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By Root 1685 0

on the subject and never even spoke of it unless she was asked. Merely doing what she did was flaunting enough for Harriet, Beatrice, and Alice, not to mention their husbands. I had often heard Harriet exclaim, "I don’t know why she brings these ideas into the family! You sit down to supper, and there’s ideas there; and then you get up in the morning and make the tea, and there’s ideas again. It makes you feel all outside of yourself, looking out the door of your own house, that you look out of a hundred times a day, but there’s ideas making it look all different. There’s no comfort in it, I’ll tell you that!" All the sisters agreed. What they disagreed about was whether she did it on purpose to annoy them, or whether she had simply been strange since childhood. Another thing all the sisters and all their husbands agreed upon was that even though Miriam might have considered herself better than the rest of them, this certainly wasn’t so. I had always liked Miriam the best, but not because of her ideas. I had always thought her livelier and sharper. And to tell the truth, she had always liked me. That was enough.

Alice would have the last word: "Miriam is an uncomfortable woman and was an uncomfortable little girl, and that’s just what she likes, taking your own hearth and home, that you’ve worked hard for, and making it just as uncomfortable for you as she can."

Following Miriam’s yearly visits to Quincy, a feature of every June, such conversations would go on for days. Then all of the sisters found a way to end the yearly visits. "She only does it out of obligation to Father," said Alice. "But Father doesn’t know her anymore, so..."

"So she might easily save herself the expense."

"Each year, one of us should go visit her, instead. We can easily afford it. We can be better sisters and better friends one at a time, anyway," said Beatrice, but although Miriam stopped coming, no one ever went to Yellow Springs to visit her. I suppose that her visits stopped when I was about twelve, and so when she died, I hadn’t seen her for eight years. I have to say of my sisters that they were sorry enough when they heard of her death. After that, all the discussion was pitying rather than vexed: if only poor Miriam had been prettier, she wouldn’t have wasted herself on such muddleheaded ideas but would have gotten a husband and some children to occupy her.

These thoughts reminded me to write my sisters.

September II, 1855

Dear Sisters:

I am writing to let you know that Mr. Newton and I arrived safely in Lawrence, Kansas Territory, about five nights ago, after eight days traveling. We are now staying at the home of some friends of Mr. Newton’s from New England

There was nothing I could tell my sisters about the architecture of the leaning house that would not excite and appall them, so I paused, then passed over that subject.

named Jenkins. His name is Mr. John Jenkins, Vermont Street, Lawrence, K.T., and you may send me letters in his care for now. Mr. Newton and the other men in the company (well, not all of them, for there are some I haven’t met) are out at our claim putting up a cabin for the winter. I am in town, making purchases of provisions. I have bought two chairs, two pans, two buckets, some forks and spoons and tin plates, and additionally a stove and a horse. The stove is of the newest type. I will say that although not everything to be had in Quincy is to be had in K.T., what is here from the States is all of the newest sort, though sometimes a little worse for wear from the travel, and always, always very expensive. Horace would be amazed at what he could ask in price for the simplest piece of merchandise if he had a store in Lawrence. You may tell brother Roland that I have bought myself a horse that he would be proud of, who is "as smart as I am and twice as useful," as he used to say about Dolly. The weather is hot, and everything is fine. We made the trip in excellent health, though there were many, even most, who were not so lucky. The saddest story I have heard is about a man who camel out here with his wife