Wonder if you missed me much last week? I was so dreadfully busy getting settled and feeding silo-fillers and hay0makers that I took a vacation from the pen and made use of your good contributions. Thank you every one for furnishing so much good material.
We are gradually getting to rights in the new house. Much finishing needs to be done, both indoors and out, but I am so delighted at having a home again that I don't see unfinished woodwork and floors at all, or heaps of brick and ashes in the yard. I see instead soft shining ivory enamel, and satiny floors, and a mahogany handrail that leads to a graceful goose neck turn at the landing.
I stand at that landing and look out of the double casement window on the yard and garden, with a heart content. For instead of a pile of lumber and a carpenter's work-bench, I see a row of hollyhocks and a trellised gateway. Instead of sun-baked grass and a heap of radiators waiting to be installed, I see a smooth lawn with some garden seats and a little pool and a bird-house and a sun-dial. Instead of a pile of unturned clay, I see a green velvet terrace with a border of roses and a path leading down to an old-fashioned flower-garden. And I see all around about, hiding every bare and ugly spot, clumps of sumach and blossoming shrubs.
I see a long way into the future don't I? For it will be a long slow task to build our place into what we want it to be. We must wait for somethings till we have time, and for others till we have money. And in the meantime the daily tasks go on.
Sometimes I get discouraged and weepy, remembering our spacious old house, with its generous rooms and its lofty ceilings. I mourn over my lost wedding dress and our treasured letters and college keepsakes and the babies' memory boxes. One of the dearest memories of my childhood is a picture of us children sitting with mother beside her keepsake trunk and looking, big-eyed, at one treasure and another of her girlhood, while she told us the stories of each one. When I think that I shall not have any such a trunk to pore over with my babies, I get all twisty in my throat. I shall not be able to go through the old house in after years and say to the children, "Here is where Cousin Grace stood to be married." "Here is the window where great-aunt Emma sat and picture pages for you." "Here is the room where Ruth was born." "Here is the dress in which I was married."
Then I remind myself of what one dear friend wrote us right after the fire: "It is sad to lose the keepsakes, but those things we have with us for only a little while, after all!"
So I remember how I used to struggle to keep those generous rooms and lofty ceiling clean. I remember that our rambling, hospitable old house was lovable, but most awfully inconvenient. And that those keepsakes were lucky to be looked at twice a year, at housecleaning time.
So I cast away gloom, and rejoice in the new home that we never would have had except for the fire--and plan to pile up new treasures for the years to come.