The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [40]
He rattled on, but Thomas, who had at least held up his end of the conversation the day before, remained silent. I kept walking, a few feet from the wagon, happy to be on my own. I knew perfectly well how to take Henry and Dick and their leader, whoever he was. I hated them.
CHAPTER 7
I Am Taken in by Some Citizens of Lawrence
There is no point of domestic economy, which more seriously involves the health and daily comfort of American women, than the proper construction of houses. There are five particulars, to which attention should be given, in building a house; namely, economy of labor, economy of money, economy of health, economy of comfort, and good taste. — p. 258
I’L ADMIT THAT after our night in Kansas City, I had lost a portion of my faith in the bills I’d seen back in Quincy advertising lovely towns with their wide streets and gracious buildings. Lawrence was, even then, a famous town, though it has become so famous since that I can hardly remember how famous it was before I saw it. I do know that as I was walking along, I imagined our destination as a pleasant, neat, whitewashed New England village, replete with steeples and mercantile establishments, a library and a school, set neatly in the midst of a smiling, tablelike prairie. I foresaw that when I got there, a glass of clean drinking water, a clean, private bed, and perhaps even a bath might be waiting for me. I was eager to see Lawrence.
But first we came to Franklin. The road had taken us through a stream called the Wakarusa—a trickle of water at the bottom of a steep hill was what it seemed to me—and then, a bit after that, some cabins, sunbedazzled and humble. It did not look as if anyone had made an effort to build anything here that wasn’t absolutely essential to survival, nor, in fact, did it look as if there was a reason for this town to be here at all—the river was thin and forbidding of access, and there was no other advantage to the spot. We passed Franklin.
It was clear long before we got there that Lawrence was a town where a great deal of business was conducted. We met up with wagons of all descriptions—open like ours, or covered with white canopies; pulled by mules, horses, or oxen; full of goods and full of men, women, and children. Once, we got in among a group of four wagons from Ohio carrying seven families heading for the town of Manhattan, K.T.—some thirty people in all, including (and I looked closely at these two) a woman who had given birth to her baby two days before and was now sitting up on the seat of the wagon, laughing and talking as easy as you please. She had the baby in her arms, but she was shading its little head from the sun with her shawl, so I couldn’t see it. Her six-year-old walked along beside the wagon, and two others peeped out from inside, their faces round and cheerful. The lady herself was a rebuke to Miss Beecher—she looked blooming and none the worse for her confinement. I thought about her all the way along the river road that runs into Lawrence.
Franklin was a good preparation for Lawrence, in that after Franklin, no town could disappoint. And as soon as you got into Lawrence, you saw that whatever the town might then lack, such things would not be lacking for long, because everyone in Lawrence was as eager as could be. I have to say that my sisters and their husbands were used to laughing a bit at New Englanders. Harriet said that you could keep a neat house without puffing yourself up so much about it as New Engenders