ten in her singlehood, said openly that she had
quite thrown herself away in settling down to house-keeping,
poultry-raising, and home-making in an out-of-the-way farmstead, with
little society except that of a man ten years older, and thirty years
soberer, than herself.

What a different story I could have told to those who doubted, and those
who pitied! Nowhere in all our broad and bonny State did human lives
flow on more smoothly and radiantly than in the white house nestled
under the great oak that was a landmark for miles around. It had but
five rooms, kitchen, store-room, smoke-house, and other domestic offices
being in detached buildings, as was the custom of the region and times.
If there had been fifty they could not have held the happiness that
streamed through the five as lavishly as the sunshine, and, like the
sunshine, was newly made every day.

I was going on ten years old when my sweet mother gave a little sister
to Bud and me. She had been with us but three days when Cousin Molly
Belle drove over for me and the small hair trunk that meant a visit of
several days when it went along. This time it signified four of the very
_loveliest_ weeks of my life, and two Adventures.

The blessed grandchildren, at whose instance these tales of that
all-so-long-ago are written with flying pen and brimming heart, and
sometimes eyes so moist that the lines waver and swim upon the page,
will have it--as their parents insisted before them--that "we never,
never can have such good times and so many happenings as you had when
you were new."

If I smile quietly in telling over to myself the simple elements and
few, out of which the good times were made, and how tame the happenings
would be to modern young folk, I cannot gainsay the truth that my daily
life was full and rich, and that every hour had a peculiar interest.

For one thing, there was a baby at Oakholme, a bouncing boy, sturdy of
limb and of lung, and so like both his parents in all the good qualities
possible to a baby, as to leave nothing to be desired by the best
friends aforesaid, and no room for criticism on the part of the
malcontents. Out-of-doors were chickens, ducks, turkeys, guinea-fowls,
pigs, calves, pigeons, and a couple of colts,--all, like the baby boy,
the best of their kind. What time was left on our hands after each had
had its meed of attention, was more than consumed by a library such as
few young planters had collected in a county where cho