3. More About Papa

To my parents, the quiet spot to which we had come was Paradise. The neighbors, riding by and seeing signs of life, dismounted from their horses or climbed out of their antique “rockaways,” and strolled in to get acquainted. Stringy little Mrs. Manning, from a near-by cottage, came to the kitchen door with a warm blueberry pie. The autumn days passed swiftly; halcyon days.

Lou and I often went across the fields to visit the Mannings who, it seemed, were very poor. An old fellow, whom we knew only as Blind Tom, lived in a little shack not far from the Mannings. He made charcoal by slowly burning logs in a deep pit. I don’t know what kind of logs they were, or anything about the process, or where and how he brought the charcoal to market. Lou and I often carried him a tin bucketful of hot soup and a pan of buttered biscuits for his dinner. He would gratefully let us see how many of his front teeth were missing, and sit down on a log to eat; but he never talked much. I doubt whether he was very bright. I was for asking him whether he had always been blind, but Lou thought I’d better not. Maybe he wouldn’t like to be questioned about it. It never took Blind Tom very long to drink the soup and wolf the biscuits. Then he would get up, and croak “Good-bye!” and go back to work.

Papa had sold his Hamiltonians and the buggy and the sleigh before we left Columbia City. The word quickly spread that the new preacher needed a horse. In a few days we had our pick of many. What we needed, Papa thought, was a gentle not too elderly, general-utility horse that could be ridden or harnessed to a vehicle. And it would be very nice of the horse if he wasn’t above pulling a light plow when it was time to make garden. Soon we had an amiable bay mare. Her name was Flora. I’m afraid she had to put up with a good deal of unwanted attention from us kids who treated her like a playmate. Perhaps she enjoyed it. I have often wondered about the private thoughts of animals, and whether they are bored by our friendship. There is a story going around that on my good friend Louis Bromfield’s famous “Malabar Farm” which, by the way, adjoins the old William Douglas place in Ohio, a foreman resigned because some of the animals were so petted and spoiled by the Bromfields that “they thought they were people.”

(Attention, please! Wanting to be sure that I was correct in saying that my parents had access to a D. M. Ferry and Company catalogue in 1881, I decided to ask for information at headquarters. Finding the name of Mr. D. M. Ferry, Jr., in Who’s Who in America, I asked him what was the earliest date on which his father might have issued an illustrated catalogue of seeds, and promptly had a cordial letter from him saying that the first seed catalogue his father brought out for general distribution was in 1868.)

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