lored
liquid with the musky flavor peculiar to wild grapes. This wild
dissipation I felt compelled to abandon after I joined a temperance
society and wore a tinsel star on my breast.

"Through the little hamlet where I was born ran, like a great artery,
the National Road. Starting in the far East, it crossed the continent,
looked in on us rustics, and finally lost itself in the wilds of
Illinois. Though we lay on the banks of a romantic river, and a canal,
a branch of the Erie, languidly crawled beside us, breathing fever and
ague as it passed, the Road was our only real means of communication
with the outside world. The river, though of a good breadth, had too
many shoals and rapids to be navigable; and though now and then boats
crept along by the towpath of the canal, I never heard that they
landed or received any produce. The streets of Indianapolis had no
names then; it was too lost a place for that, and we just said the
'main street.' This was afterwards called Washington Street, and was
really a part of the National Road. Oh but that was romantic to me,
leading as it did straight out into the wide, wide world! At certain
intervals, about once in two weeks, the weather and the state of the
road allowing, a lumbering vehicle called a 'mud wagon' left for
regions unknown to me with passengers and freight. I don't know where
it came from, but on its return it brought letters to my father from
his mother, who lived in Philadelphia.

"Sometimes bands of Indians, wrapped in blankets, came through the
town. They seemed friendly enough and no one showed any fear of them.

"We little girls wore pantalettes, to our ankles, and our dresses were
whale-boned down the front, with very long bodices. We had wide flat
hats trimmed with wreaths of roses and tied under our chins. We wore
low necks and short sleeves summer and winter. I was thin but very
tough. My Aunt Knodle[2] made long mittens for me out of nankeen
beautifully embroidered; they came up to my shoulders, and were sewn
on every day to keep me from spoiling my hands. My hair was braided in
front and my everyday gingham sunbonnet sewn to my hair. This was done
in the vain hope of keeping off sunburn, for I was dark, like my
mother, and my complexion was the despair of her life. Beauty of the
fair blonde type was in vogue then, so that I was quite out of
fashion. It was thought that if one was dark one had a wicked temper."

[Footnote 2: The "k" is sile