My old catalpa in the
fence corner beside the road and the Bartlett pear under which I
had my wild-flower garden were all that was left of the dooryard,
while a few gnarled apple trees remained of the orchard, which
had been reset in another place. The garden had been moved, also
the lanes; the one creek remaining out of three crossed the
meadow at the foot of the orchard. It flowed a sickly current
over a dredged bed between bare, straight banks. The whole place
seemed worse than a dilapidated graveyard to me. All my love and
ten times the money I had at command never could have put back
the face of nature as I knew it on that land."
As a child the author had very few books, only three of her own
outside of school books. "The markets did not afford the miracles
common with the children of today," she adds. "Books are now so
numerous, so cheap, and so bewildering in colour and make-up,
that I sometimes think our children are losing their perspective
and caring for none of them as I loved my few plain little ones
filled with short story and poem, almost no illustration. I had a
treasure house in the school books of my elders, especially the
McGuffey series of Readers from One to Six. For pictures I was
driven to the Bible, dictionary, historical works read by my
father, agricultural papers, and medical books about cattle and
sheep.
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