floor with partitions, which gave us
four rooms.

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

Mother was practically an invalid. She had a nervous affection which
made it impossible for her to stand without the support of a chair. But
she sewed with unusual skill, and it was due to her that our clothes,
notwithstanding the strain to which we subjected them, were always in
good condition. She sewed for hours every day, and she was able to move
about the house, after a fashion, by pushing herself around on a stool
which James made for her as soon as we arrived. He also built for her a
more comfortable chair with a high back.

The division of labor planned at the first council was that mother
should do our sewing, and my older sisters, Eleanor and Mary, the
housework, which was far from taxing, for of course we lived in the
simplest manner. My brothers and I were to do the work out of doors, an
arrangement that suited me very well, though at first, owing to our lack
of experience, our activities were somewhat curtailed. It was too late
in the season for plowing or planting, even if we had possessed