Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary. Daniel Dulany Addison
time, and reminds us of the days of ancient tapestried halls, and all that. That door, where the curtain is, goes into the entry; and there, right opposite, is another one that goes into the parlor, but I shall not go in there with you, because there aren’t any chairs in there; you might sit on Emeline’s blue trunk, or Sarah’s green one, though; but I’m afraid you’d go behind the sheet in the corner, and steal some of Emeline’s milk that she’s saving to make butter of; and then, just as likely as not, you’d want to know why that square piece of board was put on the bottom of the window, with the pitchfork stuck into it to keep it from falling; of course, we shouldn’t like to tell you that there’s a square of glass out, and I suppose you don’t know about that great tom-cat’s coming in, two nights, after we had all gone to bed, and making that awful caterwauling. So you had better stay here in the kitchen, and I’ll show you all the things; it won’t take long. That door at the top of three steps leads upstairs; the little low one close to it is the closet door—you needn’t go prying in there, to see what we’ve got to eat, for you’ll certainly bump your head if you do; pass by the parlor door and the curtain, and look out of that window on the front side of the house; if it was not so dark, you might see the beautiful flower-beds that Sarah has made—a big diamond in the centre, with four triangles to match it. As true as I live, she has been making her initials right in the centre of the diamond! There’s a great S, and an M, but where’s the H? Oh! you don’t know how that dog came in and scratched it all up, and laid down there to sun himself, the other day. We tell her there’s a sign to it—losing her maiden name so soon. She declares she won’t have it altered by a puppy, though. These two windows look (through the fence) over to our next neighbor’s; that’s our new cooking-stove between them; isn’t it a cunning one? the funnel goes up clear through Emeline’s bedroom, till it gets to “outdoors.” We keep our chimney in the parlor. Then that door on the other side looks away across the prairie, three or four miles; and that brings us to where we started from.
As to furniture, this is the table, where I am writing; it is a stained one, without leaves, large enough for six to eat from, and it cost just two dollars and a quarter. There are a half dozen chairs, black, with yellow figures, and this is the rocking-chair, where we get baby to sleep. That is E.’s rag mat before the stove, and George fixed that shelf for the water-pail in the corner. The coffee-mill is close to it, and that’s all. Now don’t you call us rich? I’m sure we feel grand enough.
Now, if you would only just come and make us a visit in earnest, Emeline would make you some nice corn-meal fritters, and you should have some cream and sugar on them; and I would make you some nice doughnuts, for I’ve learned so much; and you should have milk or coffee, just as you pleased; it is genteel to drink coffee for breakfast, dinner, and supper, here. Then, if you didn’t feel satisfied, we should say that it was because you hadn’t lived on johnny-cakes and milk a week, as we did.
I have got to begin to be very dignified, for I am going to begin to keep school next Monday, in a little log-cabin, all alone. One of the “committee men” took me to Lebanon, last Saturday, in his prairie wagon, to be examined. You’ve no idea how frightened I was, but I answered all their questions, and didn’t make any more mistakes than they did. They told me I made handsome figures, wrote a good hand, and spoke correctly, so I begin to feel as if I knew most as much as other folks.
Emeline does not gain any flesh, although she has grown very handsome since she came to the land of “hog and hominy.” Your humble servant is as fat as a pig, as usual, though she has not tasted any of the porkers since her emigration, for the same reason that a certain gentleman would not eat any of Aunt Betsey’s cucumbers—“not fit to eat.” That’s my opinion, and if you had seen such specimens of the living animal as I have, since I left home, you’d say so, too.
Lucy.
TO MRS. I. W. BAKER.
Looking-Glass Prairie, June 9, 1846.
Dear Sister—Here I am, just got home from school; all at once a notion takes me that I want to write to you, and I’m doing it. I’m sitting in our parlor, or at least, what we call our parlor, because the cooking-stove is not in it, and because Emeline has laid her pretty rag mat before the hearth, and because the sofa is in here. There! you didn’t think we’d get a sofa out here, did you? Well, to be sure, it isn’t exactly like your sofa, because it isn’t stuffed, nor covered, nor has it any back, only the side of the house; nor any legs, only red ones, made of brick; dear me! I’m afraid you’ll “find out,” after all—but it certainly did come all the way from St. Louis, in the wagon with the other furniture. We keep our “cheers” in the kitchen, and we find that Becky Wallis’s definition of them, i.e., “to sit on,” don’t tell the whole story now.
But don’t you want to hear how we like it, out here, in this great country? Oh, happy as clams! and we haven’t been homesick, either, only once in a while, when it seemed so queer getting “naturalized,” that we couldn’t help “keepin’ up a terrible thinkin’.” By the way, we were all sick last week—no, not all; Emeline and the baby were not. George and Sarah and I all had the doctor at once. I was taken first, and had the most violent attack, and got well soonest. Our complaint was remittent fever, which is only another name for chills and fever, I suspect. I felt ashamed to get “the chills” so soon after coming here, and I believe the doctor was kind enough to call it something else. I did have one regular “chill,” though; the blood settled under my nails, and though I didn’t shake, I shivered “like I had the agey.” That’s our Western phraseology. Blue pills and quinine I thought would be the death of me; but I believe they cured me after all. I had to leave school for a week, but yesterday I commenced again.
My school! Oh, the times I do have there with the young Suckers! I have to walk rather more than a mile to it, and it is in just the most literal specimen of a log-cabin that you can form any idea of. ’Tis built of unhewn logs, laid “criss-cross,” as we used to say down in the lane; the chinks filled up with mud, except those which are not filled up “at all, at all,” and the chimney is stuck on behind the house. The floor lies as easy as it can on the ground, and the benches are, some of them (will you believe it?), very much like our sofa. They never had a school in this district before, and my “ideas” are beginning to “shoot” very naturally, most of them. I asked one new scholar yesterday how old she was. “Don’t know,” she said, “never was inside of a school-house before.” Another big girl got hold of my rubbers the other day, “Ouch,” said she, “be them Ingin robbers? I never seen any ’fore.” Some of them are bright enough to make up for all this, and on the whole I enjoy being “schoolma’am” very much. I have not seen a snake since I came here, and if I didn’t have to pass through such a sprinkling of cattle on my way to school, I shouldn’t have a morsel of trouble. Everybody turns his “cattle-brutes” out on the open prairie to feed, and they will get right into my path, and such a mooing and bellowing as they make! George has three big cows and two little ones, and two calves, and a horse, and ten hens, and a big pig and a little one: only the big pig has dug a subterranean passage, and “runned away.” And I don’t milk the cows, and I won’t learn to, if I can help it, because they will be so impolite as to turn round and stare me in the face always when I go near them.
Talk to me about getting married and settling down here in the West! I don’t do that thing till I’m a greater goose than I am now, for love nor money. It is a common saying here, that “this is a fine country for men and dogs, but women and oxen have to take it.” The secret of it is that farmers’ wives have to do all their work in one room, without any help, and almost nothing to work with. If ever I had the mind to take the vestal vow, it has been since I “emigrated.” You’ll see me coming back one of these years, a “right smart” old maid, my fat sides and cheeks shaking with “the agey,” to the tune of “Oh, take your time, Miss Lucy!”
I’ve a good mind to give you a picture, for the sun is setting, and it makes me feel “sort o’ romantic.” Well, in the first place, make a great wide daub of green, away off as far as the sunset; streak it a little deeper, half-way there, for the wheat fields. A little to the right make a smooth, bluish green hill, as even as a potato hill—that’s the Blue Mound. A little one side, make a hundred little red, black, and white specks on the grass—them’s