At the Foot of the Rainbow | Page 5

A word
constantly on his lips was `tidy.' It applied equally to a woman, a house,
a field, or a barn lot. He had a streak of genius in his make-up: the
genius of large appreciation. Over inspired Biblical passages, over great
books, over sunlit landscapes, over a white violet abloom in deep shade,
over a heroic deed of man, I have seen his brow light up, his eyes

shine."
Mrs. Porter tells us that her father was constantly reading aloud to his
children and to visitors descriptions of the great deeds of men. Two
"hair-raisers" she especially remembers with increased heart-beats to
this day were the story of John Maynard, who piloted a burning boat to
safety while he slowly roasted at the wheel. She says the old thrill
comes back when she recalls the inflection of her father's voice as he
would cry in imitation of the captain: "John Maynard!" and then give
the reply. "Aye, aye, sir!" His other until it sank to a mere gasp:
favourite was the story of Clemanthe, and her lover's immortal answer
to her question: "Shall we meet again?"
To this mother at forty-six, and this father at fifty, each at intellectual
top-notch, every faculty having been stirred for years by the dire stress
of Civil War, and the period immediately following, the author was
born. From childhood she recalls "thinking things which she felt should
be saved," and frequently tugging at her mother's skirts and begging her
to "set down" what the child considered stories and poems. Most of
these were some big fact in nature that thrilled her, usually expressed in
Biblical terms; for the Bible was read twice a day before the family and
helpers, and an average of three services were attended on Sunday.
Mrs. Porter says that her first all-alone effort was printed in wabbly
letters on the fly-leaf of an old grammar. It was entitled: "Ode to the
Moon." "Not," she comments, "that I had an idea what an `ode' was,
other than that I had heard it discussed in the family together with
different forms of poetic expression. The spelling must have been by
proxy: but I did know the words I used, what they meant, and the idea I
was trying to convey.
"No other farm was ever quite so lovely as the one on which I was born
after this father and mother had spent twenty-five years beautifying it,"
says the author. It was called "Hopewell" after the home of some of her
father's British ancestors. The natural location was perfect, the land
rolling and hilly, with several flowing springs and little streams
crossing it in three directions, while plenty of forest still remained. The
days of pioneer struggles were past. The roads were smooth and level
as floors, the house and barn commodious; the family rode abroad in a
double carriage trimmed in patent leather, drawn by a matched team of
gray horses, and sometimes the father "speeded a little" for the delight

of the children. "We had comfortable clothing," says Mrs. Porter, "and
were getting our joy from life without that pinch of anxiety which must
have existed in the beginning, although I know that father and mother
always held steady, and took a large measure of joy from life in
passing."
Her mother's health, which always had been perfect, broke about the
time of the author's first remembrance due to typhoid fever contracted
after nursing three of her children through it. She lived for several years,
but with continual suffering, amounting at times to positive torture.
So it happened, that led by impulse and aided by an escape from the
training given her sisters, instead of "sitting on a cushion and sewing a
fine seam"--the threads of the fabric had to be counted and just so many
allowed to each stitch!--this youngest child of a numerous household
spent her waking hours with the wild. She followed her father and the
boys afield, and when tired out slept on their coats in fence corners,
often awaking with shy creatures peering into her face. She wandered
where she pleased, amusing herself with birds, flowers, insects, and
plays she invented. "By the day," writes the author, "I trotted from one
object which attracted me to another, singing a little song of made-up
phrases about everything I saw while I waded catching fish, chasing
butterflies over clover fields, or following a bird with a hair in its beak;
much of the time I carried the inevitable baby for a woman-child,
frequently improvised from an ear of corn in the silk, wrapped in
catalpa leaf blankets."
She had a corner of the garden under a big Bartlett pear tree for her
very own, and each spring she began by planting radishes and lettuce
when the gardening was