A Son of the Middle Border | Page 7

as a rock but it was
kindly, and though he soon turned from his guests and resumed his
reading no one seemed to resent it.
Young as I was I vaguely understood his mood. He was glad to see us
but he was absorbed in something else, something of more importance,
at the moment, than the chatter of the family. My uncles who came in a
few moments later drew my attention and the white- haired dreamer
fades from this scene.
The room swarmed with McClintocks. There was William, a
black-bearded, genial, quick-stepping giant who seized me by the collar
with one hand and lifted me off the floor as if I were a puppy just to see
how much I weighed; and David, a tall young man with handsome dark
eyes and a droop at the outer corner of his eyelids which gave him in
repose a look of melancholy distinction. He called me and I went to
him readily for I loved him at once. His voice pleased me and I could
see that my mother loved him too.
From his knee I became acquainted with the girls of the family. Rachel,
a demure and sweet-faced young woman, and Samantha, the beauty of
the family, won my instant admiration, but Deb, as everybody called
her, repelled me by her teasing ways. They were all gay as larks and
their hearty clamor, so far removed from the quiet gravity of my
grandmother Garland's house, pleased me. I had an immediate sense of
being perfectly at home.
There was an especial reason why this meeting should have been, as it
was, a joyous hour. It was, in fact, a family reunion after the war. The
dark days of sixty- five were over. The Nation was at peace and its
warriors mustered out. True, some of those who had gone "down
South" had not returned. Luke and Walter and Hugh were sleeping in
The Wilderness, but Frank and Richard were safely at home and father

was once more the clarion- voiced and tireless young man he had been
when he went away to fight. So they all rejoiced, with only a passing
tender word for those whose bodies filled a soldier's nameless grave.
There were some boys of about my own age, William's sons, and as
they at once led me away down into the grove, I can say little of what
went on in the house after that. It must have been still in the warm
September weather for we climbed the slender leafy trees and swayed
and swung on their tip-tops like bobolinks. Perhaps I did not go so very
high after all but I had the feeling of being very close to the sky.
The blast of a bugle called us to dinner and we all went scrambling up
the bank and into the "front room" like a swarm of hungry shotes
responding to the call of the feeder. Aunt Deb, however shooed us out
into the kitchen. "You can't stay here," she said. "Mother'll feed you in
the kitchen."
Grandmother was waiting for us and our places were ready, so what did
it matter? We had chicken and mashed potato and nice hot biscuit and
honey just as good as the grown people had and could eat all we
wanted without our mothers to bother us. I am quite certain about the
honey for I found a bee in one of the cells of my piece of comb, and
when I pushed my plate away in dismay grandmother laughed and said,
"That is only a little baby bee. You see this is wild honey. William got
it out of a tree and didn't have time to pick all the bees out of it."
At this point my memories of this day fuse and flow into another visit
to the McClintock homestead which must have taken place the next
year, for it is my Jjnal record of my grandmother. I do not recall a
single word that she said, but she again waited on us in the kitchen,
beaming upon us with love and understanding. I see her also smiling in
the midst of the joyous tumult which her children and grandchildren
always produced when they met. She seemed content to listen and to
serve.
She was the mother of seven sons, each a splendid type of sturdy
manhood, and six daughters almost equally gifted in physical beauty.
Four of the sons stood over six feet in height and were of unusual

strength. All of them men and women alike were musicians by in
heritance, and I never think of them without hearing the sound of
singing or the voice of the violin. Each of them could play some
instrument and some of them could play any instrument. David, as