When I was fourteen three tremendous events had marked my life: sunlight
through a window-pane; the logrolling on the river when father added two
rooms to our cabin; and the night I thought mother would die and leave
me the only woman in eighteen miles.

But the fourth event was the most tremendous. One night father hurried
in without even waiting to unload or water his team. He seemed excited,
and handed my mother a letter. Our Great-Aunt Martha had willed father
her household goods and personal belongings and a modest sum that to us
was a fortune. Some one back East "awaited his instructions." Followed
many discussions, but in the end my mother gained her way. Great-Aunt
Martha's house goods were sold at auction. Father, however, insisted
that her "personal belongings" be shipped to Wisconsin.


After a long, long wait, one day father and I rose at daybreak and rode
thirty-six miles in a springless wagon, over ranchmen's roads ("the
giant's vertebrae," Jim Hill's men called it) to the nearest express
station, returning with a trunk and two packing cases. It was a solemn
moment when the first box was opened. Then mother gave a cry of
delight. Sheets and bedspreads edged with lace! Real linen pillowcases
with crocheted edgings. Soft woolen blankets and bright handmade
quilts. Two heavy, lustrous table-cloths and two dozen napkins, one
white set hemmed, and one red-and-white, bordered with a soft fringe.

What the world calls wealth has come to me in after years. Nothing ever
equaled in my eyes the priceless value of Great-Aunt Martha's "personal
belongings."