“Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to be made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced; then there was a little stir in the streets, and here and there one could see a lighted window until midnight. But the next night all was dark again.” Thank God, even at Black Hawk there are a few compensations for a refined sensibility. Antonia and Jim know how to see through things, and they find beauty even in their monotonous surroundings. There are the orchard, the hen yard, the stable and the charm of the rustic works and days. There is the hay in the attic, the favorite nook of Antonia’s brood. And then Christmas comes bringing the snow, the spiced cakes made in true Bohemian fashion, then spring and the budding out of fresh leaves and flowers. Jim is not blind to the familiar and simple beauty around him. Let us follow him in Antonia’s wild garden: Alone, I should never have found the garden--except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines--and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do. When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there in the garden awhile. She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Aren’t you afraid of the snakes?” “A little,” I admitted, “but I’d like to stay anyhow.”