I possess many letters written to my father by my mother at this time, from which I can gain ideas regarding what manner of woman she was, to supplement my own memory of her whom I lost while still a child. I seem to have been something of a puzzle to my gentle mother. I quote from one letter: “Sarah ... the strangest child I ever saw ... so affectionate, but will not be coaxed ... super-abundance of spirits.... She tries to remember all the new rules of life. [I was five years old] ... brown eyes. I hope those eyes will not hold a shadow caused by her mother misunderstanding her and crushing out in her by sternness anything sweet and beautiful. I would not want to love her so fondly as to make a foolish, conceited woman of her, but I don’t know that that is any worse than to give her life a gloomy start.” I love this letter. It delights me that my mother, a high-bred New England lady, to whom foolishness and frivolity were anathema, should prefer even them to harshness and a broken spirit for her little daughter. However, her desire to give my life a happy start was not incompatible with good discipline. She expected obedience and got it, sometimes in very ingenious ways. On one occasion when I had been fretful--“whining” she called it,--she suggested that as I was usually a good girl and did what she wanted it must be that I was really unable to improve my voice, that my throat must be rusty and in need of oil to cure the squeak, so she proceeded to grease the inside of it with olive oil applied on the end of a stripped white feather. Do you wonder that it was years before I learned to like French salad dressing, with its reminder of disordered vocal chords? In the later summer grandmother died, but as we had seen so little of her and were kept away from the evidences and symbols of death, it did not make much impression upon us. We stayed on in Skowhegan until papa was free to come to Maine for us. In the meantime both mamma and Aunt Martha visited the Centennial and their reports of its sights and wonders made me most anxious to go to Philadelphia, also. When it was proposed that our return trip should be made by way of that city, in order that my father might visit the exposition I was delighted, but when he arrived and said he could not, on account of the state of his business affairs, I received one of the great disappointments of my life. I shall never forget my unavailing efforts to persuade them that they ought not to make me miss that Centennial, since I could not possibly live a hundred years for the next one. Soon after we left the old home was sold, and grandfather and Aunt Martha moved to California, where the rest of us lived. The man who bought the place cut down the beautiful trees, tore down the house and built two small ones in its stead. But although the original house is gone in fact it will live in my mind as long as I do. I could draw its floor plan; I could set much of its furniture in the correct position.