The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [127]
Thomas and I were concerned about our seed. Every stormy day seemed yet another burden. In the mornings, we went out of the downstairs door and gazed as well as we could toward the west, trying to spot breaks in the clouds. Every noon, when Thomas came home for dinner, we stared at the rain streaming down Louisa’s little windows and brooded over what was surely happening out on our claim, more money wasted; and every evening, we gazed up at the few stars that seemed to appear here and there through the cloud cover. Thomas wasn’t saying much. He divided his time between wondering what our future in Kansas could possibly hold and hauling goods with Charles, who remained unarrested, so simple-minded were the officials trying to arrest him. We got a letter from Susannah Jenkins. She wrote:
I feel as though I am writing to the figures of a dream, so distant and impossible does K.T. seem to me now. Even though our life is sadly changed by the death of Papa, both Mama and I feel that we have made an escape and that life here in Northampton is all the more to be savored. My looks are of course ruined, and I doubt that I shall find a husband, all in all, unless it is some old man with lots of children, but things that we often complained of before we ever left here, we now hardly remark upon, so pleased are we to still have life and to be living that life in the civilized world. I have two new books from the library today, isn’t that a miracle? This is how I think, now. I think of all of you every day, and Mother and I both pray for you and your safety. The papers are full of K.T., and two editors have already called upon me to ask whether I would like to write a small article for them about our experiences. To any of you who would like to, I say, write me a good letter about events there, and I will see that it is published.
I also got a letter from my sister Harriet, who wrote:
Since you have been a lifelong troublemaker, Lydia, and never in one place for more than two seconds from the time you could walk, I am sure you are in the thick of all these unnecessary ABOLITIONIST troubles. I heartily regret sending my child Frank to you, and if I could have controlled him for one minute, I would not have done so, but that’s in the past now, and his Father considers that the experience of the prairies will be good for him, I don’t know why, but it is not my way to say anything, as he IS the Father. I sincerely sympathize with the Missourians in this, as they never asked for anyone to come to Kansas Territory and tell everyone what to do there, just as we never asked sister Miriam to come sit at our tables and tell us what to do, or rather, what to think, since owning slaves is illegal in Illinois, though I’m not sure why, since nobody in Illinois cares one way or the other, any more than folks do in Kentuck or Missouri. But that is the way things turn out. I suppose if people do care, they could simply stay in the towns they were born in, like MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS, though far be it from me to condemn the activities and chosen life of a member of our family. But these discussions of slavery are getting way out of hand, and everyone wants to talk about it now, when they didn’t want to even last year, much less when I was a child, and it was considered beneath anyone’s polite notice. In my opinion, it all comes down to the age-old servant problem, and if we all lived like Quakers and had vast quantities of children to work for us, then that would be one thing, but of course not everyone wants to live like that, on a small neat little farm always and everlastingly doing your own work day after day. But you can’t get a servant girl in America. As soon as