Part 2

After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found her crying.

“Mary,” she said, with a tenderness that was rare, “if I die, you must take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman within eighteen miles.”

I was ten years old.

That night and many other nights I lay awake, trembling at the possibility of being left the only woman within eighteen miles.

But mother did not die. I must have been a sturdy child; for, with the little help father and his homestead partner could spare, I kept that home going until she was strong again.

Every fall the shoemaker made his rounds through the country, reaching our place last, for beyond us lay only virgin forest and wild beasts. His visit thrilled us more than the arrival of any king to-day. We had been cut off from the world for months. The shoemaker brought news from neighbors eighteen, forty, sixty, even a hundred and fifty miles away. Usually he brought a few newspapers too, treasured afterward for months. He remained, a royal guest, for many days, until all the family was shod.

Up to my tenth birthday we could not afford the newspaper subscription. But after that times were a little better, and the Boston Transcript began to come at irregular intervals. It formed our only tie with civilization, except for the occasional purely personal letter from “back home.”

When I was fourteen three tremendous events had marked my life: sunlight through a window-pane; the logrolling on the river when father added two rooms to our cabin; and the night I thought mother would die and leave me the only woman in eighteen miles.

But the fourth event was the most tremendous. One night father hurried in without even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited, and handed my mother a letter. Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us was a fortune. Some one back East “awaited his instructions.” Followed many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted that her “personal belongings” be shipped to Wisconsin.

After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode thirty-six miles in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads (“the giant's vertebrae,” Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases. It was a solemn moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.

What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's “personal belongings.”

I was in a seventh heaven of delight. My father picked up the books and began to read, paying no attention to our ecstasies over dresses and ribbons, the boxful of laces, or the little shell-covered case holding a few ornaments in gold and silver and jet.

We women did not stop until we had explored every corner of that trunk and the two packing boxes. Then I picked up a napkin.

“What are these for?” I asked curiously.

My father slammed his book shut. I had never seen such a look on his face.

“How old are you, Mary?” he demanded suddenly.

I told him that I was going on fifteen.

“And you never saw a table napkin?”

His tone was bitter and accusing. I did n't understand--how could I? Father began to talk, his words growing more and more bitter. Mother defended herself hotly. To-day I know that justice was on her side. But in that first adolescent self-consciousness my sympathies were all with father. Mother had neglected us--she had not taught us to use table napkins! Becky Sharp used them. People in history used them. I felt sure that Great-Aunt Martha would have been horrified, even in heaven, to learn I had never even seen a table napkin.

Our parents' quarrel dimmed the ecstasy of the “personal belongings.” From that time we used napkins and a table-cloth on Sundays--that is, when any one remembered it was Sunday.

Great-Aunt Martha's napkins opened up a new world for me, and they strengthened father's determination to give his children an education. The September before I reached seventeen, we persuaded mother to let me go to Madison and study for a half year.

So great was my eagerness to learn from books, that I had given no thought to people. Madison, my first town, showed me that my clothes were homemade and tacky. Other girls wore store shoes and what seemed to me beautifully made dresses. I was a backwoods gawk. I hated myself and our home.

With many cautions, father had intrusted eighty dollars to me for the half year's expenses. I took the money and bought my first pair of buttoned shoes and a store dress with nine gores and stylish mutton-leg sleeves! It was poor stuff, not warm enough for winter, and, together with a new coat and hat, made a large hole in my funds.

I found work in a kindly family, where, in return for taking care of an old lady, I received room and board and two dollars a week. Four hours of my day were left for school.

The following February brought me an appointment as teacher in a district school, at eighteen dollars a month and “turnabout” boarding in farmers' families.

The next two years were spent teaching and attending school in Madison. When I was twenty, a gift from father added to my savings and made possible the realization of one of my dreams. I went East for a special summer course.

No tubes shuttled under the Hudson in those days. From the ferry-boat I was suddenly dazzled with the vision of a towering gold dome rising above the four and five-story structures. The New York World building was then the tallest in the world. To me it was also the most stupendous.

Impulsively I turned to a man leaning on the ferry-boat railing beside me. “Is n't that the most wonderful thing in the world?” I gasped.