggested we go over in another field where there was a nice spring in the middle of a boggy mud hole. Someone had boarded up the sides of the spring making it a box-like affair and a shaky lot of planks led out to where the spring was. We walked out to it without mishap and Gert knelt down on the plank to get a drink. I could not wait my turn so stepped on the narrow board that formed a side to the spring and it gave way and in I plunged, head first. It took me so by surprise I was terrified, but I grabbed the side of the spring where the board was still intact and pulled myself half way out, and poor little Gert helped me to get out; but just as I was about to get back on the plank a big snake appeared from the mud, somewhere, and back I went into the spring again. With Gert's help I finally got out and I looked like a chocolate frosted cookie - the mud was inches deep all over me. For some reason we decided Gert better go home and smuggle a covering of some kind out of the house and bring it back to me. She set off and in no time at all was back with a lace tidy from the back of a chair, saying it was all she could get away with as her mother kept following her around and asking where I was and what she wanted. Aunt May soon found out where I had been and she had to laugh when she saw the tidy Gert had brought me for protection.#42. A tub of water was placed in the barn and I was stripped and washed several times before I looked human again, and then Aunt May had the job of washing all those muddy clothes and my hair, etc. About the same sort of a job my mother had when cousin Minnie fell into the cess pool, only this was not as smelly as task as mother had. It must have been a joy to Aunt Mamie to see the last of me but I always had a good time at her house, even if she didn't have so much fun entertaining me. Playing tag was a favorite sport when I was a youngster and I'd run when I was chased until I nearly dropped, rather than let anyone tag me. When I felt my strength and wind departing, I usually tried to find a tree or a high place to shimmy up to, so I could gain a moment's rest from my pursuer. Steve chased me so long and so hard one day when we were playing that I ran to a big cherry tree and scrambled up before he could touch me, but he came right up after me. I kept on going, higher and higher and he was right behind me, so I ventured out on a limb and hung there by my hands hoping he would not come after me, but he did, so rather than have him tag me I jumped, or rather, let go, and fell to the ground; but knowing he would be right on top of me I assumed a crouching position when I fell, thinking it would assist me in moving fast when I hit the ground. It didn't. Instead, it knocked my jaws shut as my knees hit my chin; and aside from that injury Steve fell right on top of me, which did not add to my comfort. I was taken into the house and a Dr. called and for several days had liquid thru a straw (some of my teeth being missing at that period of my life but none knocked out by the fall, fortunately) and after I could open my mouth and eat I was sent home. It did not cure me of the habit of going to high places when I was chased in a tag game, however, for shortly after that I was playing tag at home, over in Rich's yard, and Everett Rich, who ran like a deer, chased me so long that I ran up in the barn and climbed up on one of the beams in the hay mow and Everett came right after me. I was so excited. I crawled along the beam until I came to the window which was opened, as the men were putting in hay, and when Everett was almost upon me, with hand outstretched to tag me, I leaped out the window, two stories and a half, into some burdock bushes below. I cleared a hen house in my wild leap and it was only the heavy burdock bushes that saved me from breaking my neck or legs or what have you. Everett did not follow in this case and so I looked up at him standing in the window and stuck my tongue out and said, "You never touched me, smartie." Back to Gert again. The Staffords had an old horse, Billy, that was so fat he could scarcely waddle. He was not used very much but occasionally Grandma was taken out in the old long, low phaeton which had been in the family for years and was saved just for grandma's convenience. Old Billy was so slow and poky Aunt May would let us take him to drive up to Mr. Eager's store which was quite a jaunt on foot in the hot sun, and we would sometimes go as far as the cemetery with flowers for the graves. One day we were driving up to the store for a quart of beans and Gert decided she would save herself work if she ordered a lot of beans instead of just a quart. She asked for ten quarts and Mr. Eager looked at her and said "Oh, you are going to have a lot of music in your home, aren't you, Gertrude?" We laughed all the way home and told Aunt May what he had said and she had to laugh, too. Aunt May was very fond of cats and had about a half a dozen of her own and everyone in town who had a cat to dispose of left it at her door, knowing it would have a good home. Steve used to mix up the most awful messes in summer and take them out under the apple tree in the yard and make us pay a pin to get a drink, which we didn't want after we got it. There would be molasses, cinnamon, ginger, honey and God knows what else, in the concoction, and it would make us sick to drink it, but he seemed to like it. #43. Once Aunt Ada invited Steve and me down to Webster and we were taken down to the Lake and stayed at Uncle Lyman's cottage over Sunday. Uncle Charlie thought it would be nice, on Sunday morning, to take Steve and me in the row boat, over to a lovely sandy shore on the opposite side of the lake where the bathing was much better than on the Island where the rocks hurt our feet and the water too deep for us. It was a very windy day but the sun was shining brightly and Steve and I were thrilled because we were to have a nice boat ride and could troll for fish on the way over and then have a nice time paddling around in the water. We had our bathing suits on but Uncle Charlie didn't as he was not fond of the water and never went in bathing. He got the boat out of the boat house and up to the side of the wharf. Steve and I were told to get in and sit together in the bow of the boat to make weight so he could row better in the wind. We were nicely seated and then Uncle Charlie, long, lean and angular, [*and cross-eyed,*] stepped in and attempted to push the boat away from the wharf. No success. The wind was so strong it drove us right up the side of the wharf as fast as he pushed the boat away. He swore softly at first, then stood up and with an oar tried to push the boat away from the whar. Wham, bang, went the boat at each attempt, and after much fierce cursing he finally succeeded in getting away a few feet, and grabbing the oars he worked like mad to get out into the lake. We were bobbing around like egg shells but Steve and I were having the time of our lives. Suddenly Steve noticed Uncle Charlie didn't have his coat on and he whispered to me that he bet he left it on the wharf. We tried to stifle our giggles but Uncle Charlie heard us and asked what the hell we were giggling over. We told him he had left his coat and instantly the air was blue with curses. He cursed us, our parents, our grandparents, our children to be and everything from A to Z. He was the most picturesque swearer I had ever known and I knew a few good ones, and I was no slouch at the job myself. His watch, pipe, keys and everything were in his coat, and besides it was not safe to leave it there until we got back for the steamer stopped there and other boats came and went; so laboriously he turned around and went back. We nearly dashed the brains out of the boat trying to land somewhere near the place he had laid his coat, and I never did understand why the trip wasn't called off, he was so full of rage, but he was determined to go if it was the last thing he did. Again he went thru the same heartbreaking manoeuvers with as little success, swearing until he was utterly exhausted. With the oar he tried again to push the boat away far enough to enable him to start to row before the boat banged up against the wharf again, and in his endeavor to give it a mighty shove, he lost his balance and over he went, head first into the water and out of sight. Steve and I almost choked to death trying to keep from laughing, but we did, and after Uncle Charlie had changed his clothes he took us to another wharf on the calm side of the island and found a boat there in which he made his getaway without mishap and we had our swim at the beach after all. He was a good old scout to do this for us. Steve Stafford used to visit us during the summer vacation and he generally had as many accidents and mishaps while he was at our house, as I had when I visited at his house. Once he jumped out of the dining room window, which was two stories from the ground, and sprained his ankle. Gertrude seldom could be coaxed to stay overnight anywhere away from her home and mother. Once, when she really did allow her mother to drive off and leave her behind at our house, we had a terrible time with her when bedtime came. She cried and cried for her mother and could not be consoled, altho' we all did everything we could think of to take her mind off of her sorrow. She wanted to go home right then and there, but that was out of the question. What a blessing it would have been had telephones been in evidence then. Her mother's voice would have quieted her and she would have been happy and we would have had some sleep, too. Mother had to leave a light burning in the bedroom for her as she was accustomed to having#44. having one, but we never had one in our room and wouldn't sleep with the light in the room. Agitated as poor little Gert was, she finally fell asleep from pure exhaustion only to be awakened in a short time by the flare and glare of a terrible fire up toward Bramanville. All the fire apparatus went by our house and made such a noice it awakened all of us. Poor little Gertie set up a terrific wailing when she saw the flames in the sky, and in the direction of Oxford, too. She was sure it was her home that was burning, and what a night we had trying to quiet her and convince her everything was all right. We promised to take her to the Natural History Building in Worcester the next day, which we did, and we made the mistake of returning her to Millbury instead of letting her go home to Oxford, and again we had the same picnic with her at night. The next day she was taken home and I do not recall any more overnight visits she ever made at our house. Uncle John always had a wonderful garden and he worked in it every night and morning, and kept the yard delightfully clean and trim. Aunt Mamie had flowers galore inside and outside the house and, like mother and Aunt Ada, delighted so in having plants, it seems as tho' they very well knew how they were loved and made a special effort to grow better for these three sisters than for anyone else. My mother could coax any old half dead plant back to life and it would outdo itself to repay her for the loving care she had given it, and Aunt Mamie and Aunt Ada could do the same thing. They all loved gardens and trees and flowers and woods. And Uncle Steve had a perfect mania for the woods and trees and water. Many a picnic lunch we have had in the old Oxford and Auburn woods with him. And after the lunch he would fish some little stream nearby, which he had fished when a boy, and usually return with a catch of some sort to make his day perfect. And we always came home with our baskets and arms full of flowers - sometimes laurel, sometimes daisies and buttercups and in the spring it would be arbutus. He knew were every variety grew and if we were anywhere within a radius of two miles from the cemetery we'd go that way and stop and decorate the graves. The grave of any member of our family was never neglected and even school mates of mother were given attention if they were buried in the old cemetery. My grandma had planted water lilies in the little pond at the foot of the cemetery hill and we loved to go down there and try to reach for and fish out a few lilies when they were in blossom, but it was seldom we could reach more than one or two. Three or four yards from the little pond was a lovely stretch of deep woods and when we wanted flowers we simply went into the edge of this wooded tract of land and found ferns and lady slippers and violets and all sorts of beautiful wild flowers. I am sure I have had more real pleasure during my life roaming thru the woods and gathering flowers and listening to birds sing, than anything else I have ever done. It seems strange that I have been destined to spend all my life in places where it has not very well been possible to have more than a few house plants and where I seldom have a chance to wander in a field or thru a wood. But I have enjoyed my little porch boxes and house plants for they grow for me as mother's did for her. Whenever we visited Grandma and Grandpa in Oxford we went thru the fields in back of the house until we came to the mild, cool, fragrant woods and found a path which led to a beautiful spot where all the dear old horses that my grandpa had loved and cared for and finally put out of the way were buried. There were also some of Uncle Steve's favorite dogs buried there, and altho' these dear creatures had been dead and buried years before any of us were born, we knew the names of all the dogs and horses and where each and every grave was, for Mother had told us. #45 The O'Leary family - Irish - lived next door to us, in Dan Naughton's tenement house. Beside the father and mother, there were six children - Timmy, Johnny, Mamie, Aggie, Theresa and Georgie, and a boarder, Jerry Quill, just over from Ireland and he played the concertina on the back steps every summer night and sometimes get so drunk he couldn't find his way up to his room on the third floor, in the attic, so he usually slept off his drunk in the back yard, and we'd all rush to the window to see him lying there in the early morning. Some early riser usually came out and dragged him in and the show was then all over. The O'Learys' home consisted of four small rooms - 2 bed rooms and a front room and kitchen, and where Mrs. O'Leary parked her family during the night has always been a mystery to me. She was a short, fat, red-headed, pug nosed woman and was everlastingly baking bread for her family. She would take a hair pin out of her hair and open the oven door and then test the bread with the hair pin to see if it were done. How fragrant it smelled. She always gave us all a big slice with butter on it if we were around when it came out of the oven. It she wasn't baking bread she was washing. I can see the soap suds in the tub now, and the steam which filled the small room. Mr. O'Leary drove a coal wagon about town, delivering. There were plenty of trees in the Naughton yard and plenty of acreage upon which the six kids could play, but they always seemed to prefer our yard and they stole our fruit regularly because old Mrs. Naughton kept very strict watch over her property and the O'Learys seldom had a chance to get away with any fruit from that place. She always had her eye glued to the window behind the blinds, and we were all afraid of her - she looked like old Queen Victoria - and as soon as we did the least thing she did not approve of she would call out to us and we'd all run like blazes. Why we ran I do not know, for she was up in the second floor of the house, and fat as she was she could not possibly get down stairs fast enough to do us harm, but anyway, we were scared to death of her. Every morning I used to rise very early and go out to our nice orchard to gather the fruit which had fallen off the trees during the night, and just as sure as morning came, so came an O'Leary to get the fruit first, if possible. I never failed to meet one either coming or going or already on the premises, and then there would be a battle, for I would chase them right into the house and try to get the fruit from them but rarely succeeded. If it were one of the younger ones I usually won out, but if it happened to be Timmy or Johnny I generally lost out for they could run as fast as I and would scoot up the stairs and lock the door before I could burst in. Their hens were never cooped up but were allowed to ramble and roam all over creation and that meant that they were in our garden most of the time. Oh, the fights we have had over those pesky hens and the damage they did to our flower and vegetable gardens. We all used to get so mad we could have committed murder. Talking did no good - they would not shut the hens up and that was all there was to it. Timmy, Mamie and Aggie were the ones we liked the best of the bunch and we had many nice games of tag and hide and go seek every night before dark in our yard. One hot day in summer, after I had been playing in the sun all morning, my mother called me into the house, fed me, gave me a nice bath and some lemonade, and after a rest on the old family lounge in the kitchen (which lounge my father made - it looked like a coffin except it had a raised head piece and was covered with calico and mother kept blankets in it -) I was dressed in a brand new pink and white checked dress which mother had just finished; my hair was nicely curled in two rows and I was allowed to wear my best shoes. I was then started off to the library down town to change my book, and just as I was going out the front door Hiram Hayes drove by in his cart. He sold ice cream and usually rang a bell so all might hear him coming, but this day he was negligent and did not ring un-#48. I used to dance with Spooner and also with my dear father, who danced well. At the Unitarian Church suppers, held in the town hall before the Church was built, there was always dancing after the supper had been served. And a great many people attended these dances and what fun we all had! We knew every room in the old town hall and ran up and down stairs, sliding down the banisters and romping all over the place. And the good things to eat that were served by the ladies of the church! Sometimes Spooner and Mary would come over to our house in the evening and Spooner would insist upon playing the organ while my father played the violin. Spooner could only play a cord or two and made many discords and never changed the cord when he should have done so, and all this irritated my father exceedingly. He never liked to play with anyone who could not play correctly. Mary used to take me to Providence with her once in awhile to visit her sister, and her nephew would take me out on the water for a boat ride. The waves on the water of the portion of the ocean where this nephew used to row the boat were quite high and it used to frighten me but I did not dare say so for fear he would laugh at me. Spooner and Mary were always very good to us. They gave us presents very often and we pestered them to death running in and out of their house so many times each day. Mary once gave me a great, big doll, almost as large as myself. After my Uncle Otto moved back to Millbury Spooner and Mary had to leave Uncle Otto's house, so they moved back into one of my father's apartments, where they had lived once before. Mary used to try to break me of the habit of squinting and promised me a ring if I wouldn't do it, but I never got the ring because I could not seem to stop squinting. It probably was because, even at that early age, I needed glasses, and because I did not have them I squinted, in order to see better. Sometimes we used to go down to the edge of the water and climb into the big trees that grew on the banks of the river, and we'd get on to a branch that overhung the water and swing back and forth. It was very dangerous and we were warned never to go near the water or those trees, but we did, just the same. Mary and Spooner lived right across the river on the opposite bank, and could see us from their windows when we played near the water, so we did not get much of a chance to swing in the branches before one or the other of them would shout for us to get away from the water, and we scampered. One late afternoon, just before dark, mother sent me on an errand to Dunton and Winter's store. Returning, I got as far as the railroad tracks when the bells began to ring a warning and the gates went down to let the White Mt. Express train fly past. It raised such a dust as it sped past I closed my eyes and lowered my head, but all of a sudden I heard a terrible thud right beside me and someone shouting something, and when I looked, there was a black, bloody torso lying right beside me. The head, one arm and both legs were gone and it was a frightful spectacle. It unstrung me so completely I rushed home and into the house and buried my head under my mother's apron, crying so hysterically it was impossible to tell mother what had happened. It developed a Frenchman named Ducharme has boarded the express train in Worcester, thinking it was the local, which followed the express, and when he saw the train wasn't going to stop at Millbury, he jumped off. The head was hurled into the river and never found, and arms and legs flew in every direction. Another foot or two and the body would have struck me. Jim Cotter, standing on the station platform, had seen the man jump and had called to me to look out, but the roar of the train drowned his voice. A miss is as good as a mile, however. Another night a horse ran away and bolted down the tracks and onto the bridge over the river, where he fell and broke his legs. We all went down to see them get the horse off the tracks before a train came along. Very thrilling, but not the most lovely sight in the world to see the poor horse shot and dragged off the bridge. #49. Millbury, as it's name implied, was a small mill town lying almost directly south of Worcester, about seven miles, and a large part of it's population was foreign - Irish, French and German - and most of these people were employed in the cotton mills. There were a large number of these mills for such a small town, both in the upper and lower villages. Millbury was a fairly pretty little town with many fine, large trees, elm and maple, principally, bordering it's streets and gracing many lawns. There were many nice, old homes scattered throughout the town and most of them were well kept. The center of the town had a village square and a covered platform, where the village band performed, was erected in front of the Post Office in the town hall. The red brick town hall was a "mighty structure" for those days, being quite sizable - three stories, I believe, and it housed the Post Office, Library and Fire Department, and there were also two halls for entertainment, - the Town Hall, which was the largest hall, and Blanchard Hall, which was used for dances and smaller entertainments, and at one time was used by the Unitarian Church for their services. There were several general stores which carried every thing, as mother used to say, from a privy to a pulpit. In Bramanville there were two stores, Tom Winter's and Horne's, and in the center of town were Cronin's, Sweetser's and dear old Dunton and Winter's. There were lots of smaller stores, too - Goddard's shoe store, Cunningham's Supply store, Thompson's Drug store, Water's market, Bowen's jewelry store, Henry Hooper's barber shop and so on. There were three school buildings with grades from first to and including the eighth in each building, and a very nice high school. After graduating from the graded schools we were all allowed to go to the same high school. And we had very excellent teachers, too. Millbury schools were as good as they came, anywhere, in those days. There were any number of churches - Dr. Putnam's Congregational Church in Bramanville; the old Congregational Church in the center of town on Main Street; the Methodist and Baptist Churches; the Unitarian Church; the French Catholic and Irish Catholic Churches - enough to keep all hands and the cook in good standing. The Turtlelotte House, run by John White, in the lower village, and The St. Charles Hotel in Bramanville, were the only hotels in town that I recall. Gene Wood's drug store and Pete Bellville's were both in the Bramanville District but supplied the center of town also. There were saloons in town (the drug stores all sold liquor illegally) and many of them, I dare say, but the only one I can recall is Jim Welch's, over near the depot. The town was on the main line from Worcester to Providence and there were trains going one way or the other about every half hour. Very good service. At first there was an old bus line run by a Mr. Kilty, but after a few years it was discontinued and an electric car line to Worcester installed. The Blackstone River ran thru the town and in the old days, before I was born it used to be a canal from Worcester to Providence, but I cannot remember it as such. It was a beautiful river to look at but terrible to inhale, if you get my meaning. It was polluted by the sewer from Worcester and it was very odorous at times, altho' steps had been taken to cleanse it of its filth. The Purifying Works, up toward Worcester were supposed to work wonders for it, but they didn't. It still smelled to high heaven, and in this day and age no one would stand for such an outrage. This river supplied power to the mills in the lower village, and Singletary Pond favored the upper village. Singletary Pond was a beautiful body of water and many a fine church picnic we had on it's shores. We lived just between Millbury Center and Bramanville, but a trifle nearer the center of town - just west of the river and over the bridge. The railroad tracks and depot were on the other side of the river from our house and when the leaves were off the trees we could see the trains come and go from our windows, but they were not near enough to disturb us.#50. My father worked in Worcester as a loom repair man, in Crompton and Knowles Loom Works, and he left for his work very early in the morning and did not return until late at night. He must have worked very hard. Our house was a two story and a half dwelling, clapboarded, and painted a yellowish green, as I recall it. There were no blinds on the house and it greatly distressed me because there weren't any. It would have been much more attractive had there been blinds or even a contrasting color around the window frames. There were beautiful, large elm trees on both sides of the street, all the way up to Bramanville. The house stood not more than eight or ten feet back from the sidewalk so that we had very little front yard and the land sloped from the front to the back so that the rear of the house was much lower than the front and it was a full story from the cellar to the first floor, while the front of the house was flush with the street. As the house had once been a stable, my father had left the big door in the rear, leading to the cellar, just as it had been when he used that space to store his carriages and other things. When this large door was pushed way back on its track, it flooded the cellar with light and air and made a wonderful place to play on cold or rainy days, or on any kind of day, in fact. The front of the cellar was partitioned off into two private rooms - one for us and one for the Woods', and these two cellars were always kept locked as fruits and vegetables and garden implements were kept there. The rest of the cellar was all open to us and we used it for everything and played there a great deal, it was so nice and airy and light. A covered well stood under the stairs that led up to our apartment, and my father's long, wide work bench stood on one side of the cellar, and toward the back were the coal bins and lots of boxes that Mr. Wood brought over from the store to use as kindling. We used these boxes for stage settings when we gave a play, and the work bench was the platform. We had swings and tight ropes and trapezes and all sorts of playthings in the cellar, - yes, and even quarrels, quite frequently. A large tract of land lay behind the house and there were trees of all sorts scattered over the land - apple, pear, peach, plum and so on. There was a lane which ran from the street down thru our property (father's four family house was on the other side of this lane) to Maloney's house, which was way down in the field below our houses. This was a right of way which Maloney had, in order to get to his home. There was an easier and quicker way he could reach his home, further up the street, near Tom Barrow's, so our lane was seldom used by the Maloney family. Apple and pear trees grew on either side of it and there were large vegetable gardens on the sides, too. Our garden was fenced in. Mrs. Wood had her garden back of ours but Genie did not take very good care of it and it was usually all weeds after the first joy of planting it was over. We had all sorts of nice things in our garden, and father kept it in fine shape. The approach to our grand garden was thru an arbor, covered with grape vines. Passing thru this arched arbor one came to the double toilets which were covered with morning glory vines. Gates on either side of the toilet led into the garden, which was directly behind. There was another grape arbor at the end of the garden but it could not be entered thru the garden as the fence interfered. The old barn was on the opposite side of the lane from our house and back of the barn were the hen coops. An apple tree grew up in the middle of the hen coop roof. Father probably built the coop around the tree, rather than cut it down. The tenants in the other house had their gardens in back of the barn. They were nice gardens, too. The four family house had a big cellar, too, and we could get into it from the outside and used to play there, or hide in the tenants cellars when we were playing hide and go seek. They were dark and it was spooky in there and no one could find us when we ran in there, so we came in free unless there happened to be a rule made which barred us from hiding there. The tenants were not keen about having us climb all over the things #51. in their cellars but what they did not know did not hurt them, and we played there whether or no. Old Tyler's field, a very large one, lay right in back of our property and sometimes a circus or the gypsies came and camped there and when they did everyone in the neighborhood had to watch out or they would steal hens horses or anything they could lay hands on. After they had gone we sometimes found a dime or beads or other trinkets where they had camped. And what a thrill to go to the circus performances at night, with the torch lights illuminating the grounds and music playing and everybody in town milling around the tents. I used to be able to recite the names of every person in every house on nearly every street in town but many of the names have escaped my memory now. There were the Paines, Putnams, Marshes, Hornes, Laphams, Shaws, Kilties, Lombards, Carters, Neudecks, Whitemillers, Durstoffs, Hoopers, Gammels, Noonans, Kinnereys, Powers, Winters, Joslins, Streeters, Dysons, Livermores, Mallorys, Barrows, Fergusons, Molts, Maloneys, Webbers, Woods, Riches, Batchelors, Dodges, Holmans, Brierly, Mathewsons, Riellys, Cotters, Carrols, Broadbents, Gants, Bellvilles, Booth, Reardon, O'Learys, Sheas, Van Ostrands, Bucks, Tolman, Sweetser, Welches, Buckleys, Sears, Wallings, Hakes, Armsbys, Cunninghams, Greenwoods, Hulls, Cummings, Wilcoxes, Allens, Goulds, Wheelers, Merriams, Rices, Heywoods, Marbles, Dudleys, Hoyts, York, Strattons, Kimballs, Whites, Govers, Millers, Cliffords, Fairfields and dozens of others whose names do not come to my mind at this instant. The house we lived in was two stories and a half high and was built to house two families. We lived on the first floor. There was a porch or piazza, as we always called it, across a part of the front of the house; the other portion was taken up by a bay window in the parlor. Mother had lots of plants on the piazza, on a stand, in the summer, and the windows were full of house plants in the winter. She could make anything grow. The front door was at the west end of the front and led into a small front hall which was L shaped. One door from the hall led into mother's bed room; the other led into the parlor. All the rooms in the house were quite spacious, tho' not overly large. The parlor had at first an ingrain carpet on the floor with straw beneath it. After a few years this carpet was put into a bed room and a bright colored Brussels affair laid in the parlor with papers beneath it. It had a tan background and bright red and yellow and blue roses scattered thru it. On the walls were some good looking pictures Aunt Mamie had painted, a crayon of Aunt Clara, and on an easel stood a crayon of father - but this came only after father died. There was an open grate Franklin stove beneath the mantel and it made a cheerful spot in the room when it was burning with logs in the grate. There was an organ, a center table, two whatnots, on the wall, a lounge and a rocking chair, all of black walnut, which furniture had belonged to Uncle Steve and Aunt Joyce, but was given our parents when Aunt Joyce died. There were four black walnut straight backed chairs, too. A hassock, a small clover leaf table my father made and a rope table I made which must have been a work of art. Made out of the frame of an old sewing machine, and Lisa Flagg helped me make it. A gorgeous hanging lamp in the center of the room; books in both whatnots; Books on the table; encyclopedias (Chambers) in another rack on the floor; two lovely old vases which were wedding presents to mother from father's mother; stood on each end of the mantel, and there were photographs, and the usual array of knick-knacks on the shelf, also; lace curtains and "lambrequins" over the curtains; a big rocker painted black; pussy willows or cat o nine tails, according to season in a jar that Aunt Mamie had painted.#52. There were tidies on the backs of every chair and over the corners of some of the pictures. About a dozen colored and blown egg shells strung on different colored ribbons, hung from the hanging lamp, as an ornament. The room was papered in tan with big gold figures in it. Very swell. Mother's and father's bed room had a carpet on the floor, and the furniture was pine, painted yellow with black stripes adorning it and black walnut fancy handles for the drawers. There was the bed, bureau, commode, table, towel rack, two chairs and a small stove, in the winter. Two or three pictures on the walls. Plants in the window. Back of the parlor and out of this bed room was the kitchen, with its sheathing of pine half way up and the wall painted brown the rest of the way. A big stove stood near the parlor door. Either coal or wood could be burned in it and it had a water tank on the side of it, while a big copper tank holding water, stood on the back of the stove, always. Then there were two iron teakettles for water, also. The dish cupboard was close to the stove and held all mother's lovely china and glass ware, and on the floor we were given space for our toys. The old black walnut table, oval, stood between the two windows, and a shelf, with a clock of black walnut, and other odds and ends of things on it, was fastened on the wall over the table. Father's chair stood under one window and the other kitchen chairs were pushed under the table to take up as little room as possible. An old, hard, home made lounge rested against the wall opposite the table, and it was built by father so that the top would come off and bedding could be stored away in it. Mother's sewing machine stood in the corner near the other window, and a rocking chair in the center of the room. A desk belonging to my grandfather, and given to mother, stood near the door. Back of the kitchen was the pantry, or sink room, as we called it. The iron sink with a pump in it, and a drain board the other side of the sink, stood before the one window, and the rest of the space in the small room was given over to cupboards and shelves which contained all the cooking utensils and foods used in cooking. There was a sliding, small door at the end of the pantry; this was used to pass food and dishes thru to the room beyond which was used as a dining room in summer. Leading directly from the kitchen and lying right in back of mother's room was another bed room, furnished much as mother's room was furnished, with the same kind of furniture, but usually containing two beds, and this room was where we children slept. There was a closet in this room and one had to step up a step to get into it. In the closet were trunks and clothes. The kitchen was sunny and pleasant, facing the east. We could look across the drive into the windows of the four family house opposite. A step up from the kitchen and one entered a hall or back room where tubs, brooms and all sorts of things were kept. The Woods passed thru this hall when coming up the back stairs, to get to their apartment, upstairs. There were also stairs in the front hall leading up to their home, and on up to the attic. Out of this back hall there was this other room, used as a dining room in summer, and as a spare room for unexpected guests, in the winter. It was very cold and hard to heat, so was only used in an emergency in the winter. It was lovely room with two windows in it and a nice closet, and the ice chest was always kept there. There were three rooms plastered and finished off in the attic and used for bed rooms. That is, there was a bed in ours, but my play house took up most of the room and we seldom used the bed to sleep in. Mrs. Wood used the other two rooms and had bedroom furniture in them. The rest of the space was open attic and we played out there a lot, too. The ell of the house came up to these attic windows and altho' the roof slanted at a dangerous angle, we used to climb all over it and it is a wonder we never fell off of it and were killed, as it was two stories high from the ground. #53. Christmas was a great event in our house. At least a couple of weeks before Christmas arrived, we were all very busy making things to adorn the christmas tree. We had boxes full of ornaments but each year we added a lot more finery to that which we already had, and we always had to pop corn, and then string it in long chains, to use as part of the important decoration of the tree. We made gold and silver stars and any pretty, bright piece of paper we found was made into some sort of an ornament for the tree. Father sometimes would go up in Carter's woods to get a tree - wading thru the deep snow, into the woods, chopping the tree down and carrying it home to us, and then setting it up and helping us trim it. Other times he would buy a tree in Worcester and bring it home on the train, and we'd run to meet him and try to assist him with it. We would go into the woods and gather evergreen and make wreaths and chains of it to decorate the house. The day before Christmas found us all very busy trimming the tree and getting our presents ready, but when evening came we always went to the Unitarian Church to enjoy the Christmas service and speak a piece, and get our presents from our Sunday school teachers and the present the church always gave us. As soon as this service was over we'd race home and help father and mother put the last touches on the tree, and then we'd light it and nearly burst with excitement when a candle caught fire and had to be extinguished. Someone always stayed in the room to watch the candles for fear a fire might start. The Woods' came down and Mary and Spooner came over and it was great fun, for we could stay up rather late and eat candy and nuts. We were not given any of our presents the night before Christmas, but were told if we didn't get to bed in good season, Santa would come and find us still up, and would pass right by the house. We all firmly believed in Santa and as our house had no fire place for him to descend, we were told he came thru the door, and we'd lie awake just as long as we could hold our eyes open, waiting to hear him come up the back stairs. The next morning, Christmas day, we bounded out of bed at the crack of dawn and piled into bed with father and mother, giving them no peace until they arose and started the fire and lighted the lamps, as we were so anxious to see what Santa had left under the tree. Golly was it ice cold in those old rooms - the parlor was like a refrigerator and it took a long time to get the room heated so we could stay in there with any degree of comfort. We'd race in there and grab a package and run back to the kitchen fire to open it. The presents were simply wonderful. There was always a beautiful doll for me from Myrtis, and other nice and useful gifts from friends and relatives, and we had toys galore, too. Mother had the pantry filled with cakes, pies and puddings, and we had baked chicken with dressing, and onions, squash, potatoes and hot biscuits and every good thing imaginable. The food smelled so good when it was cooking, we could scarcely wait until it was time to eat. The afternoon was spent in visiting our neighbors and enjoying their Christmas trees and looking at the toys on display and sometimes playing with them, and then going back to our house and playing some more with our things. We were a tired crew when night came. We had very cold winters and the snow and ice came early and stayed late. Almost every day we slid down the old common hills on our sleds, and when the snow was not too deep and we could sweep off the ice from the little pond across the road, we'd have a chance to skate. The river overflowed its banks just enough to flood over Gover's field and make a fine skating pond, and we could put our skates on in the house and walk across the road onto the pond. Very good for the skates, but it helped a lot because our hands did not get so cold as they did when we tried to put on our skates outdoors. The old straps etc. on the type of skate we used in those days were hard to manage and it was nice to adjust them#54. in the house. We always had a case or two of chilblains every winter, and would cry and cry because our poor hands and feet ached and stung so. Mother was busy all winter long nursing our frost bites. Wet shoes, stockings, leggings and drawers must have been the bane of her existence. Sometimes we could slide for miles on our sleds, in a sloping meadow when the snow was frozen to a firm, diamond-dazzling crust. Once I slid belly bump fashion, down Carter's lane in the cow pasture, and forgot the bars were not taken down, and before I could stop or throw myself down on the ground, I crashed into the fence and nearly knocked my few brains out. It stunned me for a few seconds, but I managed to get home where mother bathed my head and I was soon all over it. There was usually a party at Carter's house in the winter and we had great fun, as we could roam all over their big house and also play in the barn awhile. We played games and had a wonderful supper, with ice cream and cake and candy and many other nice things. Usually everyone brought a present of a cup and saucer. It seemed to be the only thing we could think of to give to the person who was having a birthday. Every once in awhile mother would take us to a photographer's studio either in Millbury or Worcester, to have our pictures taken. Most of my baby pictures were taken at Chritcherson's, 326 Main Street, opposite old Mechanic's Hall, in Worcester, and Hermann's were taken at Baker and Knight, 406 Main Street, Worcester, Saidee's and Harold's were taken at Stewart's, in Millbury, and some of our group pictures were also taken at this studio. E. B. Luce of Worcester, had a studio also in Millbury and some of our pictures were taken there. The famous group picture of us was taken by Luce, and it is a gem. Mrs. Wood curled Sade's hair on a poker and the poor child was so proud of her curls she dared not move her head for fear the curls would disappear. I rested a heavy hand on the poor child's shoulder, dragging her down in a lop-sided position, but it is a good picture of her just the same - her little, half frightened expression is very characteristic of her. She looks as tho' she were about to play teaching school when she would sit in her little red chair and with a wee ruler point at the old blackboard and say to her imaginary pupils, in a crisp little voice, "Skullers, this is a Christian mark". Or, "Skullers, two times what is how many?" How Mr. Wood used to love to listen to her when she was teaching school! To get on with the picture I was describing: I came next, with my face rather serious and my hair neatly banged and curled and a band of black velvet holding my curls in back of my ears, but two curls were allowed to hang over each shoulder for effect. My dress was a brown andred plaid, made bodice style, with the upper part of the waist of dark red and the cuffs of the same material, the bodice was trimmed with a fluting of the red material. Hermann sits beside me, wrapped in a brown study - his mind far away, apparently. Harold stands on a box, I think, behind and between Hermann and me, with a little Lord Fauntleroy suit adorning his small person, and he looks as tho' he knew his onions, all right, and believe me, he did. This picture was taken in 1893, when I was twelve, and I recall the day it was taken as I was excused from school to go to the photographer's and was so excited I could scarcely contain myself until it was time to go. There is another picture of Hermann and me taken when we were about four and six or thereabouts. Hermann is just adorable in this picture. He is seated on a "rock" and his hands are folded peacefully in his lap and his shapely legs, encased in high black shoes, are crossed in a graceful manner. His head is beautiful - fair hair cut boyishly and falling in the careless, carefree lines that follow the contour of his fine shaped head. His blue eyes are dreamy and his little face has such a pensive expression on it, - really, it almost makes me cry to gaze at that serious, sad little face. His simple little dress of dark red satin has a big box pleat down the front of the waist and the skirt is a #55. box pleated affair attached to the waist just below the belt line. A very beautiful ecru heavy lace collar is fastened at the neck with the little gold toboggan pin he was so fond of. I stand beside him, with my hand on his shoulder. My thin legs are also crossed and in my left arm I hold my favorite doll, Lottie, who is dressed in a red satin coat and a white chrocheted cap with a white bow in the front. There is another white bow under Lottie's chin. My hair is combed straight back and a few straggly curls can be seen falling about my ears. I look as tho' I could bite nails, and I could have done so, for I was mad clear thru when that picture was taken. Mother made me wear a cute little dark blue sailor suit trimmed with white open meshed braid, and it had pearl buttons down the front, in two rows. A gold boat pin at my throat. Naturally the waist line of a sailor suit is dropped below the natural waist line, giving the skirt a short effect and the waist a long one. I did not like this style of dress. I wanted a waist line where a waist line should be, and was very much disgusted because I had to wear the sailor suit. It is a cute little picture just the same. There are darling baby pictures of all of us. One of Sade, with the same little sensitive face and half frightened expression she always wore, is particularly interesting. She holds "Lottie" and it is evidently a great treat to do so. When she, Sade, grew a bit older, she toddled up to the attic one day, unbeknown to any of us, and found "Lottie" in her little bed. After playing with her a little while, Sade decided to take her down stairs and play with her. Either there were too many stairs for "Tadie Bickey" to negotiate, or else Lottie engaged her attention to such an extent she did not look where she was going, for first we knew there was a scream and a crash and Sade, Lottie and all came tumbling down the stairs. Maybe Sade was hurt, - I don't recall, as I was broken hearted when I found Lottie a total wreck. She simply could not be mended, and that was the last of dear old Lottie. Accidents will happen but it was not very often we broke a doll, any of us, as we all were careful of our toys and loved them so much we took care to put them away in a safe place when we were thru playing. Helen Rice gave Sadie a red plush parlor suite and it was the cutest thing. We had a lot of nice playthings up in that old attic room. Sometimes mother would let us play with her finery, most of which reposed in her top bureau drawer. There was a lovely gold ring set with about three rows of tiny turquoise. It had been given mother when she was a girl, by Kate Shomo, a friend of hers and an office mate also, in the old days when mother was in Washington. There was also a lovely embroidered handkerchief which Katie had given her. Then there were the lovely slender, finely chased gold bracelets, with the tiny chain to hold the fastening together; and the most beautiful little Swiss watch, with the same fine gold chasing on the thin covers, and "Ida" engraved in the little square in the center; and the lovely little gold key that wound the watch - both these articles of jewelry mother acquired out of her hard earned cash when she worked in Washington. There was a small square gold pin, set with a greenish stone and having a little chain and pin attached to it, which had belonged to Mother's Aunt Sally. And a gold buckle which was father's. And two silver watches belonging to father; and a long, black scarf with stripes of red, yellow, green, blue, etc. running thru it. Then came the red fan, a large one, of ostrich feathers, which had been given to mother by Aunt Clara. All these lovely things were very choice and we played with them carefully and rarely.#56. Madam York was a French lady who had a millinery shop down town and mother, Mrs. Wood and Mary Baker always bought their hats or had them made at her establishment. Nothing could keep me from accompanying them to the shop when they went for hats in the spring and fall. Madam York would put some of the grown up hats on my small head, playfully, and I would look in the mirror and decide that was exactly the sort of hat I wanted to wear. Usually there was a difficult half hour or so when all the ladies tried to convince me that little girls did not wear grown up hats, but I couldn't be convinced that they were not much more becoming to me than the silly little hats I had to wear, with the everlasting streamers hanging down the back, and I'd cry and cry. Madam York had yards and yards of black velvet with big pink roses painted on it, draped around the counters where she displayed her hats. One day mother asked her how on earth she ever found time to do all that painting in the midst of making hats, and Madam York, smiling sweetly, replied in her best french manner, "Oh, Madam Ricksey, I paints lak everthin'!" And mother, glancing at the roses, agreed with her. Sometimes mother would take me to Auburn to visit her cousin, Anna Eddy who was postmistress there. Anna had two sons, Arthur and Robert, and we three played together when we visited each other. I forgot to say Anna Eddy's last name was Howe - Eddy was her maiden name. One day when we went to Auburn for the day, I wore a new white flannel suit trimmed with black velvet. As soon as we arrived Arthur and Robert invited me to go over to a brook with them to fish. I left my coat at the house but when I returned the dress did not match the coat. We caught no fish so we decided to wade in the brook and as I had to carry my shoes and stockings in one hand and hold my skirts up with the other, I seemed to be overloaded, and soon lost my balance and fell into the water. I am afraid the white flannel suit never looked the same after that. Once when Arthur Howe came to Millbury to visit us, with his mother, we were playing in the cellar and trying to open the big barn door in the cellar, but it ran off the tracks and stuck, so Arthur got down on his hands and knees and tried to budge it while I pushed. While his fingers were under the wheels, I gave the door a push and ran over his hand. He yelled bloody murder and was mad enough to kill me. It didn't do the hand any good, I'll say, to have a heavy door and equally heavy wheels run over it, but I guess he lived and was not a cripple for life. There were a number of accidents I can recall. Hermann climbed up on the grape arbor one day, to get some grapes, and lost his balance, falling so flat and so hard he knocked the breath out of himself. Soon after that he fell out of the porter apple tree and did the same thing. Then he cut his hand quite badly one day while using a sickle to cut the grass in the back yard. Myrtis happened to be visiting us and attended to the cut in a very efficient manner. Occasionally Steve Stafford got bitten by Old Lady Riccius' dog in Oxford. The dog would run out of the house and dash across the road and nip Steve in the leg. I do not think Steve ever teased the dog, but maybe he did and that was why the dog flew at him. When I was about ten or eleven years old, the Y. M. C. A. gave a party one afternoon about four, and the boys were allowed to invited a girl to attend with them. Florence received a bid from Warren Dyson and I feared I was going to be left out in the cold, but Esthen Durstoff at last came thru with an invitation which I accepted, altho' I was not very fond of Esten and wished someone else might have asked me; but no one did, so rather than lose out on the party I accepted Esten's invitation. The day came and I was ready and waiting for Esten to call for me a little after four. Under my winter coat I had a blue serge eaton jacket suit. #57 Mother sat in the parlor window with me, while I waited for Esten to appear. Florence and Warren went by - walking as far apart as the poles - Warren, a tall, lanky red headed lad, and Florence slouching along as tho' she were embarrassed to death to be seen walking with a boy, and no doubt she was. They disappeared in the distance and still no sign of Esten. I was frantic because he did not come, and could have killed him for keeping me waiting and missing the party. Just when I had entirely given up all hope that he was coming, he appeared on the distant horizon. As he came nearer I discovered he had on his old rubber boots and a big red muffler around his neck and ear muffs pulled over his ears. He looked as tho' he had just come off the boat from Germany. I told mother I would not go with him, but finally mother persuaded me to do so, and we set out, almost running all the way, for we were very late. The party had been in progress some little time before we got there, but a kind lady helped me to find a place in the circle of the game they were playing and told Esten to help me out of my coat. The game was suspended for a moment while I got ready. Esten took hold of my coat and before I could help myself in any way, he had yanked me out of it, and as he did so, the eaton jacket came with the coat and I stood before the assembly in my shirt sleeves. Everyone laughed and I turned brick red. Imagine any girl being dismayed over a silly little thing like that, today! It was tragic to me. Why, I used to be so embarrassed when I happened to be over to Mrs. Rich's house and she would pull me over close to her and lift my dress up to see what kind of trimming I had on my panties or petticoats. She only wanted a new idea so she could put the same thing on Florences clothes. Occasionally I was invited to eat at Rich's house but did not relish doing so. Their house smelled so musty and unaired, and the dishes were heavy white, unattractive things, and the knives and forks had big, black handles and were of steele. The tin dipper was put on the table for a vessel to hold water, and Mrs. Rich brought the old black, sooty kettle with the potatoes in it, right to the table, and set it down, and she did the same with the spider which contained the meat. We did not put on any airs or frills at our house but we never ate as crudely as this. And old John never looked clean. I could scarcely swallow any food and tried to side step every invitation to eat there. Florence and I often held the lantern for Mr. Rich while he took a tramp or two over to the old dirty lockup for the night. The old brick jail was across the road from Rich's house, on the back road, and as it was John's job to give tramps a lodging (John being town constable) he had to take them over to the lockup, give them a bite of supper and shut them in for the night. It was the filthiest place imaginable. How anyone could remain there overnight and not die is beyond me. I loved to get into the Rich's parlor, however. It was very small but full of interesting things. A gilt mirror held me spell bound, and after awhile a piano. And the albums and pictures and do-dads on the whatnot! Florence and I had many interesting set-to's with fellow school mates, Sidley Gammell, a french girl who lived up in Bramanville, stole the brand new shoes from Florence's doll and ran home with them. Florence and I hounded Sidley to death but she could run pretty fast and we could not get anywhere near her, either to wheedle her into giving back the shoes, or thrashing the day lights out of her because she wouldn't. We hung around her house until her gaunt mother chased us away. One day we caught Sidley as she was sneaking home, and after asking her to return the shoes, and being told she didn't haven them and wouldn't return them anyway, - well, Florence and I pitched into her and gave her such a good beating we were afraid of our lives every time we saw Sidley's father or mother, for fear we'd get a beating from them. Sidley got the licking and the shoes, too.#58. There seems to be no end to the silly little things I remember that we did, but this will have to come to a close sometime. Memories of the faces of old friends keep coming to my mind and instantly I recall some little incident connected with that person. For instance: I am thinking of Mrs. Wood, and the day she was racing back and forth in her kitchen, trying to get caught up with herself and dressed, so she could catch a train for Worcester. We always knew when she was going somewhere on the train for she raced like mad to get ready and had to step on it to make the grade after her husband had left to go to the store, after lunch. Finally she came tearing down the back stairs and as she flew up the old driveway to the street, Mother caught sight of her and discovered a sheet of sticky flypaper dangling from the back of her cashmere shawl. She, Mrs. Wood, did not know it was there, so Mother called to her. The train was whistling and Wood had to run to make it. As she ran, she struggled with the flypaper, first yanking it off the shawl with one hand, only to find she couldn't let go of it, and then the other hand came into action and the last we saw of her as she disappeared from our sight, was the frantic motions of her hands as she fought to rid herself of the clinging, sticky flypaper. She carried it way over to the train and the engineer saw her coming and, as usual, waited for her. Another day she left the house, Worcester bent, with a long corset string dangling from beneath her skirts. Mrs. Wood always had a lot of company. Her brother Eli and his wife Louise and their children, Jennie, Jack, Mamie and George Bates used to come visiting very often, and the other brother, Ira and his wife and two daughters, Gertrude and Irma, came frequently, too. Then Mrs. Wood's only sister, Josie Scott and her daughter, Mabel, and adopted child. Beatrice, came from Milford, and Mr. Wood's relatives, father, mother and brothers came, and Nona Fitts, a friend of Mrs. Wood, and her two children - so we had plenty of excitement around the place with so many people coming and going. Mrs. Wood's mother used to come and stay long periods at a time. There were quarrels and rows galore when these people came to visit the Woods for the older nieces were apt to be too flirtatious to suit Mrs. Wood and she went to the mat with the girls frequently. Mabel Scott and Jennie Bates were pretty girls and led a merry life when they got together and how they could sing and dance! I used to look forward to seeing them and they were nice to me, tho' much older, and let me tag around with them sometimes and watch them dress up in their finery. Then there were the Millers who lived across the driveway in the four family house. They had a son Albie who was grown up when little Eda Miller came along. Eda was Harold's age and played with Harold at our house a lot. When Harold had cracker and milk Eda would say, "I want some tattertoo". We called her little Tattertooo. Millers had a boarder, Old Cress. He was a nice old German about 65 or 70 and he played the guitar very well and he often came out and sat on a bench under the apple trees where he would sing, with much feeling, a song that went something like this: "Leafv py leafv der rrosess vall, von py von day fvade and die". He sang so slowly and sadly we almost wept to hear him. Then he would read our fortunes in our hands and he always would up by saying, "Married two times - middlin' in luck." Albie Miller used to beau Josie Clark around when she came to see us. Old Crazy Jack, a foolish fellow who lived down in the lower village, used to get loose once in awhile and wander up our way, with a string of boys following him. He was a complete idiot and fat and dirty and dressed only in overhalls and an old felt hat and nearly always barefooted or if it was cold he sometimes had on rubber boots. He was disgusting but we liked to hear him babble and see him run. #59. Sometimes an old man named August, who was a friend of my father, came from nowhere apparently, had a meal with us and slept in the barn, then disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared. He spoke only in German and never would sleep in the house, and who or what he was and where he came from or went to I haven't the faintest idea. Old man Neudeck and Mr. Whitemiller who lived up the back road, used to come by the house and sit on the front porch on Sundays, sometimes, and talk in German with father. We had masquerades yearly at Whitemillers hall and father would play in the band and we'd dance and have fun and beer and food and a good time. The Neudecks were a nice family and very musical. Lena, Bertha and Gus just about ran the musical end of the little Unitarian Church, altho' the Perrys' and Miss Powers' assisted a lot - or maybe the Neudecks assisted the Perrys. Bell Powers was Mrs. Perry's sister and could she play the piano! The Perrys' gave an operetta in the town hall once, and it was called "The Tyrollean Queen". It was a grand affair and I was asked to sing in the chorus and even had a small speaking part in the affair, but if any one heard what I said they must have had fine ears, as I was so darned scared I hardly spoke above a whisper. Many nights each week I went to the town hall with the Neudeck girls to rehearse and it was very thrilling to be among so many people. I think Effie Walsh, of Worcester, a very pretty girl, was the Queen. I was one of the fairies and when the great day came for the show to be given I was dressed in a tarltan short, full skirt and puff sleeved waist, all covered with small gold stars, and mother made the dress for me and I cut the stars out of gold paper and pasted them on the dress. We were too poor to afford white shoes so I painted some old black ones with white paint, but they cracked when I put them on and so mother blew me to a pair of real white kid shoes for the occasion. We were all painted or rouged by Bell Powers before we went on the stage, and the whole town was there to see the wonderful performance. Sometimes a fire would lend a bit of excitement in town. There was a big fire down near Amy Cummings house one night and I went to it with some one, but I cannot recall who it was. I remember a fireman pushing us all back because there were some barrels of oil which were expected to explode every second, and never did, much to my disappointment. We often visited Amy and Ellen Cummings and they gave us lovely flowers our of their garden. Amy was a nurse and had been with mother when Harold was born. She was so nice to us. Eller, her sister, was not right, mentally, and was a very peculiar appearing and acting individual. She had whiskers and was fat and funny. She would cry if Amy gave us a cookie and didn't think to give Ellen one. There were so many people we visited or called upon and they always made us welcome altho' undoubtedly we bothered them, many times. We often went up to Joslin's for milk, at night and watched Mr. Joslin milk the cows. He would send us into the house with a pail of milk and Mrs. Joslin would take us out into the back room and we'd watch her skim the cream off of big pans of milk. She was nice to us and gave us apples and pears sometimes. Florence and I stole some lilacs from the hedges in front of Livermores house one late afternoon. What possessed us to do so, I do not know, as we had plenty of lilacs at home, but that long, beautiful row of lilac bushes in full bloom was too much to resist. Just as we had our arms full of the blossoms, Ida Livermore appeared and caught us red handed. She was our Sunday School teacher at the time and we were very much ashamed to be caught stealing. Ida was very gentle with us and asked us why we didn't come and ask her for some lilacs instead of stealing them. She gave us each a big bunch of those we had stolen and kept some for herself, and we promised her we'd never steal her flowers anymore. And we never did.[*1938*] Tales told by Ida Barton Riccius about her grandmother, Sarah Stone Barton, wife of Stephen Barton. ***** Sarah was changing feathers from one tick to another one day, in an upstairs bedroom. The task for some reason, did not progress to her liking and she became irked and exasperated to the point where she could contain herself no longer - being a woman of short temper under the best of conditions - so she gathered up the whole miserable, fluttering, flying mess, opened the door and tossed it down the narrow stairs just in time to catch Stephen, her husband, full in the face as he was about to ascend. Stephen naturally was very wroth as well as surprised and his anger knew no bounds for a time. Sarah and Stephen had many a battle but Stephen usually won out in the long run, so the story goes. He insisted, in this instance, that she capture all the will-o-the-wisp feathers and put them back in the tick - make a clean sweep of the situation, as it were - and poor old Sarah did her husband's bidding but with such gusto, accompanied by mutterings and imprecations so vengeful Stephen decided it was the better part of valour to clear out for awhile. Stephen evidently ruled with an iron hand. Sarah was, at times, so thrifty she defeated her own purpose. Her daughter-in-law, Julie Porter Barton, declared that Sarah actually fed her family, all her life, fruit and vegetables that were not fresh - always beginning to spoil and partly decayed. Sarah diligently went thru all the fruit and vegetable bins regularly, picked out all the material that was spotted and half decayed and spent hours paring and cutting away the decayed portions, using what was good to make pies and sauces. The good, sound, delicious fruits and vegetables she never used - they were always left to decay before she used them. This habit annoyed her family exceedingly. She had a habit of baking a great number of apple and mince pies at one time, setting them all on a bench or shelf in the cellar and being much displeased if anyone requested a pie at meal time. Sarah guarded those pies very carefully, but one day Stephen, her son, slipped unnoticed down to the cellar with a big pail and scraped all the pies into it for hog feed. When confronted by his mother he told her that only hogs liked mouldy pies. It did not cure her. Sarah always did her baking in the ovens beside the old fireplace and was not at all pleased when Stephen bought and installed a new cook stove in the house. It was a new fangled affair and would not bake well - it filled the house with smoke and gave no heat - and Sarah was greatly annoyed and agitated, but Stephen insisted she use it. She honestly tried to use it, but she silently, and sometimes not so silently, cursed it for its inefficiency. It had so many faults she was beside herself, but because Stephen had bought it she must use it. Her patience, scanty under any circumstances, was soon exhausted, so without further ado she took the vile thing apart one day and carried it, piece by piece, to the pond nearby and threw it all into the water. Stephen's anger knew no bounds when he discovered his precious stove had been torn apart, discarded and drowned in the pond, and he forthwith ordered Sarah to take a rake and drag the pieces out of the water. History states that Sarah did, under great pressure intertwined with much conversation, retrieve the sunken treasure; but history saith not whether Sarah used the stove again for her family baking. I will lay a bet she never did. #2. And when dear old Sarah passed on, Julie took Ada, her daughter, to see her grandma as she lay in her casket. Ada was lifted up to look at her grandma and a few moments later someone asked Ada if she had seen her grandma. Ada's eyes were fairly bulging as she replied, "Yeth, I saw grandma and she never swored once!" So little do any of us know about Dolly Barton, daughter and oldest child of Sarah Stone Barton and Stephen Barton, that often the memory of little things my mother told me of her life really disturbs me. She was an unusually gifted girl with a high temper and an overpowering desire to attain schooling far beyond the reach of the purse of her parents. She taught school in her native town but gradually her mind gave way under the constant brooding over her unhappy condition. Her sister, Clara, always maintained Dolly never would have lost her mind had she been able to gratify her ambition for a career in the world of letters, and had she been given medical aid such as she needed at the time her health broke. Being the oldest child undoubtedly many household duties fell upon her which she did not relish, being of a studious nature - and inheriting the nervous, high strung disposition of her mother made it very difficult for her to adjust herself to her surroundings. She embroidered many beautiful articles with stitches so fine and accurate they seemed to be done by machine. When her mind became beclouded she cut many of the pieces of embroidery unto small bits and fragments. My mother had some of these pieces which she had ruined and also the little stiletto she used - ivory - to punch holes in the cloth she was embroidering. Mother kept them all sacredly in a little work box, with other treasures. At times Dolly grew very violent and had to be kept in a locked room with barred windows. She would beat on the door and scream to be let out. Once she escaped and was gone all night but returned next day without her slippers. Her brother David found them later in the deep, deep woods on old Rocky Hill and wondered how she had ever found her way home safely, bare footed and clad only in her night gown. Another day when she suddenly became violently insane she happened to see my grandmother Julie, who was her sister-in-law, walking toward the village. Dolly ran to the wood pile, snatched up an axe lying there and ran swiftly, with uplifted arms, toward Julie, brandishing the weapon in her hand and screaming wildly. David was at work in a nearby field and heard the commotion and knew by the sounds that Dolly was on the rampage. He ran as fast as he could and called to Dolly to stop. She obeyed his command just in time for Julie was exhausted running so fast and frightened out of her wits. It seems such a pity she could not have lived in an age and under conditions where her talents would have been recognized and utilized.2/ PLAN OF A. RICCIUS 4 FAMILY HOUSE [*EAST*] [*SOUTH*] BACK PORCH STAIRS CLOSET BACK PORCH BACK ROOM BED UPPER BED BACK ROOM OR ENTRY ROOM HALL ROOM OR ENTRY LANDING PANTRY STAIRS PANTRY KITCHEN SINK SINK KITCHEN CLOSET CLOSET PARLOR LOWER HALL PARLOR FRONT PLAN OF ADOLPH RICCIUS HOME BACK ROOM DINING ROOM STAIRS SINK SINK ROOM AND PANTRY CLOSET CLOSET STEP STEP KITCHEN CHILDRENS DISH BED ROOM CLOSET PARLOR MOTHER'S AND FATHER'S BED ROOM FRONT HALL STAIRS BAY WINDOW FRONT PORCH FRONT [*NORTH*] [*WEST*] 1. Every so often my father would take me to Worcester with him on a shopping expedition. Mother undoubtedly was too busy to go along and trusted father to get the things she wanted. I well remember one of these trips I took with my father when he was instructed to buy a winter coat for me at Healey's on Main Street. We entered the store and were waited on by a very large sloppy looking Irish woman who brought out the most impossible looking coats imaginable, according to my taste. After wriggling in and out of several of them and voicing my disapproval in no uncertain tones, father and the fat woman decided, over my violent objections, upon a fuzzy, cheap looking green coat which was a mile or more too large for me. The sleeves hung down over my hands and the waist line came midway between my waist and knees and altogether it was very awful, even to my childish eyes. I wore it out of the store, father carrying the old one in a bundle, and as soon as I reached the street I stopped right in my tracks and yelled as loud as I could, and between yells and sobs I vowed I would not wear the thing and refused to walk with father. When I complained about the size of it father said that was as it should be, for I would grow into it and it would be all right for next year. The more he argued the more I cried, and finally, in desperation, he snatched me by the hand and yanked me back in the store. I was allowed to try on a gray striped cape affair which had taken my eye before but which I had been told was not warm enough for me and cost too much, anyway. I was delighted with it and nothing would do but that one particular coat, so at last father yielded and allowed me to have it. I always loved that cape coat and even tho' I had to wear a jacket beneath it to keep sufficiently warm, and sometimes, too, it hindered my activities in the climbing line as it got in the way of my legs a lot, it was still my pet to the end. Once when I went to the city with my father, he took me to a fine theatre on Front Street, and we sat in the gallery. There were not many people there and I could not see or hear very well from where we sat, so my father told me to go on down front where things were a great deal better, so much so, in fact, that I ran back and begged father to come on down there with me. He willing accompanied me but we had scarcely become seated when the usher came and reminded father that he had paid for seats in the back and could not sit there. Father said he would go back to his old seat but asked why the little girl couldn't sit in front as she was doing no harm and no one else was using the seat. The usher allowed me to sit there but my day was rather spoiled because father was not with me. All I can remember of the play is a stone wall and a man climbing over it to get to a lady on the other side. It always gave me great pleasure to be with my father and whenever he was home for a day I followed him about like a dog. If he went to the barber shop which was operated by Henry Hooper, I went along and sat beside him while he had his hair cut or was shaved. He had his own mug and brush on a shelf and sometimes we would have to wait quite a while before father's turn came. If father went to the garden to work I went too, with a hoe and rake, and helped him all I could. If he had work to do about the houses I was right by his side, handing him the tools and nails to work with and talking a steady streak. When he had finished his labors he would come into the house and wash his face and hands and then lie down on the old, hard lounge in the kitchen, and he always expected me to get the family comb and gently run it thru his soft, wavy brown hair. He generally fell asleep under my ministrations. Sometimes he would call me to come to him in German - "Kummel Hare" - and when he used that expression I thought he meant "Comb my hair" and if I happened to be doing something I liked better than to comb his hair I would say, "I don't want to comb your hair now" and he would laugh. 2. In the early spring of 1891 my father had a spell of sickness which was caused, so mother said, by being poisoned with shellac he was using to finish some curtain poles in a shop where he was working at the time. [*typhoid*] [*malaria*] [*on certificate*] His hands would be stained red as fire when he came home at night and as soon as it grew hot he began to have a severe dysentery and had to remain home and in bed for a week or two. There were so many things to be done and for fear he would lose his job he went back to work long before he was able. I recall how he tried to fix the porches and stairs over at the other house and how very tired he seemed, working in the hot sun. I went with him and handed him the tools, nails and boards as he needed them, but he was so weak he could scarcely climb the stairs. Then he tried to put a new roof on the hen coop and would not let me stay up there with him because it was too hot. Shortly after this he was taken very ill again and went to bed. Harold was his pride and joy and because father was home, Harold demanded constant companionship with father and screamed and beat his little fists on the bedroom door if he was not admitted to the room. Father was much too ill to even notice what was going on around him and I had to pry Harold away from the door and take him outside and try to amuse him. Both Drs. Booth and Webber were in attendance and the house was hushed and still. One afternoon while Harold was asleep I ran across the road to the old maple tree, hoping to find some of my playmates there, but the place was deserted. I wandered over to the bank of the river and just as I reached it I saw a tiny, tiny turtle scrambling down to the water's edge. One bound and I had him in my hand and was racing home as fast as possible to give him to my father. I ran into the bed room where father lay and mother was sitting on the edge of the bed stroking father's head. He wearily let his glance rest upon me and tried to say something, but couldn't. I found his hand and put the little turtle into it. He could not even raise his hand nor turn his head to see what he had in his hand, so I told him what it was and mother told me to take it away and put it in the kitchen. When I came back to the room both Doctors were there and Dr. Webber was tapping my father all over the region of his stomach and abdomen. Then he stepped over to the other side of the room and conferred with Dr. Booth. Shortly afterward the bell rang and I was asked to answer it. Uncle Sam Barton and Sim King were there. After awhile they came into the bed room and Uncle Sam took father's hand and put a pen in it and helped him to make a cross on a paper he held. It was father's will which Uncle Sam had prepared and brought to the house for a signature, but father was too far gone to write his name. Mother beckoned me from the room and told me to go and pack Harold's clothes and my own in the little telescope bag, for we were going to Oxford to stay with Uncle Same and Mrs. Hunt until papa got better. Harold would go anywhere with me and I was the only one, outside of mother who could handle him at all. I remember before we left I decided to fire off the crackers and torpedos I had already purchased for the Fourth of July for I knew I would not be home to do it and I did not want to lose the fun of seeing them go off. Some of the children in the neighborhood came running when they heard the explosions and in a few moments mother also came running and told me I must not make that noise as it disturbed father greatly. I went in the house again and Harold and I climbed on the bed and hugged and kissed our papa and cried and then we were taken to the train by Uncle Sam and Sim King. I do not recall anything about the trip to Oxford, but when we got there Mrs. Hunt, Uncle Sam's housekeeper, whom we all loved very much, welcomed us with opened arms and had a nice supper awaiting us. We were given a nice room beside hers to sleep in and she was perfectly lovely to us. I gave Harold a bath every morning in a tin tub in the kitchen and Begota, the maid heated the water and filled the tub. As soon as I would put Harold in the tub he would immediately "wet" in the clean water and Begota would empty it and grumble in Swede fashion.3. We played with the big dog and wandered in the woods back of the house and picked vegetables in the garden with Begota and went up to Vira Stone's for the mail and went part way to meet Uncle Sam when he came home at night, so the time passed quickly. I do not think we were there more than a day or two at most but it seemed longer to me, of course. One morning when I came down stairs for breakfast Mrs. Hunt took me into the little library off the living room and told me that my papa had passed on and that I was to go to my mother at once and leave Harold with her, for I was to come back again at night. I went in on the train with Uncle Sam and he put me on the train at Worcester for Millbury. As soon as I reached Millbury I ran as fast as I could to the house and mother was waiting for me on the front porch. She hugged me tight and we both cried and then she took me in the parlor where father lay, with a sheet over him. We looked at him and stroked his hands and face and then went to the other room. Mr. Ryan, the Undertaker came and there were callers all day. Uncle Sam came for me at night and took me back to Oxford where I stayed until the day of the funeral. Father died the fifth of July and I suppose the funeral must have been about the seventh. Saidee had been taken to Aunt Mamie's in Oxford Plains, while father was so ill, and Hermann was the only one of us children who had remained at home during the illness and death of our father. After breakfast Uncle Sam got the horse and carriage ready for the trip to Millbury and we all set out for the funeral. I do not recall a single thing connected with the trip to our house but I can well recall the house full of people when we reached there. Aunt Selma, Aunt Fannie and all the German relatives were there and there were horses and carriages all up and down the street and in the yard and barn. Aunt Selma and Aunt Fannie (maybe others, too, of the German relatives) were draped from head to foot in deep black, with heavy crepe bordered veils hanging from their hats to their heels, and black bordered handkerchiefs in their hands. I was greatly impressed with all this black and veils. When Mother came out of the bedroom in a simple black dress and a black fine straw hat trimmed with black lacey ribbon, she looked almost naked to me, compared to the heavy trimmings my Aunts' wore. Someone gave mother a black bordered handkerchief. I do not remember what sort of a dress I had on when I arrived, but after seeing my Aunts in black I felt that I was very improperly dressed, so just before the services were about to begin I dashed into my bedroom and dragged a heavy black and white dress of woolen material, off the hook in the closet and scrambled into it. When Mother saw me she gasped, but there was no time to make another and cooler change, and I am here to tell you I shall never forget to my dying day the suffering from the heat I endured all the rest of the day because of that heavy dress. Father lay in his casket against the west wall of the parlor and the house was jammed with people. I think Mrs. Whitney, the Unitarian minister, preached the sermon, altho' I am not sure about this. She came to see mother in the morning and I think she conducted the services later. Mother and all of us children sat directly along side the casket and just after I was seated I raised my eyes to see who sat next to me and received a great shock, for there was my father sitting beside me. He turned out to be my Uncle Gus whom I had not seen for a long time, and who resembled my dear father very closely at that time. There were lots of lovely flowers and on the mantle were two huge bunches of water lilies in nice old vases my Grandma Riccius had given mother for a wedding present. Henry Hooper, the Barber, who was a dear friend of my father, had risen very early and gone to some distant lake and gathered the lilies as a tribute of love for my father. 4. It was a very hot day and the sun was shining brightly and the crickets chirped and the glare was intense. After the services we all were placed in hacks and slowly we wended our way toward Oxford where father was to be buried in the old Barton family lot. The roads were thick with dust and the way was long and hot. I squirmed and twisted and wiggled around, trying to get a breath of cool air. The black and white checked dress comforted me not at all, and all I could think of was the time when I could get home and get out of it. When at last we reached the cemetery the others were there waiting for us. We had become separated during the long drive over the rough, dusty roads and some of the party had gone ahead of us, probably because their horses could travel faster. At one point or stage of the journey, the hearse and one or two hacks which were back of it, ran across some railroad tracks just before a long train whizzed by, and mother was furious because the Undertaker ran such a risk of being struck by the train. They did not wait for us, and were out of sight when we finally were on our way again after the train had passed. At the grave Aunt Selma and Aunt Fannie and others threw flowers and gravel on the box in which my father lay, after the box had been lowered into the grave with straps. Then we all sadly drove away, down the hill, until we came to the old tavern that old lady Riccius ran, where all the Germans stopped, went in and had some beer. We waited outside until they were finished. Mother did not drink beer and was not overly pleased to see the procession lined up for refreshments of this sort, altho' she realized they were hot and tired and thirsty, and that it was all right. When we got home supper was ready. The neighbors had set the house to rights and people seemed to be all over the place. Clara Bellville came over and wanted to play the organ. We opened it and started to play but Mother told us to stop. Aunt Fannie told us to go ahead and play if we wanted to, but we didn't. After awhile the Germans began to get ready to go home on the train and we all went over to the depot to see them off. They had plenty of time to wait before the train came, so Aunt Selma went to the Ladies Room. She had just become nicely settled on the throne when one of her children heard a train coming (it was an express and did not stop at Millbury but she didn't know it) and dashing into the toilet she screamed at the top of her lungs, "Oh Mutter, hurry, der train iss comin'". Aunt Selma, veils, petticoats and skirts billowing about her fat figure, came flouncing out into the waiting room, shaking her clothes down as she hurried, and just as she got into the center of the room the express train thundered by and she realized the mistake her child had made. Still pulling her clothes into shape, she turned on the girl and sucking her lips together fairly spat "Ffffooollll" into her face. Everyone in the depot laughed. Just about a week after father passed away, Ida Medicke, Aunt Fannie's daughter, who had married John Rouser, gave birth to a baby daughter and died in childbirth. Poor Aunt Fannie was heartbroken. She cared for the little baby tenderly, but it was injured at birth and died a few months later. Mother had sent me up to Worcester with some calla lilies for Aunt Fannie and when I opened the door to go in the dear little baby was just expiring, so we put the lilies beside the little body right away. Aunt Fannie had a large crayon portrait made and framed, of father and gave it to mother to hang in the parlor. Josie Clark and I made a tidy of fish net to hang over it and mother bought an easel upon which to place it. Mother also had a photograph of the four of us enlarged and that hung on the wall until we were old enough to realize what an atrocity it was and took it down, much to mother's disgust, altho' later on, when we hauled it out occasionally, she almost lost her breath laughing at it. Of all the idiotic expressions in the world, that artist certainly planted the funniest of them on our faces. That picture was so awful it was a masterpiece. To this day we have hysterics when we look at it.5. We continued to live in the same house after father died, and it must have been pretty hard sledding for mother to make both ends meet. She carried on very bravely, however, and managed to feed and clothe us and send us to school. The apartment house next door was rented to mill workers mostly and if any of them were laid off on account of no work or illness, that meant no rent for mother. The little tenements of four rooms rented for seven dollars a month and the sum total mother collected from the house was twenty eight dollars a month, and from the Woods, who lived up stairs over us, she received about nine or ten dollars. Out of this small sum, if she got it all, and she usually had one or two tenants, at least, who were delinquent or moved out or in some way evaded their rent, she had to pay interest on the mortgage and father's doctor bills and funeral expenses, and there always seemed to be something about the two places that needed repairing. A sink stopped up or a cesspool or toilet to be cleaned, or a garden to be plowed or a roof leak to fix - always some unlooked for expense in connection with the two houses. Mother was a wonderful seamstress and to this day it makes me fairly dizzy when I think of the hours and hours she spent, sewing for us - often far into the night. Aunt Mamie, Aunt Ada, Myrtis and other relatives gave her clothing to make over for us and it entailed many hours of work to get the cloth in a condition to use. Usually I was called upon to rip the old thing to pieces, then it had to be washed, pressed and placed upon the table and a pattern fitted to it so it could be cut to the best advantage - and there was much piecing and planning before the actual cutting took place. It was fortunate for me that I loved to sew and found it not at all distasteful to assist my mother in the making of clothes for us all out of the cast off garments of our relatives, for had I not been able to help I would not have had as many clothes as I did have - such as they were. At the time my father died, Uncle Steve, Aunt Lizzie, Myrtis and Aunt Clara were all out west, and mother had to struggle on as best she could without their assistance or advice. Uncle Steve and Aunt Clara were always wonderful to Mother and sent her checks occasionally to help out, and heaven knows they were badly needed, for our income was not enough to support us comfortably. We had a good orchard of fruit and a garden and mother canned everything she could for winter consumption. The hens supplied us with their product and the surplus we sold to Dunton and Winter and it applied on the store bill. Life went on as usual and poor mother grew thin and tired and stooped from worry and hard work. Hermann was splendid in every way and a great comfort, always, to mother and the rest of us. He stepped into father's place as well as a small child of seven or eight possibly could, by taking care of the hens, working in the garden, cutting the grass and doing many errands for mother and never giving her any cause for worry. He had a fine disposition and was always gentle and studious and dependable. Saidee was a timid, nervous little girl but she had a very sweet disposition and everybody loved her, just as they did Hermann. She never was very fond of work and shirked it whenever she could, but somehow we never expected her to do much as she was rather frail and flighty and, like a bird, never stayed in one spot long enough to settle down to work. Harold and I were much alike in disposition - quick on the trigger and bossy and irritable. As I look back on those days I often wonder why mother did not slay me in infancy I was such a terrible old crank. To have things clean and orderly was an obsession with me and I made life miserable for anyone who did not conform to my views on cleanliness and order. For instance: The grass never grew very well on the small lawn in front of our house for the trees shaded it and the children raced over it all the time in their play. I decided to sod it, and not having the faintest idea how to go about the job I thought all I had to do was to go down in the field and dig up some grass, cart it up to 6. the lawn, spread it over the hardened dirt, water it, and that was all that was necessary. All the children in the neighborhood were put to work digging grass, or sod, down in the field back of the house and with wheel barrows and carts we toted it to the front lawn and spread it down very nicely. It looked fine to me and I was making a dandy border close to the old cracked tar side walk when Adelbert Lapham and some of his team mates came sauntering along, on their way from Bramanville to the center of town. He had some books under his arm and was probably going to the library. Adelbert's father was Fred Lapham, who owned and operated the Lapham Mills in Bramanville, and the Laphams' if you please were some pumpkins and felt their oats like no body's business. Mrs. Lapham and daughter Pauline frequently rode down thru the village in an open barouche, behind an unusually fine span of horses; a coachman sat erect in the elevated front seat and Mrs. L. held a cute, flounced carriage parasol over her big hat and looked neither to the right nor left. Pauline was all curls and ribbons and ruffles and was as snooty as her beautiful mother. Fred Lapham was a good sort, I guess, but he was too busy to ride around with the family and so we did not see him very often. He was so bow legged I used to wonder how he walked without tripping himself up. Adelbert must have been about my age and he looked much like his dad. They lived in a big, elegant house back of the mill and to us the whole family was just a fairy tale. I did not know Adelbert to speak to - just knew him by sight, as he did not go to my school and probably had a private tutor, anyway. Well, he came bow legging his way down the street on this eventful lawn making day and when he saw the gang raking and pounding grass down on the lawn he stopped to view the situation and give us some suggestions and not a few criticisms which, however well meant, did not register so well with me. He laughed at the border I was making with such painstaking effort, and with the toe of his shoe he kicked a piece of sod out of place. Some of the boys with him followed suit, but they reckoned without their hostess, for with one spring, like a wild cat, I was upon them. Shovel in hand I whang-banged right and left and how they scattered and ran. I chased them as far as the bridge and several of them felt the blows from my shovel before they got out of range of it. Whenever Adelbert came by the house in the future and I was anywhere in sight he gee-hawed into the middle of the road when he passed our house, and at a trot, too, if you please. Speaking of barouches and spans reminds me of the L.L. Whitneys who also lived in Bramanville and Mrs. L.L. and two daughters, Laura and Lillian rode in state, like the Laphams' in their carriage, down thru the town. The pompous L.L. himself was something or other in the Bank and every morning he walked to the Bank. He was a nice looking man, with grey hair and sideburns and moustache, and was beautifully dressed and held his head up like a footman and looked very austere and aristocratic. The C.D. Morses who lived in town and owned the Sash and Blink Co. also rode thru the town in state in their carriage drawn by two fine horses. We had some pretty fine "swells" in our town but they ultimately turned out to be no better, and frequently not half as good as we of the lower crust of society. Poor Fred Lapham spent his last days beating carpets for people and daughter Pauline was just another town run around, - very common. Florence and I knew both the front and back yards of all the fine residences in town as our rambling took us everywhere. There was not a square inch of Millbury we did not know. We found the first mayflowers up in the woods in Bramanville behind Dr. Putnams parsonage, and Carter's fields had many favorite spots where we stopped to loiter and play. We followed brooks for miles and climbed all the nice trees and knew where all the different varieties of wild flowers grew in greatest abundance. We had to wander far from home in order to be together for when we tried to play in either our yard or Florences there were too many other children who would horn in and spoil the day for us.7. Florence's brother Johnny Rich, who was much older than Florence and was married to Mary Small and lived in the house belonging to the Riches, next door to their own, helped his father in the mill at West Millbury. He was a very nice looking, quiet sort of chap and seemed to be very happy with his new wife and nice little home. He often drove a load of shoddy from the mill to the house where later someone would take it to Worcester to be sold. I think the old mill at West Millbury was called a Picking Mill and they sorted or picked over rags which came in bales, and after those were "picked" they were ready to be made into something or other. I don't know the process, but anyway, there were always loads and loads of shoddy bags around Riches place - in the shoddy house, barn and the lower floor of their house back of Mr. Wood's store. The Riches lived upstairs and we always had to go thru this store room on the first floor to get up to their house, the back way, and old Jim the white dog, lay on the top step and growled and I had to call Florence before I dared step over him and go in. Most of the time I went up the long front stairs at the side of the house and was always afraid the stairs would fall down while I was going up, so loose and shaky were they. To get back to Johnny Rich. One day he was driving a load of shoddy across the narrow roadway near the dam, at the mill, and either the old horse or the wagon slipped and before he could jump to save himself the whole works - horse, shoddy, waggon and Johnny slid into the deep water. He must have become entangled in the reins or caught under the waggon for he never came to the surface. Some men at the mill saw the accident but Johnny was drowned. When someone ran all those miles from the mill to the home where Mrs. Rich was busy with her work, and told her the news, she had to tell Mary, the new wife, and it was tragic. The news spread over town quickly. Mr. Wood ran home and told his wife and my mother and I went at once with mother and Mrs. Wood to Mrs. Rich's to see what could be done to assist her in her trouble. I remember when they brought Johnny home and carried him into the little house and how Mary, a small girl, wept and wrung her hands. Later on we went into the house to see Johnny and he was wrapped in a sheet and covered with another, and every time Mrs. Rich lifted the sheet so that friends who came might see him, she took a towel and wiped the water away that still oozed from his mouth. He was her pride and joy and she must have been heart broken when he died. She always looked so sad and sorrowful. We lived in Millbury about four years after my father died and may have spent the rest of our lives there had it not been for the grade crossing the town decided to put in, over the railroad tracks. This act dealt a cruel blow to mother as it absolutely ruined her property and made our lovely street into nothing more than an alley. All the lovely, old elms which lined both sides of the road in front of our house were cut down and an elevated road made to go over the tracks, which were about a couple blocks from our houses. In order to get to our house one had to go the length of the grade crossing, right by our house, and then turn at the end of it and retrace one's steps. Our attic windows were on a level with the bridge and our front windows looked out upon an unattractive bank of dirt. Because mother was a widow and had no one to fight her battle for her, and no money to fight with, either, after a long, long time she was given about three hundred dollars damages for [*how much?*] the havoc that had been wrought upon her homestead. Uncle Steve thought Mother would be happier if she moved to Webster, near Aunt Ada where the schools were fine and where she would be nearer her relatives. He rented a house a few doors from Aunt Ada's for us and we moved in May, 1895. It was quite exciting to move, never having done so before, and I was glad to be going to Webster as I liked it and had many friends there. But mother was very lonesome there and was not at all well and Aunt Ada was too wrapped up in Aunt Josie Eddy to pay much attention to Mother, so it turned out to be not a very happy move for mother. Zaidy Tanherhidesky. In summer. All day long in the sun she lies Roasting her entire hide, She sprawls on her back, She flops on her belly, She rolls from side to side. At last as the sun is sinking low, Into her kitchen she must go, For there's supper to get for Hermy dear, And later the dishes to wash, I fear - For Helen, the helper, don't always show up To wash, the next morn, the soiled saucer and cup, So Zaid Tanherhidesky, with torso well broiled, Slides out of her briefs, the sun has most spoiled, And dons such an armor, her tan to protect From the rigors of dish-pan and getting hands wet, You'd think she was bound for the cold town of Nome Instead of the sink in her kitchen at home. A helmet-like scarf nicely safeguards her tresses, A loose, long-sleeved smock covers up her nice dresses, An apron of rubber is also then tied Round the tanned midrif section of Zaidy's fair hide. Rubber gloves amply cover the manicured fingers, And safely preserve all the fragrance that lingers. On her legs are stout stockings and bobby sox, too, Her feet, clad like lumber-jack's, peek out at you. With long handled dish mop Zaid bends to her task - No armor is missing except a face mask. But fear not, dear reader, her face will not suffer, There are goggles and cold cream to serve as a buffer. Now the winter has came and the sun tan has wented, So Zaid spends the winter in furs, quite contented. Now when dishes get dirty ole Zaid sheds her clothes Waltzes out to the kitchen and turns on the hose. In summer. In winter.Dear Hermy, I used to get such a kick out of Sade when she washed the dishes on a broiling, hot night - the rigs she got into - such a big change from the one she wore all day while sun tanning. I guess I must have drawn this thing and made the wonderful poetry some time long ago for I had forgotten all about it until the other day when I came across it in an old portfolio, so I am sending it to you to get a laugh over it, if you can, and if you recall how she used to dress. Only one Zaidy, eh? Love, Edie.By Edith Riccius King. GREAT AUNT CLARA BARTON. The visits Aunt Clara Barton made at our house in Millbury I have recorded, and they must have been made when we were all quite young for I do not remember that she came to see us there when we were older, probably because she was either doing Red Cross work abroad or in some distant part of the country, at that period of our lives. She was a very busy lady and we always first on the field when any national calamity occurred. We moved to Webster in May, 1895, and were only there one year, so I know I am correct when I state that Aunt Clara, Marion Balcom and Doctor Hubbell and Mr. George Pullman came to visit us for the day, at Webster, sometime in 1895, during the summer. When I came home from visiting a neighbor, the little parlor seemed to be full to over-flowing, with people I had not seen for a long time, and some I had never seen. Dr. Hubbell and Aunt Clara I knew, of course, but Marion Balcom and Mr. Pullman were strangers to me. Marion was a small, very correct little lady in the thirties, I should say; She was prim and pale and very quiet. Her hair and eyes were light, her mouth very small and her nose inclined to be curved. She was very pleasant but had very little to say. I believe she was sort of companion, dress maker and lady-in-waiting to Aunt Clara and made herself generally useful. She made Aunt Clara's clothes, I know, but I fancy she made many of them according to directions given her by Aunt Clara, because Marion was always dressed in very good taste herself, and could not have made or designed some of the queer garments Aunt Clara wore unless Aunt Clara had directed her to make them that way. Such combinations of color and material and design as went into some of Auntie's clothes! They were a work of art from every stand point. Marion must have laughed at some of the rigs she was told to make. On this particular day they visited us in Webster, Aunt Ada, Uncle Charlie and Josie Clark were at our house, and how we all managed to squeeze into the small dining room to eat, is a miracle, but we did. Aunt Clara helped mother get the food on the table and would gladly have helped with the dishes afterward, but Josie and I attended to them. After the work in the kitchen was done, I went into the parlor again where they were sitting, talking; much to my surprise, Aunt Clara asked me to play on the organ. I was much embarrassed to play before those who were strangers to me, but did my best and received praise from them all. They departed before supper time, but where they went, or how - train or carriage - I do not recall. We moved to Worcester in the spring of 1896, and after that Aunt Clara visited us many times at the Branch Street house, where we lived. Aunt Clara bought a big house in Oxford and came to stay in it summers, for a few years before she died. We used to go down and see her several times while she was there during the summer. The house was mostly furnished with Dr. Hubbell's home made furniture, fashioned out of packing boxes, but there were some second hand pieces of furniture Auntie and my Mother had bought at an auction in Worcester. It was a huge house and many of the rooms had nothing in them. There was a square, many windowed "Sailor's Lookout" on the roof. We always went up there and it was very hot. Mother used to go down to see Auntie very often and spend the day. They loved each other dearly and always had so much to talk about. Many times before Auntie bought this Oxford house, she and Doctor Hubbell came to our Branch Street house in Worcester to visit for quite a number of days. Our house was always their headquarters when they came up into New England. Mother used to sleep on the couch down in the living room, as she had to get up early to get the gang started in the morning, so she gave her room to Dr. Hubbell, and I slept with Aunt Clara in my room. I admit it was an ordeal I did not relish nor enjoy, but Mother always arranged things that way and had I refused to share my room with my #2 beloved Aunt she would have been most surprised and hurt. We were all great fresh air fiends and to sleep with windows closed was agony. Aunt Clara was getting old and had lived in Washington where it was much warmer than New England and she could not stand the cold air without suffering. She always closed the window when she went to bed and if I surreptitiously opened it a crack she knew it instantly and either asked me to close it or did it herself, so there was not a chance of a breath of air getting into the room, and with the door closed it was simply stifling and sleep was out of the question for me. Aunt Clara had a habit of falling asleep as she sat in her chair, while people were talking to her, so she snatched off many little cat naps during the day and in this way she was enabled to stay up late at night and seemed to require little sleep, for she rose very early in the morning and it took her hours to make her toilet. Between the late hour of retiring and the early rising and the lack of air and sharing my bed with some one - a habit I was not accustomed to - I was a wreck by the time the visit was over. Aunt Clara had slept on battle fields and in other desolated places for so many years, she had devised a sleeping garment which, to her mind, was very practical and comfortable. The ones she were when she slept with me were made of dark blue heavy flannel and had long sleeves and a very long skirt which could be folded under her feet as tho' she were in a sleeping bag. She wore a night cap because most of her hair was false in the latter years of her life and her poor old head was cold when she removed the long coils of her back hair. She was very tiny and very quiet and went to sleep immediately after getting into bed, but sometimes she snored and at other times was liable to make a little puffing noise with her mouth. She rose about five and very quietly went over to the old commode and poured about a cup full of water into the wash basin, after which she set the bowl on the floor in a corner of the room, and scrooching down by the side of it dipped her thin fingers into the water and gently massaged her face and neck; and unfastening her nightie she would pat a little water on her chest and under her arms sometimes. I used to watch her from the bed where I was supposed to be sleeping, and wondered how on earth she could feel refreshed with such a slight amount of water touching her flesh. After this performance she would take a bath towel and reaching into her night gown she'd rub her whole body vigorously with the towel. She was in this most uncomfortable scrooched position the whole enduring time this performance was going on. She was far too modest to stand up and discard her clothing and rub herself with freedom of action. After this was finished she would go in the closet and get her clothing which had been carefully hung up or folded on a trunk, and after getting into her heavy unbleached cotton chemise and drawers she would put on a corset and several heavy petticoats, mostly dark ones and then go to the bureau to make up her face and comb her hair before putting on her dress. Before putting on her shoes and stockings she sat down and rubbed her feet carefully with "Lamelene". She swore by "Laan-o-lene" as she called it, and used it as a face cream, rubbing it gently into her skin with her small but firm fingers. She was very particular about her make up and in those days there were few people who dared used creams and rouge and powder, but Aunt Clara used them skillfully and the result was most amazingly good. She looked years younger when she had finished. The powder went on after the lanolene had been rubbed in and then the rouge was rubbed in with her fingers and then more powder to give a soft effect. And her eyebrows were treated with a pencil, if you please, just as we ladies do nowadays. I do not remember she ever used lip rouge. It was not used then, as far as I know. At least I never saw any of it until years afterward. #3 Next came the combing of her coal black hair, which, by the way, had been dyed. Mother told me once when she was with Aunt Clara when she was sick for a long period and couldn't have her hair attended to, it was lovely and white, but she would not have it so and wore it dyed black to the very last. She parted her hair in the center and with a fine comb smoothed it down over her ears and rolled it into a little skimpy bun on the back of her head, down rather low. Then she pinned the false coils of black hair to the little bun and one wondered how the little knot of hair ever held the burden of the coils. She worked long and hard and painstakingly over it and often had to try several times before she got the desired effect. She would comb and comb the front of her hair with the fine comb, being sure to cover all the thin spots and make it lie nice and smooth. After her face and hair were finished to her entire satisfaction, - and she never hurried one jot, either - she carefully stepped into her skirt and fastened it and then put on her waist; but before buttoning it down the front, she stuffed tissue paper all across the front to make a nice rounded bust. Then she buttoned it up and when she moved there was a wee rustling sound caused by the tissue paper pressing against her waist. Here is an example of the type of dress she usually wore, made by Marion Balcom or some other person she engaged to sew for her; This dress I am about to describe was one of the most unique affairs I ever saw her wear and I have seen many queer ones. She and Dr. Hubbell had arrived at our home unexpectedly and when I arrived home from the office that night the family, with the exception of Saidee and myself, were all seated at the dining room table eating supper. The lamp was lighted and everyone was gay. As I entered the dining room Aunt Clara rose and came toward me to hug and kiss me. Just at that moment Saidee bounded into the room, having followed in right on my heels. She also was hugged and kissed and then Dr. Hubbell came to us and started to hug and kiss us. Sade and I were young, rather attractive girls and the old Dr. was not at all averse to kissing two good looking young girls. We hated his old straggly whiskers and dodged him every time we saw him coming, but sometimes we had to kiss him or run the risk of insulting him. We got thru that ordeal as soon as possible and stood there a moment asking Aunt Clara when she had arrived and so on. All the time Sade and I were taking in the details of her costume and trying to keep a sober face. Our eyes met and we nearly exploded with laughter before we excused ourselves to go wash our hands before coming to the table. Somehow we got out into the kitchen and fell into each others arms, convulsed with laughter, and together we silently slid into the bath room, where we almost died of laughter. It was quite a few moments before we could straighten out our faces and go in and face the music again. Dear old Aunt Clara, who must have been nearly eighty then, had on a bottle green heavy broadcloth skirt cut in gores and gathered across the back. It was yards around, and about the bottom of it was a strip of the most awful old motheaten beaver fur, about six inches wide. The waist was made tight fitting, with little points at front and back, and the material was woolen of some sort, and another terrible shade of green that did not blend or harmonize with the skirt in the least. The sleeves were made the leg o'mutton style, very full, of another material, and sort of an olive green in color. Fur trimmed the cuffs, and the neck was finished with a collar, very ill fitting, which had lace on it and over the lace was placed a cherry colored satin ribbon which tied in a bow under Aunt Clara's chin. Holding the ribbon in place was the lovely amethyst pansy pin with the pearl in the center and the little gold chain to make sure of it's being safely fastened. This pin was given Aunt Clara by the Grand Duchess of Baden, I believe. Buttons of green glass peeped out from beneath a frill of lace, different than that on the collar, which fell from her neck half way to her waist. Over her left breast were pinned four or five of her red cross decorations. #4 The poor old dear was dressed like Mrs. Astor's plush horse, but she was pleased and proud of the dress for had she not, in good, old New England fashion, utilized all the odds and ends of material she had on hand and wasted nothing? Whenever a sleeve or a waist wore out another piece of material something like it could be found to take it's place - a perfect match never had to be considered. Aunt Clara always wore very soft, broad, sensible shoes and she never had any trouble with her feet that I ever heard of. Her dark eyes were kindly, but keen and shrewd and could flash when she was angry. Her nose was generous but very well shaped; her mouth was very wide and firm and beautiful and someone once told me that she had double teeth in front as well as in back of her mouth - whether this was true I do not know, but she rarely opened her jaws when she talked, keeping them firmly closed and talking very low with her lips only moving. She spoke slowly but used exquisite English and had a sense of humor that was delightful. As soon as she was dressed in the morning she made the bed. No airing whatever. Her belongings were neatly folded or packed, always. Once, when she was staying at our house for a few days, she was in need of a new hat, and seeing one I had trimmed for mother she asked me to trim one for her; so I found a hat mother did not need and went down town and brought some artficial flowers - lilacs - dark and light shades - and trimmed the hat for her. It looked lovely on her and I was scared to death for fear she would not wear it because of the subdued shades of the flowers, but she seemed delighted with it and showed it to all her friends who called. She looked very genteel and beautiful that day when she was dressed, as she wore a black silk coat and a black dress and with the lavender shades on her hat, the effect was just right. Her gloves were very shabby when she came to put them on and we kept the carriage and men who had come for her, waiting a few moments while I painted the gloves with black shoe polish we happened to have in the house. She went on gently waving her hands to dry the gloves. Another time we had planned a picnic to Oxford when she was at our house, and it was either Memorial Day or the Fourth of July; but for some reason Mother had a washing on hand and Mrs. Loughlin, the laundress, couldn't come; so when I came down stairs in the morning Aunt Clara was bending over the tub, scrubbing the clothes while ma got breakfast. Aunt Clara asked for some kerosene - she used it in the water some way, and said it made the clothes white and the smell of it would evaporate when the clothes were hung outside. I don't know whether it did or not. She could not bear to have anyone think of her as an old lady and deeply resented any allusion to her age. A neighbor, Mrs. Kidder, came over to see her once when she was visiting us, and thinking to compliment her, made some remark about the manner in which she got about from place to place, at her age. She soon found out she had made a very fatal mistake by mentioning age, and the interview ended reather abruptly, as Aunt Clara left no doubt in Mrs. Kidder's mind that she had over stepped the mark of politeness. Whenever she went anywhere with us on the electric cars we did not dare to assist her off and on, as she desired to do everything for herself. Hermann used to be mortified to death when he escorted her about town, for she would not allow him to assist her, and she really did need assistance. Onlookers could not know that she had brushed him aside and would have none of his boosting, lifting or handing down attentions.#5 One day mother received a wire from Aunt Clara stating she was coming from Boston on a certain train and would someone please meet her at the station. Hermann was there when the train pulled in but no Aunt Clara appeared on the scene so he went home. After awhile another wire came stating she would arrive from Springfield on a certain train and would some one please meet her. Hermann went to the station again and this time she appeared. On the way home she told Hermann she had fallen asleep on the train, and knew she would, so she had asked the conductor to awaken her when she reached Worcester, but he evidently forgot to do so and she awoke only when she reached Springfield. She was very tired when she got to our house. The rooms in the old Branch Street house were arranged so that one could make a complete circle, or even a figure eight, going from one room to the other, and in this way it was easy to avoid anyone a body did not wish to meet, by just dodging thru another door and going a different way. Dr. Hubbell was a small, thin man with mild dark eyes and a face decorated with a long, thin moustache and long, scraggly side whiskers which were very repulsive to Saidee and me. He was truly fond of us, I am sure, and whenever he saw either one or both of us coming in his direction, he'd smile and hold out his long, thin arms and start toward us. We knew perfectly well he intended to kiss and hug us, and the moment we saw him we would change our course, and dodging around a few doors here and there we'd manage to get out of his way. Sometimes Sade and I collided in our mad rush to escape him, and then we'd get so silly laughing he'd catch up with us and while he captured one of us the other would again be off. We had the darndest time keeping out of his way and he was bedevilled to pursue us. Aunt Clara once asked me to make a hundred copies of a letter she gave me, on the typewriter. I was employed and had the use of a typewriter in the Court House, so during my lunch hour I copied the letter exactly as it read-making a hundred copies of it. When I took the old things home that night I thought I would lose my life for a few moments, so disgusted was Aunt Clara. At the end of the letter there had been a P.S. which read, "Have you plenty of carte blanche?" Of course I had copied this, too, just as it was in the letter, for I had not been told to do otherwise and did not know the purpose for which the letter was being copied. It seemed the P.S. was not needed and spoiled the whole thing, and it was my stupidity and no one's else because the carte blanche had been incorporated into the letter. Instead of being thanked for all my hard work I was criticised and made to feel I had comitted an unpardonable sin. It was all I could do to refrain from grabbing the whole bunch of letters and throwing them in the fire and telling my esteemed Aunt to go to blazes. Mother came to the rescue by suggesting we cut the offending P.S. off; and that is what we did, and the day was saved. The letters looked as tho' their petticoats had been cut off, round about, rather abruptly, but it saved doing the job all over again, anyway. Aunt Clara took many trips to Worcester just to speak to the old soldiers she knew so well, whenever they had any G.A.R. affairs and they all loved the ground she walked on. It was great fun to see them and note how they idolized her. I do not have any reason to believe she enjoyed public speaking as she was rather retiring and timid, but she never acted as tho' she minded it when she spoke to the old soldiers. Once when she was visiting the Atwaters' in Meriden, Conn. Aunt C. sent for mother to come and stay with them a week or so. I saw Mother off on the train, and she had a very nice visit with them and lots of interesting takes to tell when she returned. We managed to keep the home fires burning while she was gone but it was good to have her home again. #6 When Aunt Clara came directly from her home in Glen Echo, near Washington, D.C., where she had a garden, she always brought along a large basket of her strawberries to divide among us. This was, of course, when strawberries were in season. She was fond of a garden and worked in hers every spare moment she had and the berries were lovely, large and red. She always wandered around our yard when she came, looking things over in general, and admiring the garden and flowers which Mother planted and made grow so nicely. Mother frequently went shopping with Aunt Clara when she visited at our home. Auntie was very fond of bright colors, and cherry-red she wore a great deal and was passionately fond of it. She always maintained red was the Barton color - some tradition about the Bartons' being in the "War of the Roses" was the basis of this belief, I understand. Mother was shopping in a store with Aunt Clara one day when Auntie asked a young girl clerk to show her some "cherry-red" ribbon. The girl politely asked Auntie whether she wanted the ribbon for herself and when informed that she intended to wear it herself, the young girl ventured to suggest lavender as a more becoming and appropriate color for a lady of Auntie's years. Aunt Clara was probably at least 75 then. Auntie's dark eyes flashed and her teeth clamped together; her wide, thin lips opened just sufficiently to allow the sound of her deep, vibrant voice to escape as she turned to mother and said, "Dida, evidently this girl does not know that I wear what I please when I please." And she forthwith ordered the young lady to amputate a couple of yards of the cherry red ribbon from the bolt, without further ado. When Saidee was about twelve or thirteen years old, she became very aenemic and frail, and we were all much worried for fear she was going into a decline. She was as tall and slender as a white birch tree, and just about as pale. She didn't seem to have the strength to stand erect and began to get quite round shouldered. Any person, who for not an apparent reason, failed to hold himself erect, invariably filled me with a desire to somehow forcibly compel that individual to stand up straight. When I saw Sade all stooped over, day after day, I am ashamed to say I yelled at her a dozen times a day to stand up straight, and gave her a slap on the back as a reminder, many more times. I dare say Mother kept after her, too, but probably did not remind her with a slap, as I did. It never entered my empty head that the child was too weak and sick to stand up and should have been in bed instead of trying to carry on. We were very poor and the food we had was not particularly fattening nor nourishing. We were all very thin and pale. Many times, as I came down our street, I could smell the delicious fragrance of frying steak which came from a neighbor's house, and so great was my desire for a taste of meat, it was all I could do to resist the temptation to go in and ask for a bite. Instead, I would run home as fast as I could to get away from the delicious smell which almost drove me mad with desire for food. When I got into the house I usually found we were having apple sauce and bread, as usual. It was all I could do to swallow it, but it was that or nothing. The rest of the family undoubtedly had the same craving for better and richer food that I had, and as Sade was the most delicate of us all, she suffered a complete collapse one day. Aunt Clara happened to be visiting us and when I came home from the office one night, the house was exceptionally quiet, and Sade was lying on the old couch in the living room, pale and very weak. She had fainted earlier in the day and a doctor had been called, I think, and had at once prescribed more nourishing food and more milk for the sick girl.#7. Aunt Clara and Dr. Hubbell had been out and purchased needful items of food for the little sick girl and there was even a nice box of candy for Sade. Mother told me on the side, that Aunt Clara had given her some money to buy things for Sade which she needed in order to get well. I was scared and worried almost to death when I saw Sade lying there so pale and drawn and ill, and many a noon, for a long time after that, I walked home to see how she was progressing. One noon when I came home she was asleep, and her pinched, white little face and figure haunted me to such an extent all afternoon I could scarcely work for the crying I indulged in. Good old Nell Tripp comforted me and told me my sister would be all right in a short time, and finally Sade did get her stride, and as soon as her health and strength returned she stood as straight as an arrow. She carries herself to this day like a queen. She is tall, slim, graceful and erect - a beautiful figure and a lovely face to go with it. After our father died both Aunt Clara and Uncle Steve sent mother a nice check every once in awhile, and if it had not been for their kindness I doubt if mother could have struggled thru the ordeal of raising us as well as she did. Goodness knows, it was hard enough, even with help, and no one knows how hard my mother worked to make both ends meet. I remember a long, long time after father died, mother got a check from Aunt Clara and took some of that money and some she had saved of her own, and gave it to me in an envelope, to take down to Mr. Ryan, the Undertaker, to complete the payment of father's funeral. We were both so relieved to get that debt settled and I can well remember mother's sigh of relief when it was paid and the bill receipted. Aunt Clara came to Boston once when I was about eighteen years old, I think, as she was to speak at a G.A.R. gathering. Dr. Hubbell was with her and they were registered at the Hotel Vendome. Auntie had written Mother to come to Boston to see her and bring me, if possible. Aunt Lizzie, who lived in a Boston Hotel, was also going to see Aunt Clara this same day, so we arranged to call for her and go together to the Vendome to see Auntie. We arrived some little time before noon and found Aunt Clara waiting for us in her room. After a nice visit with Aunt Clara and Dr. Hubbell we all went down to the dining room where six or eight people whom I did not know and do not remember now, joined us for luncheon. These people were connected with the G.A.R. and it appeared they were giving the party. I guess Aunt Lizzie, Mother and I just horned in on it - or maybe we were expected - I don't know - but we had squab, and as it was the first I had ever eaten, itmade a great impression on me and I found it delicious. There was much talking and planning being done during the meal in regard to the evening festivities or lecture, or whatever it was, but finally everyone departed and Aunt Clara, Lizzie, Mother and I went back to Aunt Clara's room where Dr. Hubbell joined us, and we visited some more. The question arose which dress Aunt Clara intended to wear that evening. Aunt Clara went to her big trunk and carefully lifted out a yellow satin affair - very ugly, I thought, in both color and design and not at all the sort of thing she should wear. Aunt Lizzie, for a wonder, made no unfavorable comment, but asked instead whether Auntie had any other dresses with her. It seems she did have, and allowed Lizzie to poke around in the trunk until she brought to light a lavender satin gown which seemed to have more possibilities, at first glance, than any of the other rigs she found in the trunk. When Lizzie unfolded the lavender satin, however, she discovered there had not been enough material to make the dress and it had been pieced out by making the sleeves and the front gore or panel of the skirt of a deeper shade of lavender and a different quality of satin. #8. This peculiar color scheme was very noticeable but the color was so much more suitable and becoming to Aunt Clara for evening wear than the yellow satin or other gowns, Lizzie suggested that Aunt Clara try it on so she could see how it looked. Auntie was soon dressed in it and Lizzie gave her the once over and set to work to see what she could do to make it presentable. Lizzie had been a dress maker and was adroit when it came to making and fixing clothes, as she had very good taste. She dug out a box of exquisite, hand made, real lace in the trunk. There were no two pieces alike in shape or design as many of the lovely pieces had been given Aunt Clara years before by members of the royal families of Europe, and some she had acquired in her travels abroad. Anyway, they were all lovely and Aunt Lizzie very skillfully pinned and sewed these lovely pieces of lace in an artistic manner, over the whole front of the dress thus concealing the contrast of color between sleeves and waist and between the waist and front panel of the skirt. It was getting quite dark before the task was finished and we found when the lights were turned on, the color scheme blended much better than it did in daylight and the soft effect of the lace toned down the glaring difference in the shades of lavender. Auntie was as sweet and pretty as a picture and very much pleased over the result Lizzie had obtained. Mother and I went home but Lizzie stayed to attend the evening address with Aunt Clara and reported to us later that Aunt Clara looked charming - the most genteel and well dressed she had ever seen her. Aunt Clara always had a warm spot in her heart for her old friends and neighbors who lived in the little town of North Oxford where she was born. She never forgot them and helped many of them by giving them money and encouragement and comfort when they needed it most. There was a dear old lady named Mrs. Rich, who could not have been much older than Auntie, but who had suffered so much mental and physical agony, she appeared to be much older. She had been a dear friend of Aunt Clara in the old Oxford days but her son had abused and stolen all of her property after her husband had died, and she was dazed and helpless and penniless and would have been sent to the poor farm had not Aunt Clara come to the rescue. Aunt Clara heard of her plight in some way (probably thru relatives in Oxford) and if I am correct, I think Auntie commissioned mother to go down and get the old lady and bring her back to our house and keep her until Aunt Clara could come and get her and take her to Glen Echo to live with her. She was a dear, old soul, her mind pretty well blasted and gone, but she realized she was being cared for by friends and was safe and warm thru the winter. Mother was simply grand to her and even Harold, young as he was, struck up a friendship with her and her poor old face would light up every time he came into the room and she would ask him the same old questions each time. Aunt Clara had a delicate throat and could not stand the New England winters in the latter years of her life, so she could not come for Mrs. Rich until it got warm. Then she came, I think, and took both old Mrs. Rich and Harold, back to Glen Echo with her. She thought Harold might be quite a help to her and the change would be good for him. Harold stayed out there quite a long time and I think he enjoyed his sojourn until he began to have chills and fever, then he was sent home. He was a pretty skinny, yellow little tike when he came home and it was quite a long time before he got back to normal again and outgrew the malarial tendencies he had acquired in Glen Echo. Aunt Clara gave Mrs. Rich very good care and she had her own quarters in the house where she could do as she pleased. I think she stayed with Aunt Clara until she died and Auntie buried her with her husband. There were many other old friends and neighbors and relatives Aunt Clara helped during her long life. The old soldiers she had nursed thru the war and known for years and years, simply adored her and all flocked to hear her speak when she came to New England. She never disappointed them.Mt. Vernon, Maine. Tues. Jan. 21, 1947. 2 P.M. Darling: The postman has been and left your card telling about your finding the bag in mother's little writing desk - and as I had intended to write you today, anyway, I will now sit me down and go to it. Gosh, what weather we do have up here at present! It poured all day yesterday and then froze in the afternoon and no one could get up the hills. There were stranded cars and trucks in everyone's yard and on the sides of the road, and altogether it was terrible. They sanded the road this morning, so traffic is some better, but still treacherous. This morning it was lovely and bright, so I washed out some duds and put them on the line outside for a change. Had scarcely got inside when the sky became overcast and in a few moments there was a young blizzard raging. It lasted about an hour or so, and now it is beautiful again, but windy. It is hot here today - our house is really too warm and I have all the doors and several windows opened. Geord took the ashes, most of them, out of the fire place and laid a new fire, so to be ready to light it if it suddenly turned cold again. I came in from outside and heard a crackling noise and went to see what it was, and there was our fireplace burning up as smart and bright as a dollar. Guess he did not get all the embers out and they ignited the paper he put in - so now the thing has died down a little and I am able to sit in here without roasting. It has been so bitter cold we have had the fireplace going full blast all week. I am sorry I cannot give you any information about the blue velvet bag you have found, but I do not recognize it from your description and cannot think of anyone to whom it might have belonged unless it was one mother had made for herself and maybe we put it in the desk to keep with the other treasures she had there. Maybe if I can see it sometime when I am down there (if I ever am) I may remember something about it, but I can't think of any such bag at present. It is not the bag we have had so much conversation about - the one Aunt Clara gave me when I was a wee child. That was a bright red plush, I think, or velvet - I don't know one from the other - about 6 inches long and 4 or 5 wide, with a stiff handle, and it fastened with a clasp of silver colored metal. It was a stiff bag - made over pasteboard, probably, and had a little pocket inside, much as bags of today have, and I had some kid jewelry in it. Beads and earrings and chains, etc. It was all wrapped up in tissue paper and was with theother missing articles in the old trunk mother gave me. Yes, gradually, the missing articles are appearing and who just can tell, as you say - this may turn up some day. No, dear, I do not ever want any of the things you find (except the chessmen, if you find them, but they do not belong in our family) and only mentioned them because I knew they were once in existence and would be nice to put in the Birthplace The reason I was about to inflict another letter upon you is this: I found an old box of letters in the book case theother day and looked them over - some from you, and upon reading one ofyoursfound that you'd asked me to copy down any information about members of the family, long since gone to their reward, that I might remember, and send it to you for your files. "Any little anecdotes" etc. + to quote you," Professor says he can remember how surprised he was to know that Grandmother could whistle for he never thought women could whistle." That reminds me - I can well remember three songs Grandma used to whistle (or rather sort of "blow" out of the middle of her mouth, for she was old then) "Long, Long Ago", "Hush my Babe", and "There is a Happy land". After reading your letter, written in 1937, I went upstairs and got out an old folder with a lot of trash in it and found that I had written quite a number of pages about this, that and the other person connected with our family; and I do not remember whether I ever sent you copies of this rubbish or not, but think not, as I have an extra copy of each thing I wrote. There was quite a lot I had written about Aunt Clara as I knew and remembered her, but I had not finished it - some of the last pages are written by hand on scraps of paper and not yet typed, so probably you did escape getting copies as I would have finished the thing before sending it to you, I think. I was half a mind to put it in the fire but thought since you had asked me long ago for material such as this, perhaps you might still like it. I will not send it unless I know you would care for it, because it isn't worth a damn except perhaps there may be a few items of interest here and there that you do not happen to have. My impressions are generally not like any of the rest of the family have, so undoubtedly are all haywire - as most everything else I say or do is. If you want this conglomeration to glance over I will send it, and then you can burn it up when you are done with it. I will finish it up if you are interested. By the way, you know Aunt Clara will have been gone from our midst 35 years this coming April 12th, 1947. Why don't you write an article right away for some magazine about her, just to keep her in the public eye, for no one seems to write anything about her anymore. You can do it beautifully as you have so much contact with the little birthplace, etc. Just an idea of mine, but I wish you would do it, dear. I have a very sore finger and strike every letter wrong, trying to favor the old thing, so will not write any more as I am making too many mistakes. I do want to ask, however, whether you found that diamond shaped pin of amber (pale yellow) that Aunt Clara once gave mother, brought from the Dead Sea area, I believe, when Aunt C. was over in Turkey etc. I think mother had broken orlost some of the pieces of amber from the pin - they were stuck on little pieces of metal as on a pin cushion, and mother used to keep that pin in that desk along with the old pen she used in Washington, some pieces of embroidery Aunt Dolly made and cut up afterward, and other odds and ends. Aunt Dolly's stilletto, too, was there. I wondered if we left all those things in the desk or put them somewhere else? [*pin*] Much love, Sis. Wed - Very cold today but the four of us are going to Winthrop for provisions. I am enclosing a "revised explanation" of the old letter - copies of which you have. Maude gave me information about Luke which I did not have when I wrote the first "edition". Also am sending copies of Dolly & Sarah I hold on forever -#67. There was an old red headed, Jewish "rag man", as we called him, who periodically came thru the town, driving a bony horse attached to an old waggon piled high with cheap, shiny tin ware. This Jew had a long red beard and side whiskers and a hooked nose - he was a typical example of his race - and he swapped his tin ware for a big bag of rags which he gathered from each house wife in the town. Hermann was greatly intrigued with the appearance of this old Jew, and hovered around him, watching him closely, whenever he appeared on the scene. There was a reason for this interest, it seems. Hermann was then attending Sunday School and had taken a great interest in his lessons about Jesus Christ and had learned quite a few facts about the Saviour. When father came home one night, after the old Jew had been there, during the day, Hermann asked father many questions about Jesus Christ. Father answered his questions patiently and accurately. "Was Jesus a Jew?" he queried. Father assured Hermann he was. "Did he have long whiskers and did he look like the rag man"? Father opined that possibly he did. "When did he die?" Given a little help from mother, it seems it was decided Jesus died about eighteen hundred years ago. Brief pause while Hermann assimilates this last bit of information; then in a solemn little voice, all the while his big blue eyes looking so seriously into father's, he asked, "Did you and mama go to his funeral, papa?" This was much too much for father. Turning to mother and laughing, father exploded, "My God, Ida, how old does he think we are." This is a little story about Tadie Bickey. Our good neighbor, Mr. Carter, had taken a trip to California, which was quite an event in our little town, and every city Mr. Carter visited in California he wrote back to the Millbury Journal and related his experiences. Mother was perusing the paper one day and reading little items aloud to us kiddies. She came across an item and slowly, half to herself, she murmured, "Oh, I see Henry Carter has got to San Francisco." Quick as a flash Sade asks, as she drapes herself over mother's knees, "What are San Francisoes, mama?" "Why, what do you mean," asks mother. "Well, you said Mr. Carter had two San Franciscoes, didn't you - are they animals, mama?" Mrs. Wood's brother, Bernie Bates, visited her occasionally, but he was so bashful he never came into our house and disappeared from sight if we went up to Mrs. Wood's when he was in the house. He was a very silent, shy individual and seemed to want to be left to amuse himself. If mother met him on the stairs or in the yard, he hastened away before she had a chance to speak to him. One day when he was visiting Mrs. Wood, he went out for a walk and when he came back to the house he must have become confused in some way, for instead of going up the second flight of stairs to his sister's house, he opened our door and walked in. Mother was just putting a pie in the oven as he entered and was quite amazed to see him walk into her house, as he had never done so before. She spoke to him pleasantly and asked him to sit down, but he fled into the bedroom like a frightened gazelle. Mother stared at his retreating figure and could not understand the situation. In a moment, however, it dawned upon her what had happened and she laughed to herself. In just a few moments Bernie came flying out of the bedroom, thru the kitchen and out the door to the hall, where he could be heard tearing up the stairs as tho' the devil were after him. Presently Mrs. Wood came down and laughed her head off over Bernie. He thought he was in his sister's house and when he saw mother he thought she was upstairs helping Mrs. Wood and so walked on into the bedroom and took his coat off before he discovered his mistake. "Oh, my God, Mary, what she ever will think of me for walking into her house and taking my coat off in her bedroom!" He never made the same error. [*SECOND FLOOR BED ROOMS.*] EDITH'S ROOM Closet Mother's Room UPPER STAIRS HALL Harold's large crib SAIDEE'S HERMANN'S ROOM ROOM Toilet BACK ROOM Sink Pantry Cellar Stairs CUPBOARDS Stairs Lower Yard Dining Kitchen Room Stove Stairs To Hall Bed Rooms Sewing Parlor Porch Room - First Floor - Chase Ave. Webster Mass. Wednesday, Jan. 23, 1935. (Grandma Julie Barton's 122 birthday) (Also Sadie Rich's birthday) My darling Sally: Your letter was a godsend as I believe if it hadn't come I would have called you up as I was fearful you were ill, and I wanted to hear from you so much, anyway, it had been so long since I'd had any word. Thanks for all the interesting things you wrote about. They gave me food for thought and made me wish more than ever we could have a good old talkfest. My tongue wouldn't stop wagging for a month were I to see you, there is so much I want to tell you and so much I want to hear. It is too bad Josie is so ill and I suppose there is not the slightest chance she will ever get well, but I am surprised she has not died before this, as every report of her for the last six months has been very bad. She must have a good constitution to hold out for so long. It is so hard for her, and for the others, too, and you were mighty nice to go and see her so often these cold, winter days. I would write but I know she cannot see to read and there is so little to tell her I really don't know what to say and am afraid if I start to write real often it will make her think she is dying and someone has told me to write. You give her my love and deepest sympathy whenever you see her and tell her I think of her every day, as I do. The Butlers' seem to have this same performance to go thru every year with Joyce and it is a shame Joyce is so frail. I am very sorry they are having so much sickness and will write Myrtis as soon as I am able and that will be in a day or so. It seems good to know someone in the family is all right, and I am delighted that you and Dix and Skid and Bill are all well and not having difficulties of anykind. I did not know Skid intended to move his office but am glad if he has a more desirable one and they are more comfortable than in the old one. Where is his office now? You will be disgusted to learn that I am still on the sick list and not able to go anywhere. It makes me tired. I have tried to follow the Drs. instructions to stay in bed most of the time but I simply have to be in the kitchen and around the house some of the time altho' I do spend a great deal of my time lying down. Don't worry about my trips to the store for I do phone for most everything but have wanted a bit of fresh air once or twice on nice days and have ventured over to the store just to have a little change as I am so sick of these four walls of the house. Monday it came off zero weather and has kept it up ever since - is very cold today and the radio says will be even colder tonight and tomorrow. Yesterday, Tues., I had to go to the Dr., zero or no zero, and he again ordered me to go home and stay in bed all I could. My blood count is normal again but must continue to eat liver, and he gave me a shot in the arm for this swelling on my throat and the congestion in my bronchial tubes. About three hours after I reached home I began to feel sick and had a terrible time. I had had a malted milk and guess the shot and that did not like one another for the cramps I had in my stomach and vomiting I did nearly finished me. I was alone and thought I'd never get to my bed but am still alive today, altho' feeling rather rocky. Hazel Seehausen is to bring me some nice soup for supper, so I am well taken care of. I am in the dining room writing and the three little boys are singing at the top of their dear little lungs. They like the sound of the typewriter and want me to tell you what nice warblers they are. Even little Jerry whose voice is not so good, is doing his darndest and that is pretty well. Bet your blue jays and red headed wood pecker and squirrel can't make a concert like I am having. Our blue jays have gone and some pigeons are here instead. I see our squirrels once in awhile but am too high up to get food to them.[Second Floor Bed Rooms Diagram] I am very sorry your Mr. Otis is ill and hope he will get well soon. They have been such nice neighbors and you will miss them if anything happens. And never know who will move in and spoil that lovely yard, which is so charming for you to look out upon. Take that yard away and where'd you go for birds, eh? Hope they don't disturb it while you live there. You must have been very busy writing all that geneological stuff and going here and there to gather information pertaining to it. It takes a lot of time, as I know, just from the little I did on Geord's family history. Maine is full of Geord's relatives and ancestors on the Chase side of the house, his grandmother, and Minnie Whittier knows some of his people and sent me quite a lot of valuable information. I had no way of doping it out as the names in the old book meant absolutely nothing and I just to to group them according to dates of birth and wondered if they were brothers and sisters. I had a lot of it doped out correctly at that. Would love to get more information if I am ever up in Maine again. While I think of it I will give you the information you asked for regarding the date of my marriage etc. George Evander King and myself were married Sunday, August 19th, 1906 at Spencer, Mass. about 2 P.M. by Geord's Uncle Frank Hale who was a minister - Rev. Francis J. Hale, to be exact. We were married in the parsonage and Aunt Lena got a nice lunch for us afterward and Uncle Frank gave me a five dollar gold piece - the one Geord had offered him as a fee for marrying us. you met the Hales once as you will recall - the time Nippy dog chased the cat "Billy Sunday" into the shed? And what a leap that dog did make out of the car, - remember? And now as to Geord's official calling. He is Western Manager of the Chicago Office of the Denton & Anderson Co. The Denton & Anderson Co. also own a welder factory known by the name of the "Taylor Winfield Co." which is in Warren, Ohio, and Geord is one of the stockholders and partners in this concern. He also represents this company along with the Ohio Seamless Tube Co. out here in this Chicago office. Hope I have made it clear. If there's any more information you'd like just ask and ye shall receive. And now I'll devulge a secret I was keeping but since you ask for all the anecdotes and sketches I can think of concerning Grandma and Grandpa and Who-all else, I must tell you that as long ago as last August I started a little book of all the things I could recall concerning our childhood days and have been plugging away on it ever since. Had hoped so much to have it ready for you and Dix at Christmas but couldn't make the grade. I had no idea so many things would come to my mind and no idea anyone could have done so many dam fool things as did in one short life time. Gosh, I haven't even gotten us into our teens yet and still have a million things to write about. The credit for writing this affair, if there by any credit in it after it is done, will be due to the insistence of Frankie Anderson that I write these anecdotes down and preserve them. Geord and I were in Detroit last August and Frankie and I were swapping tales of childhood days and she seemed to be convulsed over some of my stories and said it was a sin I did not write them down. I told her as there were no children in our family I did not think anyone would be interested in reading them, not even my own family, but she made me promise I would do it, and so I started to write little sketches on scraps of paper, a la Aunt Mamie, when I was out riding with Geord and had to wait in the car for him. I had a whole raft of notes but didn't have a chance to start work on the thing until it was cold weather and I would stand it to stay in this hot old house, so it was the last of September before I sat me down to the typewriter and began. Then came many interruptions and days when I could not get to my job as someone would be here and at no time have I been able to write at night as Geord likes to listen to the radio and is entitled to do so, so I can't write then, and find it hard to devote much time to the work. Am gettingalong pretty well, now, just at present, as I try to do a little each day I am confined to the house. I already have many of the sketches written that you have asked for and if you are waiting for them to put in your book I can send my unfinished manuscript to you and you can dig out what you like for your files. Or, when it is done, you can file the whole thing I have written as a whole, with your sketches. Now my version of many of these escapades of ours may not be at all like yours and Dixies and not half as good, so if I am wrong just tell me, for we all forget and get things twisted. I have tried to tell everything just exactly as I remembered it, but that isn't saying it is correct. Of course if Myrtis ever saw it, my Gosh, I might as well throw it in the fire, for I would be all wrong, as usual; but this never was intended to be written for her perusal so don't tell anyone about it for it is only for your, Dixies and Skid's and Bill's eyes and you are going to get into trouble if you mention it to others as I have written in my usual frank manner and not tried to gloss over every defect I saw in people, altho' I have not written anything malicious or mean about anyone. Still, I repeat, it is a family affair and not for anyone else, and if you tell others or won't promise to keep it strictly to yourself I shall burn it up. Let me know whether you would like what I have already written or had rather wait until I finish it. I have about 38 pages of the size I am writing on now, all filled and notes galore in my portfolio which I just haven't had time to type yet. My old typewriter piles up on me when I get to going and troubles me a lot. I have made carbon copies for you and Skid. A funny thing happened. The very day your letter came telling about hearing from Monkey Marden, I had written quite a lot about her which was not any too complimentary as I always hated the old bastard, anyway. Gosh, she must be in the seventies and I thought she was dead long ago, but being of New England stock she wont die for another twenty five years. At that I'd like to see her and talk with her, for what happened in school days is all water over the dam now. If Dix sees her tell him to remember me to her and wish he would ask her if she knows what became of Anna Welch the nice teacher I had before I had Marden. I remember Miss Marden's backhand writing. There is a sample of it in the little autograph album of mine I sent you for safe keeping. I fully intend to come east this summer if I am still alive then, and so, if you and Mabel are planning another trip, go right ahead and I'll go see Skid and Bill and when they are worn out I'll get a room somewhere and try not to bother anyone. Only I just must get home again once more before I pass in my checks, if I can, and I am going to try and make the grade this summer. I may come birds and all and take a room so not to disturb anyone. Or if I can find someone to look after them I'll leave them here. Now don't cry because I have told you this sad news, for I don't expect to find you at home anyway. Maybe you could arrange to give me an hour or so some week end if you are in this country. It is time for supper and I must cease and get busy for I have to get a few things ready even if Hazel is going to bring up some soup. Write me again sometime soon and cheer the old lady up. I love to get your letters. Dixies letter was so funny. Geord wanted to know if he was practicing on his income tax, the way he added up the sum totle of his gains for Christmas. He reminded me of the butcher who always weighed his hand along with the meat he sold. Dix added in the date and made quite a good showing. His letters are a scream but too, too short and far between. No more how and here's hoping I hear from you soon. Love galore to all of you and keep well. As ever, Edith.1/ Gardens Barn Russet Barn Pear Toilets Tree Porter Summer Apple House Tree Garden O'Leary's Toilet Cherry trees (Drawing out of proportion) 4 Family House Our House