THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ON THE OPEN ROAD

KATHERINE TO THE WINNEBAGOS


Oct. 1, 19--.
Dear First-And-Onlys:

When I got to the post-office to-day and found there was no letter from
you, my heart sank right through the bottom of my number seven boots and
buried itself in the mud under the doorsill. All day long I had had a
feeling that there would be a letter, and that hope kept me up nobly
through the trying ordeal of attempting to teach spelling and geography
and arithmetic to a roomful of children of assorted ages who seem as
determined not to learn as I am determined to teach them. It sustained
and soothed me through the exciting process of "settling" Absalom Butts,
the fourteen-year-old bully of the class, with whom I have a preliminary
skirmish every day in the week before recitations can begin; and through
the equally trying business of listening to his dull-witted sister,
Clarissa, spell "example" forty ways but the right way, and then dissolve
into inevitable tears. When school was out I was as limp as a rag, and so
thankful it was Friday night that I could have kissed the calendar. I
fairly "sic"ed Sandhelo along the road to the post-office, expecting to
revel in the bale of news from my belovéds that was awaiting me, but when
I got there and the post box was bare the last button burst off the
mantle of my philosophy and left me naked to the cold winds of
disappointment. A whole orphan asylum with the mumps on both sides would
have been gay and chipper compared to me when I turned Sandhelo's head
homeward and started on the six-mile drive.

It had been raining for more than a week, a steady, warmish, sickening
drizzle, that had taken all the curl out of my spirits and left them
hanging in dejected, stringy wisps. I couldn't help feeling how well the
weather matched my state of mind as I drove homeward. The whole landscape
was one gray blur, and the tall weeds that bordered the road on both
sides wept unconsolably on each other's shoulders, their tears mingling
in a stream down their stems. I could almost hear them sob. The muddy
yellow road wound endlessly past empty, barren fields, and seemed to hold
out no promise of ever arriving anywhere in particular. All my life I
have hated that aimlessly winding road, just as I have always hated those
empty, barren fields. They have always seemed so shiftless, so utterly
unambitious. I can't help thinking that this corner of Arkansas was made
out of the scraps that were left after everything else was finished. How
father ever came to take up land here when he had the whole state to
choose from is one of the seven things we will never know till the coming
of the Cocqcigrues. It's as flat as a pancake, and, for the most part,
treeless. The few trees there are seem to be ashamed to be caught growing
in such a place, and make themselves as small as possible. The land is
stony and barren and sterile, neither very good for farming or grazing.
The only certain thing about the rainfall is that it is certain to come
at the wrong time, and upset all your plans. "Principal rivers, there are
none; principal mountains--I'm the only one," as Alice-in-Wonderland used
to say. But father has always been the kind of man that gets the worst of
every bargain.

Now, you unvaryingly cheerful Winnebagos, go ahead and sniff
contemptuously when you breathe the damp vapors rising from this epistle,
and hear the pitiful moans issuing therefrom. "For shame, Katherine!" I
can hear you saying, in superior tones, "to get low in your mind so soon!
Why, you haven't come to the first turn in the Open Road, and you've gone
lame already. Where is the Torch that you started out with so gaily
flaring? Quenched completely by the first shower! Katherine Adams, you
big baby, straighten up your face this minute and stop blubbering!"

But oh, you round pegs in your nice smooth, round holes, you have never
been a stranger in a familiar land! You have never known what it was to
be out of tune with everything around you. Oh, why wasn't I built to
admire vast stretches of nothing, content to dwell among untrodden ways
and be a Maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love, and
all that Wordsworth business? Why do crickets and grasshoppers and owls
make me feel as though I'd lost my last friend, instead of impressing me
with the sociability of Nature? Why don't I rejoice that I've got the
whole road to myself, instead of wishing that it were jammed with
automobiles and trolley cars, and swarming with people?