Hamlin Garland

“ She loved games, practical jokes and jesting of all kinds. Her natural gayety was almost unquenchable; not even unending work and poverty could entirely subdue her or embitter her.
Death touching her eldest daughter threw the first enduring shadow over her life. She never entirely returned to the jollity of her former years, though she regained a cheerfulness inseparable from her life. She had been youthful to that moment; after that she was middle-aged—even to her sons.
Her two boys and her baby Jessie comforted her and she had no time for unavailing grief. ”

“ Though my mother worked hard she had time to visit with her neighbors and often took her children with her to quilting bees, which they enjoyed, for they could play beneath the quilt as if it were a tent, and run under it for shelter from imaginary storms. ”

“ She still continued to threaten to “trounce” us, a menace which always provoked us to laughter. “Mother’s whippings don’t last long,” we used to say.
Our home remained unchanged. The expense of opening a farm, of buying machinery and building barns, made it seem necessary to live in the same little story-and-a-half house. The furniture grew shabbier, but was not replaced. My mother’s dresses were always cheap and badly made, but so were the coats my father wore. Money seemed hard to hold, even when the crops were good. I cannot recall a single beautiful thing about our house, not one. ”

“ Life was a little easier for her, too. She was clear of the farm and its terrible drudgery at last. She could sleep like a human being till daylight came, for she had no one to cook for save her own small family. She saw and was a part of the village life, which was exceedingly jolly and of good report. Her son Franklin and her little daughter were still with her, and she did not much miss her eldest—who had gone far seeking fair cities in intellectual seas. The home was still poor and shabby of furniture, but it was not lonely. ”

“ Others had seen her close the eyes of their dead—for she had come to be a mother to every one who suffered. Those who brought the richest gifts considered them a poor return for her own unstinting helpfulness. ”

“ I now see that she must have suffered each time the bitter pangs of doubt and unrest which strike through the woman’s heart when called upon to leave her snug, safe fire for a ruder cabin in strange lands. ”

“ Father was not niggardly of labor-saving implements, and a clotheswringer and washer and a barrel churn came along and they helped a little, but work never “lets up” on a farm. There are always three meals to get and the dishes to wash, and each day is like another so far as duties are concerned. Sunday brings little rest for housewives even in winter.
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BUT into those monotonous days some pleasure came. The neighbors dropped in of a summer evening, and each Sunday we drove away to church. ”

“ SHE had four children at this time and I fear her boys gave her considerable trouble, but her eldest daughter was of growing service in working about the house as well as in tending the fair-haired baby, but work grew harder and harder. My father purchased some wild land in Mitchell County, Iowa, and we all set to work to break the sod for the third time. A large part of the hardship involved in this fell upon my mother, for the farm required a great many “hands,” and these “hands” had enormous appetites, and the household duties grew more unrelenting from year to year. ”

“ Most of us in America are the children of working people, and the toil-worn hands of our parents should be heaped to overflowing with whatever good things success brings to us. They bent to the plow and the washboard when we were helpless. ”

“ But as nearly all other homes of the neighborhood were of like character I don’t suppose she realized her own poverty.
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AT last a great change came to us all. The country was fairly filled with settlers and my father’s pioneer heart began to stir again, and once more he planned a flight into the wilder West, and in the fall of 1881, when I was twenty-one years of age, we parted company. My parents and my sister and brother journeyed westward into South Dakota and settled in the little town of Ordway, on a treeless plain, while I turned eastward, intent on further education. ”