HOW SHE GREW

 The date is January 4, 1953, 10:00 A .M., seventy-one year old I, in bed. Just been kissed and left alone by my good husband who wondered if that was cricket. Today is Communion Sunday, when we meet to confess our sins and commemorate Christ's great love for us. No definite New Year resolutions have been made by me at any time. This morning, after a long night of uneasiness and pain, being quite relaxed and comfortable now, I've decided to begin a long delayed account of "How She Grew", dedicated to my family.

 There is excitement in the Jasper J. Wells household. Not too much, for there has been six similar occasions during the last thirteen years. The younger children are sent across the road to a neighbor's. The older boys are busy with chores at the barn, discussing the possibility of a baby brother; there are four boys already, and two girls. Now Grandma has arrived, and there is a horse and cutter coming down the hill from the West. Is it? Yes, it is Dr. Ditmars!

If the Birth Certificate had given more information it would have read like this: Wheatland Township, Hillsdale County, Michigan, 9:30 A. M., January 19, 1881. Born to Jasper J. and Alice L. Wells in the old brick house on the old Center farm, a daughter. Weight 8 lbs. name Bertha Alice. Seventh child.

 Father rented this farm for two or three years. One winter was that of the great ice storm, with its attendant hardships. Fodder needed by cattle in the barnyard was still in the field; skates were the best means of transportation.

 Most babies walk when about a year old, but evidently there was no reason for me to do so. "Berthie" was too fearful. One day an uncle held a silver quarter just out of reach, and the miracle happened. I was then twenty-two months old, and had a new baby brother, Percy, born September 8, 1882.

 It is told that one day they could find me nowhere. They called and searched for long minutes. At last they found me fast asleep among tall weeds near a little house in the corner of the yard, where an old lady, Margaret Rose, lived alone. Do I have a faint recollection of hearing them calling, and not knowing how to respond? Probably not, but a vivid imagination gives reality.

 Our next home was on the Harry Wilcox farm, one mile north of North Adams, Northwest corner. Here sister Susie May was born, August 5, 1884. And here Grandma Gowdy (nee Sallie Collins) visited us with Uncle Hiram Gowdy. Later mother made a trip to New York State with the baby and Howard. Grandma died the next year, and is buried in Uncle Philo Gowdy's lot in the South Champion Cemetery, New York.

 We played with the George Wilcox children across the road. I remember Lena, Newton and Jay, who was nearest my age. In their side yard was lumber piled to dry out. While playing House we slipped in short pieces of boards for seats and shelves. One day this caused the pile above to topple and fall. The other children escaped and ran for help. When our big brothers arrived, there was little Jay working like a BIG boy, pulling those heavy boards off me. I was not much hurt, but making a lot of noise. This is the first occurrence that I actually remember. So I shall never forget Jay, who still lives near North Adams. We grew up in different neighborhoods, and I do not recall seeing him later.

 In 1886 we moved to Grandpa Abel Wells' farm, three miles from North Adams and half a mile west of the Center farm where I was born. Here was the Old Oaken Bucket That Hung in the Well. This well both awed and intrigued me. The water was cold and wonderful. There was a long side porch leading to a summer kitchen, and a large woodpile with fresh-smelling chips of which my mother required enormous supplies. Near this woodpile, where the hens loved to scratch, one day I stood, staring in dismay at a broken plate from which I had been throwing scraps to the hens. What would mother say? I gathered the pieces (very thick, heavy, and reddish-brown in color), and took them to her in silence. I think she said, "Oh, well. Never mind." Or similar words. And no child ever had a lighter heart, or a better loved mother, than I.

 There was a cider barrel back of the house. This stood there aging for vinegar. Brother showed how we could take out the bung, and provided us with long straws. Then we sipped. It wasn't good, and our consciences hurt, so THAT was THAT. Then one day our wagon, with the hayrack, was driven to the door. I inquired of Percy, "What are they going to do?" Although younger, he knew we were going to move. And we did -- to the Andrew Pendell farm; now Percy's own farm. And Grandpa (Abel Wells) moved back from North Adams to his farm.

 We stayed on the Pendell farm three years. Arthur Greenleaf Wells was born here, early in the morning, February 1, 1887. Before daylight someone came into the bedroom where Percy and I were sleeping and pulled the quilts up over us so high that our faces were covered. It awoke and frightened us, but we made no sound and she went away. We pushed the covers back and saw a tall woman all in black leave the room. Later Father came and told us he had something to show us. So we went with him, and there was Grandma Wells, and in the bed beside Mother was our new baby brother. Grace thought he should be named Arthur Fay, to rhyme with Bertha A., Percy J., Susie May; but the name Greenleaf was chosen, for both of Father's parents were descended from the Greenleaf's.

 Soon I began to go to school. Already I could read. My first teacher (Jackson School) was Ella Collins. Abe Schilling was one of the big boys. I liked him because he took my hand and seemed to float me over the drifts when the snow was deep. He may have been extra kind to me because of sister Mary. They say that once in grammar class they were to make a sentence with a noun, verb, and adverb. And Abe said, "Mary looks sweet."

 Once Father was taking us to school in the sleigh. I fell out of the back and was not missed at first, and could not make them hear because of the sleigh-bells; but eventually they did miss me. One day a cloudburst caught me going home from school. I had been running far and fast, and reached the "cow gate" almost at our door when the heavens opened. What a soaking I got.

 My first examination in arithmetic will never be forgotten. The teacher wrote on the blackboard; Write, 1. One hundred two. 2. Four hundred nine; and other similar lines. I followed instructions exactly by making a perfect copy of her blackboard list.

 Gypsies traveled through the countryside occasionally in covered wagons, and we were warned to keep away from them. If we saw a wagon coming we would hide until it passed. Even to this day, in my dreams I hurry home ahead of them. Our barn, across the road from the house, had a small slide door facing the road. In one election year (l888) Percy and I stood in that doorway and called "Hurrah for Fiske and Brooks", whenever a rig passed. They were the Prohibition candidates. Many people were wearing caps for "Harrison and Morton."

 There was a ram in our barnyard, and this day he was rambunctious. I climbed between the rails of the fence to take some eggshells and cabbage leaves to the hen-house in the barnyard. The ram promptly knocked me down. I offered him the eggshells because Mother had said the chickens needed the green stuff and he knocked me down again. By that time I knew that discretion was the better part of valor, so I rolled back through the fence leaving everything, even the basin, to the ram.

 Father raised and sold Poland China hogs on this farm. Each sow had her own little house out in the field. There were hop vines growing on the fences, and Mother used the hops in her bread-making yeast. Also I remember large and luscious pears from trees on the east side of the road, a ways north of the barn. In the dooryear where large catalpa trees. I could climb these, but then a big brother had to help me down.

 Mother baked bread four times a week. One night the bread, being warm and soft, tempted me to make a bread man. This I did under the table edge, as Father would disapprove, but where Percy could see and approve. This made us giggle. Father said, "Berthie, stop laughing." It was hard to stop quickly, so I took a drink of milk to hide my face, and the milk exploded. Then I was sent away from the table. We were just beginning supper, and I was hungry, so I ate my bread man. When the men had gone to their chores at the barn Mother called me to eat my supper.

 In 1888 or 1889 Father rented the Cyrus Jackson farm, on which was the Jackson schoolhouse, for a cash rent of $200.00 a year, I think. This place had sugar maples in the woods across the road, and the sap was boiled down in a shed by the house. Mother made a quantity of molasses from the syrup, and also maple sugar. The syrup was very good eaten from packed snow in pans. From the ridgepole of the house some of us viewed a balloon ascension and subsequent parachute drop at North Adams, two miles west. It was made by Ernest Stevens, whose mother (Ophelia Collins Stevens Ingham) was our Mother's own cousin. A man riding by on a high-wheeled bicycle brought us children running to stare and admire.

 Here we kept a canary, "Dickie." When he grew old and died we buried him in a pasteboard box, with flowers and tears, wearing suitable black capes, coats, and hats. Father had a yoke of oxen (they were called Herbert's because he worked them) named Spot and Star. Once when hitched to a roller they ran away. As they were in the field that needed rolling, no damage was done, but they raised some excitement along with the dust.

 When school was new to me, Isabel Speer sat in the seat ahead. She turned and made up terrible faces to entertain me, and finally I laughed aloud. Then we had to go up on the rostrum and stand there awhile. I was too young to see any justice in my punishment. For Isabel, yes; but I had done only what I couldn't help doing. Right then I learned one also suffers for unintentional misdeeds.

 Part of a circus once passed the schoolhouse. A camel was walking, and we ran out to stare and to examine its tracks. At school we played Red Lion, Duck On the Rock, Follow the Leader, Pull-Away, Ante-I-Over, Tag, Drop the Handkerchief, Three Old Cat, Hop Scotch, etc. On rainy days we played inside, such games as Blind Man's Bluff, Still-pond, Spat 'em Out of the Kingdom, Roll the Platter, Bean Porridge Hot, and London Bridge Is Falling Down. Mottoes hung on the walls: Never Be Late - Knowledge Is Power - You Can If You Will -I'll Try Will Succeed - Never Say Fail. I accepted their truth then, as I do now. Hettie Stebbins, the teacher, each day gave us a drill in calisthenics, and we marched and sang.

 When I was nine years old I had a surprise birthday party. Lida Speer, Belle Locklin, and Mayte Collins, three little cousins who were in my classes, had each had a birthday party, but I had not expected one. It was a surprise, and I was so overjoyed that all I remember about the party is the joy it gave me to be so honored.

 Part of the next year we farmed the Gilmer Place, a half-mile east and a half-mile south of North Adams, where we attended school. Herman Corbett was my teacher in the fifth grade, and Nettie Westcott and Nellie Hard were seatmates of mine. It was a custom to give valentines at school. We could deposit them in a box on the teacher's desk, and on February 14th there was distribution to the designated ones. I hoped that the most studious boy in the seventh grade would give one to me, but alas and alas! No one remembered me. By the way, just now I recall the name of the studious boy - Louie Aldrich. Never before could I think of it; proof that your mind stores facts for use many years later. Edith Crane, a very pretty blonde, and Nora Dunn, a striking brunette, were the popular girls who received dozen or more valentines apiece. I admired the girls too, but had no money to buy valentines for them.

 Sitting quietly in class one day while Harold Pierce, now the teacher, was explaining an arithmetic problem that was very simple to me, I must have been dreaming, for he suddenly exclaimed, "Bertha, are you listening?" "Yes, sir." and I stared so fixedly at that problem for the rest of the class period that my eyes actually hurt. But I liked him. He was quite handsome, with a dashing black mustache that even a nine-year old could admire. Nellie Fitzgerald taught in the Primary room; Jason Hammond was Superintendent and Jennie Jones Principal. She later married; visited here recently.

 When I stopped at Knapp' s Drugstore after school one day, there was pretty Nora Dunn behind the counter not clerking, but, sitting there resting, because she had left school with a headache, and he was a relative. She gave me a folder showing the different colors of the paint he sold. They looked bright and pretty. But when Mr. Knapp came in she told me to put it under my coat. Then I wondered if we had stolen it. I took it home but it gave me no pleasure. Giving it to Percy didn't help any either. After a few days I was really ill and mother was wondering what ailed me. I had been taught that it was a sin to steal even a pin, but had no guidance for this predicament. It was also a sin to lie, and how was I to confess without involving Nora? I finally asked mother if they sold those folders to people, and she said that they gave them away to advertise their paint. Then I got well, but now I had a Conscience.

 For a time the fear of leprosy disturbed me to quite an extent.

 The Sunday school lesson about Naaman being healed by bathing in the river Jordan was interesting. We were told that leprosy started with white spots, and there were two or three on my body. After months of occasional worry, I showed Mother a white spot, and asked what made it. "That's a chicken-pox scar," she said. By now I had read the Bible through twice, and had memorized many verses and chapters, and could name the books of the Old and New Testaments.

 One day when Father and our big brothers were away, Percy and I decided to ride horseback. We chose the black horse Barney for Percy, and a bay for me, and led them to a fence from which to mount, then rode them in the pasture field near the barn. They wore halters and we rode them bareback, so we couldn't guide them very well, and it wasn't much fun. When we made them trot, Percy fell off his horse and sprained his ankle. I slipped off my horse as quickly as possible and ran to him. Luckily, we were almost beside the house, so I had help to get him there. Then I rounded up the horses and did get them into the stable, but didn't dare tie them up. We expected Father would punish us severely, but Percy was quite badly hurt, and nobody mentioned any punishment.

 On this farm was a windmill. The ladder on it was quite a challenge to us children. The boys would go up on the platform, but I went only high enough to put my hand on it. I feared the wind would rise and set the arms whirling and take my head off.

 Now my brother Will took a fancy to a young lady in the neighborhood, and I think she once went somewhere with him, but only once. They said she said she wouldn't want to marry him because they might have ten children, as his father had. It is true that she became an old maid. She married late in life, and missed the joys of motherhood.

 And here I had my first fright. One night there was a downpour with terrific thunder and lightning. I was sleeping alone in a room with two sisters. Mother came upstairs to close windows, and I fearfully asked, "Is it the Judgment Day?" She replied, "No, it is just a bad storm" But without being asked to, she lay down beside me for awhile - my good mother.

 Then there was an early Sunday morning when I awoke suddenly, and thought I saw a man sitting in a chair between my bed and the door, with some of Mary's clothes thrown over him. I crawled out of bed carefully inched around the chair, rushed into the boys' room and whispered "There's a man in our room dressed in Mary's clothes." Herbert came into our room, and gave that chair a good kick. How the clothes flew! Oh, well!

 The farm being sold, we moved into the next house south (Ezrum Benson's) for the winter. Here we used the parlor for a bedroom for us girls. Sleeping alone, I awoke in the dark, thinking someone was in the room. Whenever I moved he moved also. It took a lot of courage to get out of bed but I made it to the door and across the living room to Mother's room beyond. "There's someone in our room." "I guess not," she said. "Yes, there is." "Well I'll go see." So we looked, and found nobody. I got back into bed. But after she had gone I was frightened, and went to call her again. "Now what?" "We forgot to look under the bed." Mother laughed a little and said, "Oh, get into our bed", and my troubles were over. I think I was ten this winter, and then came my first recollection of playing with Susie.

 In the spring we moved back to the Jackson place, and all we children had the measles. Will was real sick, and Grace had very sore eyes. Dr. Ditmars was called, which was an event in itself. I was in bed for a day or two, and remember that Mother gave me a sponge bath. That was an undreamed-of-luxury. Then I was up again, and helping all I could with the sicker ones, or housework.

 Our Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Irish, gave to Percy and me five cents apiece to invest, and give the returns to Missions. Father gave us land space, and Percy raised potatoes, and I raised beans. He gained about one dollar and I sixty cents. This made Missionary work real to us, and I fully intended to become a missionary, perhaps in India or China. My first money from outside earned by picking cherries for a neighbor at two cents a quart. Then I was allowed to go to North Adams with Aunt Hattie, who drove her horse Daisy and covered buggy. There I spent my hard-earned money for five yards of blue-and-white calico at seven cents a yard; a pair of black mitts, fifteen cents; and eight cents for a yellow hair-ribbon.

 On Children's Day our Sunday school gave a program from Sunday school printed material, and I was to give the long prose introduction. Then Aunt Sue Wells invited me to go to Tecumseh with her to visit our cousins, the Hurrys. Father thought I would lose too much school. I said, "I can do three days' work before morning recess." Then he thought of the prose I must learn for the program. But Aunt Sue said that we could take it along, and she would see that I learned it. So I had my first ride on the train, and a good visit with Clarence, Charlie, Hattie, and cousin Carrie Underwood, who also was there. She was nine years old, and did not live to grow up. Never saw her again. Their schoolhouse, three or four miles west of Tecumseh, had just burned. Classes were held in an old vacant house, and they sat on kitchen chairs around tables and stands. I went to school with them and learned by heart the poem in their reading lesson: "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great!" etc.

 Hettie Stebbins was the teacher of the Jackson school for several years, then Libbie Wright. Hettie lived with her parents on the first farm south of the school. She made Spelling and Penmanship interesting. We had a large globe, and good maps of the world. There were life-size charts of the human body to help us understand physiology, and the effects of the use of alcohol. We learned the names of all our bones. She taught us poems to recite in unison and forty years later my three schoolmate cousins and I met at a family reunion, and recited together, with the old-time vim and vigor, the poem "Barbara Frietchie." About this time we cousins formed a post office chain. We put little boxes in certain hidden spots in fence rows between our homes. We could write to the one farthest away, and know that the ones between would relay the letter. This was a vacation pastime.

 There was once a slight earthquake near the schoolhouse. It left a crack across the road at the foot of the hill south of the school. It was too wide for a child to jump across, and filled us with awe. One day while Libbie Wright was our teacher, we four cousins exchanged dresses, Mayte Collins with Lida Speer and I with Belle Locklin. When school called we also exchanged desks, each one of us sitting in the seat where the dress belonged. As we were in the same classes, the proper books were there to be used. Miss Wright looked dazed, but never said a word. Although we had exchanged names too, in our play, when she called on us to recite we responded to our real names. If we hadn't, she might have thought she had lost her mind.

 There was a well at the school, but the water was not good at this time. The older pupils would take a large pail to bring water from Lida's or our home. We all drank from a big dipper. On warm days someone was allowed to pass the water. We wrote on slates, and used damp rags to make erasures. A sponge was special and also a slate with red cord trimming. I never had one. But I did have some favors because I was the chum of Lida Speer. She was an only child with a bachelor uncle who gave her many gifts. When he bought Lida a pair of skates, Uncle Erastus gave me a pair too, and once wool material for a dress, with trimmings. My wool dresses had always been made-overs. After visiting at Lida's once I asked Mother why she never called me "Dear." "Cousin Lizzie calls Lida 'dear'" I said. "If I called you 'dear' I should have to call all the others 'dear' too." With ten children around, that explanation satisfied me, but later I realized that my Mother was very reserved, and never laid bare her inmost feelings.

 Near our barn was a well covered with boards, where water was drawn up in a pail and poured into a tub to water the horses. One day Perry got a hind foot in the well. I think he had been loose in the yard. Herbert and Grace got him out by heroic effort, one by his head and one by his tail. We still wonder how they could have succeeded. I can see poor Perry, the pulling and tugging, and hear the exultant shouts when he erupted. Each summer our Sunday School held a picnic at Allen's Landing on the south side of Devil's Lake. We went in a three-seated buggy or wagon. Each of us children wanted to see the Lake first. We watched for that first glimpse of blue water through the trees; and then we shrilled, "I see it". I see it!", and felt that we had discovered a new world. Indeed it was; and we would not see it again for another year.

 Most of the well-filled baskets contained chicken in some form. One-year Mother made chicken pie; and some of those who ate of it were quite ill during the following night. Herbert and I suffered most. That was the day of backyard toilets, and we took turns running down that path all night long. How lucky there weren't ten sick ones! At the Lake we enjoyed the long pole swings, lawn swings, rowboats, croquet, and for the men, pitching horseshoes. At one time there was a small paddle-wheel steamer called "City of Hudson" that took us all for a ride.

 The Summer I was ten Aunt Mary FlecherWells, who was the head of a colored school in Athens, Alabama, for many years after the Civil War; (first sent as a missionary from the Congregational Church in North Adams), invited Grace and Mary to spend the summer with her at her cottage by Lake Chautauqua, New York. This was the birthplace of Chautauqua programs, and Dr. John Vincent was present that year. They joined a reading club called "The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle." For four years they read four books yearly. They then received a large diploma bearing a seal. Father read their books, but had no diploma because he had no set of books. I read them too. The girls enjoyed the summer, with all their new experiences.

 Aunt Mary was born in Villenova, a four-corner's in Chautauqua County, but my sisters were never there, although they saw Jamestown, situated on Lake Chautauqua. I think Mayville, New York was their address that summer. About 1886 or 1887 Aunt Mary adopted a small colored boy named George. One year she brought him North with her. I suppose he grew up and was living in Athens, Alabama, when she died in 1895 or 1896. She is buried in Ann Arbor, Michigan, beside her sister Rebecca who was an Art teacher in Ann Arbor, and Rochester, New York. She was also a spinster, dying in 1887 of T. B. Aunt Mary was truly a missionary in the South. The whites ostracized her because of her work for the Negroes, but she learned to love the colored people, and spent her life for them.

 While my sisters were away, for the first time I took care of the upstairs work. I considered this a promotion. I washed dishes too, and scoured the knives, where previously I had only wiped dishes and scoured the forks, fed the bird, filled the reservoir, wood-box, chip-pan, etc., and swept the kitchen. Mother must have been quite diplomatic, for she made me feel that I was a great help, and quite grown-up.

 Grace taught school in the Veille district, where she boarded at Andrew Westcott's. Here she met Arthur, who was five years older than she. Soon on Sunday afternoons his horse and buggy were standing at our hitching post. There was a nice grove of locust trees just west of our house, where we had a hammock made of barrel staves and wire, where we youngsters in summer time spent Sunday afternoons. Always we saw to it that there was an extra chair for Arthur and pestered Grace by watching for him. He seemed to like us, and I guess that we tried to monopolize him. We still recall with glee how sweet smelling he left a chair in which he had been sitting. It seems that the cork came out of a bottle of perfume in his pocket, and for days if one knelt by that chair during family prayers, he was almost overpowered.

 During revival meetings in winter at the West Wheatland Church, Father would put hay or straw in the bottom of the sleigh, spread down blankets, hang some steps on the back-end, and stop at every house on the way to church to pick up all who wanted to ride. The first Sunday evening of every month we had a Temperance program at the church. Our Choir used the book "Trumpet Notes", published by the National Temperance Society and Publication House, 58 Reade St., New York, and did a good job. Then there were recitations by the young fry. Mrs. George Ridout, nee Alice Tucker, was a W.C.T.U. woman, and worked at it, and got us working also. Occasionally there were medal contests. Mary spoke in one, but I was too young to do so. I did recite an original poem on temperance, while I was too young to be quite sure of what "original" meant. Arthur, at five years of age, pleased the audience by nonchalantly leaning on the altar rail and reciting a little verse ending, "I've begun by minding my Mother, and saying my little prayer; And when I'm a man I'll never, never, drink or smoke or swear. Myrtle and Vena Barnes were two of our stars.

 One night the young adults were practicing at Mrs. Ridout's while the children were being trained in the church a few rods away. Later we were to join the others at Mrs. Ridout's. As we were leaving the church Warren Cruger, about 13, said to me, "May I escort you to Mrs. Ridout's?" "No," I replied, "I have to take care of Susie." She was about seven. I liked Warren, and had called him "Orange" before I could pronounce his name.

 But that word "escort" overwhelmed me. When we came out of the church he took hold of my arm. I objected, and we compromised by taking hold of hands. So off we went, Susie holding my left hand and Warren the right. Of course my brothers thought it was funny; I knew it was ridiculous; but the older ones were sort of cruel. There were not enough chairs, and they set out one for Warren and Bertha. I was mortified, although he did not seem to care. So we perched on the chair and brazened it out. Soon after his family moved to Litchfield, and I didn't see him for years.

 I think Howard, Percy and I were baptized and joined the Church at the same time, when I was eleven. We studied the church catechism, and were on probation for some time first. We had Class Meetings and Prayer Meetings in our church, and grew up in the Christian faith.

 In March 1893 Father bought the Lyon's place. It was one mile south of the Jackson School, one-half mile east, one mile south, and one-half mile west; or one mile south of Grandpa Wells' farm, through the woods. He gave our young team, Prince and Perry, for a down payment of $600.00, and owed a mortgage of $2,400 for sixty acres of good land and buildings - a large brick house, two large barns, hen house, and new tool shed. We hated to see Prince and Perry go, but we had the heavy gray team, Jim and Charlie left. We were unable to move into the house at once because Arvilla Church had the scarlet fever there. So for a month or two we lived in an old vacant house on the farm east, now modernized and owned by Burley Lamb. We are now attending the Bross School, three-fourths mile west of our new home. Here, and at Sunday school, we first met the Duguids.

 John F. Duguid had traded his grocery store in Montgomery, Michigan for Will Freed's farm, three-fourths mile south of the Bross Schoolhouse, this same spring. There were six children. The oldest was Dennis, twelve; then Mamie, ten; Myrta, eight; Maud, six; Otto, four; and baby John, born March 8th. Mamie and I became great chums, and tried to imagine that we looked alike. We were not in the same classes, for I was two years older, but that made no difference. She had spunk, and sometimes got into trouble because of it, but I was there with a cooler head and more muscle, to smooth her path a little. Once one of the boys was chasing her with a snake. She was very frightened. I was very frightened too, but I knew boys. So I whispered to her, "Stop running. We'll pretend we like snakes," Then there was nobody to chase.

 Jessie Smith was our teacher that spring term. We gathered around the organ while we sang from a book of hers. The song "Katie did, Katie didn't" where the boys sang DID, and the girls sang DIDN'T, was a favorite. In another bird song, the boys whistled while the girls sang. We all loved Miss Smith. Olive Brown had a very sweet voice. She and her brother Charlie often sang together on school or church programs. Charlie played a mouth-organ expertly, and often led a parade about the school-yard, with all of us singing lustily "Old John Brown Had a Little….." etc. Sometimes we insisted that he play "John Brown's Body Lies A-moldering In the Grave," while we went marching on. But as his father's name was John, we were not often so mean. Charlie was quick-tempered, but smiling a moment later and never held a grudge. So we continued to tease, although we liked him.

 We children always went barefooted in summer, except to church. Now we were to have a man teacher and so I wore shoes to school. He taught the fall term of 1893, and for two years thereafter. He graduated from North Adams High School in 1893. His parents lived across the road from the Crugers in the brick house still there, one-half mile east and one-fourth mile north of our home. They were an English family and lovely people. Mr. Robert Turner had a beard - a handsome one. Mrs. Turner was one of my Sunday school teachers, so good and kind. Lizzie was organist in our West Wheatland church, and could play everything. Bessie and Ruth were the small sisters. Arthur and brother Herbert were pals. They sang in a quartet (Herbert tenor and Arthur bass) with Otto Crapser and Clarence Tew. After Arthur's Family moved to Jackson he boarded at our house for the rest of the school year.

 Herbert's girl friend lived northwest of North Adams, and Arthur had a girl in North Adams. So one Sunday afternoon Herbert dropped Arthur off in North Adams then drove on to call on his lady, planning to stop for Arthur on the way home. When he returned in the wee hours of morning, there was no light in that North Adams home, so he drove the four miles home alone. Arthur was not there. He arrived about daylight, and was he mad! Neither of the boys married the girl he courted then.

 Frances Hopkins attended school that first winter. She was seventeen, and we were good friends too. Steward and Frances wrote notes that Dennis and I had to pass. I wished that Dennis would write a note himself, to me, but he never did. Burley Lamb, five years younger than I, at five years of age told me that he would marry me when he grew up. Now he could write, and tucked notes into my desk at noon or recess. They said "Kiss, kiss, kiss, Love, love, love, Marry, marry, marry." Years later in High School notes received asked, "How do you solve this problem in Algebra?"

 Because of pupils in most of the eight grades Mr. Turner heard my classes during recesses, as I had Algebra, Latin and Rhetoric, which were not to be taught in district schools. And because of outside complaints I left school the day before my 14th birthday, January 19, 1895 but kept on studying at home. In February I passed the County Eighth Grade Examination at North Adams. I believe this was the first such examination in the County. Jay Speer and I were the only pupils there. He was a senior in high school taking the exam for practice before the Teacher's Examination he must pass before graduation.

 That Spring I did housework in the James Cole Home for two weeks, as Mrs. Cole was ill in bed. There were four children. Cookies, cake and bread to bake. I got long quite well until Mr. Cole asked me to put more salt in the bread. I told him Mother never did, and I think I didn't put salt in until I went home and learned that Mother put salt in the yeast. When a neighbor brought in vegetable oysters I thought they were parsnips, and cooked them accordingly, slicing them length-wise. We had no carrots or salsify in our garden at home, which accounted for my ignorance. Later Mr. Cole told someone that I was good help except that I wanted to do everything just as "Sarah" (his wife) did. There was milk and cream to care for, and churning to do. It was quite natural and needful for a fourteen-year-old who had never been in the house before, to ask how Sarah did this and that especially as she was too ill to be disturbed.

 Then I helped Cousin Esther Collins Locklin for a short time. Walter and Belle Locklin were in high school, and Esther was sick in bed. Her aged mother lived with them. Aunt Betsey (Glasgow) Collins was in her second childhood, and sat alone in her room off the living room, where her meals were carried on a tray. She realized that I was not her granddaughter Belle, and when she heard my name said, "Oh, one of Jap's girls." She was not foolish; just a poor old lady with nothing left to think about after Uncle Sylvester Collins died. Cousin Lovell showed me how to start the kitchen fire with a corncob soaked in kerosene.

 Cousin Esther Locklin taught me how to make a cornmeal pudding put in a little cloth bag, and boiled with a ham bone. When I took something down the cellar she praised me for bringing back the things we would need soon, saying that I made my head save my heels. She could not understand why I would get down on my knees with a cloth to wash the linoleum and zinc under the stove, rather than use a big mop. She did not know that Mother did all the mopping at home, and a mop was too awkward for me to handle well.

 Then she asked if I could make her a wrapper. That was going to be hard to tackle. She had a pattern and cloth, but didn't know how to sew too well herself. She lay in bed where she could look into the living -room; I laid the cloth on the floor and went at it. When I basted it up it looked all right. She was not able to get out of bed yet, and I never knew whether it fitted or not. Then I went home for the weekend, I was not feeling very well. The weather was getting warmer, and that week I had partly fried and packed in crocks, three hams to slice and put down that many was a long hot job. After getting home I felt worse. Cousin Lovell came after me Sunday afternoon; we had no telephones; but Mother said I was not well enough to go back. It wasn't so much fun to be sick as I had supposed it would be.

 Herbert could not study that spring term because his eyes gave out, and so could not graduate with his class. He had to get glasses, and wore them thereafter. Brother Win had lived at Grandpa's for some time, to help with the farm work. He taught in Moscow township and in the Bross District for a year, where Minnie Hopkins was a pupil. They were married September 21, 1893, when she was eighteen, and he was twenty-five. I had a new dress to wear to their wedding. The skirt was of black sateen, with black sateen shoulder straps, and a calico blouse of red with black dots, with black sateen cuffs, and a wide gathered sateen belt; a white lace collar. I am still surprised that Mother permitted the red color.

 Grace married Arthur Nolan Westcott of Somerset Township on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1894, at our home on the Lyons farm. I remember the preceding months as a time of sewing and tying carpet rags. Evenings Percy and I would each choose a large mound of torn strips, and race to see which of us could first work up his pile. Anyway we must work awhile, and a race added zest and accomplished more. Arthur Turner, our boarder, teacher, friend, put a few stitches in her wedding gown of blue cashmere. That was to bring her luck, but the luck was that he took only a few stitches. While attending school in North Adams, Grace taught for two months in the High School, and had a contract with the school board. Other schools she taught were Aldrich, Pease, Curtis, Bailey, and Veille.

 Brother Will, after leavings home at age 21, worked for neighboring farmers, etc. He made a trip West, going; to Butte, Montana. I do not know if he tried working in the mines thereabouts, but I do know that he was not gone very long.

 He came hone quite ill, and as yellow as butter, In fact, he had a bad case of yellow jaundice, and was slow in recovering. In August 1896, he married Fallie Louise Nutten of Moscow Township, in the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fayette Nutten. There was a nice wedding party but I remember it mostly because of the largest secretary desk that I had ever seen. It was tall, wide and handsome. Fallie had one sister, Susie (Nutten) Haight.

 The Ridout family, with son Earl, sold their farm and moved to Tacoma, Washington. Another boy in our Sunday school Class, Homer Foote, had heart trouble, with ashy complexion, and blue under fingernails. He could never run and play with the rest, and died at 17. Earl also died at age 21, of pneumonia.

 Mrs. John F. Duguid (Martha Ann Geedy) became ill in September 1895 and died of quick consumption, December 8th. Her funeral was held at the home on their farm on a very cold day. She was buried in the Cemetery just south of there and later in Ray, Indiana, in the Duguid Cemetery. Mr. Duguid lifted Otto up in his arms so he might see his mother lying peacefully there, and I'll never forget the shy sweet little smile he gave her - nor the great sob that shook his father at the graveside.

 When the winter term of school began in North Adams after New Year's Day, 1896, I began attending. Mary was teaching our Bross school that year. I walked there and waited to be picked up by Charlie Hopkins, with his open single buggy. It was about three miles to North Adams, and sometimes we nearly froze. With a farm horse, frozen rutty dirt roads, and sometimes deep snow, it was more than an hour's drive to town. Upon arrival I was usually so cold that when I began to thaw out near the big hot-air floor register, I would be nauseated. Charlie had plenty of blankets, and tucked them in well, but my hands always suffered. I recall one day Father wouldn't let me go because I had a bad cold, I argued that the day before I had felt worse. When father wrote the excuse for my absence, he addressed the note to Professor Green. That embarrassed me, for we called him Mr. Green. But nobody told Father what to do; he had a dignity of his own.

 I loved school. Our Principal was Mrs. Bailey, a widow with two small children. Sidney West was my seat-mate. Judd Schaad and Edgar Kempton sat ahead of us. Those who enjoyed singing marched up on the platform, and led the singing for the morning exercises. Different pupils played marches when we changed classes. Charlie couldn't go to school in the Spring, but Lulu Brass asked me to stay with her, for her sister Matie had recently died, and she was lonesome. I studied Botany, and we hunted the woods for specimens to press.

 Lulu and I were quite congenial. She was always happy and jolly, and so was I while in the right company and to this day I take great pleasure in her cheeriness. She graduated that June, and I the next. Percy Young, Shirley Randolph, Laura Schoolcraft and I were ushers at the Commencement held in the Knowles Opera House, and Frank Birdsall asked me to go to his class picnic with him, held at Farewell Lake. My first beau!

 The Summer of 1896 Herbert worked on the William Wright farm. He lived one and one-half miles west of us, on the nicest place around. The house was frame, while ours was brick; but his house had inside blinds (ours were outside), and a front hall, and the stairs were enclosed. We each had back stairways and rooms up there. Ours were very high rooms, while his were low, with sloping ceilings. But they had a door between, connecting the upstairs, and a cupola. Also a large front yard, with evergreens hiding a long curving drive, as the house was set back from the road.

 There were many blackberries on the back of this farm, where people came to pick berries on shares. Mrs. Wright needed help in the house, as she spent so much time in the field, so I helped there four or five weeks for $1.25 a week. I had an hour off each afternoon for studying for Teachers' exam, which we had to pass before graduating from High School. Incidentally, I passed, but could not have certificate to teach because I was not yet seventeen. Besides housework, we made new sheets by hand. One day Mrs. Wright asked me to pick up some apples and make applesauce while she was gone. This I did, but the apples wouldn't cook up. It seems I had gone to a sweet apple tree, instead of a sour one. Mr. Wright, finding his lantern not cleaned and filled at dark, gave me strict orders to attend to that job right after breakfast, and I never forgot.

 Mrs. Wright was president of the Missionary Society of the M. E. church in North Adams, and asked Mr. Wright to hitch her horse to the surrey, so she could attend a meeting one-day. But the horse was in the pasture field and he wouldn't spend time to get it for her. She could drive, but knew nothing about the harness. "Can you get the horse and hitch up?" she asked. "I can hitch up if I can catch the horse." I replied. "Then try" she said. The horse was not too hard to catch. I got the halter on, and rode him to the barn, where I really met trouble. The harness was equipped with a leather fly net, of which I had never seen the like. It took some time and experimenting to decide which was front and rear, and up and down but at last we drive up to the carriage block with everything in order, and she drove thankfully away, with the fly-net's EAR TASSELS BOBBING GAILY, and only a little late. When Mr. Wright came in at night, all he said was "Who hitched up?" and Mrs. Wright smiled, "Bertha." That may have been the first and only time she bested him. He was fiery, while she was calm and mild.

 In the summer of 1895, Father hired a young stranger who was looking for a job, to help with the farm work. He was about seventeen, a little older than Howard, and we took him into the family circle. He had very good manners, attended church and Sunday School with us, and seemed to like us all. In haying, especially, Father and the boys worked early and late, and this boy wasn't very good help. After he got a little acquainted, he began going out evenings where there were parties with dancing and card-playing, which to us were cardinal sins, and the company he kept was pretty low-class. Of course his work suffered, as he was tired and sleepy every day. Father advised him to cut out the parties, and warned him that he would have to do better on the job. Pretty soon he quit, and got work a couple of miles away.

 Then one Sunday in October, during Sunday school a neighbor woman came hurriedly into the church, and talked to the superintendent. He called us to attention, said that the Wells house was on fire, and for the men to get there as soon as possible. In no time at all, Mr. Turner's double buggy, filled with the men and drawn by his dapple-grays, was going lickety-split down the road toward our home. Our big gray team, Jim and Charlie, followed close, our wagon filled with women and children; other rigs in the rear. Our neighbor said that as she and her husband drove home from church (not remaining for Sunday school) they saw smoke issuing from our cellar windows. He got out, and sent her right back to the church (two miles). He called until he roused the next neighbor, and then rushed into the house. The fire was on the floor in front of the Round Oak stove in the sitting room, with a second fire in front of the bedroom door. He grabbed a blanket shawl from a chair, to smother the flames and ran for water. There was a boiler full of water in the kitchen, enough to get the fire under control at once. By the time the other neighbor arrived there was only a little smoke.

 All the way home we'd kept saying, "I can't see any flames yet, so maybe it won't all burn up", but the shock came when we saw that it had been set afire. There was a trail of kerosene from the fire to the parlor, up the stairs, and into the bedroom. We never understood why the fires didn't follow these trails, for it had burned a large hole through the floor, which let the smoke into the cellar where Mother luckily had left a window open. Father had just sold some hay, and when he arrived looked to see if the money was safe. It was gone. Then each of us rushed to count our pennies. Each of our little savings was gone except Percy's. My pocket book was missing, Arthur's penny bank emptied, Grace's too; five or six dollars of Sunday school pennies, Herbert was Treasurer, all taken; as well as the hay money and a suit of Herbert's.

 Now it was, "Who did it?" The fires seemed to be made of clothing, so we surmised that the thief had burnt his own, and was wearing Herbert's. The boys poked among the embers, and found buttons and buckles they recognized. Yes, the hired boy's. The men had already searched all the buildings. Now some of them went home, and some volunteered to look for him where he had last worked. Brother Win finally reached Osseo. He went into an open store, and there buying a pair of shoes was the boy, wearing Herbert's suit. Win didn't know what to do. He shook hands with him as though the meeting were casual, and left to call the sheriff, who had previously been alerted. He arrived shortly, but the boy was gone, hurrying down the railroad track. A few minutes later he was in custody.

 Later we went to Hillsdale to identify our property, and he was sentenced to three years in Ionia Reformatory, on the charge of theft. He confessed the theft, but denied setting the fire. We are sure he was alone because he had all the money, even all those Sunday school pennies tied up in a handkerchief. I think we all felt a little sorry for him. It seems that he had been in the Boys Reform School in Lansing. Father knew it when he hired him, and had seen his discharge papers. Perhaps that is why he didn't like Father. But Father had never told us children.

 Two or three weeks previously Mother had stayed home from church because Susie wasn't feeling well. Someone rapped, and there was this boy. He told Mother he was coming across our fields, and had found one of the cows with her head caught in the lane fence. That he would take the pliers, and cut a wire to release her, which he did. Our brothers couldn't understand how a cow could have caught her head in that fence. After the fire they declared he must have entangled her there, and evidently had planned something wrong for that trip, but gave it up because someone was at home. We were so thankful that he did not harm Mother and Susie.

 Mary worked for her board at Mrs. James Barker's at least one year while attending high school. She had taught some before graduating in 1894. First school "the Grubbs" east of Jerome toward Somerset Center - Payne and John L. Buck, west of North Adams. She was Principal in North Adams for the classes of '97, '98, '99, with Burt Green and then Henry McDonald, Superintendent. Now that I was a senior, I studied hard and got good marks, my average for the year 99 plus. Mayte Collins was nearly as high. We voted for Mayte to be the Valedictorian. She was very good in elocution. I was chosen for the Salutatory. Mr. Green told Mary that my mark was the highest by a fraction, but I always thought that Mayte was a little better.

 Mary and I rented two rooms in the brick house North of the old high school. Once the James Barker home, then Ula Filio's now Ned Towns'. We brought furniture and food from home. I got the meals and did the housework. Mary paid the rent and $1.00 a month to me. Mother baked bread, pie, and cookies. We brought potatoes and other vegetables from home as well as butter and some milk and eggs. We had a one-burner oil stove for cooking, and our antique heating stove had a flat top, with two small doors in front that opened to a sort of oven right over the wood-fire box, which was fed from the end. We could heat water above, and cook below. One window in our room opened onto the flat roof of a porch, and sometimes on a warm summer evening we would sit outside to study. One night I sat there reading. Mary swung the window shut and locked me out just for fun. I didn't care, and kept right on with my book. After a while it began to get a little dark and chilly, I got up to open the window. Well, it didn't open. I called softly. Then I remembered that I had seen Mary leaving for an Epworth League meeting, so she would be gone nearly an hour longer. My chair was a small rocker with a long "tidy" on the back. I draped this around my shoulders and waited, rather than call anyone down stairs. Mary had intended to unlock the window before leaving, and then forgot all about it until she was nearly home, and then she came a-flying!

 Now as I sit and think about it, I realize that Mary and I never quarreled about anything. Once she did threaten to stop sewing for my dolly unless I quit swinging my foot. She said it made her fidgety". Of course she was five years older than I, but we did the dishes together, and other housework. She was also my bedfellow. We both loved books and music. She was never anything but kind to me, and how I loved her. I fear I wasn't like that with my younger sister, Susie. When she broke my favorite goblet I told Mother she did it purposely, which I think she did. I wanted her punished. But Mother probably imagined she had had some provocation, knowing me, and only said that she should handle the dishes more carefully. This goblet was wine-colored, rather than clear glass, and a present to me. I don't recall that Arthur got babied because he was the youngest, but I think Susie was babied more or less.

 Once we had a husking bee in the big back barn, with all the young men and ladies around home, and some from town. We served coffee, doughnuts, cheese and pumpkin pie. When the boys brought the corn shocks into the barn, they saw to it that there were a few red ears, which made it quite exciting. The whole group husked about as much corn as one man might have done in a day. But we had a grand time. Belle Locklin and I, with two of the boys, jumped out of the back door of the barn onto what we supposed was straw. It was chaff!

 During skating season, Shirley Randolph arranged a skating party for an evening, all in couples. I had no special boy friends. In fact, I didn't like boys in North Adams very well. Shirley sat down beside me that day, and said "If I didn't have a girl, would you go with me?' "That's a funny question" I replied. "Well, would you go with Fred?" "No." "Would you go with Judd?" "He's got a girl." "With Bill?" "No" "Is there anyone you might go with?" So I acknowledged that if Earl asked me to go, I would accept, because I really wanted to go skating. He asked, I accepted. He called for me at Mrs. Filio's front door. Later she asked me to have my callers go to the side door, as the stair door was just inside. I should have thought of that myself, Shirley sometimes came over after school, and we would sit on the porch and visit until Mary came. Then we three would visit awhile. He told me he did it to get to talk with Mary. She was a teacher, you know.

 Pliny Marsh was teaching in the Bross school now. His father was an auctioneer in Hillsdale. We rode our wheels to Hillsdale, to attend the county fair. I suppose we had to walk part of the way up Emery Hill, although once later I made it on my wheel. We went to his home first, where his mother had a nice luncheon prepared just for us; the rest was a typical Fair day, with us back home by suppertime.

 Laura Schoolcraft and I were great chums. One day in class Mr. Green sat with one foot slid out over the edge of the rostrum. The recitation seats were directly in front. Laura crossed her knees, and swung her foot nearer and nearer the sole of his shoe. She miscalculated, and gave it quite a tap. When he glanced at us quickly, I was almost bursting, trying to keep sober, while Laura was gazing off unconcernedly. Another time she ate a note while on her way to deliver it to him.

 After school one day I began spitting blood. I went over to see Dr. Ditmars who lived just south of the schoolhouse. He told me to eat a little salt and drink water. Said it wasn't so unusual for my age. How mistaken he was! But at least he didn't frighten me. I was sixteen. Mayte Collins and Laura were, too, while Belle Locklin was seventeen and the other girls about eighteen; boys also. This was the Class of 1897, graduating June 3rd.

 Commencement at last! Pretty gowns and speeches. Proud papas and mamas and teachers. Gifts of books and flowers. My Salutation delivered. My dress - pale blue cashmere, with ribbons and lace. I carried a dainty pale blue silk fan; but wore black stockings and black high-top shoes. These were not noticeable because of the long dress. Warren Cruger was there from Litchfield, and took me home, but went back immediately, although Father asked him to stay over night.

 The next week our Class picnicked at Bird's Lake near Osseo, with the Class of 1896. Shirley took me (I had been to political speeches with him during the spring), and Herbert took Lulu Brass. We had our pictures taken there. We stayed on the lake until a little after dark, singing "Good-night, Ladies" and "Landlord, fill the flowing bowl", with nary a bottle on board, and then got lost going home. We were driving west, but thought we were going north. After a time we were surprised not to overtake some of our group, as we had driven quite fast. I wanted to stop and ask directions, but Shirley was sure we were going the right way. Finally, the lights in the houses we passed began going out, and at last I persuaded Shirley to ask the way to North Adams. They said, "We can tell you the way to Hillsdale." Then I asked where we were. They told us that we were three miles east of Reading, and going west. We had to turn around, drive back nine miles to Hillsdale, and then eight miles on home. His livery-stable horse was about tired out by that time and he wanted to get back to North Adams before daylight, but it was then 4:00 A.M. Of course he couldn't make it, but he was leaving for Battle Creek the next day, and so didn't have to stand the teasing that I did, for he told the story before he left.

 Pliny Marsh started a debating society that met at the schoolhouse, and eventually interested even the parents. Once a mock trial was held. Father as foreman of the jury, Clarence Barron and Pliny were opposing lawyers; Lennie Galloway was the culprit. I do not recall the judge, but it was a good community effort. Pliny was interested in Mary, and when he wanted to walk home with her, knowing we had come to the debate together, he asked Dennis why he didn't take me home. What a debt I owe to Pliny! That evening Mary and I had each given our old Commencement speeches before the judges, and mine had won. The prize was a small cake of maple sugar. Dennis and I, upon arriving home, sat on the steps of the side porch until Mary and Pliny came, when we all shared the prize. Now Pliny is Judge Marsh of Detroit; Dennis and I are Mr. and Mrs. Duguid; and Mary left us almost thirty years ago, April 16, 1926.

 The summer and fall of 1897 I was at home helping Ted hay, driving horses on hay fork, picking berries, etc. Mamie and I made us shirtwaists from the same pattern. They were of pink and white calico. Cost fifteen cents each. Over the neckbands we wore high collars of ribbon or velvet. We planned to have coats alike, and we did have the same style and material, but she liked blue, and I chose brown.

 After the dishes were washed on Sunday afternoons we used to gather about the organ. I played Grace and Susie sang soprano, Mary alto, Father, Herbert and Percy tenor, Howard bass. Win and Will were away from home now, but both liked to sing, and this organ was Will's. Before that we had Grandma's melodeon to use for awhile. While I was still too young to attend, a Miss Miles had held singing school in the neighborhood, and my older brothers and sisters learned a lot there. Father learned to use a tuning fork, and could teach us new songs, using it, before we had the melodeon. Father and Grace sang solos in Miss Miles' concerts. I remember Father in "The Sexton", and Grace in "The Vale of Chamanee". Mother stayed at home with the little ones, but Aunt Emma told me that when my mother was twenty-three or four years old, teaching the Jackson school, she (Alice Gowdy) sang the solo parts in their singing school concerts. I never heard her sing except lullabies to the children and such hymns as "In the Sweet By and By" and "There Is a Happy Land."

 Herbert and Lulu Brass were married at her parent's home on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1897. I was bridesmaid, Lula Jackson Roberts, Matron of Honor, and Arthur Turner best man. A day or so later I entrained at Baker's, and went to Tipton (Sand Lake), where Will was to meet me. He was working on Cousin Barzillai Hurry's farm near Tecumseh, where their first child, Fern Louise, had just been born, November l4th. Cousin Adelle Hurry was keeping house for their three children attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Fallie needed my help with the housework. We attended church in Tecumseh. I had mittens for winter wear. My hands were so rough and chapped that Will thought I should keep them covered in church and Sunday school. So Fallie let me wear a pair of her gloves. I hadn't thought of that for years.

 Miss Jennie Gallatin taught a class of girls. She was a wonderful woman and teacher. One of the girls in that class, Lavie Snedecor, became my good friend, and still is. She was nineteen years old and already teaching school. A few months later I visited in her home. Her parents were Baptists; her father sexton of their church. Her father was very studious, and interesting to talk with, but rather withdrawn from the family life, preferring to eat his meals alone in his room. They were surprised and pleased that he served at the head of the table while I was present. Mrs. Snedecor was motherly and kind; Elmer, about fourteen, with high aspirations and ability; hustling Mary with her long curls; busy Glen with his big round eyes; and Ellen, still using the baby-buggy.

 Herbert and Lulu were at Will's a day or two during their honeymoon. I was quite bored with all the "billing and cooing." The new baby got her share also. Though fond of them all, including Cousin Barzillai Hurry, the work was quite hard, and I was glad to be home again by Christmas.

 Having passed my seventeenth birthday, I taught my first term of school in Hoxie, in the Spring of 1898, salary $16.00 a month; was rehired for the next year at a salary of $18.00 a month for the Fall and Spring, and $20.00 for the Winter. I paid $1.50 a week for board, going home weekends. I did all the janitor work including building fires. Boarding places - homes of Mr. and Mrs. Everett Fish; Mrs. Fry, widow with one son, first house east of Hoxie; and Win and Minnie's. The oldest pupils were Eugene Cronk, Montie Birdsall, Ada Price, Lily Lee, Lily Holtenhouse, Pansy Camburn, Mamie Phillips; youngest, Roy Bemis and Cleve Crater. I liked Frank Birdsall. He walked home from church with me twice, and took me to a neighborhood party, but he liked Mary better. She went to a picnic with him, but thought him too young for her old age of twenty-five.

 Father came over to Hoxie one cold winter afternoon to take me home for the weekend, driving gray Charlie and another horse. "Where's Jim" I said, and he told me that he was dead and buried. He died of colic. I cried, and I am not sure but Father had already done so. May Chapman, Mrs. Irish's granddaughter, lived in Hoxie, and her father was the postmaster, and had a small general store. We had many good times together. Once we were going somewhere in her cutter when the roads were very drifted. The horse was scarcely moving - the cutter tipped more and more - and we slowly tipped over. Of course we were unhurt, so righted the cutter, and went merrily on our way.

 Grandpa Wells died on his 80th birthday, March 18, 1896. His funeral was in the West Wheatland Church. One of the hymns sung was "How Blest the Righteous When He Dies." We went in sleighs to the Cemetery in North Adams where he was buried. Grandma Wells and Aunt Hattie Wells having moved to Aunt Lucy Beecher's house in North Adams, Father was working the fields on their farm this Spring of 1899. So Howard and I "camped out" there, Howard farming, and I teaching in Hoxie and getting the meals. Our furnishings were straw-filled bedticks on the floor, a table and two chairs, a few dishes, and an old cook-stove, with Mother providing the baked stuff.

 Dennis, when a senior in High School, took me to the Junior Reception at Ula' Filio's; also the Alumni Reception at the Opera House. I had a new sailor hat of rough creamed-colored straw, with a lot of filmy blue tulle heaped around (not over) the crown, and practically covering the brim. I thought the blue accentuated my blue eyes, but I daresay Dennis didn't notice either. The hat was really quite nice; price, $1.50 That was twenty-five cents more than my old hat cost, which was also a sailor of fine straw, with a pale blue velvet band.

 I now had a second grade certificate. The fall of 1899 and winter of 1900 I spent teaching in Mud Lake district, where Aunt Phoebe and my father had once taught. The Secretary of the Board told me I was the third generation to teach in this school. Here the big boy was Lee Simonds, the girls Grace Sabin and Edith Caskey; my youngest, Earnest Rogers. Others were Blanche Simonds, Florence Driscoll, May Sabin, Susie Morehouse, Gladys McBain, Blanch Rogers, Wilbur Blackmer, Laurel Lewis, etc. There were several young ladies in the neighborhood; Minnie Gregory, Susie Wilson, Belle Whitney, Grace and Matie Wyman, Linnie Lewis, Gertrude Older and Alice Gray.

 Howard, Percy and Susie were attending school in North Adams. So were Bertha and Iva Lamb, who walked to our house and rode with our young folks in the double buggy. I rode with them part way to Mud Lake, and walked the last mile. When winter came I boarded with Mrs. Israel Post instead of riding my wheel, which I had earned by selling tea and spices during the summer of 1897 or 1898. Mrs. Post was a dear old lady, and her cooking was excellent. Especially delectable was her creamed cabbage; chopped real fine, boiled a little and creamed. Delicious! The snow was very deep that winter. One morning her son came over from next door with his shovel, waded ahead of me to the schoolhouse, and shoveled the snow from the porch. It was piled higher than the keyhole. I did not have a pupil for a day and a half. By that time the parents were able to bring in a few.

 Uncle Albert Gowdy of Walkerville, Michigan was urging me to teach in their school, the Spring Term of 1900. As Mud Lake was hiring only by the term, I refused to sign the spring contract, and went up to Uncle Albert's. It was necessary to take an examination in Hart, which I did, and luckily passed. The school was the Gowdy school; the director, John Giddings, a brother of Aunt Achsah, also from Hillsdale County.

 I had some trouble in this school. A brother and sister, ages ten and eleven, behaved well only while I gazed at them (but their older sister was a perfect lady): another girl about twelve was sneaky and mean, and hateful to her playmates. One day she grabbed an umbrella from another girl, and ran away home with it, in the rain. The other girl was going my way so I sheltered her with my umbrella. Her punishment was staying in her seat until the others were on their way home. Her mother called on the lady who lived across the road from the schoolhouse, breathing fire and brimstone, and vowing vengeance upon me (so I heard later), and then called at the schoolhouse. When she told me her name, I really was pleased that she had come, and placed a chair for here where she could see and hear the class reciting in geography. Her daughter was reciting, and I helped her to make a good recitation. In no time at all her mother was my good friend, and she changed too. Nothing was ever said about the girl's misbehavior. Arthur Giddings, Etta Van Brocklin, and Nellie Kalman were the oldest pupils, Jessie Giddings the youngest.

 I boarded with Aunt Sarah Swift, Mother's only sister. She, with Uncle Oscar, Martin and Clark, lived on the next hill beyond Uncle Albert's. The house was new, but never finished inside, and later burned down. Across the road were many evergreens, bordering a small lake. The hill was so sandy that planks had been put in to help one get up; through the swamps were log roads, and planks. But how crisp and fresh the air on a Spring morning! There is no scent finer than that of evergreens, and pine chips wet with dew or rain.

 Uncle Albert Gowdy's Sallie had been married to Thomas Routley, and divorced. She and her three-year-old Lawrence lived with her parents. Her brother Stephen had married Etta Houk, and lived across the roads. Nearly every Saturday and Sunday I spent with Sallie. We used to sing all the time we were churning with the old dasher churn. We went in the wagon to Walkerville after groceries, with Martin and Clark, and ate peanuts all the way home. Sundays we went to Sunday school held in the Colfax schoolhouse, north and west of Uncle Albert's. There I met most of the Draggoo sisters; Maud, nearest my age, and Sam, their only brother.

 Indians called each year selling baskets they had woven. While I was there one came. She said to Aunt Achsah Giddings, "This your papoose?" referring to me. Uncle Albert said that if Mother would come to visit them, he would pay her fare home. So I sent her money for the trip, and paid half. She came about a week before school closed, when we left for home. Aunt Sarah died about a year later.

 All the district schools seemed to be supplied with teachers for Fall when we returned, and I was unable to get a position until the Winter term. Brother Will wanted my help in pulling beans, and his wife Fallie needed some help in the house. They were living east of her father's home, in the old Nutten house. It was large, and had a cupola with windows on all sides, reached by a stairway from upstairs. It was high and roomy, with a window seat all around, and I thought it was grand.

 My third school in Hillsdale County was a mile or two east of Church's Corners. I boarded at Elva Bailey's. It had once been my job to drive taking Grace and Mary to their respective schools; now Father usually took me. One cold morning with very deep snow, our team hitched to the sleigh had to break a track the whole six miles to school. Mr. Bailey had unlocked the schoolhouse and built the fire, but I did not arrive until nine-thirty, much to my shame. At this school I had to burn mostly green wood, and had a lot of trouble with creosote dripping from the long stovepipe, and the stove smoking. I asked the director to have the pipe and chimney cleaned; and again I warned him that it was impossible to study with eyes smarting and running from smoke. The third time, we sent word about 10:30 A.M., that school was closed until we could use the stove again; that the children had been excused for the rest of the day. When we arrived the next morning we found that the men had done a good job the afternoon before and also they provided dry wood for burning at night when the dampers were partly closed to hold the fire. But I was not hired for the Spring term. They said they had decided to hire a man.

 If this had been a rough school with big boys, this would have seemed reasonable, but every pupil was orderly and cooperative. I liked them and I think they liked me. The parents, too, treated me very well. The Elva Bailey's, where I boarded, took good care of me and fed me well. Mr. Bailey and I once ate a race through ice cream. He won by eating four heaping tea-saucers full. I stopped with three; George Bailey was my youngest pupil - Arthur Spencer the oldest.

 This winter saw the end of the 19th Century. The Bailey family retired at the usual time on New Year's Eve, after fixing the fire for the night. My room opened from the living-room which was getting rather cool by 11:00 P.M., so I got into bed to keep warm, intending to lie awake to watch the Century end and the new Century begin. In the country there were no guns booming nor bells ringing at midnight. When I awoke it was 1:00 A.M.

 The last day of the term we gave a program of music, recitations and dialogues, with the parents invited. Several mothers were present, and as brother Howard was to take me and my belongings home, he came early to hear the program. I recall that this created a pleasant stir in the audience, and seemed to add zest to the program. I did not teach that spring, but signed a contract to teach in the Hill school all the next year of 1901 - 2. This school was only two and one-half miles from home, and in good weather I rode my bicycle.

 Grace and Arthur Westcott had sugar maples on their farm, and made s lot of maple syrup in the spring, so it was always a busy time. That year when Arthur tapped the sugar bush, I hung the pails and helped as much as I could. Most of the Spring I was at home sewing, after the housework was done. We made all of our dresses, and under garments also. Mother made shirts and overalls for Father and the boys, and some of their better trousers, and all the towels, sheets and pillowcases. That is where I learned to make buttonholes, sew over and over, hem, etc. Mother was a very good seamstress and fast at her work. We girls had to rip out our work and do it better when it didn't pass inspection.

 When cold weather came, I boarded at the Lorenzo Mosher home. On snowy mornings Mr. Mosher often took me to school with his high-stepping horse and cutter. He was very kind. Mrs. Mosher loved to sing, and Pearle played both organ and violin so, many times Pearl played and we all sang for our own pleasure. All of us could sing soprano and alto. Later years found me singing alto only.

 Mrs. Mosher made a cake with bread dough, which was moist and very good, for my lunch. I liked her homemade bread so well that usually I took three sandwiches in the dinner pail, and nothing else. Mr. Mosher got a clot of blood at the base of his brain, and began having seizures. Because of lying unconscious upon the floor uncovered in a cold room, pneumonia developed. He was semi-conscious for two or three days, and then died, February 13, 1902. None of us could milk very well, but there were six cows to milk. I took the two easiest milkers, and Mrs. Mosher did the rest, while Pearle did the cooking. As soon as possible, five of the cows were sold. Mrs. Mosher had a sister in Jackson, Mrs. Frances Manee, who did oil painting. She gave me one of her paintings; Alice has it now.

 I enjoyed this school fairly well. The girls were lovely and the boys not bad. There were only minor irritations. Blanch Crisp, Marie Hogan, Louie Bump, Hattie Havens, Sopha Britton, big girls; Earl Williams, Alfred Van Duzer and Devillo, Leo Hogan, Robert and Richard Leonard, the older boys; also Ralph Crisp, Willie Parrish, Dawson Henvey, Harry Eldridge, Lynn Williams, Clarence Wheaton, Nina Johnson and Mary Britton. We had a group picture taken on the front porch just after some of us had recovered from the mumps. Percy taught for me three days, I think.

 But I decided that I didn't like teaching well enough to keep on. Mary had saved her money and gone to Hillsdale College, but I did not have enough money for that. One summer I had tried assembling the parts of artificial roses to earn a little more. Having to sell them also, I didn't make a dime. A business school in Huntington, Indiana had sent me letters advertising their system of teaching Shorthand - the Putnam-Graham - and I sent for a copy of the Manual. That summer of 1902 several North Adams girls got jobs as waitresses at the summer resort of Wequetonsing, just around the Bay from Bay View and Petoskey; Grace and Clara Corbett, Naomi Gamble, Mamie Duguid and I, and later in the summer, sister Susie. The forty girls there were teachers, seamstresses, college students and a couple of high school pupils.

 Our rooms were over the kitchen, two double beds in a room. The partitions were about six feet high, not reaching the ceiling so it was possible to communicate quite freely, but we did not abuse the privilege. Most of my spare time was spent studying shorthand, while sitting on a side porch over-looking Little Traverse Bay. Occasionally, some of the girls took care of children for an hour or so. My roommate, Pauline Hazelton, was a senior in Alma College, and tutored in Greek, a boy in Harbor Springs.

 This waiting on tables was not too easy, especially when the cooks were short-tempered and the days hot. Our pay was small also, $3.50 a week, and half our railroad fare. I was there three months, and with about $9.00 in tips, earned $54.00. Each one of us was given time off so we could take the boat trip to Mackinac Island some time during the summer. On my trip the Strait was very rough, but I enjoyed it, and thought the Port, Arch Rock, Lover's Leap, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Devil's Kitchen, etc. were wonderful.

 Susie and I had arranged for Uncle Albert to meet us at Bitely on our trip home, as our tickets gave us stopover privileges. As the train halted at Baldwin, I saw my valise put on a baggage truck. I rushed out to the platform and yelled, "That valise goes to Bitely - not Baldwin." "Everything for Bitely we put off here for the local to pick up. This train doesn't stop at Bitely." "Well, it's going to today." I sputtered. Then I talked with the conductor. I told him my uncle was driving his buggy fifteen miles over poor roads to meet that train, and if I weren't there he might go back, or he might wait and wait.

 "My ticket showed the stopover, why did they let me board that train?" He said they were behind time and he couldn't promise that they would stop, but if we would be ready at the steps, so they would barely need to stop, perhaps they might. And they did. Uncle Albert drove up a minute later, and my heartbeat got back to normal.

 Aunt Sarah Swift had died the summer before, and Clark and Sallie were married. We saw some of my old pupils, and Arthur Giddings, Nellie Kalman and Sam Draggoo came calling. Clark and Sallie took us back to the train. We ate fried chicken from our lunch-basket on the way to the depot.

 Pliny Marsh was getting students for Detroit Business University, and when he found that I contemplated taking a business course, he suggested D.B.U., instead of Huntington, Indiana. He was working his way through law school in Detroit. As I knew no one in Huntington, and the shorthand system taught in D.B.U. was practically the same as the one I was studying, it was not hard to persuade me to go to Detroit instead.

 Brother Will's Wendell was sick all the fall with a bloating of the abdomen. They took him to Ann Arbor Hospital, but they were unable to help him. He was three years old, and the last time I saw him he was wearing a little red suit that Fallie had made him. He was very fair, the color becoming, and he looked very sweet. The news of his death on November 30th came to me after I had gone to Detroit about November 3, 1902.

 Pliny had agreed to meet my train, take me to the D.B.U. to enroll, and help me to get located. I arrived, and sat and waited in the Grand Trunk Railway depot perhaps thirty minutes, when in rushed Pliny, all out of breath. He had been delayed, and feared that I would be gone, I don't know where. As I had never been in Detroit, I was as ignorant of locations as it was possible to be. With him as guide, I enrolled at the D.B.U. They recommended me to the Y.W.C.A. in the same building on John R Street, between Woodward and Farmer, where I was engaged to wait on table from 11:30 to 12:45 P.M., for $1.50 a week, and my dinners, except on Sundays. Pliny took me to his boarding house for supper, and I had my trunk brought to a Catholic Home for Girls, where I stayed for a few days until I found a good front room for $1.50 a week, in a private home at 36 West Columbia Street.

 In 1902 Detroit used gaslights in most homes. The lady, who showed me to a room, lighted the gas for me and left me. When I retired, I blew out the gas, after turning it down a little as one would with a kerosene lamp, as perhaps YOU do not know. But that didn't seem quite right, somehow. I lighted a match and held it to the gas jet. It burned a little, without turning it on any more. So then I got the idea; the gas must be turned entirely off. I thought there should have been a placard with instruction for people who know nothing about gaslights. I might have been listed as a suicide!

 The first night I stayed at Columbus Street address I was awakened by what sounded like a shot across the street. I went to the window, and saw lights coming on across, and a little West. Soon an ambulance arrived, and someone was carried out of the house on a stretcher. The papers reported that a man came home drunk, and when his wife berated him, he said, "I'll shoot myself." And proceeded to do so, but not fatally. This was a house where I had looked at a room the previous afternoon, but thought it too small. How thankful I was, not to be over there.

 Mr. Drake was President, and Mr. Spencer Secretary, of the D.B.U. They were both fine men. Tuition for the Shorthand, Spelling and Typing course was $60.00 for six months, with a reduction to $54.00 for cash, which I paid. In the Junior department we worked individually, going from one lesson to the next as fast as we could pass the test. Helped by my study of shorthand in the book from Huntington, I was able to complete the work of this department in five weeks instead of the usual twelve. Then began dictation, and later, office procedure. This was harder for me, especially typing, as my physical reflexes are slow. The keys on the Densmore typewriter I used were not lettered. We had a lady teacher whom I adored; her name, Miss McAllister.

 I cooked my meals on my landlady's stove. It was usually oatmeal for breakfast, mush and milk for supper, while I was getting a good dinner at the YWCA where I worked. Later when I had finished school, I ate lunch at the Delmont restaurant on Gratiot near Woodward.

 Of course I wanted to set foot on Canadian soil, so Pliny and I took a ferryboat to Windsor one Saturday afternoon, and walked about town a little. On the boat we had been eating bananas, and had to tell what was in the paper bag, when we passed the customs officer. When ill with a cold, Pliny brought me a bright blue cineraria, and called occasionally, until I was fully acclimated. He was a Baptist, and after he became interested in a Miss Belle Morehouse in his church, later his wife, I seldom saw him, but have never forgotten his many acts of kindness.

 For $15.00 I bought a violin, with twelve free lessons given in a studio on Clifford Street, just off Woodward. My teacher, Mr. Mueller, was patient, and I practiced faithfully, but I never could hold the violin easily, nor play well. When he played his violin with me, it sounded very well, but when I played alone it was altogether different. This practice was done when I lived alone.

 One day in the spring the school had a call from Alma Sanitarium, asking for a stenographer who could play simple marches and hymns. Most of the students wanted to stay in Detroit, but I was willing to go. My teacher thought I could handle the job, although I lacked six weeks of the six months of instruction, but told them I was unable to pay for the gymnasium exercises. So I bought a new spring hat, and left for Alma.

 My salary was $8.00 a week, with room and board at the Sanitarium. The two secretaries of the doctors were Anna Watts, and Josie Starkweather. We had a large room together on the second floor, and were quite congenial. My boss, Mr. Mills, was the manager of the Sanitarium. Every morning he planned the meals for the day. I had to cut a stencil for each meal, and roll off the menu cards on a sort of slate duplicator. This was new work for me, but not difficult, and I took pride in making the menus neater looking. I played the hymns for the chapel service held each morning in the parlors. Then I passed out mail at the desk in the lobby, sold cigars, rented pool balls, etc., and helped the bookkeeper, Mrs. White, with any job she gave me. Rev. Wooten, whose wife was Rhetta Kempton of North Adams, was pastor of the M. E. church, which I attended.

 Alma Sanitarium was famous for its mineral springs, Almanian and Almarian. One was drinking water, and the other for bathing. Pauline Hazelton, my roommate at Wequetonsing, was a senior at Alma College, and I met her each morning when she came to drink of the mineral spring. Once she got permission for me to stay over night with her in the girl's dormitory.

 But I was getting no dictation except for an occasional letter. One day a Mr. Fischer from Detroit, who was resting up in the Sanitarium for a few days, asked me if that was my writing in a ledger in which I was doing some posting. Then he asked how I liked my work there. I told him I was thinking of leaving because I was not using the shorthand knowledge I had acquired, and realized it would soon be forgotten unless used; and I could go back to school for six weeks more. He said if I would do that, he'd like me in his office in Detroit, and would call me at the D.B.U. when ready.

 So after being in Alma five or six weeks I left my new friends with regret, made a short visit at home, and then returned to Detroit. Here I found that a Miss Nellie Eastman, from Rochester, Michigan, had my old room at Mrs. Dearin's. She was a dressmaker about thirty years old. She sewed for ladies in their homes, and got her meals out. She was my first roommate.

 After three weeks Mr. Fischer called the D.B.U. and I then began as a stenographer in the employ of Gage and Fischer, General Agents of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sixth floor Hammond Building. I sat in William Skinner's outer office, but took dictation mostly from Miss Mary Smith, the Company's cashier, and turned out monthly form letters on a duplicating machine. Carl Loud was office boy, and ran my typed letters through a letterpress. Miss Helen Emery was engaged for Mr. Skinner's work, and Wm. C. Mage became my boss. I also did work occasionally for Wm. Robinson, Billy Gage, Samuel Heavenrich, and William H. Bloomer. Bonnie Doone Lowe worked for Wm. Wrightt; Helen Todd for Dr. Balch; Ernest Patterson and Warren Flynn for Gage and Fischer; Bessie Baxter was bookkeeper; Irving Keiser and Charlie Munro were young city agents who also helped in the main office. Cassius Hudson from Jackson, was the switchboard operator.

 We girls formed a club, with weekly meetings in our rooms, reading aloud plays from Shakespeare; serving perhaps coffee and doughnuts, or pop-corn, or toasting marshmallows. Miss Baxter's roommate, Betty Brown, also attended; sometimes Harriet Capes, Charlie's friend, later his wife. We all enjoyed this very much. In summer we did not work Saturday afternoons. Twice, I think, we girls put up a lunch, and invited the boys to go for a picnic on Belle Isle, and canoeing on the canals. We were a congenial group, jolly but dignified; no one was loud, or rough in speech or manner.

 One day in June Mr. Gage held a picnic at his summer home on Grosse Isle. He was a widower, but a neighbor lady acted as hostess. For lunch we filled our plates from a large platter of sliced baked fish, and buns and relishes. For dessert, we were taken back a lane and turned into the strawberry patch, where we ate our fill. There were pictures taken, and late in the afternoon we boarded a streetcar for the return trip to Detroit after a memorable day.

 One day the office cashed a money order Mary had sent me in payment of a loan. Mr. Fischer asked if I had to send for money. I replied "No," but the next week my salary check was for $8.00 instead of $6.00. While attending D.B.U. I once got down to a 2-cent stamp, but never borrowed nor went broke. Mother wrote faithfully once a week, and usually Dennis Duguid did also. The postman used to bring the mail into the office, and say, "Here's the letter from your Mother. What's s the matter with the boy friend?" Usually both letters came on Tuesdays. Dennis came to Detroit once or twice a year. I had a week's vacation every summer, and a few days at Christmas time. I got very homesick the second winter, and actually sick from it. I believe it lasted about three weeks; then I began recovering and never felt so again.

 Nellie Eastman fell and broke her wrist, and went home to Rochester for a few weeks. Mary visited me once at Mrs. Dearin's. I saw Pearle Mosher and May Chapman on an excursion from Hillsdale; Clyde Van Patton and Burr Wisner were callers when visiting Detroit; Sam Draggoo came once to the State Fair. Mary Wright Johnson and husband Pearl entertained me in their home, as did Mr. and Mrs. Erskine whom I remember very well, but do not recall how I met them. Mrs. Wm. Robinson , wife of one of my bosses, was President of a Missionary Society, and I did some typing for her. She invited me to dinner one evening. They had two small boys about seven and five years of age. The dinner was in a stately dining room, but they were cordial and friendly, and the dinner so good, (scalloped oysters the one item I recall), that I overcame my bashfulness.

 I heard Bryan lecture in the Light Guard Armory; King Edward's Gernadier Band play; and concerts for which Mr. William Mage gave me tickets. Usually Miss Janie Berkley, a friend from the Y.W.C.A. accompanied me. I visited the church where Harold Jarvis sang, and his "The Holy City" almost carried me to Heaven. We heard the brilliant organist, Dr. York; and Dr. Elliot preach. His sermons were wonderful, his choice of language superb, but his handshake left me cold. But I joined Central Methodist Church.

 When Nellie Eastman came back to Detroit we got a room together on High Street where she planned to do some sewing in our larger room, which was on the first floor, and had a folding bed with full-length mirror. This was the first house west on Woodward, on the south side of High Street, and owned by the Runstedlers. We get our breakfasts and suppers together in a back room off their kitchen. We had been there about a month when Miss Eastman needed to press a seam in some garment she was finishing at night, and plugged in her gas flatiron in one of the chandelier lights. She said to me , "I must ask Mrs. Runstedler what it will cost if I plug in occasionally for five or ten minutes." She had hardly got the words out when Mrs. Runstedler came in to see if we were warm enough with a small fire in the fireplace. The next day she plugged the extra gas outlet with soap, and wouldn't believe that Miss Eastman had never used it before, and intended to pay extra for it. She said that Miss Eastman must go, but I could stay.

 But I went too, as Miss Eastman was a fine woman. We found another room a little farther down the street, with a Miss Susie Perkins. This room was small, upstairs, and had only one window; but we could cook in her kitchen. Then Miss Eastman was called home again. I did not hear from her but paid our rent one week longer to hold the room. Not being able to pay rent for the two of us, I gave up the room, and went into a larger back room with a Miss Lucy Nash, a milliner from Adrian, Michigan.

 Lucy was younger than I, and trimmed hats for wholesale millinery. A week or two later Miss Eastman came back, and there was no room waiting for her. We thought she could sleep with us for one night, and hunt a room the next day, but Miss Susie would not allow it. It was already dark, and I was in tears, but Miss Eastman herself comforted Lucy and me and assured us that she'd get a room at the Y.W.C.A. Later Lucy and I got a better room at 150 High Street, with Mrs. Polascio and little six-year old daughter. The child didn't seem to have regular meals, and hung around us so hungrily that we often gave her part of our supper. She died of a fever about a year later. Poor Mrs. Polascio! When the millinery season was over, Lucy went home, and I went back to Mrs. Dearin's Lucy and her sister Minnie Nash both came back to Mrs. Polascio's the next season. I loved my Sunday school teacher, Mr. Seelye. There was a Kitty Wells in the class. My dresses swept the ground unless held up a little. My shoes were buttoned high-tops. Lucy Nash had made me a pretty dark blue straw hat, and trimmed it with while lilacs, and when sister Grace came to visit me, made her a winter hat, brown with pretty brown velvet flower - very be coming.

 Cousin Nellie McConnell wrote from Hillsdale that she was about to come to Detroit, and we arranged that she would room with me at Mrs. Dearin's. Her work was in an Overalls Factory. She cooked breakfast and left for work. Then I ate, washed dishes, made bed, etc. On my way from the office at night, I shopped for our supper food at John Blessing's grocery, and started supper. We cooked on a gas plate in a small room over the front entrance, just a step from our room. We ate together, and each paid half the bill at the end of the week. We got along very well. Nellie was livelier than I, but we enjoyed being, together. When Mrs. Dearin asked her age, she replied "Bertha is 22, and I am 22 - 2." Mrs. Dearin, of course, thought she was 22, too, instead of 22 - 2.

 Once Mrs. Dearin lighted the small kerosene stove in my room, before I get home at night, so it would be warm when I came in, and left it turned up too high. When I arrived the room was blue with smoke, and everything in the room sooty. Luckily, the closet door was shut, but the room was filthy. She asked me not to tell her son Charles, because he might think her too old to be trusted to keep house for him. He was an old bachelor. Nellie heard a rustling in our potato sack, and found a rat in it. She held the sack tight shut, and ran downstairs and let it out in the alley, she was as frightened as the rat. We never saw another, and cannot imagine how it go upstairs into our kitchen.

 One Thanksgiving Day and weekend I spent in Tecumseh with Lavie Snedecor and family. Elmer took me to the High School football came. I wore my new dark blue felt hat, and a blue suit of the same color. I liked Elmer a lot. He was Lavie's young brother, and wrote me long interesting letters. He had lofty ideals, but his life was cut short by tuberculosis in his early twenties, and his wife and little daughter were left alone.

 Aunt Hattie Wells, and Aunt Emma (Nellie's mother), had moved to Detroit now and ran a little store on Sixth Street, so Nellie moved in with them. Aunt Emma had a News Agency, and employed several newsboys. I was about to have my summer vacation, and arranged that Elmer Snedecor and his Pastor could use my room while they were attending a Young People's Convention in Detroit, and Lavie spent the week with me in North Adams. Lavie (Vie) did not like Salmon, but it was served at every home where we ate, while visiting my brothers and sister. Lavie tried to eat a little of it, and says that ever since she does eat it some. Then Elmer wrote that Mrs. Dearin was taken ill that first night of their stay. She died before morning, and was to be buried beside her husband who had died in Lansing years before. He had been librarian in the Capitol Building for years. That was a sad ending to our vacation. Mrs. Dearin was a tiny sweet old lady, and I loved her dearly.

 Soon after Mrs. Dearin died, Miss Thompson, who owned the house at 36 West Columbia Street, married. I had to find another home. Pearle Mosher's friend Doris Spotts, came to Detroit to find a typing job. We found a large front room on second floor on Park near Sibley Avenue. It had a folding bed, and an oil stove for cooking; in a niche in the hall opposite our door. This was $5.00 a week for two people. Helen Jefferson Bryant was the landlady. She had a daughter Isla in grade school; daughter Rose, a bit older than I, and son Gifford Wiggs, about 30. This was my home as long as I stayed in Detroit, and with young people in the house I was not so lonesome.

 Doris Spotts got a job without difficulty, but complained that her boss was always interrupting her work, telling her to answer the phone. In less than a month, her boy friend came from Hillsdale add persuaded her to go back with him and marry him. Mrs. Bryant let me have the room alone for $3.00. Rose Bryant clerked in Hudson's Book Department, and Gifford in a Photo or Art Gallery. I liked them very much; Isla expected me to be perfect and I had to watch my step.

 In the spring of 1905 Mr. W. J. Fischer left the firm of Gage and Fischer, and became General Agent of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Mage, Mr. Bloomer, and Warren Flynn went with him then, or soon after, and my heart was broken. Mr. Mage gave me "The Master's Violin" and words of appreciation, and later Mr. Bloomer offered me a job there, but warned me of the extreme heat in St. Louis in summer. I sent him a telegram saying I'd decided to stay in Detroit, and then walked out of the office and went to my room, where I grieved the grief out of my system. No one ever remarked about by absence from work.

 O. J. Wright was my boss now, very kind and considerate. But I was upset and confused and quite unhappy. In the fall a friend from Walkerville, Michigan came to the State Fair and called on me. He asked me to write to him once a week or oftener, but I had to refuse. Mother made me a visit, and there were so many things to show here that I nearly walked her to death; Palmer Park, Belle Isle, Waterworks Park, Majestic Building, Hudson's, Newcomb-Endicott's, William Elliott Company, Frank and Seder's, Central Methodist Church, Harold Jarvis, Dr. Elliot, my employers and fellow office employees in the Hammond building. On Susie's 21st birthday on August 5^th I sent her a gold-plated Elgin watch, with pin, to be worn on the blouse.

 In October, Dennis and I began planning our marriage, for Christmas Day. There was a furniture sale in Jackson (1/4 discount) so we met there one Saturday and shopped for household goods. We still have the bill of sale. The clerk called me "Mrs. Duguid", without being corrected. We were both too bashful. The store was to deliver the goods when we notified them, during the first week of January, which they did.

 During November I stayed with Helen Todd, as her sister and family were away. She had a kitchen shower for me, inviting the girls and boys from the office and Rose and Isla Bryant. Besides all the small do-dads for kitchen use, they gave me a lovely cut glass water bottle. After helping to break in a new girl for my job with O. J. I left Detroit for home in time for Thanksgiving.

 Mother and I shopped in Hillsdale, bought a set of dishes, ordered wedding announcements, etc., and quilted three quilts before Christmas. I had already bought lace curtains, tablecloths, bed linen, towels, etc. in Detroit. My wedding dress was of pale green peau de sole, a sort of silky tulle; Miss Tepfer, dressmaker. It had a full skirt, shirred at the top worn over a pale green cotton skirt, flounced. The blouse was lined with pale green cotton. It had a white satin yoke covered with white lace. The sleeves from the elbows down were white lace over satin, and the tops were puffed and shirred just above the elbows. The stiff white satin lace covered collar had ruching, as did the sleeves. The blouse was shirred and boned, 26 inches waist measure. Dennis wore a black suit, and a white vest with a little black fleck.

 Rev. Elbert G. Mather read the wedding ceremony. Myrta Duguid and Mary A. Wells were witnesses. We were married in my home at noon; then sat down to a dinner of oyster stew, mashed potatoes, veal loaf, some vegetables, jelly, pickles, etc., cake and ice-cream. Present were both our families, Aunt Sue and Aunt Hattie.

 Dennis had a week's vacation from his school in Napoleon. We spent our honeymoon visiting our relatives, and attending the Duguid reunion at his Uncle Will's near Ray, Indiana. Mayme and Ben, Dennis and I went on the train and stayed over night with the Judson's. Aunt Catherine invited some of the young cousins over for an evening party. At the reunion I met all the uncles, aunts, and cousins of the Duguid Clan, and the Wells' couldn't outnumber them. They collected some money for a gift for the bride and groom. It paid for a good solid iron bedstead, painted gilt and green. We liked it then, and we like it today. It is in use still.

 I had never been in Napoleon. The day we arrived there it is raining, and it is January. We tramp 1/4 mile down a boardwalk to Dennis' boarding place. How dreary everything appears. The house next door is painted a sickly yellow - a color I loathe. Dennis points it out proudly, and says it is to be our first home; he has paid a month's rent. We spend a day or two cleaning the house, for creosote has run down in the kitchen doorway.

 Then our furniture arrives. There is carpeting for living-room and bedroom; linoleum for hall and kitchen; a baseburner for heating, and a coal range for cooking, and two zinc squares; a sanitary couch with space for linen or clothing; a small library table; a large rocker and a small one; dining room table and six chairs; a kitchen cabinet' two iron bedsteads, two mattresses and springs, one pair pillows; a dresser and commode; two kitchen chairs. We return a writing desk, for it is not the one we ordered. We have a double bookcase with glass doors, bought in Detroit.

 Our wedding presents supply silverware, salad bowls, bread and butter plates, linen napkins, teapot, clock (still running) six tumblers, one pair pillows, one quilt, one chamber set, one rococo mirror, kitchen shower gadgets, cut glass water bottle, and jelly dish. The main thing lacking is a rolling pin. Mother lends me a small flatiron, until we can buy some with wooden detachable handle. We have been given a few quarts of canned fruit, by the relatives. We buy hard coal and wood, a bushel of potatoes, apples, peck of onions, cabbages, etc. 25 pounds of flour, 25 pounds sugar, baking powder, soda, vinegar, tubs, washboard, boiler, soap, pancake griddle, and other articles as we need them. We arrange for butter, eggs, and milk. Dennis buys some canned fruit and a rolling pin at an auction. Broom, mop-stick, and pails. Sort of fun getting started, but it does take a few dollars. Dennis' salary is $500.00 for ten months, but I have enough left to buy a sewing machine.

 We joined the Methodist Church in Napoleon by letter, and subscribed for the Methodist Christian Advocate for 1906. I sing alto in the choir, and join the Ladies Aid Society. Dennis arranges a Lecture Course. No one offers to entertain the cello player, who is a Negro. So we entertain him in our home, and are glad to have him there.

 In June we took a honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls, on a boat from Detroit to Buffalo; then an interurban car to the Falls. It was so hot that I spent a lot of time in the bathtub in the private house where we stayed, while Dennis visited the Shredded Wheat Biscuit Company. We both went through the Larkin Soap Factory, and of course the Falls were wonderful.

 We went across to Canada and down to Lewiston on streetcars. Saw Brock's monument. Then we crossed the river below, and the car brought us back in the gorge along by the whirlpool, with the rocks, as it seemed, hanging over us. This trip was discontinued later, after rocks did fall and injured people. I was seasick coming up the Detroit River on the way back to Detroit.

 Later in the summer we went to Coldwater; stayed overnight with Cousins Albert and Ella (Van Schoik) Gowdy. They had Elsie and Suella Mary. They were busy looking over huckleberries, and we helped out. The next day we took the train to East Gilead, to visit the Pifer family, where Dennis boarded while teaching in their district. They had two young lady daughters. Mr. Pifer was an angler. We went fishing with potato bugs for bait and caught bluegills as fast as we could pull them in. I remember that he had a cider mill, made apple jelly, etc.

 My sister Susie, and Dennis' sister Maud, came together to visit us in Napoleon, and soon after they went home Dr. Norton of North Adams told Susie that she must stay in bed, because of ophthalmic goiter. Her eyes protruded, and she became very ill; Emma Gilmer was engaged as nurse. For some time she was fed intravenously. I went home, and sat up with her one night, about a month before Alice was born. About then she began to get better, and mother sent me home.

 Emma promised to be my nurse if she could leave Susie. She left soon after and came to Napoleon when we called her December 4th, 1906. Tuesday, Dr. Kirkland and Mrs. Smith was with me when Alice Annette was born at 9:30 A.M. Dennis had left for a few minutes at school. When he found that she had arrived during his absence, he hurried over to tell Mrs. Hackett, our good neighbor whose phone he had used that morning. Winnie Quigley was my helper for two weeks, $4.00; Dr. Kirkland, $10.00; Mrs. Smith $1.50; Emma, $15.00 ($1.00 a day), Total $30.50.

 Soon after we were married I had a bad fright in the night. Percy was with us, and I heard him holler and talk in the room upstairs over our bedroom. I thought someone was murdering him. I woke Dennis, but it was quiet then, and he said Percy probably talked In his sleep. But I lay awake four hours, and cried when Percy came downstairs happily in the morning. For months afterwards, I awoke thinking I heard someone in the house, and could not sleep again. Finally I would wake Dennis. He would get up and look the house over. Finally I got brave enough to take a stick, and go alone to investigate. After Alice was born we kept a lamp burning. Of course, I was up to feed her, and at last was free of fear.

 Mayme and Ben visited us later, and sister Mary made her wedding dress on my new sewing machine, in April, 1907. Our new brother-in-law was Rev. Elbert L. Mather, the Methodist minister in North Adams who had married Dennis and me. They were married April 17th. Howard and Iva Lamb were married on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1903. Mayme and Ben Pendell were married in August 1904.

 We lived three years in Napoleon, Michigan. In the summer of 1907 Dennis and Ben went to Winnipeg and Battleford, Saskatchewan, to locate some land in Canada on which to settle. They filed for 160 acres apiece, and planned to build a house, half on each claim, the next summer. So in June 1908, at the end of the school year, Herbert came with his truck and loaded it with all our furniture (we sold our library table and kitchen cabinet to Mrs. Hackett), which we stored upstairs at Father's where Alice and I stayed while Dennis and Ben made the second trip to Canada to build, and plow the required amount on their claims, ninety miles southwest of Battleford. Instead of one of them coming back for their families, they both came back to stay, for Ben was allergic to the mosquitoes. They were able to sell the yoke of oxen, wagon, plow, and the few tools they had acquired, and so their experience was not too costly.

 John was born at Father's on Monday, July 20, 1908, about 4:00 P.M., two weeks after Dennis got home from Canada. Dr. Ditmars charged $7.00 for two trips from North Adams with horse and buggy. Mrs. Church $2.00; Blanche Church, $3.00. Total $12.00. Dennis helped Father with the haying. John Van Raalte was the hired man.

 Father and Dennis took two loads of furniture by wagons to Dansville, where Dennis was to teach. They stayed over night there and came back the next day. Then we went by train to Dansville, where we lived from September 1908 to June 1911, in a house of Dr. Lemon's. Just before we left for Dansville, Michigan, I spit a little blood, for the first time since 1897. Not again until 1914.

 Rev. and Mrs. Arthur Camburn with Helen, Harmon and Paul compromised the Methodist minister's family. Dr. Lemon was our physician. Mr. and Mrs. Archie Marshall were our good friends; she insisted on calling John, "Robert Marshall." Her children were both girls, Mildred in high school, and Vancha the Primary teacher. Selora Dunsmore and Carmen Aseltine were playmates of Alice. Dennis was vaccinated for smallpox, and quite ill from the effects. John was sick with tonsillitis, and before he was well came down with the chicken pox, which Alice got also. John was very sick, and I remember Mrs. Camburn used to come down to our house and sit with me. John wanted me to hold his hand all the time, so I could not get any work done. Mrs. Camburn brought me biscuits, pie, etc.

 Once Alice, John and I went with the Camburn family to her home at Stockbridge, and stayed over night. The next day we called on some of the girls who had been at Wequetonsing the summer I waited on table there, the Grimes sisters, and Alma Rockwell. Susie came from Albion College, and sang at our commencement exercises one year. We bought an 80-acre farm, one mile east of Woodville, Newago County, Michigan from the Freeman's.

 Our next school was in White Cloud, Michigan. There was a farewell party at the Town Hall for the Avery family, moving to Limrock, Alabama and us. Rev. Camburn helped Dennis crate our household goods. Mr. Simonds drove a load to Williamston for freight to White Cloud, and we went on to Detroit and visited Aunt Emma and Nellie, and Aunt Hattie Wells. They had a little store on Gratiot, and a News Agency. Then we went to White Cloud by train. Dennis taught this school from September 1911 to June 1913.

 We rented a large, rambling old house with a big yard, with hen house and yard where we kept a few white Leghorns, in preference to a small upstairs apartment nearer the schoolhouse. This disappointed someone who seemed to expect us to rent the apartment. Eliza Cole boarded with us and attended school. Her father was rural mail carrier in Woodville, and also a lay Free Methodist preacher in the country church we attended when we lived on our farm summers. We camped in the farmhouse. Charlie Brown lived a mile away. He was now Supervisor of Norwich Township, married to Nora Lawrence, and working the Lawrence farm. Charlie and Mr. Lawrence did the teamwork on our farm, and we had crops of rye, and potatoes.

 Father Duguid visited us at the farm, also my father and mother. Dennis was building a small barn, and Father helped him shingle. We had a few peaches and dewberries. I recall that one day Dennis and Charlie asked if I would help stack rye. Charlie pitched bundles to me; I pitched or threw them to Dennis, and he laid the stack. A couple of women drove by with a horse and buggy and I overheard, "O that poor woman! They are making her work on that stack." And there I was enjoying every minute of it, as I worked only short periods. I also liked corn and potato planting, not hard work in sandy soil. We also weeded five acres of potatoes by hand -- mostly tumbleweeds.

 In White Cloud, Alice and John played with Selma and Angela Slade, Mildred Barnes, Dolis Phillips and sister. I sang in a W.C.T.U. Ladies Quartet; taught a class of young ladies in Sunday School; was president of the Ladies Aid Society for one year. We quilted a quilt in our large living room. One of our neighbors threw a stone at a White Leghorn chicken of ours that had flown over the fence, and strayed into his yard. Accidentally, it killed the bird. He brought it over to us with his apologies, and we had chicken for dinner.

 In 1912 we moved to the Storeman house, nearer school and church, and with the yard fenced. While here we were invited to a Christmas dinner in the country. Our host came after us in a sleigh drawn by a yoke of oxen. Our minister was Rev. Wellington Earle, a widower. Whenever he married a couple he would get Mrs. McClure, who lived across the road to witness the ceremony. If she were away he would call me, as I lived just around the corner. He had a nice garden and I canned his tomatoes for him. We hired his horse and buggy to drive to Diamond Lake to go fishing. He died that summer and his household goods were sold at auction. Dennis bought a tall open shelved bookcase and two shelves of his books.

 Our second daughter, Blossom Ruth, was born Sunday morning at 3:45 o'clock, February 9, 1913. If a boy she might have been named Wellington Earle, after Rev. Earle, he was such a fine man. Already Alice could read some, and she started school when the Spring term began, with Nettie Branch her teacher. We all went trout fishing along the banks of a stream near White Cloud, May first. There was a swinging footbridge near town, rather difficult to cross. White Cloud was a train junction, and Cousin Albert Gowdy visited us between train's one day. He was traveling about the country taking indoor photographs, and he was an expert in his business. He took a wonderful portrait of Alice and John, and Grandma's old melodeon. When Blossom arrived, Dr. Fowler officiated, and we had Mrs. Merrill and Nora Rice for a few days. Total cost, $26.00.

 In the late summer and fall Dennis worked in the pickle house, where the cucumbers harvested around White Cloud were weighed, sorted, and put in brine. He had passed a Rural Mail Carrier's examination, and was appointed to Bitely, Michigan. So we left good friends, by name of Bawkey, Barnard, Barnes, Cooper, Cole, Bartron, Fuller, Hall, Hayward, Kuhn, McClure, Murray, Reed, Slade, VanNess, etc., and moved to Bitely, Oct. 26, 1913. We lived upstairs in the old hotel; had five rooms, plus a large room for storage and laundry work. We had to get water from the town pump, or go into Mrs. Belcher's kitchen, which was a bother to her. We had no stationary tubs or drains. We had a washing machine that was swung by hand. I boiled the white clothes and took all day to wash when there was a baby to care for, and feed. Please remember that there were kerosene lamps, wood or coal ranges, outdoor toilets, no running water, no telephone, no radio and no television.

 At about four months of age Blossom suddenly could not seem to get the milk from her bottle. Each feeding would take about forty minutes. Dr. Branch finally cut the cord under her tongue, but it made no difference. I spent hours feeding her. She did not grow, as she should. Our doctors could find nothing wrong, although her head was slightly misshapen, and her feet turned outward perhaps more than normal. Whenever she leaned her head against me or against a chair back she rolled it back and forth -- but not when lying down. The doctor had to change her position in the womb before she could be born, and I think she may have been injured at birth, and then also later suffered an attack of polio -- about which we knew nothing in 1913.

 After Dennis had tried to explain electricity to John, we had the first snowfall of the season. John stood looking out the window at the storm and suddenly said, "Who turns on something to make it snow?"

 At a birthday dinner for Dennis, with his teaching staff present, John said, "Why do we have two spoons?" And another time with company present, "I know what those little dishes are for. Butter!"

 Once at the farm, John picked up an egg from the table where I was about to stir up a cake, and dropped it. He called "O Mama, come quick. The frosting's running out of the egg. Anyway it is all breaked for you."

 We bought the old Methodist Church in Woodville, and camped there a few days, until we could rent a small new house just beyond our farm, so Dennis could help during the summer on the farm, which was then rented. We could take the train from White Cloud to Woodville, and then walk to the farm about a mile east. Once I left on the train a granite kettle with some boiled potatoes and a bowl of butter inside, and the lid held on by a new leather shawl strap. We didn't find it at the terminal in Big Rapids. In later years I left a silk coat on the streetcar. This was turned in, but a good silk parasol was never recovered.

 When Rev. Earle was eating Christmas dinner with us, a young couple called and asked him to go home soon so they could be married in the parsonage. This Christmas was also our sixth wedding anniversary, so we asked them to be married in our home. They ate dinner at the hotel, and came back later and were married. A couple of years later they called on us at Bitely.

 Our house in White Cloud was almost across the road from the schoolhouse, and just around the corner from the church, and the stores were back of the lot. There was a tree large enough to hold a swing for the children. John, who liked to go barefooted, often stood on one foot yelling, until I pulled a sand burr off the other. One day John took pennies from his bank and went out of the back gate to the store and bought candy. We told him he must never open the gate and go alone to the store. But he went again. When I saw him returning I locked the house door. He could not get in. Of course he cried, and when he began to be frightened I opened the door. He never opened the gate again. Alice and John had always played together without fussing. Now John began to develop a mind of his own.

 Mr. and Mrs. Belcher ran the hotel in Bitely. He was ticket agent at the depot; the railroad track ran right in front of the hotel. There was no church in town, but Sunday School was held in the schoolhouse, Mr. Belcher superintendent. The ladies had a W.C.T.U. which met monthly in their homes.

 We bought a little shack by the railroad track for $40.00, but never lived there. Sold it for $50.00. Long Lake was nearby, and a few cottages there. Dennis bought three horses for driving on the mail route, a distance of twenty-eight miles. One horse was "Napoleon." The route was mostly through cut over land, sandy, with poor roads all times of year. He went within two or three miles of Uncle Albert's. Sallie's and Stephan's families visited us in Bitely. The Gleasons lived on a big ranch north of town. Mrs. Gleason was a cousin of Frank Birdsall, and I had known her as a little girl. Her daughter Ruth chummed with Alice at school, and brought our milk from the ranch each morning.

 That fall we moved to Bitely, Susie began teaching Music and Penmanship in Schoolcraft, Michigan. She had three years in Albion College, and graduated in Public School Music, and Voice, I gave her my violin. She sang in the church choir, and also in the operetta "Pinafore" put on that winter in Schoolcraft. About Easter time she had a hemorrhage of the bowels. Mother went to care for her, and later Herbert went and they brought her home. Herbert was living one and one-half miles east and one mile north of North Adams, and Father nearby on the angling road to Jerome.

 Susie had a nurse for awhile. She got a little better, so she was able to take a ride one-day. Then worse again. Mother was tired out, so they moved her to Herbert's. She could not keep anything on her stomach, and suffered so. She died May 29, 1914. Her funeral was Monday, June 1st, at Herbert's. I went down on the train from Bitely, taking John, while a friend stayed with Alice and Blossom. Grace, Mary, and I all wore white dresses, (I borrowed a white skirt from Clara Young) and Susie was dressed in white also. She looked very peaceful. Her superintendent, and others, came from Schoolcraft, and Albion. Myra Salisbury, who later married Dr. Pellowe, sang.

 Susie loved to sing, and had a strong, sweet, clear voice, She sang a lot in revival meetings at North Adams, and was a great help in the services. She belonged to Acapella Choir in Albion College. An autopsy showed a growth closing the opening between the stomach and bowel, and they suspected that her bowels were full of ulcers or cancers. Today, X-ray and surgery might save a patient's life.

 It was a dreadful shock, and I began to feel ill. Though never fainting away, I felt a sinking feeling, had indigestion, and was very tired. A doctor, summering at the lake, suggested that I take Blossom, and visit somewhere for a couple of weeks. So we took the train to Buchanan where sister Mary and Elbert lived. Blossom's picture in the oval frame was taken there. From there we went to North Adams, where Mayme met us. It was so hot a day that I took Blossom's shoes and stockings off on the train, and gave her a wet washcloth to play with. I stayed in bed all the next day. Mayme and Ben lived where brother Percy lives now, on what was then the Andrew Pendell farm.

 Then we went to Father Duguid's in North Adams for a day or two, and relatives called to see us there, before we left for Bitely. That was the only time they ever saw Blossom. I recall that Grandma Duguid thought Blossom looked so nice in her little pink gingham dress. She usually wore rompers because she could creep around more easily in them. By this time we were pretty homesick, and glad to get back to our family, and vowed we'd never leave them so long again.

 Mr. DePew, for whom Dennis had done some work while in Hillsdale College, persuaded him to give up his mail carrier job and work as bookkeeper in his office in Springfield, Illinois, where he ran an advertising business. We moved there on November 15, 1914, with a stopover in Buchanan with Mary and Elbert. We lived in a hotel in Springfield until Dennis found a house at 1346 North 6th Street, only three doors from his Mother's sister, Aunt Mary Akerman. Her daughter Pearl married Fred Maisel a few weeks later.

 Before we left Bitely I had been spitting blood again, and couldn't work too much. Pearl unpacked all our dishes and put them on the shelves. I was expecting a new baby about my birthday, January 19th, but Mary Elizabeth was born December 14th at 7:00 A.M., Monday morning, weight five pounds and twelve ounces; Dr. Taylor presiding at the breech presentation. Cost $25.00, as I remember, and Aunt Mary helped us a short time for $15.00. A Mrs. Prunk came one day a week to clean and iron. We sent the washing to the laundry, and got along fairly well, although my stomach hurt, and I never got rested.

 John caught the measles at school, then Alice and Blossom. John was quite ill. Alice not very sick and Blossom did not break out much. She would take only a little milk, and lost five of her sixteen pounds in about ten days. We lost her Monday evening, April 12, 1915. A little poem written that Spring tells it all:

 Dear Little Girl, whom I long to see,

Her Mother

July 1915.

 Our friend Evelyn played Grandma's melodeon while Jennie Caldwell sang "Safe In the Arms of Jesus", and Rev. Kruel preached, and read a poem he liked about the children playing on the streets of Heaven. She is buried in the cemetery in Springfield, not far from Abraham Lincoln's resting-place. He also died on April 12th, but fifty years earlier. We also have her name on the Duguid stone in North Adams Cemetery. Mary Beth grew slowly, but at last she thrived, and was a great comfort to us. She was a good baby, too, as all our girls were.

 In the fall we moved to 100 North State Street, rent being $12.50 per month instead of $20.00. Aunt Mary Akerman had an operation for gallstones, and lived only a few days. I had hemorrhages of the lungs. Dr. Humbert had me stay in bed for a week. He took away strychnine tablets and gave one-hundredth grain nitroglycerin tablets, and I had no more blood spitting for twenty years. Mary Beth had whooping cough, we think, and did not learn to walk until May 1916. Dr. Humbert was wonderful with her. He fixed her a cough syrup of lemon juice and sugar; and of ammonia and water when her heart weakened.

 Mr. DePew's Agency was failing, so we stored our goods, and drove our 1913 Ford, bought July 4, 1916, to Father's in North Adams. Dennis tried to find work. Alice stayed at her Aunt Maud's and attended school at Grubby Knoll. The rest of us went to my Father's and Mother's near Mud Lake, where John attended school. About October 1st, Dennis was recalled to Springfield, and we moved into a bungalow at 333 South State Street, a couple of blocks from our previous home.

 But by spring the business had failed completely. Dennis had sold our farm at Woodville, and bought 160 acres of wild land east and north of it, on the road to Big Rapids. He formed the Duguid Fruitland Company, and sold five and ten-acre plots to be set out to cherry or peach trees; he to take care of them for a certain time. So on April 11, 1917 we left Springfield.

 We stopped at Mary and Elbert's in Buchanan for a day or two, and then set out for Charlie Brown's home near Woodville, where we stayed until our household goods arrived. Mary Beth and little Charlie Brown had the measles, while Alice and John spent a week with Cousin Sallie Swift near Walkerville. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence and Charlie's wife Nora were very kind to us. They would not let us go to a hotel in Big Rapids.

 We rented an old house of three large rooms across from Fay Rogers, about one and one-half miles from our land, where I held school every morning, until Alice and John had completed their year's work. We bought a team, a couple of pigs, and a few chickens. Dennis and a neighbor bought a stumping machine, and cleared a few acres of our land. We rented a field and put in rye and corn. We had potatoes and cucumbers on ours, and in front of the old house we grew turnips. A friend of Rev. Kruel's of Springfield came to see how "Fruitland" was progressing. He stayed over night, and seemed to be satisfied with what Dennis had accomplished.

 On August 3rd, my father and mother celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We drove down from Big Rapids, and I think all of their living children were present. They were living on the Andrew Weeks' farm then, and I remember Father took all the small children for a ride in the only car he over owned -- a used? (none of us can recall the name).

 Our crops didn't amount to much, and we needed cash. Dennis was able to set a country school to teach between Big Rapids and Stanwood. He left our team with Mr. Rogers, our piano at Charlie Brown's; moved our furniture and chickens to a small place about a mile from the school. We went to church and Sunday school in Stanwood, and also Sunday School was held in the schoolhouse. There was rationing of white flour and sugar that winter. We tried to use some rice flour, but did not like it very well. So we ate corn bread mostly. We had a small hog butchered, and ate beans. We had a few eggs, but the neighborhood boys swiped our five nice young roosters and had a picnic, I suppose. Dennis quit teaching when it was time for farm work in the Spring, and I taught for three weeks on a Special Certificate. Mary Beth stayed next door while I was at school. They gave her lunches, and care for $1.00 per week. Then we moved back and into the old Rogers Home down the hill, in Hungerford, where the children had attended school in