第11章 II(4)

During the winter life offered us few diversions and many hardships. Our creek froze over, and the water problem became a serious one, which we met with increasing difficulty as the temperature steadily fell. We melted snow and ice, and existed through the frozen months, but with an amount of discom- f ort which made us unwilling to repeat at least that special phase of our experience. In the spring, therefore, I made a well. Long before this, James had gone, and Harry and I were now the only out- d oor members of our working-force. Harry was still too small to help with the well; but a young man, who had formed the neighborly habit of rid- i ng eighteen miles to call on us, gave me much friendly aid. We located the well with a switch, and when we had dug as far as we could reach with our spades, my assistant descended into the hole and threw the earth up to the edge, from which I i n turn removed it. As the well grew deeper we made a half-way shelf, on which I stood, he throw- i ng the earth on the shelf, and I shoveling it up from that point. Later, as he descended still farther into the hole we were making, he shoveled the earth into buckets and passed them up to me, I passing them on to my sister, who was now pressed into service. When the excavation was deep enough we made the wall of slabs of wood, roughly joined together. I recall that well with calm content. It was not a thing of beauty, but it was a thoroughly practical well, and it remained the only one we had during the twelve years the family occupied the cabin.

During our first year there was no school within ten miles of us, but this lack failed to sadden Harry or me. We had brought with us from Lawrence a box of books, in which, in winter months, when our outdoor work was restricted, we found much comfort. They were the only books in that part of the country, and we read them until we knew them all by heart. Moreover, father sent us regularly the New York Independent, and with this admirable literature, after reading it, we papered our walls.

Thus, on stormy days, we could lie on the settle or the floor and read the Independent over again with increased interest and pleasure.

Occasionally father sent us the Ledger, but here mother drew a definite line. She had a special dis- l ike for that periodical, and her severest comment on any woman was that she was the type who would ``keep a dog, make saleratus biscuit, and read the New York Ledger in the daytime.'' Our modest library also contained several histories of Greece and Rome, which must have been good ones, for years later, when I entered college, I passed my examination in ancient history with no other prep- a ration than this reading. There were also a few arithmetics and algebras, a historical novel or two, and the inevitable copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose pages I had freely moistened with my tears.

When the advantages of public education were finally extended to me, at thirteen, by the opening of a school three miles from our home, I accepted them with growing reluctance. The teacher was a spinster forty-four years of age and the only genuine ``old maid'' I have ever met who was not a married woman or a man. She was the real thing, and her name, Prudence Duncan, seemed the fitting label for her rigidly uncompromising personality. I graced Prudence's school for three months, and then left it at her fervid request. I had walked six miles a day through trackless woods and Western blizzards to get what she could give me, but she had little to offer my awakened and critical mind. My reading and my Lawrence school-work had already taught me more than Prudence knew--a fact we both inwardry--admitted and fiercely resented from our different viewpoints. Beyond doubt I was a pert and trying young person. I lost no opportunity to lead Prudence beyond her intellectual depth and leave her there, and Prudence vented her chagrin not alone upon me, but upon my little brother. I became a thorn in her side, and one day, after an especially unpleasant episode in which Harry also figured, she plucked me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from her. From that time I studied at home, where I was a much more valuable economic factor than I had been in school.

The second spring after our arrival Harry and I e xtended our operations by tapping the sugar- b ushes, collecting all the sap, and carrying it home in pails slung from our yoke-laden shoulders. To- g ether we made one hundred and fifty pounds of sugar and a barrel of syrup, but here again, as al- w ays, we worked in primitive ways. To get the sap we chopped a gash in the tree and drove in a spile.

Then we dug out a trough to catch the sap. It was no light task to lift these troughs full of sap and empty the sap into buckets, but we did it success- f ully, and afterward built fires and boiled it down.

By this time we had also cleared some of our ground, and during the spring we were able to plow, dividing the work in a way that seemed fair to us both.

These were strenuous occupations for a boy of nine and a girl of thirteen, but, though we were not in- o rdinately good children, we never complained; we found them very satisfactory substitutes for more normal bucolic joys. Inevitably, we had our little tragedies. Our cow died, and for an entire winter we went without milk. Our coffee soon gave out, and as a substitute we made and used a mixture of browned peas and burnt rye. In the winter we were always cold, and the water problem, until we had built our well, was ever with us.