The hired men occupied the original ranch house; in the usual basement was the tool room, open to us children. I here learned to hammer, saw and plane, and, most charming of all, bore holes with an auger in the wooden boxes we used in the making of figure-four traps. I also learned about gimlets, chisels, pliers, brads, rivets, and screws and thus prepared myself to be a general handy man at college and in my own home. It was in this shop that papa made me a fire-cracker holder,--a willow stick with a hole bored in one end in which to place the lovely red symbol of patriotism, so that I could celebrate without endangering my fingers. In front of the house was the flower garden, enclosed by a white picket fence as a protection against chickens and other wandering ranch animals. Ladies-delights turned up their smiling little faces beside one walk, and nearby grew papa’s favorites, cinnamon pinks. I liked the red honey-suckle and the dark mourning-brides that were like velvet cushions stuck full of white-headed pins. There was one orange tree that bore no fruit important enough for me to remember, but, in spring, had many waxy white blossoms that smelled so good it made one hurt inside. In larger enclosures, bounded by the same white fencing, grew vegetables and fruit trees. Sometimes we pulled a pungent horse-radish root and pretended that a bite of it made us crazy, an excuse for much running and wild gesticulation. Under a long row of loaded blackberry vines Dick once asked me the riddle, “Why is a blackberry like a newspaper?” Do you know the answer? It is: “Both are black and white and red all over.” I presume the play upon the word “red” was my introduction to puns. The orchard contained peaches, plums, pears, apples, and apricots, but, to my mind, the cherry trees were the chief glory. One evening while Annie Mooney, our nurse, was taking in some clothes from the line, my little sister and I had a feast of fallen cherries, but she ate with less discrimination than I, for when, a few minutes later, we drank our supper milk she had convulsions. A quick immersion in a tub of hot water cured her, and we had learned about babies and cherries and milk, all mixed up together. Down in the far corner of the orchard was a spring, with marshy ground about it, where the children were forbidden to go. But one morning, bored by the lack of novelty in our lives, one of the Flint twins and I boldly ventured into the tabooed region. We had hardly arrived when we saw an enormous black snake, which drove us back in terror, chasing us, with glittering eyes and darting tongue, over the ridges and hollows of the new-ploughed ground that clutched at our feet as if in collusion with the black dragon guard of the spring. I laid, during those few minutes, the foundation for many a horror-stricken dream. The snake was real. I wonder if the pursuit was merely the imagining of a guilty conscience.