hough I was only
twelve, I took an eager and determined part. I loved work--it has
always been my favorite form of recreation--and my spirit rose to the
opportunities of it which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the
first thing to do was to put doors and windows into the yawning holes
father had left for them, and to lay a board flooring over the earth
inside our cabin walls, and these duties we accomplished before we had
occupied our new home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles
from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and there we bought
our lumber. The labor we supplied ourselves, and though we put our
hearts into it and the results at the time seemed beautiful to our
partial eyes, I am forced to admit, in looking back upon them, that they
halted this side of perfection. We began by making three windows and two
doors; then, inspired by these achievements, we ambitiously constructed
an attic and divided the ground floor with partitions, which gave us
four rooms.

The general effect was temperamental and sketchy. The boards which
formed the floor were never even nailed down; they were fine, wide
planks without a knot in them, and they looked so well that we merely
fitted them together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them
go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house. Nothing is
more comfortable than a log cabin which has been carefully built and
finished; but for some reason--probably because there seemed always a
more urgent duty calling to us around the corner--we never plastered
our house at all. The result was that on many future winter mornings we
awoke to find ourselves chastely blanketed by snow, while the only warm
spot in our living-room was that directly in front of the fireplace,
where great logs burned all day. Even there our faces scorched while
our spines slowly congealed, until we learned to revolve before the fire
like a bird upon a spit. No doubt we would have worked more thoroughly
if my brother James, who was twenty years old and our tower of strength,
had remained with us; but when we had been in our new home only a few
months he fell and was forced to go East for an operation. He was never
able to return to us, and thus my mother, we three young girls, and my
youngest brother--Harry, who was only eight years old--made our fight
alone until father came to us, more than a year later.

Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous affection w