An American Idyll | Page 8

reason we were so blissful on such a small salary in University
work--we could never think, at the time, of anything much we were
doing without. I remember that the happiest Christmas we almost ever
had was over in the country, when we spent under two dollars for all of
us. We were absolutely down to bed-rock that year anyway. (It was just
after we paid off our European debt.) Carl gave me a book, "The
Pastor's Wife," and we gloated over it together all Christmas afternoon!
We gave each of the boys a ten-cent cap-pistol and five cents' worth of
caps--they were in their Paradise. I mended three shirts of Carl's that
had been in my basket so long they were really like new to him,--he'd
forgotten he owned them!--laundered them, and hung the trio, tied in
tissue paper and red ribbon, on the tree. That was a Christmas!
He used to claim, too, that, as I got so excited over five cents' worth of
gum-drops, there was no use investing in a dollar's worth of French
mixed candy--especially if one hadn't the dollar. We always loved
tramping more than anything else, and just prowling around the streets
arm-in-arm, ending perhaps with an ice-cream soda. Not over-costly,
any of it. I have kept some little reminder of almost every spree we
took in our four engaged years--it is a book of sheer joy from cover to
cover. Except always, always the need of saying good-bye: it got so
that it seemed almost impossible to say it.
And then came the day when it did not have to be said each time--that
day of days, September 7, 1907, when we were married. Idaho for our
honeymoon had to be abandoned, as three weeks was the longest

vacation period we could wring from a soulless bond-house. But not
even Idaho could have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile
trip up the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old
buckboard and two ancient, almost immobile, so-called horses,--they
needed scant attention,--and with provisions, gun, rods, and
sleeping-bags, we started forth. The woods were in their autumn glory,
the fish were biting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and
apples--Rogue River apples--made red blotches under every tree. "Help
yourselves!" the farmers would sing out, or would not sing out. It was
all one to us.
I found that, along with his every other accomplishment, I had married
an expert camp cook. He found that he had married a person who could
not even boil rice. The first night out on our trip, Carl said, "You start
the rice while I tend to the horses." He knew I could not cook--I had
planned to take a course in Domestic Science on graduation; however,
he preferred to marry me earlier, inexperienced, than later, experienced.
But evidently he thought even a low-grade moron could boil rice. The
bride of his heart did not know that rice swelled when it boiled. We
were hungry, we would want lots of rice, so I put lots in. By the time
Carl came back I had partly cooked rice in every utensil we owned,
including the coffee-pot and the wash-basin. And still he loved me!
That honeymoon! Lazy horses poking unprodded along an almost
deserted mountain road; glimpses of the river lined with autumn reds
and yellows; camp made toward evening in any spot that looked
appealing--and all spots looked appealing; two fish-rods out;
consultation as to flies; leave-taking for half an hour's parting, while
one went up the river to try his luck, one down. Joyous reunion, with
much luck or little luck, but always enough for supper: trout rolled in
cornmeal and fried, corn on the cob just garnered from a willing or
unwilling farmer that afternoon, corn-bread,--the most luscious
corn-bread in the world, baked camper-style by the man of the
party,--and red, red apples, eaten by two people who had waited four
years for just that. Evenings in a sandy nook by the river's edge,
watching the stars come out above the water. Adventures, such as
losing Chocolada, the brown seventy-eight-year-old horse, and finding

her up to her neck in a deep stream running through a grassy meadow
with perpendicular banks on either side. We walked miles till we found
a farmer. With the aid of himself and his tools, plus a stout rope and a
tree, in an afternoon's time we dug and pulled and hauled and yanked
Chocolada up and out onto dry land, more nearly dead than ever by that
time. The ancient senile had just fallen in while drinking.
We made a permanent camp for one week seventy-five miles up the
river, in a spot so deserted that we had to cut the road through to reach
it. There we laundered our change