I have, thank goodness,
no serial story on hand for this summer, to hang like an Old Man of
the Sea about my neck, and hope to enjoy a little season of being like
other folks. It is a most lovely day to-day, most unfallen Eden-like."
In a letter written later in the same season, March 28, 1875, Mrs.
Stowe gives us a pleasant glimpse at their preparations for the proper
observance of Easter Sunday in the little Mandarin schoolhouse. She
says:--
"It was the week before Easter, and we had on our minds the dressing
of the church. There my two Gothic fireboards were to be turned into a
pulpit for the occasion. I went to Jacksonville and got a fiveinch
moulding for a base, and then had one fireboard sawed in two, so that
there was an arched panel for each end. Then came a rummage for
something for a top, and to make a desk of, until it suddenly occurred
to me that our old black walnut extension table had a set of leaves.
They were exactly the thing. The whole was trimmed with a beading of
yellow pine, and rubbed, and pumice-stoned, and oiled, and I got out
my tubes of paint and painted the nail-holes with Vandyke brown. By
Saturday morning it was a lovely little Gothic pulpit, and Anthony
carried it over to the schoolhouse and took away the old desk which I
gave him for his meeting-house. That afternoon we drove out into the
woods and gathered a quantity of superb Easter lilies, papaw,
sparkleberry, great fern-leaves, and cedar.
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