Babies vs. Fame

\ Babies vs. Fame By Mrs. Agnes Just Reid Codyville, Wyoming, Thursday. My very dear La Vern: — Your long and interesting letter came today. I love you but you and the rest of my friends are certainly an awful trial to me. I have had no less than ten let- ters bearing the same lamentations that yours does, that I was foolish to marry and waste the gift with which I have been so unaccountably blest. In the first place I am not sure that my drawing is anything to rave o^er and if it is I see nothing in love and happy marriage that should so seriously handicap its development. Just because I could make pictures better than anyone in school, or perhaps anyone of our acquaintance, is no reason that I am a Rembrandt. Of course I appreciate the com- pliment that you all pay me in thinking that I am. It gives me the most pleasurable sensation in the region of my solar plexus, but all the time I realize that you all have prejudiced eyes for me. You say to me, "But there'll be babies" and e\en in cold ink, I can hear the tragedy in your voice as you say it. Of course, there'll be babies. I expect fifteen or so in the course of our lives. Why, it would be criminal for anyone as happily married as I am, and as happily and comfortably "homed" not to have babies! You wonder how I'll ever be able to take care of them and still have time for my drawing. Well, you just come see me in ten or a dozen years and I will show you. Surely you of all persons should know that house keeping with me is sort of a joke. What ha\e I been keeping my daddy's house for all these years since I was eleven, if not to gain efficiency in that line ? You surely haven't forgotten how I could always turn off more work than any three of you other girls. I know I am vain over my accomplishments but it is a source of real pride to me to think when I hear other women pitying themselves over the burdens of wash day and the tragedy of dishes never washed, that those things are always done so quickly at our house that I never think of them. And cooking; I always have thought I was most as clever as that girl in the old, old song who could "make a cherry pie, quick as a cat can wink his eye." You know I can make a pie while most folks are getting ready

BABIES VS. FAME 601 to. Anyway, the people who know, tell me that before one can succeed in artistic lines he must first live and know life and that is what I am starting out to do. Your calling may be to train other people's children; Helen's may be to nurse sick people back to health; next to motherhood teaching and nursing are the finest vocations in the world, but here is the real reason that I have chosen home- making and motherhood. You know my grandmother and re- member how we girls all loved to visit her and hear of her re- markable experiences as a pioneer. She surely is a grand mother to me as well as to my daddy. In the early, early days in Montana she was deserted by her husband, four months before my daddy came to earth. Before this unthinkable tragedy, she had been associated with theatrical people and had gone on the stage several times taking minor parts. She undoubtedly had dramatic ability, and when she was left alone, to become a mother, the old stage manager and his wife made her the most flattering offer. They would take care of her and the baby and train her for the stage. She was then only nineteen years old and they recognized her ability, but in that day, the stage was looked down upon, and she feared she could not be a good mother and a good actress at the same time. Young as she was, she turned away from the lure of pretty things to wear and the comforts of civilization, and came into the wilderness where she could raise my daddy in the way that daddies should be raised. After she told me that story she said: "And have I ever regretted my decision? No, indeed. I have never envied an actress her life before the foot lights, but if I had chosen dif- ferently and had even become a Maude Adams or a Sarah Bernhardt, I could never have passed a little cozy home, with a family gathered around the evening lamp, without being torn to pieces with envy and regret." Another thing I have never told you, and it is a great secret, because George is so very modest that he never even told me, until long after we were married. He has a lot of inventive genius. He has patents on several small articles and is working on others. It may happen that, after all, he is the unheralded genius of the family. Wouldn't you girls change your ideas about my farmer if he should turn out to be an Edison? Well, my drawing is certainly a great help to him anyway. He tells me all about his plans and I make them. He thinks I am a wonder to be able to put his ideas on paper just as if they were my own, and I think he is a wonder to be able to have such ideas, so aren't we happy? Well, I should think we are. Anyway, if he does not turn out to be an Edison, his work will

602 IMPROVEMENT ERA bring in a few extra dollars, and more than that, add the most joyous interest to life. The days are not long enough for him to be in the fields making the crops grow with his hands and inventing things with his head. I've heard that really, truly in- ventors are disagreeable and absent-minded but either he is not real, or else he's different. He is just the thoughtfulest, kindest husband, and happy, he whistles or sings every minute of the day. I wish you could see our garden. It has everything in it. I never did take very kindly to out-door work, but George says it is lonesome working in the garden alone, so every evening, he wipes the supper dishes, then we work together in the garden for one hour, and we surely work hard and fast. Then when there isn't a weed in sight, we take that evening hour for a horse- back ride together. The ride, however, is not always limited to one hour. Sometimes we are out until far in the night. A visit from you is all that I desire to complete my hap- piness. With love, Margaret. Shelley, Idaho, R. D. No. 2 Spring O come with me, O happy be; We'll stroll away where flowers lay, O gladly sing, cares from you fling, For in sweet lay, 'tis spring, birds say. O come, 0 come, your work begun Can wait a day, O come away; We'll go and roam o'er earth's warm loam, And joyful play this bright spring day. Winter's cold spell is gone, buds tell, The forest birds, in warbled words, Just seem to say, O come away, Let's gayly fly through spring's blue sky. The great woods teem with life unseen. Let's search their depths, until our steps Lead where we'll see, with pulsing glee, It's sights new-old, it's wealth untold. The very sod bespeaks of God; The dew, the birds, in nature's words, Say, haste away, how can you stay? On magic wing we'll roam with spring. Zephyrs harps play melodious lay, All earth is glad, no one is sad, 'Tis God-given day, come, come away, The world doth ring with joy, 'tis Spring. Laie, Oahu M. F. Kirkham