The Log-Cabin Lady | Page 2

social amenities.
"It has been a satisfaction and a compensation to me," she added, "to be able sometimes to serve these fellow country-women of mine."
And right there was born the idea which culminated in the writing of this little book. I suggested that a million women could be helped by the publishing of her own story.
The thought was abhorrent to her. Her experience was something she had never voiced in words. It would be too intimate a discussion of herself and her family. She was sure her relatives would bitterly oppose such a confession.
It took nearly a year to persuade this remarkable woman to put down on paper, from her recollections and from her old letters home, this simple story of a fine American life. She consented finally to write fragments of her life, anonymously. We were pledged not to reveal her identity. A few changes in geography and time were made in her manuscript, but otherwise the story is true to life, laden with adventure, spirit and the American philosophy. She has refused to accept any remuneration for the magazine publication or for royalties on the book rights. The money accruing from her labor is being set aside in The Central Union Trust Company of New York City as a trust fund to be used in some charitable work. She has given her book to the public solely because she believes that it contains a helpful message for other women, It is the gracious gift of a woman who has a deep and passionate love for her country, and a tender responsiveness to the needs of her own sex. MARIE M. MELONEY. September 1, 1922.

THE LOG-CABIN LADY
I. I
I was born in a log cabin. I came to my pioneer mother in one of Wisconsin's bitterest winters.
Twenty-one years later I was sailing for England, the wife of a diplomat who was one of Boston's wealthy and aristocratic sons.
The road between--well, let it speak for itself. Merely to set this story on paper opens old wounds, deep, but mercifully healed these many years. Yet, if other women may find here comfort and illumination and a certain philosophy, I am glad, and I shall feel repaid.
The first thing I remember is being grateful for windows. I was three years old. My mother had set me to play on a mattress carefully placed in the one ray of sunlight streaming through the one glass window of our log cabin. Baby as I was, I had ached in the agonizing cold of a pioneer winter. Lying there, warmed by that blessed sunshine, I was suddenly aware of wonder and joy and gratitude. It was gratitude for glass, which could keep out the biting cold and let in the warm sun.
To this day windows give me pleasure. My father was a school-teacher from New England, where his family had taught the three R's and the American Constitution since the days of Ben Franklin's study club. My mother was the daughter of a hardworking Scotch immigrant. Father's family set store on ancestry. Mother's side was more practical.
The year before my birth these two young people started West in a prairie schooner to stake a homestead claim. Father's sea-man's chest held a dictionary, Bancroft's History of the United States, several books of mathematics, Plutarch's Lives, a history of Massachusetts, a leather-bound file of Civil War records, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", Shakespeare in two volumes, and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." My mother took a Bible.
I can still quote pages from every one of those books. Until I was fourteen I saw no others, except a primer, homemade, to teach me my letters. Because "Vanity Fair" contained simpler words than the others, it was given me first; so at the age of seven I was spelling out pages of the immortal Becky.
My mother did not approve, but father laughed and protested that the child might as well begin with good things.
After mother's eighth and last baby, she lay ill for a year. The care of the children fell principally on my young shoulders. One day I found her crying.
"Mary," she said, with a tenderness that was rare, "if I die, you must take care of all your brothers and sisters. You will be the only woman within eighteen miles."
I was ten years old.
That night and many other nights I lay awake, trembling at the possibility of being left the only woman within eighteen miles.
But mother did not die. I must have been a sturdy child; for, with the little help father and his homestead partner could spare, I kept that home going until she was strong again.
Every fall the shoemaker made his rounds through the country, reaching our place last, for beyond us lay only virgin forest and wild beasts. His visit thrilled us more than the arrival of any