+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber’s note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ A LIFE UNVEILED BY A CHILD OF THE DRUMLINS WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURROUGHS [Illustration: Logo] _Ce livre est toute ma jeunesse; je l’ai fait sans presque y songer._ --DE MUSSET GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. _First Edition_ CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURROUGHS vii TO THE READER xi CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY TREE 1 II. THE ROOF-TREE 14 III. “A CHILD WENT FORTH” 42 IV. IN THE OLD PATHS 71 V. “AS TWIG IS BENT” 94 VI. “BRED IN THE BONE” 119 VII. SCHOOL DAYS 134 VIII. THE “MEDIC” 172 IX. THE “MEDIC” (Continued) 229 X. THE “MEDIC” (Concluded) 245 XI. THROUGH THE GATE OF DREAMS 273 INTRODUCTION I fancy that this “Child of the Drumlins” did not know she was living amid drumlins when she passed her youth there. She knew them only as the long, smooth, loaf-shaped hills that were scattered over her native landscape, upon which she saw cattle grazing and grain ripening, and upon which she roamed and played in the freedom of childhood. These curious-looking hills are found in certain parts of New England, and in a large section of the central and western parts of New York state. They would suggest artificial mounds were they not so large as to preclude all idea of their being the work of man. They were indeed made, but not by human hands. They are the work of the great continental ice-sheet which tens of thousands of years ago crept slowly over a large part of the Northern hemisphere, giving to the landscape, among many other strange new features, these long, low, rounded hills, called by the geologists drumlins, amid which the “Child” passed her early life. Carpeted with grass and often dotted with trees, these peaceful pastoral elevations are seldom more than a quarter of a mile long, and perhaps a hundred feet high. Their trend is in one direction, from northeast to southwest--the general course the ice-flood took. They are simply huge heaps of clay and water-worn boulders shovelled together by the gods of the Ice Age, though just how it all came about the geologists are not clear. But there they stand, making a marked feature in the landscape.