how not to which boating and swimming lessons would have helped teach; and as for horseback-riding, it is one of the most noble sports on earth for men and women both. We proved it so when (after the calf-taming episode) it was permitted us, by the intercession of our mother, who had been a fine rider in her younger years.

Happy the girls of the period who practice nearly every outdoor sport that is open to their brothers; wear gymnastic suits in school, flee to the country as soon as vacation comes, and have almost as blessed a time as we three children had in the old days at Forest Home. It is good for boys and girls to know the same things, so that the former shall not feel and act so overwise. A boy whose sister knows all about the harness, the boat, the gymnastic exercise, will be far more modest, genial and pleasant to have about. He will cease to be a tease and learn how to be a comrade, and this is a great gain to him, his sister, and his wife that is to be.

Here are some bits from journals kept along through the years. They are little more than hints at every-day affairs, but, simple as they sound, they give glimpses of real life among the pioneers.

From Mary's:

Frank said we might as well have a ship, if we did live on shore, so we took a hen-coop pointed at the top, put a big plank across it and stood up, one at each end, with an old rake handle apiece to steer with. Up and down we went, slow when it was a calm sea and fast when there was a storm, till the old hen clucked and the chickens all ran in, and we had a lively time. Frank was captain and I was mate. We made out charts of the sea and rules about how to navigate when it was good weather, and how when it was bad. We put up a sail made of an old sheet, and had great fun till I

fell off and hurt me.

To-day Frank gave me half her dog, Frisk, that she bought lately, and for her pay I made a promise which mother witnessed, and here it is: "I, Mary Willard, promise never to touch anything lying or being upon Frank Willard's stand and writing-desk which father gave her. I promise never to ask, either by speaking, writing or signing, or in any other way, any person or body to take off or put on anything on said stand and desk without special permission from said F. W. promise never to touch anything which may be in something upon her stand and desk. I promise never to put anything on it or in anything on it. I promise, if I am writing or doing anything else at her desk, to go away the minute she tells me. If I break this promise I will let the said F. W. come into my room and go to

44

Drops into Poetry and Tears.

my trunk, or go into any place where I keep my things, and take anything of mine she likes. All this I promise unless entirely different arrangements are made. These things I promise upon my most sacred honor."

Mother says Frank liked to walk on top of the fence, and to chop wood with a broken ax handle, and to get Oliver's hat while he was doing his sums, and put it on her head and go out to the barn.

I've made a picture of the house Frank was born in-mother helped, of course; she always does. I was born in Oberlin, and that's a nicer town than Frank's. I remember Mr. Bronson and Mr. Frost-they were students in Oberlin, and boarded at our house. I guess it's the very first thing I do remember-how they made us little rag dolls and drew ink faces on them, and we really thought they were nice; but we should n't now, I know, for my doll Anna is as big as a real little girl, and father painted her with real paint and mother fastened on real hair, and I made her clothes just like mine; but she is a rag doll all the same, only she's good, and not proud like a wax doll.

Mr. Carver and Miss Sherburn went with us from Oberlin to Wisconsin. They are both good Christians, and Mr. C. often led in prayer at family worship; but when he killed our puppies (though father told him to) I thought he was a sort of awful man.

From mine:

1 I once thought I would like to be Queen Victoria's Maid of Honor; then I wanted to go and live in Cuba; next, I made up my mind that I would be an artist; next, that I would be a mighty hunter of the prairies. But now I suppose I am to be a music teacher--"simply that and nothing more."

When it rained and filled the stove so full of water, standing right out on the ground, that mother could n't even boil the kettle for tea, we did n't think it very funny. Mother had n't any money to get us Christmas presents; father was sick in bed with ague, and yet we hung up our stockings, and Oliver put his boot strap over the front door knob. So mother stirred around and got two false curls she used to wear when it was the fashion to wear them on a comb, and put one in my stocking and one in Mary's, with little sea-shells that she had kept for many years, also an artificial flower apiece; to Oliver she gave a shell and Pollock's "Course of Time." We had n't a hired man, and mother and Ollie went out in the woods and dragged in branches of trees to burn. We girls thought it great fun, but father called it his "Blue Christmas." Next day Oliver went to town and hired a good, honest, Yankee fellow, whose name was John Lockwood. Then we had Lewis Zeader, Thomas Gorry and his wife, and so on; never after that having to go it alone. I like farm life; "God made the country and man made the town ”—“ -"them's my sentiments."

I tried my hand at poetry. Here is a specimen written on an occasion that afflicted me-almost to tears. A noble black oak that grew near one of the dormer-windows of Forest Home was heard straining and cracking in a high wind one night. It was found to be so much injured that the order was given next

day to cut it down. This was a sort of tragedy, for father had taught us to regard the trees as creatures almost human, and he guarded those about the house and in the pastures as if they had been household pets. So when "old Blackie" was cut down, Mary and I were greatly wrought upon, and I penciled my thoughts as follows:

TO AN OLD OAK.

RECENTLY FELLED AT FOREST HOME.

And so, old Monarch of the Forest, thou hast fallen!
Supinely on the ground thy giant limbs are laid;

No more thou'lt rear aloft thy kingly head,

No more at eventide the chirping jay

Shall seek a shelter 'mid thy boughs or 'mong them play.

No more the evening breeze shall through thy branches sigh,

For thou art dead. Ah, e'en to thee

How fearful 'twas to die!

Perhaps, ages ago,- for 'mong the centuries thou hast grown on,—

Some swarthy warrior of a race long past,

Some giant chieftain of an early day,

Beneath thy shade has rested from the chase,

And to thy gnarled trunk told some wild revenge,

Or gentle tale of love.

And in the dusk of the primeval times,

Some fair young maid, perchance, to thee complained

Of vows unkept, or, in a happier mood,

With smile as innocent as e'er maid wore,

Has told to thee some simple happiness,

Scarce worth the telling, save that in her path

Joys were the flowers that by the weeds of care
Were overwhelmed.

Around thy base the forest children played

In days long passed away, and flowing now

In the dark River of Eternity.

The years but lately gone were waiting then to be;
Time quickly sped, these years that were to be

Came, hastened by, and are no more; with them,

Well pleased to go, my childish hours fled trait'rously,

Bearing to Shadeland holiest memories.

Telling of busy feet and happy heart,

Delighted eyes and all the unnumbered joys

Given us but once-in Childhood,

Glorious were mine, old Tree!

46

Has the Tree a Spirit?

Birds have sung for me, flowers bright have bloomed
That had not, had I ne'er been born to greet their beauty.

Skies wore their loveliest hues for me

Just as they do in turn for all that live,

And as they will for happy hearts to come.

E'en when the tiny nut that held thee first,
Dropt quietly into the rich, dark soil,
'Twas in the plan of the great God of all,
That thy bright leaves, thy green crest lifted high,
Thy sturdy trunk, and all thy noble form,
Should be, some day far distant, loved by me;
Should cause my eyes with joy to rest on thee,

And so increase earth's gifts of God to me.

Thou hast given this grace to many, thou hast granted it to me;
But none, perhaps, besides me shall extol thy memory.

Stern Death, remorseless enemy, spares nothing that we love;
Upon the cold, white snow to-night, lie boughs that waved above.
And I'm lonely, sad and silent, for I feel a friend is gone,

As 'mong thy great, dead boughs to-night,

I hear the strange wind moan.

Old Tree, hast thou a spirit? If so, we'll meet again!

I shall not give thee up yet, for I'll meet thee, Yonder-when?
Perchance thy leaves, etherealized, above me yet shall wave
When to bright Paradise I come, up from the gloomy grave!
So in this wistful, hopeful tone,

Farewell, old King of Forest Home.

CHAPTER II.

THE ARTISTS' CLUB.

In 1856 the greatest event occurred that we Forest Homers had chronicled since the famous "Founding of Fort City." Father's only brother, who had married mother's sister, came with his wife and our aunts Elizabeth and Caroline to "spy out the land" and "see how Josiah and his family had got along." It was an unheard of thing for this quartette of Vermont-New Yorkers to venture so far from home, and to our secret astonishment they evinced no love for the Great West. "Josiah was the only one that strayed," they said, and her sisters bemoaned mother's long loneliness even more than she did herself, whose isolation was, until her great bereavement came, the memorable misfortune of her life. But of all this her children knew practically nothing, so sunny was her spirit and so merged was her life in theirs. Our "nice uncle Zophar" was a revelation to us children. He was tall, like father, and had the same dignified ways, but was more caressing toward his nieces and had one of the kindest faces, and yet the firmest in the world. He was a Whig and father a Democrat, at the time of his visit, so there was no end of argument about Webster and Clay, and the principles they represented on the one hand, and the "grand old Jeffersonian doctrines" on the other. He was a Congregationalist and father a Methodist, so there was no end of talk about their differences in theology, and uncle Zophar liked to quote the line, "A church without a bishop and a state without a king." But the old stone church, where both of them had once belonged, the old stone school-house where they had been pupils, the old neighbors who had come with them from Vermont, on runners across the snow, about 1815, these were subjects of which we never tired, especially when the sparkle of aunt Caroline's fun and the bright recollections of aunts Abigail and Elizabeth were added to the conversation.