Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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And on this October day I saw the spot where the old house stood on the south flank of that woodland—the house around which I played with my brothers as a care-free child, and where my mother almost cried her heart out because of loneliness. Also, it was here where my mother told me a story one day—a story of my father, of herself, of why we had left our home in the Southland. Our tears mingled over the telling of that story then. And there was sadness in my heart that October afternoon as I paused, reverently, for a moment in passing.

Although I was born in the sunny South where magnolias bloom and mockingbirds sing all winter long, my first vivid recollection of life was upon this bleak Kansas farm, hot and wind-swept in summer, cold and desolate in winter. The rigid climate of this new plains country home was in such marked contrast to the mild and even temperature of my mother’s native heavily timbered state as to her long to go back to her old home.

It was eight wilderness miles to Powhattan, the post-office; five miles to Granada, the trading post; and one mile to the nearest neighbors—Rube and Anne Wolfley.