The new house had plenty of exposed pine lumber and fresh air all right. It was a box-house made of barn-boards, unplastered, with sleeping quarters in the loft, comparable to the hay-mow in a barn, reached by a ladder from one corner of the ground-floor room. On occasions, snow sifted through the cracks in the loft, covering my bed completely. The lower room was more closely built, which was living room, kitchen, and sleeping quarters for my parents—and the babies. There was a standard sized bed, and a trundle bed—the latter shoved under the regular bed in the daytime, and pulled out to the middle of the room at night. It was a replica of many another home of that day, only the others could have added protection of plastered walls. Then too, it was Dr. Thomas Milam’s belief that Charley would show improvement in the new home with the coming of spring. But, come time for the swelling of the buds of those old cottonwoods in the spring of 1879, the “Grim Reaper” beat the carpenters to the finish. Charley had died before the new house was ready for occupancy. And that made long lonesome hours for me on the farm. Charley had an enviable record as an exemplary boy—and, try as I might, I have not been able to follow wholly in his foot-steps. But I am sure that my memory of him has helped to make me what I am. Roses The Girls Didn’t Get Reference has been made to my Rose Garden. I have grown them, you might say, as a hobby—and for the pleasure of giving the flowers to my friends. Bushels of them have gone in the past to the Cemetery on Memorial Day, and not a few to sick rooms, to churches, and to local society functions. The fame of my Rose Garden has traveled far—to California and to Florida. Proof: The two little girls of Shady Mitchell, a Tennessean, who conducted a general store in Wetmore some years back and lived across the street west from the school grounds in the house now owned and occupied by Prof. Howard V. Bixby—in their school work at their new home in Orlando, Florida, wrote in collaboration a theme, beginning: “There was a man living in our town in Kansas who grew roses just to give them away to his friends—” This is the extent of the essay which has been relayed to me—but I’ve no doubt that Verda Bess and Marjorie Lou acknowledged having been the recipient of roses from my garden. I don’t think I ever permitted a little girl—nor a big one either, for that matter—who stopped by to admire my roses, to go away without a bouquet.