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BRECKIE 
 
 Two Years and Nine Months 
 
B R E C K I E 
 
 HIS FOUR YEARS 
 1914-1918 
 
 By 
 
 Mary Breckinridge Thompson 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PRIVATELY PUBLISHED 
 
 I918 
 
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 Copyright, 1918, 
 By Mary Breckinridge Thompson 
 
 Type-Set, Printed and Bound by 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company, New York 
 
 NOV 29 iSltf 
 
 ©CI.A5()8325 
 
 'Vvf \ 
 
What alchemy is thine, little child, 
 
 Transmuting all our thoughts, thou that art dead, 
 
 And making gold of all the dross of lead 
 That leaves the souVs pure crucible defiled? 
 
 — Eugene Lee-Hamilton 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In presenting this brief record of Breckie's four years to his 
 friends and mine and a few others whom I revere as friends 
 of childhood, I would like to call attention to the fact that much 
 more of his short life was spent outdoors than in — something 
 unusual I think in the annals of civilized infancy. For at least 
 seven or eight months out of each year he spent about twenty 
 hours of the twenty-four in the open air, and this was a tre- 
 mendous factor in making his body sturdy and his nature sweet 
 I reared him as carefully as I could by those scientific laws of 
 child development whose discovery in recent years has revolu- 
 tionized the care of little children in body and mind, and this 
 partly explains his wholesomeness and the growing reasonable- 
 ness of his third and fourth years. But Breckie was a creature 
 of higher endowments than my own and I early recognized in our 
 comradeship together that I led only in maturity, for his were the 
 larger possibilities. He was not my little child only but my 
 master as well, and the best friend I ever had. 
 
 It will help those who have so tenderly shared Breckie's loss 
 with us, and to them this is especially addressed, to learn that 
 recently I have had good news of him through a friend who 
 is, unknown to all but a most limited circle, a psychic of un- 
 usual gifts. That I should have this news will be no surprise to 
 those who have been following the work of the Society for 
 Psychical Research and especially the astonishing progress of 
 the last few years. It has been an inexpressible blessing to learn 
 from old friends on the other side that Breckie is with his sister 
 and impressing all who meet him over there, just as he did us, by 
 the wonder of his expanding mind and the radiance reflected 
 from his happy heart. In addition I know that I am often with 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 him when I sleep and that the passing months are not so much 
 severing as uniting us. 
 
 Now to all who loved Breckie, and they were many, and to 
 those who love childhood who will see its pages, I dedicate this 
 book. To those who have, like me, relinquished a loved child — 
 whether to death or to human maturity — I especially dedicate 
 it with the hope that in reading of Breckie they 
 
 ". . . may chance to hear once more 
 The little feet along the floor." 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 August 1st, 1918. 
 
FIRST YEAR 
 
 Out of the Everywhere into the Here. 
 
 — George MacDonald. 
 
BRECKINRIDGE THOMPSON was bom at the home of 
 his grandfather and grandmother Breckinridge in Fort 
 Smith, Arkansas, on the night of the twelfth of January, 1914, 
 at eleven thirty-five o'clock. His advent had been so difficult that 
 he was three days and nights in arriving and presented quite a 
 battered appearance to those who first saw him. There was a 
 big bruise on his head and over one ear and bad cuts in the 
 neck in which an infection settled which kept his life in the bal- 
 ance above two weeks. He was an eight pound baby, well formed 
 with an exceptionally fine head — but so wrinkled that he looked 
 as if he had just terminated a long and philosophic existence. 
 
 For hours after his birth Breckinridge's hold on this ex- 
 istence was of the feeblest. At first he seemed quite lifeless, and 
 over an hour was spent in resuscitation by the doctor and two 
 trained nurses before respiration could be established in even a 
 tolerable manner, so they told me afterwards, but I was mercifully 
 unconscious then. 
 
 In one of his books. Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking of the ar- 
 rival of each new life in an embodied form, notes that there are 
 always loving hearts waiting to receive it and eager prepara- 
 tions for its coming. Not always, Sir Oliver; I have myself at- 
 tended confinements where no preparations had been made and 
 no love awaited the baby's coming. But for Breckie's ad- 
 vent, the first child, the first grandchild, a host of loyal hearts 
 stood by, and such was his welcome that the morning stars 
 seemed singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. 
 
 The first two weeks after his birth were really the only hard 
 ones Breckie ever knew, except the one preceding his death. 
 While they lasted I Hved from one nursing to the next, 
 when every third hour brought the little bandaged head, so hot 
 to the touch, and the pressure of hot little hands against my 
 
 3 
 
4 BRECKIE 
 
 breast. In a few days the wrinkled old-new face had given way 
 to one baby-like and full, with a real hunger look thereon, 
 and enormous eyes which seemed to me to harbor an expression 
 like that of Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, for "the wonderment 
 had hardly gone from that still look of his." Puzzled, he seemed, 
 pondering, but "trailing clouds of glory," my little son. 
 
 Fortunately I had an abundance, a superabundance of milk 
 and his appetite never flagged, so that at the end of the two 
 weeks of fever he had gained in weight. His "immunizing 
 fluid," the doctor called it; but you willed to live, my baby, 
 and caught with mighty tugs at life. 
 
 The trained nurse who attended me was an old friend and 
 classmate of mine from St. Luke's in New York, Breck's 
 Aunty Biddle, and to her devoted care and the doctor's skill we 
 owed Breck's life. It was two weeks after his birth before I 
 could see other friends, even so dear a friend as his godmother, 
 whom we called "Pansy." Nevertheless the friendship of many 
 hearts there and elsewhere backed Breckie and me in our 
 fight to pull through, and I wrote February third : "What would 
 the world be without them ? Friendship it really is which makes 
 the closeness in human relationships. We loved my mother so 
 much as children because she entered into our lives as a friend 
 and I trust that Breck will be my friend from his earliest con- 
 scious moments." 
 
 Before he was a month old the baby's superb appearance com- 
 pensated us for all the anxiety we had gone through in his be- 
 half. On February fourth I wrote my husband : "Before your 
 last visit, when Breck's fever ran high, and I was especially 
 anxious, I often thought of Frazier and of how his mother 
 had nursed him through all his childish illnesses but to lose him 
 when and as she did. But I thought too that each day of a 
 child's life from the earliest ones is its own blessing, even if 
 the sum total of them all were never garnered in — and I would 
 have gone through what I did to have our baby for only one 
 week of him at my breast, if that had been all I could keep. . . . 
 But now you never saw such a lusty fellow." 
 
 Later in the month I gave details about him : "He is adorable 
 
BRECKIE 
 Age Six Weeks, with His Grandmother 
 
BRECKIE 5 
 
 in his bath and likes it ... an exquisite baby, exquisitely clean, 
 fragrant and well cared for." "He is a good baby — well trained 
 that is — almost never frets at night — just wakens, nurses, and 
 either goes right back to sleep or plays with his hands. He has 
 never known what it is to be picked up and walked about, or 
 rocked, and he doesn't expect it. His playing with his hands 
 consists as yet in waving or sucking them." "He had his first real 
 out-of-doors airing on the lawn in his carriage yesterday (Feb. 
 2ath) between one and two in the afternoon. Alice was 
 proud indeed to take him. I watched them from the upstairs 
 gallery, which is still my only out-doors." 
 
 On February twenty-eighth I wrote : "If you were here now 
 you would delight in your son who has been lying for an hour 
 in his cradle cooing and waving his hands, and asking attention of 
 no one. . . . Here he fretted and I went to him. While I was 
 with him he broke into one smile after the other, his fat little face 
 creasing. I have left him smiling and waving his hands. He 
 is the jolliest, merriest, heartiest, hungriest fellow of his age I 
 ever saw. Alice says a gentleman came on the place yesterday 
 and called him a whale. He was weighed yesterday — thirteen 
 pounds and five ounces, a gain of fifteen ounces in the past 
 week. That is prodigious. I keep his weight on a weight chart 
 that records the normal weight line of the average infant up to 
 fifty-two weeks. Our baby's weight is nearly four pounds more 
 than this normal average for eight weeks." 
 
 In my journal I wrote : "He is my life indeed, and his father 
 too worships him — my longed-for baby, my despaired-of baby, my 
 love-life, my great man in embryo, for whom high deeds are now 
 preparing and a noble death attending a career of lofty services. 
 For these an all-unworthy but humbly eager mother must pre- 
 pare you, Breckinridge, by seeking to foster in you those ideals 
 which are the best of us, by keeping your young body healthy 
 and your will in your own control." 
 
 On March nineteenth when Breckinridge was two months 
 and one week old we left the home of his grandparents where 
 
6 BRECKIE 
 
 he was born and carried him up into the Ozark mountains, to 
 Crescent College at Eureka Springs where his father and I 
 lived. With us went an old-fashioned negro woman, Aunt AUce,. 
 his first nurse. I was glad that my boy's first months were lived 
 under her kindly influence and in the spell of her traditions, for 
 the old South was his inheritance and I wanted him to drink at 
 that spring. In my journal of that period I find I have written: 
 
 "I want many things for him and dream his future as once 
 I dreamed my own, and all, all that I can gather in to glorify it 
 will be gathered with the growing years. He must know 
 the ways of all the little creeping things, of trees and birds, and 
 he must have a garden plot and chickens. He shall ride and 
 swim, fish and hunt. As he grows older I will open up the 
 wonders of the dear tales I loved from 'Alice in Wonderland' to 
 'Ivanhoe.' He shall not want Ruskin's 'Sesame,' but shall learn 
 under the 'wise of old.' h>specially I want so to guide his 
 growing tastes as to help him to develop himself — not to make 
 him over ; and the brother and sisterhood without which he 
 would miss the give and take of nursery days shall not be lacking 
 if I am eciual to the bearing of them and Dick can make the 
 money to feed and educate them. 'O, bonny brown sons and 
 O, sweet little daughters' of my far dreams, I have realized one 
 of you — and he is bonnier, better, dearer, than any I ever 
 dreamed." 
 
 The chief characteristics of his first months were his immense 
 appetite and his love of wind and fresh air. With the first warm 
 nights we arranged a sleeping porch for him on a balcony oflF of 
 my sitting room and he and I slept out there all summer, I on a 
 mattress on the floor by his crib. Nearly all of his other hours 
 were spent on the lawn in his carriage, or on the ground, tum- 
 bling about in grass and leaves. He grew brown as a nut and 
 weighed at five months, naked, twenty pounds. 
 
 When he fretted he could nearly always be quieted by letting 
 the wind blow on his face. Once on the sixteenth of April, 
 when his nurse was ill with tonsilitis and his father in Little 
 Rock, I left him, while I went to supper, with my friend Celia 
 Brinson, later his devoted "B." He behaved well until just 
 
BRECKIE 7 
 
 before I returned, when he suddenly seemed to believe himself 
 deserted by his own people. He looked at "B", saw that the 
 face was not one familiar to him, and burst into the most deso- 
 late of sobbings and tears. Even after I had taken him he still 
 sobbed a little until I carried him out on to his little balcony, 
 hung in mid-air, with the lights of the valley below and the 
 stars of the sky above, and there, where the wind blew full on 
 his face, he soon fell quietly asleep. 
 
 I find the following brief records of certain phases of his 
 development : 
 
 On April twenty-second, aged three months and ten days, he 
 first demanded his food from Alice's arms at fully a yard's dis- 
 tance. From so great a distance he had not noticed me before. 
 
 On April twenty-fourth he first took hold of and shook loudly 
 his dog-faced rattle. 
 
 On May tenth, a warm Sunday afternoon, we put on his first 
 short clothes. He lacked two days of being four months old 
 but weighed eighteen pounds and ten ounces and looked so 
 huge that the short clothes became him better than the long. 
 
 On May twenty-third he first succeeded, after repeated efforts, 
 in sucking his toe. 
 
 In his second month he was smiling, but unfortunately I did 
 not record the exact dates of the first smile and laugh. He 
 fairly beamed with smiles every morning upon Alice when she 
 came into my room to lift him from his crib. She told me that 
 out of doors when groups of students or strangers approached his 
 carriage he would turn a really appealing look at her, "as if. Miss 
 Mary, as if he was sayin' 'Alice save me.' " Again and again 
 she shook her white head and said to me: "Miss Mary, he's de 
 smartest child to his age I ever see." 
 
 He was the lustiest I had ever seen, accustomed chiefly to 
 the sickly specimens of my hospital days and the far from per- 
 fect type of our average civilization. 
 
 Dear old Alice had to leave me, when summer came, for 
 her daughter's confinement. She sent me her niece Adella to 
 take her place until her return — but in the autumn she was ill 
 and the next spring she died. I kept the niece until I could go 
 
8 BRECKIE 
 
 back to Fort Smith again, when Alice secured for me one of her 
 friends — the "Mammy" of my baby's second and part of his 
 third year. With Adella, because of her comparative inex- 
 perience, I rarely left the boy alone for even a couple of hours — 
 although she seemed reliable and willing. I find this note in my 
 journal : 
 
 "I nurse him, boil his water, watch his dress, sponge for 
 the heat, sleep on the balcony by him at night, keep him 
 four mornings a week entire while Adella washes and irons 
 his clothes — but also I try to rest, exercise when it is not too hot, 
 to carry him as little as possible, and so order my own life as to 
 keep healthy and rested for him ; and to this end I am not with 
 him always." 
 
 It was nearly a year after his birth before I had really re- 
 gained my strength, but I nursed him entirely for nine months. 
 Anticipating a little I will add that in his tenth month he re- 
 ceived one bottle of suitable formula from Holt, at ten months 
 two bottles, in the eleventh month three, and at one year ex- 
 actly he gave up his last breast feeding and was completely 
 weaned, having by that time begun also to munch on pieces of 
 unsweetened zwieback and to eat every day a coddled egg and 
 strained cereals. When he was eight months old I gave him 
 orange juice once a day between feedings. Because there were 
 no certified dairies in our locality I pasteurized his milk every 
 day from the time of his first bottle feeding until his last 
 illness. 
 
 His first tooth broke through the skin on the nineteenth of 
 July when he was six months and one week old, and dentition 
 proceeded satisfactorily thereafter. 
 
 On July seventeenth, on my large, old-fashioned tester bed, 
 he did his first real creeping and succeeded in reaching and grab- 
 bing the object of his pursuit. Until then such progress as he 
 had made was achieved mainly by rolling from side to side. 
 
 3 
 
 We spent the summer at Crescent, used in the season as a 
 large hotel under a manager's care, and hard it was to suf- 
 
BRECKIE 
 Age Five Months, with His Mother and Tidy 
 
BRECKIE 9 
 
 fer the intrusions of strangers everywhere out of doors on our 
 family life. My mother and sister stopped with us on their 
 way to Norway, where they were touring with my brother Car- 
 son when the great war thundered in upon a horrified world. 
 I sat out of doors with my baby and read and thought of it 
 until my mind reeled, and often I said: "Oh, little boy, what 
 does the future hold for you and me — for would not the sword 
 pierce through my own soul also ?" It was to pierce indeed, but 
 not for him the wars of this world — only for me, for me. 
 
 My mother and sister stopped with us again on their way 
 back to Fort Smith after they had returned from Europe. At 
 that time the thing Breck most wanted to do was to throw a 
 rock (the name by which we designate stones in Arkansas from 
 pebbles to boulders), but he could not, in his eighth month, com- 
 pass the act. 
 
 My little fox terrier Tidy fairly gloated over having rocks 
 thrown for her to pick up and bring back. She seldom saw one 
 of us sitting on the ground without bringing a rock, laying it 
 down beside us, and then standing by with the fanatical light 
 of a single-minded enthusiast in her eyes and an ingratiating wag 
 of her stub tail. As we threw the rocks Breck watched us with 
 intense earnestness, then he would pick up a rock himself, grasp 
 it tight, and throw with his arm — but he never let go the rock, 
 kept it clasped tight in his moist little hand, and thereupon 
 appeared utterly puzzled as to why it didn't spin off into space 
 like ours. He wanted desperately to throw it and tried his 
 hardest, but could not let it go. 
 
 On August twenty-third he spoke his first word, with knowl- 
 edge of its meaning. The day before his grandmother had spent 
 much time in showing him his celluloid duck and saying: "Duck, 
 duck." On the twenty-third, upon his being shown the duck 
 again, he at once called out : " 'Uck, 'uck." In his eighth month 
 he also began calling his father "daddy" and "dadda" and he 
 knew Tidy by name but could not call her. Whenever he heard 
 her called he tried to bark like her. He also waved "bye-bye" 
 and shook his head solemnly sidewise at us when we said : 
 "no, no." 
 
lo BRECKIE 
 
 But his most characteristic and growing trait, even at eight 
 months, was his ready humor for all situations, even a bump 
 on the head — and when he laughed his whole face creased, his 
 mouth expanded broadly, and his eyes actually snapped with 
 joy. One day he was sitting on the lawn in his wooden pen when 
 Tidy came up on the outside and began digging a hole with her 
 forefeet. Breck watched her solemnly for a moment and then 
 began to laugh and laughed so hard he had to hold to the sides of 
 his pen for support. 
 
 We often took him driving during that summer, usually to a 
 small body of water hid against the side of a mountain and sur- 
 rounded by tall pines, called the Sanitarium Lake. There we had 
 picnic suppers and I always carried along his rubber folding 
 bath tub for him to lie in, well out of reach of chiggers and ticks. 
 Afterwards we drove back in the cool of night under the stars 
 or moon with him sleeping in my arms. In the warmest 
 weather he wore only a gauze band and diaper, the Arnold 
 knit style of diaper. He had socks and linen bootees as well 
 as thin cotton shirts and nainsook dresses for cooler days with 
 long silk stockings and light wraps for the coolest. Sometimes 
 he and his father and I drove alone, just with Tidy, but often a 
 dear cousin, Katherine, and a dear friend, Eleanor, spending the 
 summer at Crescent, were with us, and once or twice another 
 friend who bore Breck's name. 
 
 Breckinridge early began climbing about and at eight months 
 fell out of his carriage, the carriage falling on him, bruising and 
 cutting his left cheek. He had awakened and climbed down to 
 the foot of his carriage and out before Adella, sitting by, was 
 aware of his being awake. Soon after this I bought a strap 
 for him that fastened around his waist and then to the sides of the 
 carriage, allowing him to stand up in it without its being possible 
 for him to fall out. From that time on he usually rode in his 
 carriage standing upright until early in his second year, when he 
 discarded it altogether. 
 
 I find the following notes on my daily life written in October 
 when Breck was nine months old, and just before I began the 
 gradual weaning of him : "My family have all gone aad I have 
 
u 
 
 < 
 
BRECKIE II 
 
 settled into a fairly useful routine which centers chiefly around 
 my boy. His schedule is planned first and I tuck in the odds 
 and ends of the rest of my life about that. When I go out to 
 him after my breakfast, while Adella takes hers, I generally 
 carry with me a book. Lately it has been one of the English re- 
 views, yesterday and for some days before the Nineteenth 
 Century. Its every war note is an inspiration in the September 
 issue. Babekins is taking his first daily nap as I read. Sud- 
 denly he wakes, sits bolt upright in his carriage and laughs at 
 me, his sunburnt little face peering over the side. Then we 
 go in and he has his strained orange juice, his bath, and then 
 his nine thirty nursing. He is such an early bird that he has 
 risen and nursed before six and gone outdoors at six thirty. 
 Next on four mornings a week, while Adella washes and irons 
 his clothes in the laundry, he and I go out in the grounds again 
 with my old brown traveling rug, many times washed, where 
 he plays with acorns and sticks and stones and mother watches 
 lest some find their way into his mouth. In between watchings 
 and calls of Here, here, Tidy, which he now says quite well 
 himself, I read over something for my lectures on hygiene or 
 I sew. When he has his second nap I give more attention to the 
 study or the sewing. In the afternoons Adella has him after his 
 one thirty nursing and I take a nap and then get out for a walk. 
 Five thirty is baby's nursing time again, and after that to bed on 
 his balcony, where he is now sleeping — my own lamb." 
 
 One morning I woke to find it raining and, running out to 
 Breck's balcony, discovered him sitting up in his crib with the 
 rain falling gently on him, while he tried to catch its drops in his 
 hands. 
 
 One afternoon this same autumn, when his father and I with 
 him and Tidy were all driving together he seized the reins and 
 shook them, making sounds to the horses. Whereupon Tidy 
 began to bark and seized them too, so that it looked for awhile 
 as if the dog and the baby were to do all the driving, Dick 
 straightened out the tangle, saying meanwhile to his son : "Boy, 
 there isn't anything about you I would change if I could." 
 
12 BRECKIE 
 
 4 
 
 On the third of December we lost our little dog Tidy, poisoned 
 by strychnine, and I wrote the following brief tribute to the 
 memory of one of my baby's earliest friends: 
 
 "In connection with the death of our little fox terrier, 'Tidy,* 
 I want to write a few words — but they are not intended for those 
 who already know and love dogs (and the man who knows dogs 
 and does not love them is too bad to be reached by words), but 
 rather for those who have grown up and are living in ignorance 
 of dogs. I should like to open some hearts towards these loyal, 
 kindly creatures by telling briefly a few things about Tidy. 
 
 "This little animal was a member of our household, welcomed 
 and fondly greeted by every teacher and student, to many of 
 whom she paid frequent visits of social affability. In addition 
 she was a member, on intimate terms, of our family circle and 
 showed in a thousand endearing ways her affection for us. 
 During the long months before my baby came, she seldom left 
 my side, taking all my walks with me, and curbing her own de- 
 sires (when I could not walk) to curl her active little body down 
 near mine. Other friends had often to go about their several 
 ways, but Tidy's ways were always mine. There was never 
 an hour's slackening of her constant devotion. 
 
 "After our baby had come, she extended her affection for her 
 family to include her family's baby, not a touch of jealousy or 
 envy marring its single-minded purity. When the baby grew old 
 enough to creep on the floor. Tidy was always his playfellow, 
 tumbling about with him, but so gently, and suffering excruciat- 
 ing liberties to be taken with her eyes and ears. Her only 
 retort would be to kiss over and over his barbarous little hands. 
 His fondness for Tidy was the strongest moral force we could 
 bring to bear in rearing him, for he tried to imitate her and 
 learned nothing but good in doing so. Observing that Tidy was 
 obedient and desisted from whatever she did when one of us 
 said 'no,' the baby would also desist. Even when traveling on 
 all fours towards the coveted coal scuttle, he would stop promptly 
 
BRECKIE 13 
 
 when we spoke (as he had seen Tidy do), shake his head solemnly 
 'no, no' — and wave bye-bye to the coal scuttle. He likes to be 
 called Tidy. We had hoped, as Tidy was young, for her help 
 in training him for years to come. But the ready little paws 
 have stiffened and the friendly eyes have closed in a sudden and 
 violent death. 
 
 "The noblest minds of all ages have loved dogs, and the pages 
 of those who wrote (Scott, Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs. Ewing 
 — innumerable others and among the moderns Maeterlinck, Bar- 
 rie and many more) are written large with the praises of them. 
 But no love that we could bear him has ever equaled the love 
 of the dog for us. From drowning, from death in banking snow- 
 drifts, from desolation, from distress, in all the ways that he 
 could compass the dog has aided man, has followed him living 
 and guarded his corpse when dead — yes, and died of grief for 
 him afterwards. The dog was never unfaithful to a love or trust. 
 Such devotion as is his, such unconscious heroism, such fidelity, 
 such gentleness to the weak and ferocity to the wicked, such 
 utter forgetfulness of self, are elsewhere so rare that when we 
 find them united in a man we call him godlike. 
 
 "And in return for the noblest attributes of the spirit, what 
 material claims does the dog ask of life? Only 'the crumbs that 
 fall from the master's table.' When we had folded up the blanket 
 she slept on, put away her collar and brush, and emptied her 
 bowl of drinking water, we had disposed of Tidy's worldly pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 "But we believe in the spirit of the ancients that she has 
 gone to Sirius, the dog-star, 'the bright and happy star that gives 
 good dwelling.' " 
 
 On December sixth, when he lacked a month and four days 
 of being one year tfld, Breckinridge took his first two or 
 three steps in the rotunda of Crescent College. On several pre- 
 vious occasions he had stood alone, but quite suddenly he de- 
 cided on this particular day to cut loose from all his moorings 
 
14 BRECKIE 
 
 and put out to sea by himself. It was some weeks later before he 
 walked habitually in preference to creeping. 
 
 Before the Christmas holidays had begun Breckinridge and I 
 went down to Fort Smith for a visit, and great was the amuse- 
 ment of every one over the luggage with which we traveled. 
 Besides the trunks (one of which held the indispensable pas- 
 teurizer), and baby carriage, which were checked, there was my 
 handbag, Breck's lightweight suit case, a Walker-Gordon zinc 
 lined traveling milk container filled with Breck's tubes of milk, 
 boiled water and orange juice, all packed in ice, his folding 
 bath tub and his clothes rack. My mother brought her house 
 man, Alice's son Walter, to meet the train and assume the bulk 
 of our supplies. 
 
 We stayed in Fort Smith until after Breck's first birthday and 
 saw again several times his dear nurse Aunt Alice, who marveled 
 over his growth and bonny face. I had to carry him to her cot- 
 tage, for she was dying and could not come to us. We got news 
 of her every day through her son. She told me that since she 
 could not come back to me again she was sending me her friend 
 "Mammy Jennie" to be Breck's nurse and take her place with 
 him. Mammy was a dark negress, delightfully old-fashioned and 
 simple-hearted and, barring rheumatism in her feet, a perfect 
 nurse for a little baby. She was willing, experienced, and faith- 
 ful in overwhelming measure. Breck and I both became devoted 
 to her. She had a way, if I kept him longer in the family circle 
 than she approved, of coming after him, saying as she came : 
 "Dis chile's tired of white folks. Come back to Mammy." 
 Months later, when he could talk fairly well, he used to echo this 
 complaint: "Mammy, baby's tired of white folks." She never 
 got over his size and splendid appearance, saying often: "Miss 
 Mary, dis is de biggest baby I ever see." 
 
 My mother's dressing room was Breckie's nursery in Fort 
 Smith, but he slept out on the sleeping porch by day and, by 
 night, next my bed, in a little old crib whidi had been mine, while 
 Mammy occupied an adjoining room. The doctor who had 
 brought him into the world and who was immensely proud of him 
 vaccinated him while we were there. It "took" well, changing 
 
BRECKIE 15 
 
 him for a few days from the cheerful, good-natured child he was" 
 habitually into a feverish, fretful one. 
 
 But he recovered soon and learned to dance. That is he 
 danced up and down with quite evident delight whenever his 
 grandmother or aunt hummed "Sho-fly" or "Turkey in de straw." 
 
SECOND YEAR 
 
 He has seen the starry hours 
 And the springing of the flowers; 
 And the fairy things that pass 
 In the forests of the grass. 
 
 — Stevenson. 
 
/^N January twelfth we celebrated Breckie's first birthday in 
 ^^ the house where he was bom. Instead of having a cake, 
 which he couldn't even have tasted, we stuck one candle on an 
 orange of which later he had the juice. We also ransacked the 
 attic for such of the old toys, some of them over thirty years 
 old, as might charm him. A little red bucket which had been 
 given my brother Clifton nearly twenty years before in Finland 
 was brought out and presented to Breck on this occasion. It 
 stands now on the mantel in my bedroom where some one placed 
 it when it was last carried in by his eager little hands. 
 
 I did not take Mammy back with me from Fort Smith but she 
 followed me about a month later. I then resumed the long af- 
 ternoon tramps in the woods which I loved and without which 
 my health suffered, quite safe about the baby when I left him with 
 this devoted woman. 
 
 There was a young married woman in the faculty at Crescent 
 this winter who fairly radiated a loving comprehension of lit- 
 tle children. She delighted in watching Breck playing about, 
 intervening between him and his chosen tasks only when neces- 
 sary to keep him from harm. She enjoyed especially his per- 
 petual imitations at this period of sounds. When the elevator 
 stopped with a groan he mimicked it and if a piece of furniture 
 squeaked he at once squeaked as nearly as he could. He crowed 
 when he saw birds and chickens. One day, upon first observing 
 a print my mother had brought me, a copy of that Norwegian 
 painting of the Resurrection which hangs above the altar in the 
 village church of Molde, he seemed struck by the wings of the 
 angel, looked at me and crowed. 
 
 During this winter of 191 5 my cousin Frances came on a 
 visit to us and wrote about Breck as follows to her mother 
 in Kentucky: "Mary is so happy in her mammoth child. He 
 
 19 
 
20 BRECKIE 
 
 is a regular mastodon — one year of age and two year old clothes 
 too small for him. He is good as gold, wonderfully well and 
 healthy and beautifully cared for. Mary is mad over him, also 
 his father and others seem somewhat idolatrous. He is not cling- 
 ing or appealing like other children, but gorgeous and inde- 
 pendent ; never lays his head on any one's shoulder, has no caress- 
 ing ways, but is cheerful and pleasant and grows on one's af- 
 fections. I am getting a bit foolish on the subject. He is a yery 
 impersonal child and joyous." 
 
 Nearly three years later this cousin, who never saw him again, 
 wrote me : "I shall never think of him without an impression 
 of Bigness and Brightness." 
 
 Soon after this old Alice died. February twenty-fourth I wrote 
 in my journal : "I have left what Frances calls my 'mastodon' out 
 on the East Terrace, where I was keeping him while Mammy ate 
 her dinner, — he playing with the gravel on the paths and I 
 watching the buds on the maple and the green leaves of the 
 early tulips. And as I watched my eyes were brimming with 
 tears for the two quaint figures that shared that terrace with me 
 last spring while baby, a wee baby, slept in his carriage. Of those 
 two figures, one a dog and one an elderly negress, the one is 
 now dead, the other dying, — and I had thought a second spring 
 would find us grouped as before. But that kind old face of Aunt 
 Alice's, her head bound in red flannel, will never bend again in 
 loving care above my child — and the dear little, bounding, pul- 
 sating body of dog Tidy will not spring forward now at 
 my call. How peopled the world is with those that were !" 
 
 On March second when Breckie was nearly fourteen months 
 old I wrote : "Baby weighs twenty-five pounds and twelve ounces, 
 and has just cut his tenth tooth, his second jaw tooth. He has 
 recently evinced constructive tendencies, which please me, piling 
 up his blocks instead of only striking them down after Mammy 
 has piled them. He can pile up as many as four. He also 
 tries to put on his own cap and sometimes succeeds. When he 
 gets in my bed in the morning he pulls my handkerchief from 
 under my pillow and goes through the motions of blowing his 
 nose with it. He kisses himself in the mirror. His favorite toy 
 
BRECKIE 21 
 
 just now seems to be a wooden duck Caroline Gardner gave 
 him, which he calls *Guck,' but he loves sticks and leaves and 
 stones and his blocks. He points to the radiator and what he 
 calls the 'pire' and says 'hot.' He is passionately fond of the 
 buttons on clothes, calling them 'baaton.' He is delectable, en- 
 trancing, trotting about on his sturdy legs, his pleasant red- 
 cheeked face usually radiant with sunshine and good nature." 
 
 He was fond of turning up all the handles to the drawers 
 in his father's Adam desk and of hanging my typewriter brush 
 to a screw. Frequently when I couldn't find it in the drawer 
 of my typewriter table I located it in the next room hanging 
 from this screw. 
 
 Mammy had a way of exclaiming, when Brack cried, "Oh, 
 he's throwing a fit!" This soon caught and fascinated his at- 
 tention so that whenever she exclaimed his tears ceased. Later 
 he began simulating the fit without a preliminary of grief, 
 doubling his fists and shaking them while his face screwed up 
 comically. He never emerged from this performance without 
 the proud and confident look of one who has achieved. 
 
 In this spring of 191 5 my parents broke up their home in 
 Fort Smith and first my mother, later my father, came to stay 
 at Crescent College. My sister came also for the spring and 
 early summer, and great was the delight of all in Breckinridge 
 and his satisfaction in them. 
 
 At about this time Dick bought a collie puppy for Breckie, 
 black with white and tan markings like an idolized Shep of six 
 years of my childhood. We called him Jock of Hazeldean and 
 he and Breck were inseparable. He slept on the floor under 
 Breck's balcony crib and hardly strayed ten feet from his side 
 when they played out in the woods together. 
 
 As the quiet weeks of June, linking Crescent College with 
 Crescent Hotel, weeks of dear domestic life to us, were passing 
 all too quickly I wrote thus in my journal: "Our baby is the 
 joy of our fives. I wish I could so visualize his sturdy 
 little body and strong, cheerful face as to keep each stage 
 
22 BRECKIE 
 
 of him before it passes! Most blessed baby, seventeen months 
 yesterday, with radiantly happy face, frequent laughter, eager 
 little hands — he trots about everywhere, trying to say almost 
 anything. Jock is 'Gokkie,' my mother 'Hoho,' Lees 'Sheshoe,' 
 and I am *Bop.' I held out for mother and Bop is his render- 
 ing of it. In the last two months he has gotten demonstrative 
 and tender — often putting his arms about the knees of his loved 
 ones (or their necks if he is high enough) and hugging and kiss- 
 ing them. This applies to all of us : 'Daddy, Bop, Gokkie, Hoho, 
 Mammy.' If he thinks he has offended he rushes to do it. He 
 is fond of saying 'How-do' to us and of bowing and shaking 
 hands. It is an inspiring sight to see him and Jock solemnly 
 shaking hands with each other. Now he begins to put two 
 or three words together, as 'Come along, Gokkie,' 'All gone.' 
 
 "But I hear him waking and Mammy is at church. He went 
 to sleep late for his afternoon nap and has slept later. O, what 
 do summer hotels matter when one has one's best beloved close 
 at hand, and when one's child is a radiant manifestation of God! 
 While over in Europe the sod was drenched this spring in blood — 
 O, the poor souls, — and the bodies of other children wash up 
 on the Irish coast from the sunken Lusitania. 
 
 "Now I will go to Breckinridge and he will stand up in his 
 crib on the balcony and say : 'How-do, Bop.' " 
 
 Jock did not remain long with us. We never knew the cause 
 of his death as there was no veterinary to attend him, nor 
 whether he had been poisoned or not. But he had two hard 
 fits, in the second of which he died despite all Dick and I could 
 do in his behalf. Of all the dogs I have owned and loved he was 
 unquestionably the gentlest and the baby's grief for him, though 
 limited, was real. For some time afterwards he seldom went out 
 walking or to the balcony for his naps without calling : "Gokkie, 
 Gokkie," and looking with anticipatory eyes for the little black 
 playmate whose devotion for several months had shadowed him. 
 
 3 
 In the summer of 191 5 my mother had to go to New York 
 for a few weeks and during her absence the baby's godmother, the 
 
BRECKIE 2a 
 
 "Pansy" of my deep affection, came up to spend two weeks with 
 us. Dick and I had asked her to be his godmother and Allen 
 Kennedy of Fort Smith his godfather, and beautifully both filled 
 that relationship which was in essence a bond though not in fact, 
 for Breckinridge was never christened. 
 
 Breckie loved his godmother and when told, at the end of 
 the visit, that she had to go he said: "Don't go, Go'm'r." He 
 never saw her again but knew her well in her pictures. She only 
 stayed ten days and as Mammy was called home at this time by 
 the illness of a daughter we spent most of the visit dashing in 
 Breckie's wake and saving his life a dozen times an hour. The 
 monotony of daily routine was further broken by the need for 
 toning up the physical well being of the new puppy, helping the 
 kitty through a series of fits, and by the finding of two scorpions 
 in my bath tub and a large snake, said by the men on the place 
 to be a copperhead, just outside Dick's bedroom door. 
 
 I find by referring to my journal that Breckinridge at twenty 
 months weighed naked twenty-eight pounds, seven ounces, and 
 was thirty-three and three-fourths inches tall, hardy as a wild 
 thing, walking two miles at a stretch, climbing the mountain 
 up the Board Walk from Spring Street, never still except when 
 sleeping, unbounded in his energy and his interests. I noted 
 at this period that his moral nature was visibly awakening and 
 that he could easily put several words together, such as: "Bop, 
 gie baby baf." Nothing pleased him more that summer than to 
 splash around in my big tub a half hour at a time and have 
 the cold shower turned on him while he sat in the warm water. 
 While I dried him on my lap he would beg for a hair pin. "Hair 
 pie," he called it. Then he begged for another. Once I said: 
 "You want two hair pins," and after that whenever one had been 
 given him he smiled at me and said: "Two hair pies." He 
 stuck one between the big and middle toe on each foot. 
 
 He liked to ride in his father's car, which he called : "Daddy's 
 autote." Sometimes I rambled alone through the woods and had 
 Dick and Breck and Mammy all meet me at an agreed rendez- 
 vous on a country road. I vividly recall the pleased, but never 
 surprised, expression on the baby's face whenever he first saw 
 
24 BRECKIE 
 
 me coming towards the car. Comfortably seated on Mammy's 
 broad lap he greeted me generally with "Howdy-do, Bop." 
 
 He grew very fond of balls at this period and usually went 
 to bed with two large ones and took a tennis ball out walking, 
 while to break into the bowling alley and throw around the 
 smaller balls there was a keen delight. 
 
 At twenty months he was rhapsodizing over the moon, which 
 he had only discovered three moons before. He called it 
 "blessed moon" and it and the stars were friends ever after upon 
 whose companionship he counted when he slept outdoors alone, 
 which he did after the first summer. 
 
 A flock of pigeons had a way of descending on the campus 
 lawn to feed and Breckie did love to chase them and stand in 
 wonder as they rose, calling out like Mammy: "Pidgy, pidgy, 
 pidgy.'' From this came one of the names I had for him. 
 
 Dogs held a high place in his affections and he always wanted 
 to run up and hug strange ones. He called them "boo-woos" 
 and "goggles." There were usually several on the place, be- 
 longing to the men, or strays that had taken up with us through 
 our being kind to them. The houseman, George, had a hunting 
 dog named "Lead" and a shaggy, black, guard dog named "Jodie." 
 A yellow dog we called "Sandy" took refuge with us when 
 hurt by an automobile and George called him, with unconscious 
 humor, "an old-fashioned cur dog." But when he had recovered 
 from his hurt Sandy went away. Still another dog, a hound 
 whom the men dubbed "Queen," came to us and had fourteen 
 puppies at one swoop, ten of them girls, in the barn. She only 
 required our hospitality for a little while, leaving us later. 
 Breckie loved all of these — but we wanted him to have a special 
 dog of his own and made one more attempt to keep one. This 
 third little companion was of all the dogs we had the hardiest, most 
 roguish, most like Breck himself — a bull terrier, we called him 
 "Camp" after a dog of that breed beloved of Walter Scott. 
 Breckie adored him. "Baby kissee Camp," he would say, and 
 hard it was to prevent each from kissing the other. If either 
 were reproved and in disgrace the other sought to intercede, 
 Breck crying out in real distress when Camp had to be house- 
 
BRECKIE 
 Age Twenty Months, with Mammy and Camp 
 
BRECKIE 25 
 
 broken and Camp creeping up to me uneasily and apologetically 
 whenever I spoke firmly to Breck over putting things in his 
 mouth. 
 
 October of 191 5 was a glorious month and "baby dear," as he 
 then called himself, Mammy, Camp, and I spent the most of its 
 afternoons together out on the campus, tumbling about in a 
 crimson and yellow shower of maple leaves. I find some of these 
 leaves in between the pages of my journal, leaves Breckie brought 
 me then with : "Ta ta eaves, Boppie dear." Then off he would 
 run, Camp bounding at his heels, to roll over and over in the 
 wonderful heaps. Sometimes we picked greens together. Mammy 
 and Dorothy helping, with Lead and Jodie looking on and now 
 and then Queen coming up to be petted as though she had done 
 a praiseworthy act in presenting us with fourteen mongrel pup- 
 pies. Sometimes we planted narcissus poeticus bulbs on the 
 lawn, Breck and Camp both clumsily assisting by scattering the 
 dirt and sand and running off, the one with my trowel and the 
 other with my dibble. As surely as I settled down to steady 
 planting without them I could count on seeing Mammy's com- 
 fortable figure and kind, dark face surmounted by a large white 
 cap looming up the walk with Breck and Camp fairly springing 
 in ecstasy before her, Breckie calling as he ran : "Baby tumin', 
 baby tumin'." 
 
 Sometimes we played in the sand pile I had built for Breckie 
 under two of what he later called "pine comb chees." "Such 
 golden October afternoons," I wrote in my journal, "such a 
 happy baby and dog, such a radiant Bop!" 
 
 For Camp they were abruptly put to an end one day through 
 his picking up and eating strychnine in some form not fifteen feet 
 from Breck as they climbed the Board Walk with Mammy. He 
 died in ten minutes and Breck, catching up Mammy's wail, kept 
 repeating solemnly: "Campy's daid." 
 
 It was our last effort to have a dog for him. Three lost in one 
 year with other dogs poisoned all around us made us realize 
 that we could not at that time attempt to keep one in Eureka 
 Springs. So Camp went after Jock and Tidy to the happy dog 
 star and again, in his limited fashion, our baby mourned a friend. 
 
26 BRECKIE 
 
 It was weeks before Camp passed altogether from his memory, 
 before he could see a bone without exclaiming: "Bone, Campy. 
 Come gie bone, Campy dear." Many times he said solemnly: 
 "Camp daid," once in a while adding: ''Come back, Campy 
 dear." 
 
 Breckie made mighty efforts this autumn of 1915 to tell things, 
 his experience and thoughts about them always exceeding his 
 vocabulary. 
 
 A few days before Camp was poisoned when he and Mammy 
 and Camp came back from their early walk he appeared fairly 
 bursting with excitement and exclamations. Mammy explained 
 that they had been looking for the nanny goat that lived down 
 below the Hardin spring on the eastern slope of the Crescent 
 mountain and had finally seen her through the crack of a barn 
 door with her head caught, and that she had directed some little 
 boys to let her loose. 
 
 But Baby meanwhile was giving me bits of these matters in dis- 
 jointed sentences : "Baby see Mammy goat fwough er c'ack." 
 
 " 'Ittle boys, 'ittle boys ! 'Et Mammy goat 'oose, 'ittle boys !" 
 
 "Mammy goat fwough er c'ack." 
 
 The goat so bewitched him that autumn that he talked of her 
 nearly every day and sometimes at night when he woke I heard 
 him calling out : " 'Ittle boys, 'ittle boys, 'et Mammy goat 'oose, 
 'ittle boys !" 
 
 One night when it was raining I heard him singing the re- 
 frain of a song: "Oh, what a wet, wet day!" 
 
 On November third I wrote as follows in my journal : "Yes- 
 terday at about five in the afternoon Dick and I took the baby 
 from Mammy and walked with him down the western slope of 
 the mountain to Dairy Hollow and up by another road, reaching 
 home at six, supper, and bedtime with Mammy ready for both. 
 Down in the Hollow Dick gave the baby his first real lesson in 
 throwing rocks at objects and we were enchanted when he 
 hit a bucket at five feet. I shouted : 'Hurrah for baby,' and he 
 repeated it, looking pleased. Indeed it was a good throw for 
 
BRECKIE 27 
 
 twenty-one months. . . . He lives out of doors, walking up and 
 down the hills, his eager little feet never still except in sleep." 
 
 On November thirteenth he drew a mark for me and said it 
 was "A.R.K." 
 
 He was interested in caterpillars this autumn and I told him 
 they would be butterflies when the days got warm again. I 
 showed him pictures of butterflies and said he should chase 
 them. This so pleased him that he often spoke during the fol- 
 lowing winter of chasing them, and with the first gay butterflies 
 of the early spring (and the butterflies in the Ozarks are very 
 gay) he reveled in the fulfilment of my prophecy. 
 
 The first favorites among his picture books, and he had be- 
 gun to love them in the summer, were two English publications 
 called "Babes and Beasts" (which he called the Boo-cow-boo 
 book) and "Babes and Birds" (Gobble-gobble book,) with charm- 
 ing illustrations. Other favorites were an old cardboard "Peep 
 at the Animal World" which had been mine, and a cardboard 
 copy of the "Three Little Pigs," graphically illustrated, which 
 had belonged to my sister. 
 
 At twenty-two months Breck's naked weight was thirty pounds 
 and his height in his stocking feet thirty-four and a half inches. 
 On November nineteenth I wrote: "The past two days have 
 been a bit too bleak for Mammy's rheumatic legs, especially 
 towards night-fall, and I have had Breck out with me on the 
 East Terrace from about four o'clock on until his supper time. 
 We have been working in the flower beds together, I with trowel 
 and he with a Httle 'shobel.' This tiny bit of sweet alyssum" (it 
 lies between the pages of my journal yet) "he gave me the first 
 afternoon — the only flower left blooming by the last frost, al- 
 most as hardy as an evergreen, sunny, clean, and sweet, — how 
 like Breck it is ! ft has been for years one of my favorite 
 flowers, that I grow wherever I am for a season. Eleanor (here 
 the other day for a ■'dsit which was cut short in a day by the 
 sort of appeal from absent friends in trouble she never denies) 
 smiled when she saw my sweet alyssum and said: 'You are 
 never without it.' 
 
 "Breck is getting most companionable. He rarely stuffs things 
 
28 BRECKIE 
 
 in his mouth now and when he does says quickly : 'Baby so'y.' 
 He doesn't try to run away, but works contentedly along with me 
 and the man I sometimes have to help me. Together we have 
 pulled up all the dead scarlet sage bushes, cut off the tops of the 
 cannas, transplated several of the perennials, and cleared the 
 beds of old marigold and zinnia stalks. To-day they must be 
 spaded, in and out around the peonies, lilies, etc., and then I shall 
 plant more bulbs in them : Emperor narcissus and Darwin tulips. 
 
 "Day before yesterday Dick told Breck to count and said: 
 'One !' Breck : Two.' Daddy : 'Three.' Breck : 'Four.' Daddy : 
 'Five.' Breck : 'Six.' Daddy : 'Seven.' Breck : 'Eight.' Daddy : 
 'Nine,' Breck: 'Ten.' This he has picked up from having his 
 toes counted, I suppose, and from counting buttons, ribs, etc. 
 The alternating counting is all he can do beyond two or three. 
 He can't grasp a long sequence unassisted. He doesn't like his 
 ribs counted and says: 'Gogo (don't) count baby's 'ibs.' " 
 
 When my mother got back from New York in the late summer 
 Breckie was delighted. She helped a good deal in the care of him 
 that autumn and he became especially attached to her so that 
 when she ran down to Fort Smith for a brief visit in Novem- 
 ber he seemed to miss her. She got back one evening after he 
 had gone to bed on his balcony and when he came in at ten for 
 his bottle of milk and to sleep in his indoor crib the balance of 
 the night, he saw her with apparent delight. He went to her in 
 tenderest affection and kept holding out his hands to her be- 
 fore being tucked in bed, saying over and over : "How-do, Hoho, 
 How-do, Hoho." 
 
 She often wore a dress in the evenings of which he was fond 
 because it had buttons which attracted him. When she came 
 in with it on he ran to her, climbed into her lap and began to 
 count what he called the "bupons" — "two, fwee. . . ." 
 
 My journal is full of allusions to Breck's future, to some as yet 
 unknown work for which I believed him to be destined. I wrote 
 one day of my own bit of work as secretary for the Arkansas 
 
BRECKIE 29 
 
 committee of the Red Cross Nursing service and of the cor- 
 respondence it entailed, and I added : "What a little backwater of 
 a place I am living in now in these terrible times. ... I devour 
 newspapers, reviews, books, anything that tells of what is go- 
 ing on in this great and awful war. One feels as if one had 
 no right to be out of it, to be planting bulbs, . . . while over 
 there, oh, over there. . . . But my thoughts are never half a day 
 from this crisis and if I am living in a backwater now I am 
 rearing a man child who will emerge some day to lead the crisis of 
 his age — and a backwater is a good place for the rearing of such 
 a man child." But the destiny wasn't to be here, Breckie darling. 
 That's what we didn't foresee, you and I, nor that it might per- 
 haps be as great a destiny There as here. 
 
 Tenderness and demonstrations of affection once having be- 
 gun their growth in Breckinridge he ever grew more demonstra- 
 tive and loving with each month of his remaining years. At the 
 period of which I am writing, shortly before he was two years 
 old, he sometimes roused in the night sufficiently to say: "Bop, 
 kiss your baby dear," dropping off to sleep again when I had 
 roused sufficiently to do it. One night about ten, soon after he 
 had been carried gently from his outdoor to his indoor crib, he 
 sang out the usual : "Bop, kiss your baby dear." Now I had 
 not been long abed and I had just been kissing him, so I didn't 
 want to sit up in the cold to do it over. Therefore I said: 
 "Bop is too cold. Baby go to sleep." 
 
 There was a moment's silence, then a thoughtful voice rose 
 from out the neighboring crib. It said: "Bop too cold kiss 
 baby dear." 
 
 Whereupon I sprang up, crying out: "No, she isn't," and 
 Dick, snugly ensconced under the eiderdown comfort, laughed 
 aloud. 
 
 On the Thanksgiving day of 1915 we put Breck in a little white 
 wicker chair I had just bought for him, in front of a little white 
 enameled table George had just made, and set before him his 
 zwieback and broth in the silver porringer Breck Campbell had 
 given him — all for the first time. Hitherto he had eaten on 
 
30 BRECKIE 
 
 Mammy's or his grandmother's or my lap, but he already 
 handled his spoon well and spilled very little. 
 
 As our apartments were, though numerous and commodious, 
 on the second floor in the southeast wing of a large building and 
 very far from the service part of the institution, I had arranged 
 for a sort of Milk Laboratory, as we called it, later Milk Room, 
 for the baby, connected with our suite. Here we had a stove for 
 him, first electric, then alchohol, then coal oil, on which I pas- 
 teurized his milk every day. In the darkest and coolest corner 
 stood his own small refrigerator, presented by his grandmother, 
 with room in the top for twenty pounds of ice, his bottles of 
 milk (one for each of his four daily meals), and pasteurized 
 creamery butter, and at the bottom space for baked apples, jel- 
 lied broths, cereals, prunes, eggs, — and the other usual things 
 making up the scientifically planned dietary of a very little child. 
 An old marble-topped bureau that had been scrubbed and sunned 
 and a table held the requisite pots, the oranges, measures, glass 
 jars filled with graham and other crackers, the clean bottles, cups, 
 etc. In the paper lined top drawer of this bureau I kept his 
 special dish cloths, the non-absorbent cotton for stoppering his 
 bottles, bread knife, etc. In a bread box on the table we put his 
 special bread, wheat or rye or other dark bread, baked three 
 times a week by a friend, a native of Switzerland. This same 
 lady supplied us with fresh laid eggs. At no time did Breckin- 
 ridge ever have anything to eat not scientifically planned as suited 
 to his age and regularly served at correct intervals. He never 
 ate between meals. He never had a piece of candy in his life, 
 and, knowing nothing of it, had no desire for it. The machinery 
 of his little body moved in almost unbroken harmony throughout 
 his four years. < 
 
 6 
 
 On December sixth I had taken Breckie with me between one 
 and two in the afternoon down to the grocery known as Mc- 
 Laughlin's to get mints and lemons for one of a series of teas I 
 was giving the students. In returning we took the grassy road 
 by the beautiful memorial Catholic church set in a niche on the 
 
BRECKIE 31 
 
 side of the mountain below Crescent, its red tiled roof gleaming 
 above gray stone walls. Its rose window Breck called a wheel. 
 I decided we would go in. It was Breck's first entry into a 
 church and I had him pull off his knitted cap as we opened the 
 bronze doors. Then I showed him the little Christ and, as we 
 left, he gurgled with delight over dropping a coin all by himself in 
 the alms box. 
 
 A few days later I was, with Dorothy's help, making ready for 
 another of these teas when an incident occurred of which I copy 
 the account from my journal as I wrote it then: "The tea table 
 was set out in my study in preparation. An exquisite little thing 
 of mahogany it is with embroidered cover and doilies, big silver 
 tray and service, and, arranged on the shelf below, were the cups 
 and saucers. Upon these Breckinridge seized, dropping several 
 on the floor and breaking one. 
 
 'T heard the clatter and ran in from an adjoining room, having 
 ventured to leave him for a moment — or rather having ventured 
 not to follow immediately when he left me. 
 
 " 'Baby,' I said, when I saw the broken cup, and I said it sor- 
 rowfully, 'Baby has broken Bop's poor cup. Poor Boppie. Poor 
 cup!' 
 
 " 'Boppie fix it,' he replied, bringing me the pieces. 
 
 " 'Boppie can't fix it,' said I, showing him how they fell apart 
 when joined. 'Baby broke Boppie's cup. Poor cup. Poor Bop- 
 pie. Oh, Baby, how could you break Boppie's cup !' 
 
 "In reply he burst out weeping and ran into my arms crying: 
 'Baby so'y. Bop. Baby so'y (sorry).' 
 
 "My lamb, my best loved treasure, how I gathered you in! 
 How we clung to each other and how quickly the ever-ready 
 smiles dispersed your tears ! 
 
 "Oh, God, was I wise or cruel? Was I unjust? There came 
 not a note of harshness in my voice, but was it just to make him 
 sad? Of course I know that in breaking the cup he had done 
 no shadow of wrong, had only been at his legitimate occupation 
 of investigation. My purpose was to teach him so that another 
 time he would recall the ownership of the tea table, the fragility 
 
32 BRECKIE 
 
 of china, and let them alone. Perhaps he won't do either ! Then 
 we can try again, always gently, always patiently. How easy it is 
 to be patient with a creature dearer ten thousand times than all 
 one's possessions ! But did I do right, was I wise ?" 
 
 I had not, I remember, then or at any subsequent time a single 
 possession out in his sight that Breckinridge was not permitted 
 to touch provided he asked permission. I had learned that an 
 object lacks form to a young child until he has felt it, so 
 many were the things I gave Breckie to feel and know. But 
 I did, from the first, try at the same time to teach him that 
 certain special things belonged to special people and that he 
 should ask before he touched them. This was a long and patient 
 lesson, but I ever kept the principle before him and to emphasize 
 it we did not encroach upon his rights, his own possessions, with- 
 out first obtaining his permission. His godmother recalls how on 
 her visit in his second year he would point to his books and say : 
 "Baby's books," and to mine on another shelf and say : "Boppie's 
 books." 
 
 In his third and especially in his fourth year he came to know 
 the lesson almost by heart and asked to play on my typewriter 
 or to look in my desk drawer nearly always before doing either. 
 With the greatest sweetness he accorded similar privileges with 
 his things : "You can dwink out of my cup, Boppie." "Breckie, 
 may I use your scissors ?" "Yes, sir." And if he found any one 
 making use of his belongings without permission he nearly always 
 said reproachfully : "You didn't ask." 
 
 Needless to say in teaching him this tremendous lesson of the 
 rights of ownership we never punished him for his innumerable 
 failures. We knew that the principle could not be mastered with- 
 out the failures and it was no part of our plan to penalize his 
 immaturity. Punishments were not, in fact, at any time a part 
 of our plan in rearing him, because we preferred the slower, 
 deeper, juster way of reason hand in hand with patience. 
 
 I have recorded that the first question Breckie ever asked was 
 on December fifteenth of this year when he lacked nearly a month 
 of being two years old. He said to one of the men on the 
 place, Dorothy's husband: "George, where are you going?" 
 
BRECKIE ' 33 
 
 Christmas of 191 5 we had much sickness, but Breckie kept his 
 usual perfect heahh. My father spent the hoHdays with us and 
 had the grip, as did my mother. Dorothy had the grip too, which 
 left me with the housework of my apartments, and Mammy was 
 barely able to creep around because of a heavy cold, so that I 
 dared not have her close to Breckinridge. What with house- 
 work, nursing and care of baby, mine were busy holidays, but 
 precious ones in many years. My brother Carson, then a cap- 
 tain in the Marine Corps and stationed at Washington, came 
 down for two and a half days and he and Dick decorated a little 
 tree in my mother's room for Breckie. This was the last time he 
 and Breckie were to meet, although the thought of this uncle in 
 his country's service was to become one of the guiding forces in 
 the nephew's life. 
 
 Under the tree stood the hobby horse Dick and I gave Breck 
 from Santa Claus. He had been told he would get one and when 
 he came into the room he made straight for the horse as though 
 for a moment he saw nothing else. But there were a super- 
 abundance of other things as well, since many friends had been 
 kind. I kept a list of his presents on this his second Christmas, 
 thinking he might like to read it later. Carson had brought him 
 from Washington a small basket ball, a push button electric light, 
 and four rubber animals, a bear, a goat, a horse (Lady Light- 
 foot), and a dog. Of the latter one remains, the "Mammy goat." 
 Her face has been bitten off, but she continues to hold her own in 
 the little master's toy box among later acquisitions. This toy 
 box is a substantial one of wood, twenty-four inches long, nine 
 and a half inches high and thirteen inches broad. It belonged to 
 my father and came many years ago from Washington to Fort 
 Smith packed with papers. Elbowing the nanny goat in it now 
 are other toys dating back to this Christmas, notably a wooden 
 horse called Kitchener, sent Breck from England by my friend 
 
 Frances J in Sussex, — a flat horse, jointed, on which a gay 
 
 pink coated hunter once rode manfully. He and the horse were 
 both made under special circumstances for a war fund. 
 
34 BRECKIE 
 
 My sister Lees sent Breck a pair of boxing gloves and these 
 are lying now in a drawer of an old mahogany chest where he 
 kept his leggings and mittens and caps. His grandmother gave 
 him a coat, to help me out, and for himself a large nickel watch, 
 all his own, and never to be returned to an adult pocket until he 
 had heard enough "tick, tick." This watch lies in a drawer of 
 my desk, for he lent it to me two years afterwards, but only 
 the minute hand is left intact, the crystal has long been broken, 
 and the face is smeared from dirty little hands. In addition the 
 mainspring must be broken for the watch has stopped. 
 
 From my cousin Anne came a pistol with holster and belt. 
 For this he was then too young but it was later to become 
 one of his dearest possessions and one of the last to be played 
 with. In fact it is lying now just where he left it on a book-shelf 
 in my study. 
 
 His godmother sent the exquisite Jessie Wilcox Smith edition of 
 the "Child's Garden of Verse," but of his books I will write later 
 for in his fourth year they took a firm hold on his afifections. 
 From his godfather came a silver knife, fork, and spoon which 
 he used constantly. Then from many other friends there were 
 blocks, books, a top, a rubber hammer which couldn't injure 
 chairs be they never so banged upon, a little red coal scuttle from 
 Dorothy that he left at "The Brackens" in Canada the following 
 autumn, a sheepskin rug from old friends in North Carolina on 
 which he slept outdoors in bitter weather, and two character 
 dolls. One of them Mammy named "Jess" after her first hus- 
 band. The other, "Tommy Tucker," minus both legs, lies on 
 his back at this moment in the toy box in the company of 
 Kitchener and the nanny goat. 
 
 Altogether Breckie received so many things this Christmas as 
 almost to suggest the presents which poured in at the time 
 of his birth, only those came from all parts of the globe, includ- 
 ing, besides all the American things, a satin pillow from England, 
 an embroidered cap from Italy, and a crepe-de-chine coverlet 
 from Japan. 
 
 Mammy named the hobby horse "Stacey" in memory of a 
 defunct steed of that name which had belonged to her. Breckie 
 
BRECKIE 35 
 
 seldom used the reins in riding, but held on by the neck or mane. 
 Stacey, a large, well-built horse, is still intact except for dents 
 in the nose from a real hammer, but I find on examination that 
 little hands quite lately had broken the reins and tied them to 
 one forefoot, while a blue ribbon is tied about the left stirrup. 
 
 On the last day of the old year of 191 5, so I read in my 
 record, Breck and I took a walk together of two or three miles 
 in the rain and he learned the difference between hog and barbed 
 wire fences. He knew the names of mullen plants and buck- 
 bushes, so I read, shaking hands with one mullen leaf as if with 
 an old friend, and we hunted for crows. A rather remarkable 
 incident occurred that afternoon which I carefully noted in my 
 journal the next day. While we trudged along under one um- 
 brella the sun shot out suddenly through the rain. 
 
 "See the glorious sun," said I. There was a short silence while 
 Breck observed the to him hitherto unknown phenomenon of 
 simultaneous sunshine and rain. Then he said : 
 
 "G'owious sun take a baf (bath)." 
 
THIRD YEAR 
 
 In a wonderland they lie, 
 Dreaming as the days go by, 
 Dreaming as the summers die: 
 
 Ever drifting down the stream — 
 Lingering in the golden gleam — 
 Life, what is it but a dream? 
 
 — Lewis Carholu 
 
/^N the twelfth of January, 1916, came Breckinridge's second 
 ^^ birthday. I had been reading a number of authoritative 
 books during the past year on both physical and mental develop- 
 ment of children and I find, dated January eighteenth, the follow- 
 ing notes in my journal: "His weight, naked, and height, in his 
 stocking feet, are on his birthday almost exactly what they were 
 at twenty-three months, viz. : weight thirty-one pounds, height 
 thirty-five and a fourth inches. I ascribe the lack of his usual 
 growth during the past month to his cutting two more big jaw 
 teeth and necessary dieting. He now has eighteen teeth and 
 his weight at two years is just one pound less than Holt gives 
 as the average weight for boys at three years, and his height 
 is one-fourth of an inch more than the average at three years. 
 The circumference of his head, if I measure correctly, and I 
 think I do, is normal for two years, viz : nineteen inches. The 
 circumference of his chest is three inches over normal, viz: 
 twenty-two inches. — A good start, my man. How I trust that 
 I can so rear you that your possible attainments will never be 
 handicapped by a physique in the smallest particular defective. 
 
 "It isn't enough to love one's child profoundly. One must 
 put one's brains at his service in advance of his demands. As to 
 the outcome — I never doubt it for a moment. There is the 
 stuff of a great man in Breckinridge." 
 
 After all, Breckie fell heir this winter to another dog, a female 
 fox terrier puppy, with a black patch over one eye from which 
 she drew her name. She was given us by a butcher and as 
 she is, though affectionate, not bright or pedigreed, or espe- 
 cially desirable, she has thriven down to this day. When Clifton 
 at Cornell heard about her he wrote : "My condolences to Sister 
 Mary over her new dog, for by the time this reaches you I pre- 
 sume it will have been poisoned." 
 
 39 
 
40 BRECKIE 
 
 Patch was never the companionable pet to Breckinridge his 
 other Httle dogs had been and during the next summer she de- 
 serted him ahogether for my father, to whom she has remained 
 constant in her devotion ever since. 
 
 In January I wrote again : "In spite of all our care Breck meets 
 with mischances occasionally, usually tumbles, but a few days 
 ago during a recent bitter spell of weather he got frosted in 
 both cheeks and chin. When the thermometer hovered around 
 zero I was afraid of the outdoors for him late at night. I let 
 him go to sleep out on his balcony as usual, on the sheepskin, 
 in sleeping bag, tucked in wool comforts, in his all-flannel night- 
 drawers with feet, and light silk and wool shirt and band; but 
 I promptly brought him in when he had fallen asleep and put 
 him in his indoor crib in my room, with open windows. 
 
 "It never entered my head, however, that it might be too cold 
 for him outdoors in the day time, and I never heard of any one 
 in Arkansas getting frosted. So on the first bitter day, with 
 the thermometer just above zero, we went out as usual for a 
 walk, he and Patch and I. (Mammy rarely goes out walking 
 in bad weather and if she does venture she is ill.) There was 
 a fine, driving snow with much wind and Patch looked so miser- 
 able I put her in my sweater. But Babekins, in leggings, over- 
 shoes, wadded coat with fur collar, fleece lined mittens, and 
 wool cap pulled over his ears, did not look or declare himself 
 cold, and his rosy cheeks appeared as usual. However, during 
 the days following it has developed that they are tender to the 
 touch and hard in spots. When Dr. Phillips examined him 
 Br€ckie said: 'Gogo (Don't) pet Baby face, Gocker Phips. Baby 
 face sore.' Mammy is putting on the cheeks twice a day some 
 of the mutton suet dear old Alice got ready for him the summer 
 at 'the Brackens' before he was born. The trouble seems to be 
 slowly clearing up, but I blame myself for this accident to my 
 lamb." 
 
 Some time before his second birthday Breckinridge was re- 
 peating fragments of Mother Goose rhymes. At two years he 
 
BRECKIE 41 
 
 could say quite accurately: "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" 
 (Mammy's version, which concludes thus: "Pig got loose and 
 killed ma goose, and dey put ole Tom in de callyboose."), "Ding, 
 dong dell" (all but the last lines and insisting that Baby pulled 
 pussy out of the well), "Rock-a-bye, Baby," "Bye Baby Bunting," 
 parts of "The Three Little Kittens," and many other fragments. 
 His "Ring around the Rosy" was also Mammy's version, char- 
 acteristically modified in transmission : 
 
 "Ring around de rosy. 
 Pocket full o' posy, 
 Squat little Josie." 
 
 Breckie loved it and when he said : "Quat 'ittle Dosie" he ducked 
 his fat little person down. 
 
 He also knew at this time several songs wholly or in part, 
 isuch as : 
 
 "I won't have any your weevily wheat, 
 I won't have any your barley," 
 
 "Where are you going, Billy boy, Billy boy. 
 Where are you going, charming Billy?" 
 
 "Oh, dear, what can the matter be, 
 Johnny's so long at the fair," 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha, you and me. 
 
 Little Brown Jug how I love thee," 
 
 "I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," 
 
 "Cheek or chin, knuckle or knee. 
 Where shall the baby's dimple be?" 
 
 "Go tell Aunt Rhody de ole gray goose is daid," 
 
 "I see de boat go round de bend. 
 Good-bye, ma lover, good-bye," 
 
 and 
 
 "Ole Dan Tucker was a mean ole man," 
 
 "De ole gray horse came a tarin' out of de wilderness," 
 
 "Step light, ladies, Oh, Miss Lou, 
 
 Neber mind de wedder so de wind don't blew." 
 
42 BRECKIE 
 
 This last was an especial favorite of mine, so my mother says, 
 and taught me at the same age by an old negro servant of ours, 
 "Aunt Nancy." 
 
 One time during this third year, but I have unfortunately no 
 record of the exact date, I sang to Breckie the second part of 
 "Rockabye, baby, on. the tree top," as follows : 
 
 "Rockabye, rockabye, mother is near, 
 Rockabye, rockabye, nothing to fear." 
 
 The tune is, I admit, a bit wistful, though not so much so as 
 the negro melodies, and my capacity for carrying any tune in a 
 pleasing fashion slender. As I sang this Breckie turned upon 
 me his deep blue eyes in which tears were gathering. 
 
 "Dat makes Baby feel bad," he said, and began to sob. With 
 caresses and tender words I asked him to tell me where it made 
 him feel bad. He instantly put a hand on his throat, saying: 
 "Dere." 
 
 At intervals of several weeks I tried the song again, but 
 Breckie either began to cry or else stopped me at the first words 
 of the second part, putting his hand on his throat as indicative 
 of the place where it made him feel bad. Finally we agreed 
 beforehand that when I began to sing this song I should never 
 go beyond the first part. 
 
 He never objected to any other song on the score of its making 
 him feel bad, and in his fourth year he ceased objecting to that 
 one. I tried it after an interval of months, and apparently he 
 took no more notice of it than of any other. It became his 
 custom in his fourth year whenever I sang or told a rhyme he 
 did not at that moment want, to say, very politely, "Please stop." 
 
 Shortly after his second birthday I told Breckinridge his first 
 consecutive story, not in jingles, that of "The Three Bears." 
 I wrote: "He grasped the elements of it at once and now asks 
 for it often and interlards the recital with his own comments, 
 such as 'No, no. Goldilocks, gogo eat bears' pease po'idge cold,' 
 and (after she breaks the chair of the little bear, represented as 
 being not much larger than his cherished Teddy bear) 'Bop, git 
 George fix it.' " 
 
BRECKIE 43 
 
 On the night of February third in 1916 I put on a dress Breck 
 had not seen before, a heavy dark green silk which had been 
 one of my mother's Paris frocks in her Russian days, later re- 
 made by a St. Louis dressmaker, and that winter adapted to my 
 figure by Dorothy! 
 
 Breckie lay in my arms just before my supper and his bed- 
 time observing this historic garment. Then he touched the sleeve 
 and said : "Bop's pitty dess. Bop got on pitty dess." 
 
 "Do you like it ?" I asked, and he replied emphatically : "Yes, 
 sir!" 
 
 He was from that time on and even earlier, as witness his 
 interest months before in the buttons on a gown of my mother's, 
 as observant of clothes as of everything else and frequently re- 
 marked upon his own and those of others. The summer he was 
 eighteen months old, to go back a bit, after my sister had left, 
 he often went into my mother's bathroom, touched a dressing 
 gown of hers that Lees had worn, and said: "Sheeshoe, come 
 back." Later in the year he said once, on touching this dressing 
 gown: "Tell Sheeshoe come git her clo'es." 
 
 I find this rather exceptional note in my journal, dated Febru- 
 ary ninth, 191 6, when Breck was nearly one month over two years 
 old: "Yesterday morning Breckinridge awoke suddenly and sat 
 up in his crib instantly, as is usual with him: 
 
 " *Bop,' he said, 'calfie sat down on de gwound' (ground). 
 
 "I saw at once that he had been dreaming, and this was the 
 first time he had ever told me anything I clearly placed as a 
 dream. 
 
 " 'What did the calf do,' I asked, 'when it sat on the ground?' 
 
 " 'Calfie eat birdies.' 
 
 " 'Oh, no,' I said, 'Calf eats grass and flowers.' 
 
 "But he persisted : 'Calfie eat birdies on de gwound.' " 
 
 At about this time Mammy took a vacation of a few weeks to 
 visit her daughter and granddaughter whom she spoke of as 
 "Jinnie May" and "Liza" and whom Breckie considered as one 
 person, Dorothy helped me with Breck during her absence. 
 
44 BRECKIE 
 
 Mammy's children made frequent demands on her. One inci- 
 dent, become famous in our family, is that of Mammy being 
 called to the long distance telephone to talk to Kansas City where 
 her married daughter lived. She couldn't take the call until 
 she had first paid for it and she was so scared over the probable 
 ill news such an exceptional and costly thing portended that I 
 had to support her, in tears and trembling, into the booth. 
 What was her wrath to find that the call came from her son-in- 
 law, who wanted her to send him fifteen dollars so that he 
 could go to the funeral of an aunt in Oklahoma. Mammy's 
 daughter put in the plea for him, but all I could hear at our 
 end was poor Mammy's tearful voice in rising indignation 
 ejaculate : "But, I tells yer, I aint got it." 
 
 I have a note in my journal during the February of Mammy's 
 visit to Jinnie May and Liza that Breck is cutting his last two 
 jaw teeth and is a restless sleeper, but not very fretful. I added 
 that he was quite ready to diet himself when teething. 
 
 I note that at two years and two months he "carries water 
 from the bathtub to the hand basin or Patch's drinking pan and 
 with such steadiness that he rarely spills a drop. And he can 
 drink a glass of water as easily as I do except that he holds it 
 with two hands." 
 
 He began going to breakfast with his father this winter, not 
 that he ate his breakfast then, but he sat in a high chair by him 
 and drank a full glass of water and sometimes, as a special 
 treat, ate a little salt from the palm of his own hand! It was 
 my custom to take breakfast in my own room, and a little later 
 Breck invariably ate his with his father when the latter was at 
 home — his bowl of cereal, cup of milk, and slice of stale brown 
 bread and butter regularly served on a tray with his father's meal. 
 He never expected anything but his accustomed rations and 
 his other meals were always eaten at his own little table 
 upstairs. 
 
 I find this characteristic note in my journal, written during 
 Mammy's February, 191 6, vacation : "I got in shortly before my 
 supper and found Babekins eating his at his little white table, 
 with Dorothy by, but feeding himself and doing it well. When 
 
BRECKIE 45 
 
 he saw me he smiled all over his charming face, saying: "Howdy- 
 do, Boppy dear. Howdy-do.' " 
 
 One night in this same February I felt sure that his ear 
 ached. He was restless anyway with his nineteenth tooth just 
 about through and the twentieth not yet in sight through swollen 
 gums. But the ear ache was over and above all that. He kept 
 pulling at his ear and finally said there was a bug in it, and 
 asked me to kiss it. Then he shook his head back and forth 
 on his bed in a way I had often remarked in my training as a 
 nurse at St. Luke's with babies with ear trouble. Next day 
 Mammy, back from her vacation, and Patch and I went with 
 him to the office of Dr. Huntington, an ear specialist. 
 
 "He will give you little funnels to play with," I said. "Won't 
 that be fun?" 
 
 So he shook hands happily with Dr. Huntington, asked at 
 once for the funnels, and while he sat playing with one offered 
 no objection to having another put in his ear. There was a 
 little redness, which cleared up promptly under treatment and 
 never returned. 
 
 On February twenty-sixth Breck set up a row of blocks on 
 end and I covered a few central ones, and said : "Now this is 
 Stonehenge." Then I got out a volume of the eleventh edition 
 of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," which had been my father's 
 wedding present to Dick and me, and showed him a good photo- 
 graph of the wonderful old pile. He was intensely interested 
 and often built "Ton-enge" after that, always asking to see the 
 picture. 
 
 In this same winter of 1916 we began hoping for another 
 little child to bless us with its presence as the first had done. I 
 quote fragments in allusion to it from my journal of that Feb- 
 ruary : "It is true that Breckinridge, so far as I know, represents 
 out of all eternity the beginning of motherhood for me. Herein 
 is a first baby always more marvelous than the others — but not 
 dearer, I am sure not dearer. I want this new little creature 
 that is coming — how I want it ! Little baby, that is not yet, but 
 
46 BRECKIE 
 
 will be when the long, hard way is past, — it is awful to get you, 
 little baby. I know now how awful since your brother came. 
 But you, like him, will be worth it a thousandfold. 
 
 "But what else on earth is worth it? For what else but the 
 creation of life would one voluntarily face such suffering? 
 Even now, half-starved, weak, ... I have crept out to the group 
 of trees under B reek's sleeping porch to write and ponder. 
 What else is worth it? 
 
 "It is the balmiest of soft days, 'so cool, so calm, so bright, — 
 the bridal of the earth and sky.' The ground is redolent. I 
 worked in it yesterday for an hour with my trowel, and then grew 
 so tired ... so utterly tired. . . . 
 
 "But to-day I am starting in with a bit of strength renewed. 
 I have been reading Jean Ingelow's 'Songs of Seven' (which 
 I love) to make me happy. I love also this group of trees: two 
 big pines, a hard and a soft wood maple, an apple tree and a 
 curious tiny tree with silver leaves, not indigenous, but whose 
 name no one here knows. About its roots two years ago I 
 planted crocuses. Before long they will be springing up and the 
 apple tree will be white with blossoms. Then comes a hot 
 summer . . . but in the early autumn, with the first red and 
 yellow leaves, you will be here, my little second baby, my welcome 
 little second baby. 
 
 "I was telling Breck the other day about 'Hot Cross Buns,' 
 winding up, 'If you haven't any daughters then buy them for 
 your sons.' 
 
 " 'Bop,' said he, 'Buy Baby a daughter.' 
 
 " 'That would be a little girl,' I replied. 
 
 " 'Boppie,' said he, 'Buy Baby 'ittle girl.' 
 
 "Now nearly every day he begs for one and promises to share 
 'Stacey' with her, and, when he isn't hungry, he agrees also 
 to divide his food. But when a meal time comes around he often 
 begins exclaiming: 'No, 'ittle girl can't have Baby dear's pease 
 po'idge cold. Mammy bwing Baby's milk 'fore 'ittle girl gits 
 it.' " 
 
 On March fourteenth I noted that Breck had cut his twentieth 
 
BRECKIE 47 
 
 and last tooth. On April first I wrote as follows : "Our wonder 
 boy grows apace in the sweetness of his sunny nature, in vigor, 
 in intellectual development. We tested his mentality a few 
 weeks ago by the Binet-Simon scale and he was instantly and 
 correctly responsive to the tests for three and four years. 
 
 "He is learning camp meeting hymns from Mammy of which 
 his favorite is : 
 
 "Way down yonder by myse'f, 
 Couldn't hear nobody pray. 
 
 "He also sings with much patting of hands : 
 
 "Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come. 
 Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come, 
 Oh, sistern de bwidegwoom-me done come, 
 Awise and twimme yoh lamps. 
 
 I am afraid that his conversation is chiefly a mixture of baby 
 talk and darkey talk like Mammy's, though Dick is diligent in 
 correcting both. The other night he woke me up to ask: 
 'Boppie, is yer got any owanges?' 
 
 "When I said I had he asked : 'Is yer got any for de 'ittle 
 girl?' 
 
 "Then he counseled me to ask 'de good, kind moo-cow' to 
 get oranges for the little girl. 
 
 "Mammy is absent again for awhile and Dorothy nurse. He 
 speculated for awhile as to Mammy's absence, then asked me 
 point blank: 'Bop, where is Mammy?' 
 
 "My little son, never yet have I told you even the faintest of 
 white lies and never will I tell you one. When you ask for 
 a cracker at a time when crackers are not distributed I never 
 tell you they aren't there. I tell you yes, Boppie has plenty of 
 them in the Milk Room and Baby shall have one for supper — 
 but not now. Your candid eyes will never meet anything but 
 equal candor in mine and you shall know that though the whole 
 world deceived you your mother would not, that from her you 
 must often expect mistaken judgments and false opinions (for 
 our opinions are tentative and formative many times) but never 
 an untruth, never, never an untruth." 
 
48 BRECKIE 
 
 Early in April Patch was taken suddenly and mysteriously ill. 
 I worked over her and pulled her through, but suspected poison 
 of some sort. Said Breck to me on April sixteenth : 'Tatchie 
 sick." 
 
 "Patch is well now," I answered. He looked seriously at me 
 while he replied : 
 
 "Mammy sho' did tell Baby Patchie was sick." 
 
 On April eighteenth I wrote as follows in my journal : "I 
 am going to Fort Smith to-morrow to see Dr. Cooper and while 
 there I shall make little visits to Caroline and Pansy, being gone 
 in all six days. Never have I left my boy for even one whole 
 day except that other time when I ran down to Fort Smith for 
 two nights. I wouldn't make the trip and leave him now just 
 for diversion — but I have to go and while there I shall take the 
 change and relaxation I really need. Even so I must train my 
 mind rapidly into acquiescence with its own plans, for I shall 
 hunger for my son. He will be well off with my mother, 
 Mammy, and Dick, with Dorothy coming over every morning 
 to pasteurize the milk and help Mammy at his bath. But I 
 shall so miss him. To-day Mammy said to him: 
 
 ** 'Shall we go in de auto to see Boppie go off on de choo-choo 
 train?' 
 
 "His eyes filled at once and he said: 'Boppie, don't go off on 
 de choo-choo twain.' 
 
 "One of his expressions when urging my nearness is : 'Don't 
 weave Baby.' " 
 
 I have been looking over the letters from my mother and 
 Dick written to me during this visit in Fort Smith and full 
 chiefly of details of Breck. In the first one my mother says 
 the baby had asked for me several times but was always com- 
 forted with the expectation of the shoe strings I promised to 
 bring back to him. In the second one she writes: 
 
 "I avoided bringing you up as a subject of conversation last 
 night but this morning thought I would risk it and said: 'Baby, 
 
BRECKIE 49 
 
 I am going to write to Boppie this morning. What must I tell 
 her?' Between mouthfuls of pease porridge hot he answered: 
 'Tell Boppie to come back.' I said: 'Must I tell her to bring 
 Baby shoe strings ?' 'No, sir, tell her to bwing somefing else.' I 
 said: 'Why, doesn't Baby want some nice, new shoe strings?' 
 'Ya, ma'am, and somefing else.' He was perfectly composed in 
 speaking of you and very positive about the something else. He 
 is sleeping soundly at present (on his balcony) while a storm 
 rages about him." 
 
 During my absence it had been arranged for Mammy to sleep 
 in my room by his crib when he was brought in at about ten each 
 night from his outdoor bed. My mother writes that he did not 
 awaken on being brought in as usual the first night of my absence 
 but did wake up, according to Mammy, at twelve and stayed 
 awake until three. Mammy reports, however, that she herself 
 went to sleep. He asked for water once or twice and to be 
 kissed and Mammy handed the water and gave the kisses in 
 silence, hoping he would not notice she had taken Boppie's ac- 
 customed place. But she said that as she was dozing she heard 
 an exclamation, which was of pleasure according to her, and 
 Baby crawled out from under his cover and jumped on her, 
 exclaiming: "It's Mammy wid a white cap." "He was," wrote 
 my mother, "apparently, reconciled to the change." 
 
 When pressed frequently for messages to send me he gave 
 them as follows : "Tell Boppie to come back," "Tell Boppie Baby 
 got eyes and nose." "Tell Boppie to bwing somefing else." 
 And, through his father, "Tell Boppie Baby good 'ittle boy." 
 But when asked if I should be told that he loved me he said 
 positively : "No, sir." However, a scrawled bit of paper is en- 
 closed in one of my mother's letters, where she guided his hand 
 in holding what he called a "pensule" and forming the words : 
 "Dear Boppie, I love you. Baby," which she said were entirely 
 his own. 
 
 Once, too, my mother asked him : "If Baby saw Boppie coming 
 in the room what would Baby say to her?" The reply came 
 promptly : "Boppie, take Baby out." 
 
 When asked what he had dreamed he replied with equal swift- 
 
50 BRECKIE 
 
 ness but briefly: "J'lcob." (We had lately been telling him of 
 Jacob's dream of the angels going up and down the ladder.) 
 
 The third night of my absence, and thereafter, his father took 
 care of him at night, but said that he did not awaken at all 
 when Mammy brought him in from outside at ten or later. 
 At twenty minutes after six, however, he woke up for the day, 
 turned over, looked up and said: "Howdy-do, Daddy Dick. 
 How you feel ? Baby good." 
 
 Easter Sunday during my absence he had an exceptionally 
 happy day. I had left several toy chickens and rabbits for him 
 and a set of eggs over which my mother, wrote ''he nearly lost 
 his mind." In addition two charming children of about ten 
 years old, Eleanor and Marsh, the children of members of the 
 faculty at Crescent, shared their Easter eggs, rabbits, and 
 chickens with him and let him join in their hunt — putting things 
 just ahead of him where they knew he could find them. 
 
 It was during this same absence of mine that Breck startled 
 a professor of English from the State University by asking: 
 "How is yer, Mr. Jones," and stopped drinking his milk to say 
 to his friend B. when she came in his room: "B., kin yer wead?" 
 When she replied that she could he continued: "Wead about 
 de kittens." This "B" and "Camille," which was Breck's name 
 for my husband's private secretary, were among his earliest and 
 most devoted friends. 
 
 My father had disposed of some interests he had on a plan- 
 tation in eastern Arkansas at just this time and come to stay at 
 Crescent, to Breck's manifest satisfaction. It is recorded in one 
 of the letters that he asked his grandfather seriously one morning 
 at breakfast: "Bobo, have yer got yer clo's on?" 
 
 His memory for people and names was extraordinary. Later 
 he was nothing like so observant of people, en masse, and more 
 dependent on the few that he loved. But in the early part of 
 his third year he knew the faces and first and last names of 
 over fifty of the teachers and students at Crescent College, and 
 of many people in town to whom he always spoke cordially. 
 What makes this remarkable is that he saw very little of them. 
 It was rare for him to forget any name or face after an intro- 
 
BRECKIE 51 
 
 duction. When he was less than two and a half years old his 
 father introduced him one day to a stranger named Clarke. 
 The next day Breck, walking with Mammy, amazed this gentle- 
 man, who reported the incident afterwards, by singing out in 
 passing : "Howdy-do, Mr. C'arke." 
 
 Mammy's friends among the colored people were his, and 
 her especial friend, whom she called: "Sister Ritchie," he like- 
 wise spoke to as : "Sister Witchie." Another pleasant spoken 
 colored woman, a very large one, who came to Crescent for 
 laundry, he called : "Big Mattie." A tall negro man named Fred 
 who drove a wagon was a source of special interest to him. 
 
 When I got back to Eureka Springs from Fort Smith Mammy 
 fell ill with lumbago and stayed in bed a week, during which I 
 nursed her and took care of Breck with no ill effects. One 
 rainy afternoon early in May when Breckinridge and I returned 
 from a walk through the dripping woods he carried a present, 
 he had gathered himself for Mammy, pressed tight in one moist 
 fist. It was a bouquet, consisting of three violets and a nail, and 
 when he handed it to Mammy in bed I couldn't determine which 
 of the two looked the prouder or more pleased. 
 
 On the night of May twelfth when he was two years and 
 four months old Breck made his first inquiry regarding certain 
 natural processes in his own body, using nursery phraseology 
 of course. So I gave as simple an explanation as I could of the 
 kidneys, omitting the bladder as too complicated for purposes 
 of illustration then. I showed him where the kidneys were 
 located. He already knew what he called his "Lumbar wegion" 
 and named it instantly as the place where Mammy had pain 
 when she was sick. The cord in the middle of his back he 
 called the "pinal column" and often remarked in eating that the 
 food went down into his "abdomen." A year later he took real 
 interest in following the course of his food after he had eaten 
 it, and had a rudimentary but not unscientific general conception 
 of the digestive processes. 
 
52 BRECKIE 
 
 Early in May Breckinridge began again sleeping out all night 
 on his balcony, instead of coming in at my bedtime as he did in 
 the coldest weather. On the eighteenth, after he had been put 
 to bed, he called me out to ask me to kiss his chin. "What is 
 the matter with it?" I asked. 
 
 "Baby squatched it wid his fingers. Fingers bad. Fingers 
 dangewous." 
 
 A few nights before this when I was out there putting extra 
 covering over him he half woke up and spoke sleepily to me. 
 At the same moment a bird twittered, 
 
 "Dat's a cat bird," murmured Breck drowsily, closing his eyes 
 again. 
 
 When Breckie was out walking with me one afternoon we 
 passed a group of school boys playing baseball. His eagerness 
 to get in on the game was pathetic and often after that he took 
 a stick and tried his best to bat his balls with it. When he heard 
 Mammy and me discussing whether or not he needed his sweater 
 on going out, he interrupted us to say positively : "He needs his 
 ball." That was his real need. 
 
 Upon another occasion he heard me say to her : "Mammy, he 
 can't be trusted," and said pleadingly : "Oh, 'et him be twusted." 
 
 Out in the sandpile one Sunday afternoon he was playing with 
 Mrs. Tranche's two little daughters, Juliette and Mary Gertrude, 
 when he suddenly hugged and kissed the latter, who broke away 
 from him and began to run. "Mawy Gertwude," he said, "Baby's 
 so'y." 
 
 Another day he was out on the east terrace when he heard 
 his grandmother calling to him. Looking up he saw her standing 
 at an open window and called back to her anxiously : "Come 
 down, Hoho. You will bweak your bones." 
 
 We never let him climb into the window seats and had to be 
 mighty careful not to sit there ourselves in his presence. One 
 such example from us naturally undid all we might say, since 
 he could not see why it would be unsafe for him if not for 
 us. Once, at a somewhat later period, he ran in and found me 
 sunning my hair in a window seat and cried out : "Boppie, dat's 
 
BRECKIE 53 
 
 dangewous. Boppie, get down." Needless to add I complied 
 with all haste and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. 
 
 On June thirteenth I wrote : "About two weeks ago Breckin- 
 ridge asked his first question about God. I had him in my 
 arms one Sunday evening and said to him: 'God bless my baby, 
 and help him to make himself a good boy.' 
 
 "'Where's God?' asked Breck. 
 
 " 'Everywhere,' I answered vaguely. 'In the blessed moon, in 
 baby's head and heart and little feet, in Boppie, in everybody, 
 in the four leaf clovers and the little birds.' He appeared deeply 
 interested but has not touched upon the subject since. 
 
 "Breck's schedule now is as follows : When he rises in the 
 morning he has the juice of two oranges. Later he breakfasts 
 in our little private dining room with his father and grandfather 
 on a coddled egg and crisp toast. Afterwards he and Mammy 
 sally forth for the morning, coming in before noon for his bath. 
 Meantime his quart bottle of milk has come and I have pasteur- 
 ized it and put it in Walker-Gordon tubes in the upper part of 
 his own small refrigerator. After his bath he has one of these 
 eight ounce bottles of milk to drink and a cracker or two of his 
 own choice, viz: graham, arrowroot or bran, or a piece of zwie- 
 back. Then he goes to bed for his nap. When he wakes at 
 two or thereabouts he has his dinner, prepared by ourselves, con- 
 sisting generally of a bit of rare tenderloin steak, broiled on our 
 little broiler, or young chicken, a slice of stale brown bread and 
 butter, eight ounces of milk, and a vegetable, often beans or 
 greens from our own garden, or asparagus tips, carrots, a baked 
 potato, or beet tops. Then he and Mammy spend the balance 
 of the afternoon out of doors. They are fond of going with a 
 little cup to one of the springs, especially the Grotto, Crescent, 
 or Hardin, where they drink any quantity of water. Some- 
 times they walk farther afield, or just play about the grounds 
 where he has gardening tools, wheel-barrow, sandpile, etc. At 
 six they come in and Babekins has a supper of rice and milk, 
 or some other cereal and milk, and goes promptly to bed on 
 his sleeping porch for the night, — after he has had hands and 
 
54 BRECKIE 
 
 face washed and often feet, for the dust sifts in through his 
 sandals, and has brushed his teeth." 
 
 He loved brushing his teeth and in his fourth year could 
 do it so well as to require little of the assistance we necessarily 
 were giving in his third. In his fourth year he also learned how 
 to gargle his throat expertly. 
 
 In the middle of June Breckinridge was ill with quite a high 
 fever and a rash which my mother and Mammy pronounced 
 measles, of which there happened to be a few cases in town. 
 We will never know what he had because when Dr. Phillips saw 
 him the rash had not come out in a definite way and early 
 symptoms were not typical, and later, when it had, I could not 
 locate the doctor. 
 
 This illness began in the night suddenly with vomiting and a 
 high temperature, which in the morning had dropped a little. 
 At the same time a small flat eruption appeared on arms, thighs, 
 buttocks, back and lower abdomen and slightly on the chest. 
 Under appropriate treatment the temperature gradually went 
 down, was normal that day and rose the second, failing to go 
 down even under treatment. The third morning a splotchy red 
 rash appeared on his face and the back of his neck and the 
 temperature promptly dropt to nearly a degree subnormal. It 
 was subnormal for three successive mornings and did not rise 
 above normal again. The rash gradually faded, but Breckie was, 
 that rare thing for him, cross and fretful for fully four days 
 following this illness. In less than a week, however, he was 
 again the joyous^ hearty boy to whom we were accustomed, and 
 I find the following note in my journal dated June twenty-sixth : 
 
 "Yesterday afternoon late Dick, Breck and I had a happy 
 walk and Breck climbed way up on a high ladder — with Dick 
 standing by — and then down again, very smoothly, after a pre- 
 liminary puzzling over hands and feet. 
 
 "He always speaks of himself in the third person, sometimes 
 climbing into my lap, saying : 'Boppie, pet him.' The other day 
 
BRECKIE 55 
 
 he fell off a fence he was climbing ;and picked himself up with 
 this query to his nurse: 'Mammy, did he hurt himself?' If he is 
 interrupted in his play he says : 'Baby's busy.' 
 
 "The other night when I was out on his sleeping porch arrang- 
 ing his covers I called his attention to the stars, for the curtains 
 of the porch had been let down and it was a bright night. He 
 said : 'Dem's Baby's 'ittle stars.' " 
 
 He loved on this balcony at night to listen to the tree frogs 
 and katydids, about which he often talked. The myriad sounds 
 of a Southern summer night interested and pleased him. The 
 wind too became as real a personality to him as to any child 
 of a more primitive time. He learned to call the gentle winds 
 Zephyr and the rude ones Boreas. On particularly wild nights 
 when Boreas was storming all around the balcony Breckie talked 
 to him with affectionate familiarity. In lulls we caught snatches 
 of his end of the conversation. 
 
 No one who has not slept out of doors alone month in and 
 month out as Breckinridge did can appreciate the charm of his 
 bedtimes and his awakenings, the dropping off to sleep with the 
 drowsy bird notes and rousing to their insistent calls. Grieg 
 must have known about it, since he imitated the symphony of the 
 birds so extraordinarily well in his Peer Gynt Suite. Breckie 
 loved them. The two he observed most at this period, I suppose 
 because they are conspicuous, were the red-headed wood-pecker 
 and the "old jay." But he could not admire the jay because of 
 its quarrelsome disposition. 
 
 I think one reason why Breckie had such a sweet and joyous 
 heart was because of his nights out of doors and his matins 
 with the birds after the sun had shot its first long rays across 
 his opening eyes. I think the winds helped too, "winds austere 
 and pure," and the waving boughs of the two tall maples which 
 guarded his little crib. 
 
 8 
 
 One day in June Breck came to me asking for a story. I 
 reversed the usual procedure by requesting him to tell me one. 
 
56 BRECKIE 
 
 He began with alacrity and delivered himself of the following, 
 which I took down in pencil immediately afterwards : "One day 
 'ittle girl walkin' fwough woods and er ole snake bit her patellas 
 and her muver had to put black salve on her patellas 'ittle girl 
 cwied so one day." 
 
 He was two years and five months old when he told this story, 
 his first. The following morning I questioned him further and 
 he repeated the tale, but the villain in the piece had evidently 
 experienced a change of heart for he added : "But er ole snake 
 didn't mean to do it." 
 
 At about this time he had another vivid dream, waking up 
 and calling out loudly that he didn't want to be taken by "de lady 
 wid de black abdomen." 
 
 9 
 
 That summer was excessively hot and my mother and I often 
 longed for the cool sweetness and solitude of her island home, 
 the Brackens, in Canadian Muskoka. Our summers for many 
 years had nearly all been spent there, but none of us had been 
 able to go up since the summer before Breck's birth. 
 
 With the beginning of the extreme heat and the first crowds 
 of summer vistors to Eureka Springs my health was not so good 
 as it had been and I was often tired, especially after Breck's 
 little illness. I gave up working among my flowers and fre- 
 quently felt discouraged and ill. But I continued to feel deeply 
 the blessedness of my condition with one little child playing by 
 me and another next my heart — and now, less than two years 
 after, bereft of both, I sit with empty arms in a silent room re- 
 calling the promise life held for me then. 
 
 Dated June twenty-seventh I find the following in my journal : 
 "In writing I do not often put down the troublous things, the 
 every-day annoyances and deeper distresses which I do not want 
 to associate indelibly with my life. It is an obligation as well 
 as a desire for me to control my thoughts, cultivating wherever 
 possible only the sweet and gracious ones. This I owe to those 
 around me and particularly to my children, for already I think 
 of myself as the mother of children, not just of one child. 
 
BRECKIE 57 
 
 "But there are inevitable annoyances — though not so many- 
 things in my environment annoy as once did. I have learned, 
 in my condition, to be grateful, when so many are homeless, for 
 shelter, -when nations like Poland and Servia are starving for 
 food. I feast my eyes on the beauty of this rugged country 
 and shut my ears to the discords of a great crowded house. 
 My own apartments are a sanctuary and so is much of the out 
 of doors. It has been my privilege to rear my boy through his 
 tenderest years in a land at peace, where the right food has 
 been available and all he needed of sunshine and air. War and 
 the evils of great cities have been far from us and if I am not 
 carrying my second child in that dearest of quiet homes, that 
 loveliest of islands, 'The Brackens,' I am at least carrying it 
 in the fresh air, with pure water, good food, surroundings of 
 physical comfort, and — all about me to look at — the 'hills of 
 God.' I have flowers to work among, sweet, though not in a 
 garden forever my own, and rambling, lonely walks. I have 
 books, enough occupation, and no hard work. I have security." 
 
 All these blessings were not to avail in bringing me safely the 
 chiefest of all blessings, another little child. The last of June 
 Mammy was called home to Fort Smith by the illness of a 
 daughter which seemed to be of indefinite duration. It became 
 a question of another nurse for Breckinridge and there was only 
 one person in that part of Arkansas I was willing to entrust 
 with this precious responsibility. Already I had noticed that 
 Breck was outgrowing Mammy, whose faithful devotion would 
 have tended admirably my second little baby but whose rheumatic 
 legs and substantial person could not keep up with a child of 
 Breckie's large activity. I felt that he was not free enough. 
 Neither she nor I, in my condition, could keep up with him. 
 
 The person I now wanted for his nurse was Juliette Carni, a 
 French-Swiss woman with whom I had long been acquainted. 
 Breck and I on our walks had often stopped at her house in 
 Dairy Hollow to talk, the mutual attraction at first being that 
 she came from a country where I had spent two years of happy 
 girlhood at school, a country to the memory of which her heart, 
 like that of every exiled Swiss, never ceased clinging. 
 
58 BRECKIE 
 
 Juliette had recently lost her little baby and was anxious to 
 nurse another child. I therefore engaged her for Breckinridge 
 to whom she was to become a second mother, for the devotion 
 between them lasted unbroken to the day of his death. 
 
 It was arranged that Juliette continue sleeping at her home 
 where she had a husband and nine-year-old daughter, but come 
 to me every morning. Every afternoon Breckie, after his nap 
 and dinner, went with her down to the Dairy Hollow to play. 
 She brought him back at five thirty, gave him his supper and 
 put him to bed. This plan suited us both and she was ready to 
 stay at Crescent in the evening should I need her. She had 
 every Sunday afternoon at home to herself and later every 
 Thursday as well. 
 
 Between Mammy's going and Juliette's coming there were two 
 days when I had no nurse and I overtaxed my already depleted 
 strength. In addition Breck met with an accident which was an 
 awful shock to me. His balcony crib was a model thing of its 
 kind, the largest size made, plain iron white enameled, with the 
 highest obtainable sides and smooth spindles closely spaced. 
 The sides at that time reached up to Breck's chest and it had 
 never entered the heads of any of us that he might possibly climb 
 over them. This is just what he did, however, and met with a 
 terrible fall. When I ran to him, climbing the stairs like the 
 wind, he had picked himself up and was sobbing piteously, his 
 poor head badly hurt above the eyes. I will never forget the 
 look he gave me, it had so much assurance in it that I would 
 understand and comfort, as I raised him in my arms. 
 
 Juliette came the next day and he took up with her at once 
 in happy fashion, first with that cordial sociability with which 
 he greeted everybody and soon in the special way of affectionate 
 attachment. This was fortunate for I was soon past helping in 
 his care. After I had been five days ill in bed, in spite of 
 everything two doctors and a trained nurse could do to prevent 
 it, my little daughter Mary was born prematurely at half past 
 three in the morning on Saturday the eighth of July, and in 
 six hours died. 
 
BRECKIE 59 
 
 lO 
 
 O little ship that passed us in the night, 
 What sunrise wast thou bound for, as we sailed 
 Our longer voyage in the wind that wailed, 
 
 Across dark waves with few great stars in sight? 
 
 Or wast thou bound for where, in dim half-light. 
 The Isles that None Return From lie thick-veiled 
 In their eternal mist ; and shrunk and paled, 
 
 The sun of Ghostland shines from changeless height? 
 
 We had but time to hail and ask her name. 
 
 It sounded faint, like "Persis," and we heard 
 "God's haven" as the port from which she came; 
 
 Bound for . . . But in the sobbing of the wind, 
 And clash of waves, we failed to catch the word, 
 And she was gone; and we were left behind. 
 
 — Eugene Lee-Hamilton. 
 
 She was an exquisite baby with well shaped head, broad brow, 
 and eyes set wide apart. Side by side with one of Breckie's 
 yellow curls I have yet a lock of her straight brown hair. 
 
 With all the welter of woe in Europe it did not seem like a 
 great loss, just one little girl baby. But she was my little girl 
 baby, and I had been loving her from the very beginning. For 
 nearly seven months I had carried her and now my body felt so 
 still since she had left it and my very breasts were to throb for 
 lips which could never suckle them. 
 
 From one dark cradle to another with hardly a break between! 
 Only six hours — and then she had passed back into the great 
 silence from whence she had come. 
 
 I grieved for the life which she had missed, the splendid work 
 she might have done, the human motherhood she might not 
 know in all its dearness as I knew it. But always through my 
 grief there ran that ever-lasting hope of the soul of man, which 
 spoke for my darling a continuity of life with possibilities so 
 vast that this little episode of birth and death could not really 
 matter, except in linking her to me forever, through a mother's 
 imperishable love. 
 
6o . BRECKIE 
 
 After she had died I lay for some time with the precious little 
 body, which for months had been so close to me, tight in my arms. 
 Then I heard Breckinridge outside and asked to have him 
 brought in. When he came to the side of my bed I laid the 
 little baby in his arms and said : "This is your little sister." 
 
 Breckinridge looked at me with radiant eyes. "Baby wants 
 to see her," he said, trying to remove the handkerchief from her 
 face. When he was prevented he petted her proudly. 
 
 Often during the days that followed, after she had been carried 
 by her father down to Fort Smith and buried, in our family lot, 
 her brother came to my bedside to talk of her. Once I told him 
 that perhaps she lived among the stars his loving heart went 
 out to every night as he lay on his outdoor bed. He replied, 
 with evident recollection of the shrouded, still figure he had 
 held: "Baby is goin' to get her and pack her to you, Boppie, and 
 unw'ap her and wake her up." 
 
 II 
 
 A few pictures of Breckinridge at this period, while I lay ill 
 in bed through long, hot hours, stand out with peculiar vivid- 
 ness although I find no record of them in my journal. One is 
 of him coming in with Juliette after a visit to Mrs. Jordan, the 
 Swiss lady who made his bread, and standing by my bed in a 
 pink and white low neck suit without sleeves — yellow hair curl- 
 ing tight over his head, eyes very big and blue, — declaring: 
 "Boppie, Puts was asleep under de stove." Puts was, so Juliette 
 told me, the Jordans' gray cat. 
 
 Another is of his being brought in to me very early in the 
 morning by his father, who said : "I asked him what he wanted 
 to play with and he said 'Give him a belt,' but it doesn't satisfy 
 him long." So then he was left, at my request, that morning 
 and subsequent mornings too on my bed until my nurse came in 
 to me and Juliette for him. The bed, a large old rosewood one 
 with a tester, in which I had sometimes slept as a .girl, made a 
 fair sized playroom for him, and I let him ransack the contents 
 of my work basket while he sat there by me. It was great fun 
 
BRECKIE 6i 
 
 for us both and it eased the soreness in my heart to turn from 
 the death of my baby to this remaining precious child. 
 
 Breck's curls, of which I have written, were not long ones. 
 His hair curled naturally, especially in damp weather or when he 
 perspired, in tiny ringlets all over his head. Mammy called them 
 "drake's tails." I was careful to cut them back often enough 
 to keep him from being bothered with tangles of hot hair on his 
 neck. I have seven envelopes of these yellow "drake's tails" for 
 I trimmed them back seven times. 
 
 While I was ill Breck began to pick up French from Juliette 
 — bits at a time. A friend of mine told me later of his running 
 into her house, followed by Juliette, and exclaiming: "Lanky, en 
 haut is upstairs and en bas is downstairs." The first rhyme 
 he learned was : "Un, deux, trois, nous allons au bois." 
 
 12 
 
 While I lay through these hot days my father, mother and 
 husband began planning for my mother and me to take Breckie 
 and Juliette and her daughter Liliane and go up to Canada as 
 soon as I could travel. It was a wonderful plan. Always I 
 seemed, in that hot room, to be hearing "Lake water lapping with 
 low sounds by the shore," and at last the old dreams were to 
 become again realities. 
 
 I left Eureka Springs Monday, the seventh of August, with 
 Juliette, Liliane, and Breck, and with Dick taking us to Seligman 
 to put us on the St. Louis sleeper. My mother had gone on 
 ahead to do some necessary shopping in Toronto and engage 
 another maid. 
 
 We were two nights and a day reaching Toronto, but Breck 
 stood the trip well. I had tucked all sorts of new things for 
 him to play with in the corners of his suitcase and Juliette pro- 
 duced them at intervals, thus enlivening the tedium of the day. 
 I remember vividly awaking the first morning an hour or so out 
 of St. Louis to find him already awake, sitting up and staring 
 hard out of the window at the woods and fields past which we 
 were rushing. In fact what woke me was his exclamation : 
 "Oh, see de pine comb chees!" 
 
62 BRECKIE 
 
 Though he stood the trip well it proved too much for my re- 
 turning strength and I had to lie over twenty-four hours in 
 Toronto at the old Queen's hotel, of which I had always been 
 fond because of my grandfather's having stopped there in the 
 days of his exile. Juliette took Breck out walking and bought 
 him a plaster pig, wearing a Prussian helmet, and sold for 
 a Belgian relief fund. We named it "Junker" and it lies in the 
 toy box now in far grander company than it ever desei*ved, to wit, 
 with the English horse we called after Kitchener and other 
 gentlemen. We met my mother at the Queen's and left for 
 Muskoka the next day with a maid named Helen, who was to 
 become one of Breck's many friends, and with a loved relative, 
 my Aunt Jane, who had joined us in Toronto. On the journey 
 down we met unexpectedly two favorite cousins from Mississippi 
 and through the care of one of them I was able to continue on 
 to the Brackens. I had become so very faint and ill that with- 
 out his help from the berth in the train tp the boat I could not 
 have managed. 
 
 It was several days after we reached the Brackens before 
 I could leave my bed upstairs and so I missed the joy I had 
 anticipated of being the first to show the wonders of the place 
 to Breckinridge. On the twelfth of August I wrote in pencil: 
 "I have seen nothing of the islands yet except from the win- 
 dows of the North Room, but that little is more beautiful than 
 anything I have seen since I last was here. The moon reaches 
 a long, silver arm across the lake and through the doors of 
 my balcony nearly on to my bed." 
 
 13 
 
 By August eighteenth I was evidently able to be up and in 
 swimming, for I find in a letter to my husband of that date 
 this account of Breckinridge : "You would have been proud 
 of the fearless and eager way in which he first went in the 
 water. But he started to run as we were all splashing in the 
 bay and fell over on his face. I caught him before his head 
 went under all the way, but he got water up his nose. You 
 
BRECKIE 63 
 
 would have been proud of him again for he hardly cried a mo- 
 ment, seemed more shocked than grieved, and almost at once be- 
 gan again splashing water. That was two days ago. He has not 
 asked to go in since and I have not suggested it. I am waiting 
 for the suggestion to come from him as a sign that he is no 
 longer frightened. He has a little wooden canoe that was 
 Clifton's that he loves." 
 
 He often went in the bay again before the water got too cold 
 and never seemed frightened, though the incident referred to 
 made him cautious. He said the lake had choked him, and added 
 with a charming smile to me: "Boppie, did you pull Bweckin- 
 widge out by de hair?" He loved rowing and canoeing of all 
 things and in the shallow bay where an upset would not matter 
 I often let him sit alone in his bathing suit in one of the smaller 
 boats and manipulate the oars or paddle, while I walked along 
 in the water close to him. He really handled the oars well and 
 I think had boat and oars been adapted to the size of a two and 
 a half year old he would have succeeded with them admirably. 
 He was never frightened on the water, even in rough weather, 
 and no more disturbed when waves dashed over the boat, delug- 
 ing him with their spray, than I was myself. When any of us 
 started to push off in a boat we could usually hear him calling: 
 "Wait for Bweckinwidge." When he went with us in the boats 
 he sat on a cushion at the feet of whoever did the steering and 
 was perfectly quiet, because we had explained the danger of 
 moving in boats, trailing his little canoe by a string, 
 
 14 
 We were designedly a small household in the roomy house 
 that in other years had ever been full of our kindred and 
 friends. Aunt Jane and Eleanor were our only guests this sum- 
 mer, and they not really guests of course since they are one 
 with us. Lees came up for a few weeks before returning to her 
 work in Richmond, but my two brothers, whose fondest associa- 
 tions hung about the place, were far away — Carson as assistant 
 naval attache at Petrograd and Clifton in training at Platts- 
 burg. 
 
64 BRECKIE 
 
 We turned Clifton's old room into a nursery where Breckie 
 slept in a crib we bought in Toronto. I left him in Juliette's care 
 at night so that I could sleep later in the morning, but this period 
 succeeding my illness was the only part of his life when any 
 one but his mother regularly had care of him at night, excepting 
 right after he was born. 
 
 I wrote in my journal of our life on the little island: "It is 
 simple, it is plain, it is heaven. We live in beauty and breathe 
 in health with every breath. We linger on the water and I am 
 in it swimming once or twice each day. We wander among the 
 rocks and trees, and at night we gather about the lamp before 
 the great fire of wood in the stone chimney and read aloud. 
 
 "From the open windows of the North room, which I occupy, 
 I overlook that expanse of water over which the northern 
 lights play often at night, and now and then I raise my grateful 
 eyes to look across this loved spot. From a distance comes the 
 voice of my little son at play — but close by me, closer than any 
 but the dead can reach, is that other voice of my baby girl. I 
 hear it in the lapping of the lake upon the shore, in the wind 
 sighing softly in the cedar and hemlock trees ; I feel it in the 
 brave sunlight and the wide stretches of water and sky, and in the 
 spicy odors of the forest. Perhaps that is why we are affected 
 supremely by such things. Perhaps they are the voices of our 
 dead, the voices of little children and babies who cannot reach 
 us through any other language until we too are free. 
 
 "But I still waken at night and imagine she is a live baby and 
 I am nursing her, and Breckinridge (to whom I talk of his little 
 sister who has gone to live beyond the stars) has asked me for 
 "anuder 'ittle sister" that won't go so far away. Beyond the 
 stars ! As if one knew ! She is closer yet. I know it in my 
 own 'body where she lived and in my heart that loved her. Some- 
 where her destiny is wrought out and my love gives me a claim to 
 share it. This is my faith, my hope of immortality." 
 
BRECKIE 65 
 
 15 
 
 Breckinridge, in constant association with Juliette, soon picked 
 up French. On August twenty-seventh I noted : "He is rapidly 
 learning an excellent French but mixes the two languages at 
 present." Once when I asked him for a message to his father 
 he said: "Tell him Bweckinwidge hadidejeuner and some fish;" 
 and another time, as he splashed in his bath he said: "Dites-lui 
 que le savon est un.papillon (pronounced by B. papiwon) and 
 Bweckinwidge is a bon gargon." 
 
 When we passed under a clothes line he exclaimed : "Fegardez 
 (meaning regardez) le night gown de Xante Lees!" 
 
 Among the toys which had been Clifton's when he was little 
 older than Breckinridge and which we found in the top of the 
 boathouse were some soldiers, a fire engine, and a hook and lad- 
 der truck. With these soldiers for angels Breckie rehearsed 
 Jacob's dream. One morning he said to me that Juliette called his 
 angels "des soldats." 
 
 A month later and Breck had ceased to confuse French and 
 English and from then on to the end of his four years he was 
 equally at home in both. This was what I had expected from 
 reading of how early the language centers develop in the brains 
 of little children and from remembering how my brother Clifton 
 at Breck's age, when we were living in Russia, had a fair nursery 
 vocabulary in Russian, English, French, and German. The lit- 
 tle Russians with whom I played in those days all spoke two or 
 three other languages as readily as their own just from hearing 
 them constantly spoken. 
 
 In other respects Breckie continued to develop with that ex- 
 traordinary rapidity so characteristic of unhampered babies. At 
 this time, and indeed always thereafter, I noticed an intense 
 earnestness at play which contrasted strongly with the joyous 
 flashes of light illuminating his face in conversation. Nothing 
 could exceed the seriousness of his expression when he played — 
 a seriousness almost stately in a child whose broad brow and 
 deep colored eyes gave him a rather striking appearance at all 
 times. Play was the real business of his life — as indeed we now 
 
66 BRECKIE 
 
 know it to be with the young of all highly developed creatures. 
 
 I recall standing with my sister one day at the Brackens and 
 watching Breckie run around the table of our outdoor dining 
 room with Liliane in pursuit. His expression was so earnest and 
 grave that Lees exclaimed : "No matter what he is doing he looks 
 like a senator." 
 
 As soon as he began talking with any on-e the smiles fairly 
 chased each other across the face which had responded so seri- 
 ously to play. I wrote of a steam launch full of old friends from 
 other islands calling one day late in August, and added: "The 
 whole party were charmed with Breck, who went up to every- 
 body in his cordial way, repeating each name as he shook hands." 
 A friend from Virginia who spent a few days with us early 
 in September wrote nearly two years later: "I remember him 
 as the most perfect blending of all that was beautiful and attrac- 
 tive in childhood, with an understanding and poise of mind 
 seldom found." 
 
 Breckie's love for the lake grew to be almost as absorbing a 
 passion with him as it had been for years with me and he became 
 quite fanciful about it and about the sky. Once he said that 
 there was another lake up behind the clouds and when on the 
 water he often said he was behind the clouds. His mind was 
 so full of water that when I asked one day what message I should 
 send his father he said: "Tell him to take a baf." 
 
 i6 
 
 On the first of September, fearing the threatened railroad 
 strike, Aunt Jane left the Brackens and Eleanor, Juliette, Liliane, 
 Breck and I went with her on the big boat as far as the locks 
 at Port Carling. Then we walked back through the woods three 
 miles or so to a sandy bay about two miles from the Brackens 
 where Mr. Bissonette, our old French-Canadian caretaker and 
 gardener, met us by appointment with two row boats. 
 
 Meanwhile a terrible wind had arisen and was blowing just 
 across our course. I decided Breckie was safer with Mr. 
 Bissonette than with me and so put him with Eleanor in Mr. B.'s 
 
BRECKIE 67 
 
 boat. That left Juliette and me to row the other with Liliane in 
 the stern. Juliette had learned to pull a strong oar, which was 
 certainly needed on this occasion as the storm fairly raged 
 around us and I never had a worse pull. We finally tried tacking 
 and made better headway, going against the wind to the shelter 
 of an island, then following the line of the island on the lee- 
 ward side and finally, having worked considerably to the south 
 of the Brackens, coming down with the wind on the last stretch. 
 It was an exhausting row but did me no harm and, except for 
 blistered hands, I was none the worse next day. Of Breckie's 
 conduct we were all immensely proud. He sat at Eleanor's 
 feet, deluged often with the spray of waves breaking over the 
 boat, but quite unafraid and much interested. 
 
 17 
 
 Many people said that Dick made the best father they ever 
 knew. Even when Breck was a very little baby Dick gave him 
 any amount of personal attention and the two were uncommonly 
 chummy as Breck got older. During that summer at the Brack- 
 ens Breck spoke frequently of him. Once when I was telHng 
 him good-night he said, almost tearfully and without sugges- 
 tions on my part: "Tell faver he wants to sweep (sleep) wif 
 him." When I reminded him that father was in Eureka Springs 
 he cried out : "O, Boppie, take faver to Hoho's Island." 
 
 One day he began running round and round the big hall and 
 when I asked him what he was doing he said : "Wookin for 
 faver." He often sent casual messages, some of them unsolicited, 
 such as : "Tell him to come to Bweckinwidge." "Tell him he 
 (meaning himself) is playing wif soldiers and wagons." "Tell 
 him he can wow (row) fast and quick" — which was an over- 
 statement of facts. Once he said to Juliette : "Dites a son pere 
 de venir vers lui," and once, when he had picked a wild aster, 
 he gave it to Juliette saying: "11 veut I'envoyer a son pere." I 
 pressed it and enclosed it in my next letter to Dick, where I 
 was to find it again long afterwards. 
 
68 BRECKIE 
 
 i8 
 
 One day late in September when Juliette, Helen, and Liliane 
 had all gone to the county fair at Bracebridge, the county 
 seat, and I was giving Breck his bath for the first time since 
 my illness, I left the water running and he stuck his hand un- 
 der the faucet. Instantly he came to me, calling out as he came 
 "Boppie, c'est twop (trop) chaud. II s'est bwtile (briile)". He 
 got caught in the bushes on another occasion and told me that 
 his grandmother's island had "scwatched him." Sometimes as 
 he ran up and down he exclaimed: "C'est Beckidge qui court." 
 It was not until after his third birthday the following winter that 
 he ceased speaking of himself in the third person. 
 
 I have the remembrance of his first impersonations associated 
 with the Brackens, of his playing baby, sick soldier, and once 
 of his descending the stairs in a fresh white suit below which 
 the bloomers showed only a little, and saying to me with a 
 shy smile : "It's a 'ittle girl." 
 
 Late in September I wrote his father as follows: "Yesterday 
 I took the boy back into the woods behind old Captain Howe's 
 hut to the swamp where the tamaracks grow, where the moss is 
 deep and red and the rushes are tall. Quantities of spruce grow 
 also in this swamp, and tall plants with a bloom like cotton. All 
 around the edges of the swamp the deciduous trees were touched 
 with yellow yesterday. The boy enjoyed plunging through the 
 rushes, taller than his head, and sinking deep in the moss. You 
 and I went to this marsh one windy day on our honeymoon and 
 took a long walk on the old road off to the left of it. Do 
 you remember? 
 
 "Coming back yesterday the lake was entirely calm and the 
 air had a wet smell. Breckinridge sat with me and rowed 
 with me going over — really quite well. He can propel the boat a 
 little, but of course doesn't handle his oars well, nor has he 
 great force. His education is progressing — for he is learning 
 how to row a boat, to hammer nails in wood, to be steady and 
 sure-footed on rocks, to respect deep water and hot stoves, to sit 
 still in a boat and why he does it, and many, many other things. 
 
BRECKIE 69 
 
 He is also becoming, among these Canadians, quite as pro-ally 
 in his sympathies as even his parents could wish. He told me 
 of a certain bee in the goldenrod that it was a 'dangewous bee — 
 a German bee.' 
 
 "He is learning the Twenty-third Psalm and knows about 
 half of it. We act it as he learns; then we tell it to the big 
 hydrangeas down by the water's edge and they whisper it back 
 to us. The grassy slope from the Southern veranda to the 
 little bay is a 'green pasture/ the lake a 'still water,' and the 
 little path back of the island is a 'path of righteousness.' We 
 haven't gotten to the 'valley of the shadow of death' yet and 
 I don't know how I shall depict that.* 
 
 "He learns eagerly and easily and it is so jolly to teach him. 
 I hope he won't want to learn to read before he is eight years 
 old because oculists unite in declaring the eye too unformed be- 
 fore eight to use print without risk of eye trouble later. So my 
 eyes will have to serve him as long as possible and I will read 
 a thousand delicious and noble things to him. I wonder what 
 his tastes in literature will be. He accepts willingly enough all 
 he is taught now. How wonderful it is to watch a remarkable 
 mind in its early development and help in its education ! We 
 must be careful not to stifle it, careful to help it to follow its own 
 bent, careful to fill it with tender and lofty images, careful to 
 have only the best food accessible for it to seize upon. I sup- 
 pose the education of a child is difficult chiefly because it is one's 
 own education. We can't ram one moral into a child's head 
 and live by another, tell it to keep its temper and lose our own. 
 The other day Breckinridge struck at me with his open hand. 
 I said : 'Breckinridge, does Boppie ever strike you ?' In- 
 stantly with his quick catching at the right he threw himself upon 
 me declaring in his broken way that he wouldn't strike either. 
 How different would the feeling in his heart have been had I 
 struck back ! 
 
 "Old Mr. Bissonette is immensely proud of Breckie, says he is 
 
 * (Note — at that point Breckie lost interest and we did not pursue the 
 subject further.) 
 
70 BRECKIE 
 
 the strongest child for his age he ever saw — says he reasons and 
 that he never knew a baby to reason before. I don't suppose 
 the reason of a baby is brought out as a rule and if it isn't ap- 
 pealed to how could it develop? Nothing develops until it is 
 used." 
 
 Mr. Bissonette put Breckie through a military drill nearly 
 every day, both of them standing upright, facing each other, and 
 solemnly going through certain setting up exercises, some of 
 which were hard for Breck's plump little person to execute. 
 
 19 
 
 Breckinridge's play room at the Brackens on stormy days was 
 the top floor of the launch and boat house, a roomy space, all 
 open but sheltered from the wet and full of all sorts of delectable 
 things to delight the little boy : old boats and tools and camping 
 outfits and, mixed in with them, Clifton's little red wheelbarrow, 
 toy boats, tin dishes, soldiers and other pathetic reminders of his 
 childhood. Soon, I felt, would Breckie be growing beyond them 
 too. But now I know he never will — not that is in the world we 
 know of. The old boats and tools and toys lie up there under 
 the snow with the frozen lake all about, while the first little 
 boy — grown a soldier — prepares to serve his country on a foreign 
 shore, and the second — after a death as heroic as the bravest 
 soldier's — sleeps under the grasses of a southern grave. 
 
 How Breckie did enjoy that old boathouse and its fascinating 
 junk ! Tired of my typewriter, I often left the house, and, 
 wrapped in a long waterproof cape I had as a girl in Switzer- 
 land, I ran down to the connection between the two islands, 
 stepped in the boathouse, and there, at the foot of its stairs, 
 close by the slips of water, I stood and called. Instantly Breckie's 
 sunny head appeared at the head of the stairs and in his 
 gracious voice — a voice whose inflections were the sweetest I ever 
 heard — he called back: 
 
 "You can come up here, Boppie. You can." 
 
 In my journal in late October I wrote : "Old Mr. Bissonette is 
 usually there (in the boathouse) with Juliette, Liliane, and 
 Breck, and he is mending rugs with a long sailcloth needle and 
 
BRECKIE 71 
 
 worsted and a horny protector in the palm of his hand, instead 
 of a thimble, — which is sewing sailor fashion. The occupation 
 charms Breckinridge, who adores Mr. Bissonette anyway, and 
 he has promptly learned to sew. I have in my work bag a bit of 
 lace in which he took his first stitches. Now he can sew a button 
 on his shirt or romper, though I have to thread his needles with 
 double thread, and fasten his threads when he has finished. 
 Last night just before supper he came into the big hall where we 
 were sitting around the fire, sat down and sewed on two buttons 
 with much gravity. But of course they weren't in the right place 
 for buttons and I had to cut them oflf later." He never sewed for 
 more than a few moments at a time and I hardly think gave it 
 enough attention to strain his eyes. 
 
 His appetite at this time, so I wrote, was stupendous and he 
 had gained nearly seven pounds since we came up, weighing 
 on the supply boat scales forty pounds — which was a little over 
 thirty-eight without his clothes. I never recorded any but his 
 naked weight. During the hot weather in Arkansas he had lost 
 some of his high color, but it all returned at the Brackens and 
 he was a splendid looking child, red-cheeked, hearty, his face 
 alight with a succession of radiant smiks except when he engaged 
 in the serious business of play. 
 
 He came into the big hall every evening while Juliette was 
 getting ready his supper of bread and milk, and usually he rushed 
 for Gipsy, our time-honored cat of many summers (the cleanest 
 of cats, living on the islands with us and smelling of sweet bal- 
 sam and pine) who was generally to be found at that hour dozing 
 in a cushioned chair before the liberal fire. Breckinridge mingled 
 his yellow curls with Gipsy's sleek, black fur and then grabbed 
 him by the middle and, staggering over to me, exclaimed: "Vous 
 pouvez avoir ce minet." 
 
 In talking French with him Juliette used only the "vous." 
 She said she had found that if one tutoies American children, 
 who are not likely to hear the language out of their homes, then 
 "lis tutoient tout le monde." So we all used the vous in speak- 
 ing to Breck, except Lees, who could never bring herself to say 
 "vous" to a baby. 
 
72 BRECKIE 
 
 A dominant trait in Breckinridge, in possessing which he re- 
 sembled his father, was keenness of observation. That autumn 
 at the Brackens he learned to know both the Union Jack and the 
 Stars and Stripes. There hung a photograph of the U. S. Ala- 
 bama, on which Carson once served, by the tall clock in the big 
 hall, with an American flag flying from it. The whole thing was 
 not particularly vivid or strikingly apparent, and the flag in the 
 picture was quite small, but Breckie called my attention to 
 it one day by saying: "Fegardez ce dwapeau Amewicain!" 
 
 20 
 
 Breckie learned that summer and autumn many little French 
 poems and songs from Juliette's well stored memory, such as : 
 "Frere Jacques," "Quand j'etais dans ma chambrette," "Ainsi 
 font, font, font, les petites marionettes," "Deux Petits Yeux," 
 "L'Ange Guardien," "Enfin nous te tenons, petit, petit oiseau." 
 One day he was walking around the island with me when sud- 
 denly a bird flew up in the air from close by our feet. Breck 
 watched it a moment, then burst out singing: "Enfin nous te 
 tenons, petit, petit oiseau." 
 
 He called the bath house the bath tub house. One day he was 
 playing on the edge of the little pier, the one for the small boats 
 in the bay, with his wooden canoe. I said: "Be careful 
 Breckinridge, or you will fall in." He replied : "And if he did 
 would you put on your having suit and catch Beckinwidge ?" A 
 leisurely mode of rescue, truly! Sometimes he called himself 
 "Beckinwidge," then "Bweckinwidge," and occasionally "Beck- 
 idge." 
 
 That autumn was an exquisite blending of color and wind, 
 spray, frost, and sunlight, on our dear islands of quietness. We 
 had several small adventures, which greatly interested Breck. 
 Eleanor and I routed out a large creature, too big for a mink, 
 which we took to be a fox, one night as we returned in a boat 
 from the mainland with the mail. On October fourth I wrote 
 to Dick : "Eleanor saw a bear last night swimming over to 'Wis- 
 towe.' At first she thought it must be a great dog and it scared 
 
BRECKIE 73 
 
 her when she perceived what it really was, but the bear was worse 
 scared. Breckinridge and I routed a big muskrat out of the 
 rushes the other day. B. was excited. A wild duck took a bath 
 this morning in the lake right under my window. Not for years 
 have I seen the wild creatures as little shy. That is because of 
 the comparative scarcity of tourists this summer, I suppose. O, it 
 is heavenly quiet, beautiful, — a golden and red glory behind a 
 soft haze." 
 
 From other October letters to his father I cull the following 
 notes of Breckinridge : 
 
 October 6, 1916. 
 
 "I read your message to him this morning and asked him if 
 he didn't want to say something for me to write you. I grieve to 
 write that he replied : 'O, he doesn't want to say anyfing.' But 
 soon after he seized your letter, held it in front of him and 
 read out: 'Cher pere, je vous aime de tout mon coeur.' 
 
 "Eleanor, bless her heart, is making him two suits of clothes, 
 which will be two less to buy. She is always making things 
 for other people. Between her sewing machine and my type- 
 writer there is an incessant racket upstairs all morning. We 
 seldom indulge in the luxury of staying out until afternoon, 
 except mother, who is improving these exquisite days by sys- 
 tematically gardening with Mr. Bissonette. It is so warm these 
 last days we can sit out without wraps. In father's last letter he 
 said: 'You will be wanting to come back now, for it must be 
 doleful on the lakes since everybody left.' Doleful, doleful ! with 
 the forest a pageant of color, the air like wine, the sun divine 
 in its radiance, the moon in untroubled splendor hallowing each 
 night. Now that 'everybody' is gone and the lakes are pre- 
 tematurally quiet, more so than I have known them in many 
 years, the shy creatures that hid back in what the natives up here 
 call 'the bush' are coming out a bit. Even the wild ducks ap- 
 proach near us. We are often apt at dusk to meet strange, wild 
 things — blessed wild things. At night we have a roaring wood 
 fire and 'Anne of Geierstein.' Then we sleep with the lap-lapping 
 of the waves against our shores and even the fish (was it Eu- 
 ripides who so quaintly called them the 'voiceless children of the 
 
74 BRECKIE 
 
 deep?' I read of it in the Princess Priscilla's Fortnight), even 
 the fish do not rest more tranquilly than we." 
 
 October 8. 
 
 "I have been romping in the pine groves v^^ith your son. As 
 I came up to write I saw him running with a stick and heard 
 Juliette calling: 'Que faites vous?' To which he replied: 'II 
 joue.' It has taken him exactly three months to acquire the 
 French language, not indeed a very vast vocabulary, but as good 
 in French as in English. I see no difference now between the 
 two and he passes from one to the other with equal ease. You 
 will revel in him. He will astonish you. In two months the 
 difference in his development and conversation is marked." 
 
 October 15. 
 
 "Last night came the post card of the sow and her little ones 
 you drew. I showed it to Breckinridge this morning, asking 
 him what it was. Your art is natural for he replied at once : *a 
 
 pig. 
 
 "I have just shown him the post card picture of you on horse- 
 back with the girls, and I pointed you out. Without a word he 
 leaned forward and kissed the picture, then said: 'Beckidge a 
 embwasse faver.' " 
 
 Oct. 19. 
 
 "B. enjoyed your card and repeated gleefully: 'Faver calls 
 Beckidge young buck!' He says: 'Faver will meet him in St. 
 Wouis and take him to de wions and tigers.' " 
 
 21 
 
 In happiness and natural beauty did Breckinridge's opening 
 personality continue to expand and on October 22nd he achieved 
 a moral victory. I laid aside my preparations for leaving to 
 record it in my journal as follows : 
 
 "Last summer once when he needed castor oil he rebelled and 
 wept over the dose. I gave it anyway but resolved to see what 
 training would do before there came occasion to repeat the dose. 
 So I led some of the play to sick soldiers and the way they 
 
BRECKIE 75 
 
 take their medicine — for I am no pacifist and am lost in wonder 
 every day over the way they take their medicine of every kind. 
 Breckinridge has often been a sick soldier in the past months 
 and has taken his imaginary medicine well. Yesterday morning 
 and to-day there were evidences of a slight digestive disturbance 
 — so our game had to stand the test of real life as games often 
 must. Juliette had prepared Breck when he awoke and he came 
 running into my room with a determined face : 
 
 " 'Boppie,' he said, 'have you some medicine for dis sol- 
 dier?'" 
 
 He recognized the castor oil and took it without flinching. I 
 did not soil the triumph by any external reward, only took his 
 hand and said gravely : 'Congratulations, soldier.' " 
 
 22, 
 
 It was time to leave, to take Breckie away from the beautiful 
 islands in which his body and soul had both grown larger. On 
 Thursday, the nineteenth of October, I had written to my hus- 
 band: 
 
 "This will be my last letter. It goes down on to-morrow's 
 boat and we follow on the next boat, which is Monday's. Mean- 
 while it is storming outside, raging even. The waves break into 
 white caps under my windows (and far out across the lake) 
 — looking like lovely gulls alighting for an instant on the 
 angry water. It will have to be angrier than it is to keep me 
 from going for the mail to-night on the chance of a letter from 
 you and to post this. I love the lake when it is all tossed about 
 like this even more than I love its placidity, and I like to get 
 out in a boat and wrestle with it as Jacob did with the angel. 
 He said: 'I will not let thee go except thou bless me.' The 
 blessing of an angry lake lies in the vigor and buoyancy one gets 
 out of it — and those are blessings indeed. 
 
 "But we are leaving. All sorts of farewells from all sorts of 
 loved places have been ringing for the past week in my ears. In 
 the poignancy of good-bye there is always the dread that it may 
 be final and therein lies its sting. Listen to a few examples : 
 
76 BRECKIE 
 
 " 'For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more, 
 We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.' 
 
 " 'Some of us will never see you again, loved valley of Vir- 
 ginia.' 'Shall I ever forget thee, Jerusalem !' " 
 
 I can't say that Breckie took the parting from his grand- 
 mother's dear home as we older people did — but in effect it was 
 he who was never to see it again. He had been radiantly happy 
 at the Brackens. But then, he was radiantly happy everywhere. 
 
 We left Monday morning, October twenty-third — Helen stay- 
 ing behind to help Mr. Bissonette close the house. As our boat 
 pushed off from the wharf they both stood waving and Breckie 
 waved back at them until we had rounded another island and 
 the Brackens, with the golden and red glory of its birches, 
 maples, and oaks, and the darkness of its evergreens — with its 
 lovely shores silhouetted against the lake's blue and the homey 
 smoke rising from its stone chimneys, — passed out of his sight 
 forever. 
 
 On our return trip from Canada to Arkansas we stopped off 
 for two days and a night at St. Louis, where Dick met us and took 
 us to rooms he had engaged at the Planter's — in which were 
 fresh flowers. He declared that the sweetest thing Breck had 
 learned in his newly acquired French was to answer, when he 
 addressed him, "Oui, mon pere." That first afternoon while we 
 shopped and Juliette visited two sisters living in St. Louis, Dick 
 took Breckie, both overjoyed at being together again, to a toy 
 shop and gave him the wholly novel experience of looking the 
 place over and choosing what he liked. A diminutive tennis 
 racket is the only thing left of several selections. Breckie paid 
 for them all himself. 
 
 The next day we took him to a children's photographer, 
 who let him play at will in a room full of toys and got several 
 natural looking poses. Then we went with him to an orthopedic 
 surgeon that I wished to consult because of a tendency he had 
 to walk with his toes turned out. He prescribed shoes built 
 
BRECKIE 
 Age Two Years and Nine Months, with His Father 
 
BRECKIE 77 
 
 up a little on the inner sides, and, after we had ordered them, 
 we went out to the zoo. Dick said all along that the chief reason 
 he had met us at St. Louis was to take Breckinridge to the 
 zoo. But it made no greater impression on him than a stable, 
 and lions and tigers not a whit more than horses and cows. For 
 some months afterwards he did indeed remember and occasionally 
 allude to a certain savage pussy and the way she jumped on a 
 shelf to eat her meat, after rolling over and over begging for it. 
 And he remembered the monkeys even better and their diet of 
 bread, apples, turnips, and carrots. He was interested — but not 
 more interested in the marvels of the zoo than in the common- 
 place marvels which made up the wonderland of his daily 
 life. 
 
 There was a donkey for him at Eureka Springs when we re- 
 turned, which his father had bought, and which he bestrode 
 on a little saddle that had belonged to Clifton some fifteen 
 years before. His grandfather presented blanket and bridle and 
 "Peter Pan" (his name was Pete, which suited him, but some 
 one ran it into the inappropriate Peter Pan) with his equipment 
 became a part of our establishment for a year. Breckie liked 
 to ride him occasionally and to lead him now and then, and we 
 found him most useful carrying provisions on picnics. But Breck 
 tired of him. He was too active and eager a child to be willing 
 to remain long on a donkey. A year later, when Breck was 
 three years and twenty-two months old, he really ceased to care 
 for Peter Pan at all and, as feed was very high, we sold him 
 then. But before this happened Breck had learned to handle 
 him alone, even at Peter's most rapid gait, with considerable 
 ease, to guide him to right or left, to dismount, but not to mount, 
 alone. 
 
 During our absence Patch had attached herself permanently 
 to my father, who had been taking care of her, and through her 
 own choice became his dog. Dr. Phillips' dog, Dixie, followed 
 suit and the two little fox terriers were much about. Breckin- 
 ridge had a pleasant acquaintance with Dixie, dating back to his 
 earliest recollections. I remember once soon after he was two 
 years old coming in with him and meeting Dixie standing on a 
 
78 BRECKIE 
 
 box on the Crescent west veranda, and Breckie's inquiring with 
 sweet courtesy : "How do you do, Dixie ? How did you get 
 way up dere?" Occasionally when the dogs lay about on the 
 floor of our study Breckie would stumble over them and several 
 times we heard him exclaim : "Excuse me, Dixie." 
 
 He was always most courteous in his manner — partly, I sup- 
 pose, because we never failed to thank him after he had obliged 
 us or to preface a request of him with please. Once, several 
 months later, when his father had taken something suddenly 
 from him, he said : "You didn't say excuse me. You gwabbed." 
 In his fourth year he had become quite thoughtful about pulling 
 off his glove when he shook hands, pulling out a lady's chair for 
 her if one sat with him and his father at breakfast (he wanted 
 to do this because he saw his father and grandfather do it) and 
 taking off his hat, if it wasn't snug fitting knitted headgear, when 
 he spoke to people out of doors. These little things and his 
 cordial manner in speaking made him a great favorite with his 
 fellow townsmen. When I walked out with him many people 
 whom I did not know even by sight sang out "Hello, Breck," to us 
 in passing. 
 
 24 
 
 But to revert to the autumn of 1916. A dear young cousin 
 had come to study at Crescent, Florence Carson, — a cousin I 
 had loved from her earliest childhood on her father's plantation 
 in Mississippi. Between her and Breckie that year and the next 
 there grew up a happy friendship, so that she is reckoned as one 
 of the factors in his life. I remember well a picnic he, she and 
 I took one day in November, just after Breck's nap, with the dogs 
 and Peter Pan. He was to have other jolly picnics later but this 
 happened to be the first since he was old enough to take an active 
 part in them. We went to the Oil and Johnson springs on a gray, 
 rocky road leading down into Leatherwood valley, and, after we 
 had unpacked the provisions carried there on Peter Pan's back 
 and tied him, we collected dry wood and built a fire on a rock. 
 Breckie helped in gathering the wood, and then lit the fire him- 
 self, his hands trembling with eagerness. We broiled a steak. 
 
BRECKIE 79 
 
 heated some ready cooked string beans and made coffee. Breck 
 had his share of the steak and beans, his cup of milk and plenty 
 of brown bread and butter. Then he fed the dogs and gave 
 the left over salt to the donkey. Afterwards he played in the 
 water from the spring as it danced over the stones and added 
 another happy day to the bounty mother nature had ever in 
 store for him. 
 
 When we first returned to Eureka Springs we found that our 
 friends Dr. and Mrs. Phillips had a baby girl, just three days 
 old, whose godmother I became and who was given my name. 
 Breck and I saw much of her and to him as well as to me she 
 brought up the remembrance of another baby we could neither 
 of us forget. When she came to spend her first afternoon with 
 us he said to his grandmother: "Beckinwidge has a 'ittle baby 
 too. God is taking care of Beckinwidge's baby." 
 
 Sometimes, in fact nearly every day, he used to talk after this 
 fashion: "Beckinwidge wants his 'ittle sister to play wif him. 
 Beckinwidge is going to get a gweat big ladder and go up behind 
 ze stars and get his 'ittle sister and bwing her to you, Boppie. 
 Beckinwidge is going to wite his 'ittle sister a wetter : Dear Sis- 
 ter, come back. Beckinwidge's 'ittle sister is wif God." 
 
 26 
 
 In the reading on Child Welfare, which I had pursued in a 
 desultory fashion since before Breck came, I chanced this par- 
 ticular autumn upon Herbert Spencer's Education, and I agree 
 with Dr. Saleeby that this classic marks an epoch in the personal 
 development of any one who first reads it. Much that I had 
 been conscious of but dimly in striving to do right by my child be- 
 came thereafter luminous as day. I turned the book over to Dick 
 who was similarly impressed. 
 
 We found after we had returned from the Brackens that Breck 
 thought Germans were dangerous birds — doubtless of the chicken 
 hawk variety. He was shooting Germans with a stick gun one 
 
8o BRECKIE 
 
 day and Juliette noticed he pointed it up into the trees. She 
 asked him what he thought Germans were and he repHed 
 promptly "des oiseaux." She explained about them and he came 
 rushing to me shouting: "Boppie, les Allemands sont des gens 
 comme nous." Whereupon I explained as simply as I could 
 how in the matter of ideals we differed as widely as if we had 
 really been of different species. 
 
 At about this time he said to Juliette, respecting the absence 
 for a few days of his father : "Juliette, son pere lui a fait de la 
 peine. II est alle sur le gwand twain sans lui." 
 
 One day in November I sang to Breckinridge. "Dormez, 
 dormez ma belle, dormez, dormez toujours." 
 
 He had just arisen from his nap and looking at me said dis- 
 consolately : "Non, il ne veut pas dormir toujours." 
 
 A negro cook at Crescent named Jennie taught him a song 
 she often sang, and the way in which he sang it was like this : 
 
 "Lord, I want more weligion, 
 Weligion makes me happy; 
 I'm weady for to go — 
 Leave dis world ob sowwow, 
 Twoubles here below." 
 
 An old verse he liked me to repeat to him in the early morn- 
 ing when he climbed into my bed, and which he sometimes re- 
 peated himself, ran as follows: 
 
 "Seven o'clock, says nurse at the door, 
 
 Kate lifts not up her drowsy head. 
 
 Eight o'clock, says nurse once more. 
 
 But Kate is still in bed. 
 
 Nine o'clock, says nurse with a frown, 
 
 Kate opens one sleepy eye. 
 
 Ten o'clock and Kate comes down, 
 
 And the sun is in the sky. 
 
 Alas and alas when the day's half done 
 
 Kate's work is just begun." 
 
 He was quick to notice any change in familiar songs and 
 rhymes. I used to sing Cadet Rouselle "Que pensez vous de 
 
BRECKIE 8i 
 
 Cadet Rouselle?" and Breckie corrected me, saying it was "Que 
 cwoyez vous de Cadet Wouselle?" 
 
 Juliette had gotten him into the habit of folding his hands at 
 night and repeating the verse she taught him of L'Ange Guardien, 
 as follows : 
 
 "Veillez sur moi quand je m'eveille, 
 
 Bon ange, puis que Dieu le dit; 
 Et chaque nuit quand je someille 
 
 Penchez — vous sur mon petit wit (lit). 
 Ayez pitie de ma faiblesse, 
 
 A mes cotes marchez sans cesse. 
 Parlez-moi le long du chemin, 
 
 Et, pendant que je vous ecoute, 
 De peur que je ne tombe en woute (route), 
 
 Bon ange, donnez-moi la main." 
 
 He recited this with the sweetest inflections, but gradually 
 dropped out of the habit of making it a part of his nightly 
 routine. 
 
 I now had Breckie again at night, as Juliette went back after 
 his bedtime to her little home in the Dairy Hollow. As winter 
 set in he began sleeping indoors again in the crib next my bed, 
 except for his daily naps which were always taken outside. Of 
 course the large windows were wide open in our bedroom at 
 night and the atmosphere breezy and cold, but Breck, if he 
 happened to wake, always stuck one fat hand out from under his 
 covers and said, in a smug voice, as he had evidently been say- 
 ing to Juliette : "Prenez sa main." When I had held it for a 
 moment he went back to sleep. 
 
 On the few rare occasions when I went out in the evening 
 after he had gone to bed my mother or Juliette, or Florence or 
 "Camille" would sit in the study next my bedroom with closed 
 doors between until I returned, in case Breck should awaken 
 and need something. He was never frightened at night, indoors 
 or out, but if he awoke he called out from sheer sociability. I 
 never left the place in the evening without telling him before 
 he went to sleep that I was going and where, and who would be 
 sitting near him should he need attention in my absence. This 
 
82 BRECKIE 
 
 satisfied him and he did not object either to my going or the 
 attentions of my substitute if such were needed. 
 
 He still remembered his terrible fall of the previous summer, 
 when climbing over the sides of his bed, and when I suggested 
 that he might be trusted not to climb over again, because it wasn't 
 right, he added: "And he would bweak his bones," which was 
 quite evidently a more deterring thought. 
 
 On those afternoons when he woke from his nap and I instead 
 of Juliette went out to his balcony to take him up, he said, almost 
 invariably: "Boppie, are you going to take care of him?" and 
 his face expanded into a pleased smile when I said that I was. 
 That his smile was equally as pleased when Juliette went out 
 I freely admit. If he woke up a little sooner than usual and she 
 or I, as the case might be, questioned him : "Who woke Breckin- 
 ridge ?" he generally replied : "It was Boweas" — "C'est Boweas" 
 — which indeed was often true. He liked the picture of the 
 Sandman by Jessie Wilcox Smith and mingled the Sandman in 
 his prattling with Boreas, the stars, the birds, and Jack Frost. 
 When he felt sleepy he rubbed his eyes and said that the Sand- 
 man was coming. 
 
 27 
 
 Clifton came down from Cornell to be with us at Christmas. 
 Breck still remembered a brief visit of his in the early summer 
 when he brought the big gun with which he won a sharpshooter's 
 medal on the rifle range. Now he had a commission in the 
 U. S. Reserves besides one in the military at Cornell and Breck's 
 interest in him was unbounded. His pride in being like a sol- 
 dier was becoming more and more transmuted with the passing 
 months into the sort of courage that had made him take willingly 
 the castor oil. We taught him that the military trappings were 
 symbolic of that sort of courage — as, at their highest, they are. 
 
 Qifton brought him a jointed wooden dog so plainly of 
 the Dachshund variety that we named him "Pilsener." This beast 
 promptly took his place among those loved playthings of Breckie's 
 which he called his "cweatures." 
 
 My sister Lees was also with us this Christmas, but Carson, 
 
BRECKIE 
 Age Two Years and Ten Months, with His Grandfather, Peter Pan and Dixie 
 
BRECKIE 83 
 
 off in Europe, had been transferred from the embassy at Petro- 
 grad to the post of naval attache for the Scandinavian coun- 
 tries and could share only in thought the baby's Christmas. 
 
 We felt that it really was the baby's Christmas, that we 
 wouldn't have had the heart to celebrate it otherwise. Breck 
 had a tree again and sang very prettily as Juliette had taught 
 him : "Voici Noel, O douce nuit." I did not keep a list of his 
 presents this year and recall chiefly those still in our posses- 
 sion: a climbing monkey and a small iron from Juliette, nine 
 pins, a Panama pile driver, a fascinating pair of riding boots 
 from my father, a rubber swimming man for his bath, a metal 
 donkey from his Swiss friend, Mrs. Jordan, which we named 
 "Cadichon" after the donkey in "L'Histoire d'un Ane," and which 
 survives to-day though with broken legs, a top, balls, books, and 
 from his cousin Foncie a wooden duck which he called Jemima 
 Puddleduck after the heroine of the book of that name. 
 
 This year Breckinridge gave a present himself for the first time. 
 I asked him if he wouldn't like to give one to his father and the 
 idea pleased him immensely. So he took five of the pennies out 
 of his bank and we went down town together to a stationer's 
 shop where toys were kept. I asked the clerk to put a row of 
 things costing only five cents each in front of him and told 
 Breck that his pennies would buy any one of those things and to 
 choose. He was fascinated with some celluloid creatures such as 
 float in baths, but the difficulty lay in taking only one when he 
 wanted all. 
 
 "Now, Breckinridge," I said, "decide which you want — the 
 swan, or the duck, or the turtle, or the fish." 
 
 One by one he picked them up gravely, saying: "De swan 
 and de duck and de turtle and de fish." 
 
 At least he chose the duck and bore it home triumphantly. The 
 secret was kept until he presented it to his delighted father, and 
 then of course he had it afterwards, loaned by father upon de- 
 mand, to play with in his bath. 
 
 Many things at one time or another shared his bath, but per- 
 haps the one of most unfailing interest was a metal log cabin 
 which had held molasses, given him by the neighbor he called 
 
84 BRECKIE 
 
 Mrs. "Rosy," and from the chimney of which he could pour the 
 water in and out. 
 
 28 
 
 With the approach of the New iear I taught Breckie certain 
 Hnes of Tennyson's beginning : 
 
 "Ring out wild bells to the wild sky." 
 
 He delighted in them and in playing that he rang the bells. 
 His favorite verse was : 
 
 "Ring in the valiant man and free, 
 
 The larger heart, the kindlier hand — 
 
 Ring out the darkness in the land. 
 Ring in the Christ that is to be." 
 
 Once he said that he didn't want darkness to be in the land. 
 When he did a generous action I told him his was the larger 
 heart, the kindlier hand, and that when he was "bwave like a 
 soldier" he became a valiant man and free. 
 
 Soon after New Year's in the space of one week we had the 
 onset of three serious illnesses. Juliette fell ill and had to have 
 an operation and after that caught the grip, which was followed 
 by a severe neuritis. I kept her at Crescent where I could take 
 care of her, and her sister Blanche came down from St. Louis 
 to help me both with her and with Breck. The night after her 
 operation Dick fell down the elevator shaft and when found was 
 covered with blood, clammy, almost pulseless, and injured in 
 many ways of which the most severe proved to be a badly 
 sprained back. Before he could turn himself in bed unassisted 
 Breck caught the grip, of which there was much in town, and 
 a little in the school, and for several days anxiety for him was 
 added to my other cares. He was only sick a few days, but 
 looked a bit peaked and pulled down for several weeks after- 
 wards. 
 
FOURTH YEAR 
 
 And Nature the old Nurse took 
 
 The child upon her knee 
 Saying, "Here is a story book 
 
 Thy Father hath written for thee.' 
 
 And he wandered away and away 
 
 With Nature the dear old Nurse, 
 Who sang him by night and by day 
 
 The rhymes of the universe. 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
So busy was I with ill people on Breck's third birthday that 
 I did not make any note of it in my journal. My recollection 
 is, and Juliette confirms it, that she, my husband, and Breck 
 himself were all too down and out for any celebration except 
 his presents and that his birthday cake, with its three candles, 
 was made by Jennie, presented and eaten on the twenty-third 
 of tlie month, which was his father's birthday. Breck's cake was 
 a simple sponge, covered with powdered sugar, but Dick had a 
 more gorgeous afifair, iced. 
 
 For some days after his illness Breck used to get hungrier 
 than his limited convalescent diet could satisfy. One day, walk- 
 ing in the woods with Blanche, he said, addressing promiscuously 
 any listening birds : 
 
 "Petits oiseaux, Beckinwidge dois vous tuer. II n'aime pas 
 vous tuer, petits oiseaux, mais sa mere ne lui donne pas assez a 
 manger." 
 
 Several weeks after Breckinridge's attack of the grip had dis- 
 appeared he was troubled with a swelling in the glands of the 
 neck — cervical adenitis — which had finally to be opened. We 
 explained to him. Dr. Phillips and I, that it would hurt, but not 
 more than a soldier could endure, and he submitted with only 
 a moment's wailing when the scalpel went in. The wound had 
 to be dressed and bandaged for several days and Breck's neck 
 was exceptionally well swathed. He wore anyway on bitter days 
 (pulled up over his knitted cap) a Russian "bashlik" which had 
 been mine in St. Petersburg. 
 
 After his third birthday Breck gradually began to speak of 
 himself in the first person, with frequent lapses for awhile into 
 
 . 87 
 
88 BRECKIE 
 
 the third. One day he heard it repeated that a woman had 
 whipped her boy, and he said to me : "You wouldn't whip Beck- 
 inwidge, would you, Boppie ?" 
 
 And when for reply I caught him in my arms and said : "No, 
 my blessing, not Boppie nor anybody else shall ever whip my 
 little boy. Boppie thinks that is cruel and wrong. She would 
 fight any one who even tried to do it." He gave me a proud 
 confident look and never alluded to the subject again. But 
 months afterwards when he turned the pages of his Volland 
 edition of Mother Goose and came to the illustration of the old 
 woman in the shoe he said : 
 
 "She's a bad, wicked woman to whip her little childwen. 
 Don't wead about her." 
 
 At about this time he began inventing nonsense sounds, and 
 words without any meaning — sometimes, however, using them as 
 if they conveyed a meaning to him. We told him he was talking 
 polyglot and he used the expression frequently to describe his 
 own jargon. Unfortunately I never made a note phonetically 
 spelling any of these sounds and do not remember them accu- 
 rately. Sometimes he used one in a sentence : "He' s toocha." 
 Sometimes he strung a lot of them together without any English 
 or French mixed in. He liked to do this, kept it up all through 
 his fourth year, and seemed proud of it. 
 
 While Juliette lay ill with us he often ran into her room and, 
 climbing upon her bed, made her the sharer, as much as possible, 
 of his thoughts and games. We three played "Le Petit Chaperon 
 Rouge," Breckie and Juliette tailing turns at being the wolf. She 
 was reading a book called "L'Enfant des Bois," when con- 
 valescent, with startling pictures in it of an ourang outang, and 
 Breckie was full of eager interest over "le gwand singe." 
 
 Towards spring we passed on our walks, near an old stable, 
 (where Breckie loved to go because of the friendly horse, the 
 cows, and sometimes the sheep we found there) a small boy who 
 called himself "W. P." He was a good-natured, agreeable small 
 boy several years Breck's senior and inspired in the latter's breast 
 a profound though fleeting admiration. At this time when 
 Breckie climbed into my bed in the early morning he was apt to 
 
BRECKIE 89 
 
 say, with an air of stating all things needful, "Dis is W. P." 
 He then asked me: "Who is dis?" I invented a name to give 
 tone to the game : "Algernon Fitzgerald." Breck pronounced 
 it with difficulty but played the game often. 
 
 Later he became fond of being a rabbit called "Bwight Eyes" 
 and I was "Bobtail." His father, when present, was "Long 
 Ear." Bright Eyes and Bobtail were usually put to it to escape 
 the clutches of the fox, the same fox who nearly got Jemima 
 Puddleduck and figured in another Peter Rabbit book as Mr. 
 Todd. We dived into our holes under the bedclothes, sneaking 
 out occasionally to find carrots and then eating them with much 
 munching and nibbling. 
 
 When Juliette was able to get up and go about she and Blanche 
 went down to her house in the Dairy Hollow and for several 
 weeks, while she was recovering her strength, I took care of 
 Breckie alone, neglecting the other things I had to do pretty 
 much. We often went down to the Dairy Hollow for the after- 
 noon and Breckie worked at "piocher" as he and Juliette called 
 his attacking of the wintry garden with a pick, or he fed the 
 chickens and ducks or piled stove wood on the porch. I re- 
 member seeing him poking into the dog kennel with a long stick 
 and a moment later here he came running to us, exclaiming: 
 "O, Juliette, Queenie a pondu un oeuf ." Sure enough there lay a 
 hen's egg on the straw of the dog's bed. Queenie was Juliette's 
 dog, very gentle, and Breckie's stanch friend. 
 
 Breckinridge laid claim to many of the live creatures at 
 Juliette's place, notably at this time to a black and white duck, 
 which unfortunately it became necessary for the Carnis to eat. 
 How Breck got wind of it we did not know, but he came run- 
 ning to Juliette in tears and saying: "Juliette, vous n'avez pas 
 manger mon canard!" He was young enough to be soon con- 
 soled with another duck, a brown one with black stripes. 
 
 He learned a little poem this spring which he loved to recite: 
 
 "Petite poule, la blanchette, 
 Tu connais la vieille Lison — 
 Notre voisine est si pauvre. 
 Pond pour elle, c'est la saison. 
 
90 BRECKIE 
 
 Viens deposer chaque matin 
 Un petit oeuf devant sa porte — 
 La bonne femme n'est plus forte 
 Pour gagner un morceau de pain. 
 Petite poule, ecoute encore — 
 Le bon Dieu te benira." 
 
 He liked me to recite the rhyme of the Jabberwocky for him, 
 and a favorite Mother Goose rhyme of this period was the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 "Leg over leg the dog went to Dover; 
 When he came to a stile, jump, he went over." 
 
 A French song which he learned this spring and to which he 
 was much attached ran like this: 
 
 "Le petit bossu s'en va au lait, 
 
 II n'y va jamais sans son petit pot. 
 
 Arrive chez la laitiere, 
 
 Tout en faisant ces petites manieres — 
 
 (Here he shook his little body from side to side as Juliette 
 had taught him.) 
 
 "Donnez-moi du lait, 
 Viola mon petit pot! 
 Non, non je n'ai jamais vu 
 D'aussi resolu que le petit bossu. 
 Non, non je n'ai jamais vu 
 D'aussi resolu que le petit bossu. 
 
 "Le petit bossu s'en va au pain, 
 
 II n'y va jamais sans son panier. 
 
 Arrive chez la boulangere, 
 
 Tout en faisant ses petites manieres — 
 
 *Donnez-moi du pain, voila mon panier,' etc. 
 
 "Le petit bossu sans va promener, 
 
 II n'y va jamais sans ses papiers. 
 
 Arrive chez la frontiere. 
 
 Tout en faisant ses petites manieres — 
 
 'Laissez-moi passer, voila mes papiers,' etc." 
 
BRECKIE 91 
 
 The first of every month that winter and spring we took up 
 a collection in the school for the Belgian Babies' relief fund. 
 We added to it whatever funds the townspeople cared to con- 
 tribute too and did what we could to stimulate such contributions 
 by placards, notices in the papers, and an occasional public talk. 
 The sum was always a small one (for people had not learned to 
 give as they are doing now), made up mostly of nickels, dimes, 
 and quarters — but it afforded an outlet for those who either could 
 not, or felt that they could not, give much at any one time. 
 Liliane gave a little every month and I asked Breckie if he did 
 not want to contribute five of his pennies. Naturally enough it 
 pleased him and of course meant no sacrifice whatever — not like 
 the benefactions of "Mrs. Pardigle's Young Family" in Bleak 
 House, over whom I laugh and cry to this day. On the contrary, 
 next to putting the pennies in his bank Breck's greatest pleasure 
 in saving was to take them out. But I think that he did grasp in 
 a young way the thought of other little children like himself 
 without cribs, warm milk, mittens and sweaters and things with 
 which to play. He grasped too in a dim fashion the responsi- 
 bility devolving upon us to give up a measure of our sheltered 
 lives to them. He had a generous heart and was ever ready to 
 give or share whatever he possessed with any one — if only they 
 said please and didn't "gwab." He was a stickler even then 
 as to his rights and if he found one of us making use of his pos- 
 sessions without his permission he would repeat the same expres- 
 sion we made use of in rebuking him : "You didn't ask." But 
 sometimes he heaped coals of fire by saying with sweetness : 
 "You can have my scissors (or my tway, or my cup) — you can." 
 I never knew him, when requested, to refuse an immediate loan of 
 anything he had and he always looked pleased and often a bit 
 proud in granting the request. 
 
 Breckinridge's savings account began soon after he was born 
 with a five dollar gold piece from his Aunt Lees. We gave him 
 the pennies that came our way and the ten per cent profits from 
 the long distance telephone booth in the institution. That was his 
 
92 BRECKIE 
 
 income, which was supplemented by an occasional gift from 
 grandfather or grandmother. He was not allowed to receive 
 money from any one outside the immediate family. He had an 
 account at the bank and whenever his savings totaled a dollar he 
 went himself with Juliette or me to the bank, carrying his own 
 deposit book, and handed both over to the cashier, saying: "Mr. 
 McCwowy, here are my pennies." 
 
 He had nearly fifty dollars saved at the time of the first 
 Liberty Loan bond sale and bought his own Liberty bond. His 
 grandmother presented him with another and, at the second sale, 
 his father gave him two more. He had no conception of the 
 meaning of any of this, but he did share in the patriotism of us 
 all. Little child though he was I protest that he did understand 
 that. We talked often to him of his country and told him that, 
 next to God, his country had the first claim on him — a claim 
 immeasurably greater than his father's and mine. Strangers were 
 surprised sometimes when they asked him : "To whom do you 
 belong?" to hear his quick response: "To God and my coun- 
 twy." 
 
 We told him that he would have to decide for himself when 
 he grew older what he wanted to do for a livelihood, and he often 
 said that he would be a soldier. This was natural enough con- 
 sidering the times we lived in. But I explained to him that being 
 a soldier wasn't necessarily, for every man, a calling in itself, 
 that he could be something else for every day and still be a sol- 
 dier too — so that if his country needed him he could defend 
 her. To help him to grasp the idea of what his country was, to 
 make the idea tangible, I told him that the trees and ground 
 and rocks all about him were a part of his dear land. These he 
 knew and loved already, and, though of course he could not love 
 his country as he loved us, I believe nevertheless that he wished 
 to serve her, and that he knew he was first of all her son. 
 
 As he grew further into his fourth year I sometimes led the 
 conversation, when we were alone together, to the subject of 
 other duties he owed the nation besides those of defense. Ever 
 since I became a trained nurse the question of neglected chil- 
 dren had troubled my heart, and after motlierhood came to me 
 
BRECKIE 93 
 
 the sight of undernourished or misunderstood children was of- 
 tentimes intolerable. I did what I could, of course, in my own 
 environment, but the thought was ever present with me that in 
 rearing Breckinridge I was doing far more than my puny services 
 could ever accomplish had I devoted them to nothing but Child 
 Welfare. I felt that he, with his larger intellect and heroic cast 
 of mind, could get at the causes of things, when he grew up, 
 and rectify them. Even his sociability and charm of manner 
 would help, so I thought, in bringing facts before others and 
 securing co-operation. Where I could only have helped a little 
 here and there he, in his manhood a leader of men, would strike 
 at the roots of poverty, ignorance, and vice and rescue child- 
 hood — sacrificed from countless ages to these three evil gods. 
 
 I began to talk to him about it a little. I sometimes said: 
 "Breckinridge, there are little children without beds to sleep 
 on, without milk to drink, without trees to play under." At 
 once he replied: "I will buy dem beds" — or else: "Boppie, 
 buy dem beds." Then I explained that we hadn't but a very 
 little money for that — and I often said: "But when you are 
 a man, Breckinridge, you will learn how to help the little chil- 
 dren and you won't let them be hungry and cold." 
 
 The students at Crescent had a big Christmas tree every year 
 for nearly a hundred poor children in the town and adjacent 
 country and to this Breck gave some of his toys. But I did not 
 tell him the children were poor. I was anxious to avoid even 
 a suggestion of condescension — to let him grasp as early as his 
 mind could the fact that they were not so responsible for their 
 circumstances as were we who permitted such distresses, and 
 that the things they lacked should come to them as a right and 
 not as a charity. He gave to his guests, his equals. He was too 
 young for me to suggest more than that. 
 
 4 
 
 In March there occurred an incident I made use of later in an 
 article on "The Child's Point of View." Breckinridge came to 
 me one day with my hot water bottle in which he had stuck a 
 pin, saying : "See, I can get de water out wifout taking out de 
 
94 BRECKIE 
 
 stopper." I did not, of course, blame him for this discovery — 
 which was an achievement from his point of view — but I knew 
 that the logical moment had arrived for explaining to him the 
 nature, use, and limitations of hot water bottles, and so I showed 
 him how he had spoiled the bottle, which couldn't be used any 
 more because it would leak and wet his bed. I further reminded 
 him that the only other one we had was metal and he didn't like 
 it, but that now he would have to use it since there was no other. 
 He understood perfectly and that night, when a cold March wind 
 whistled over his bed and I tucked in the metal bottle, he accepted 
 it without a protest, remarking only upon how hard he found it. 
 Even at three his reason was so well developed that if he under- 
 stood a thing, apprehending it as logical, that was nearly always 
 enough. 
 
 Of course I do not mean that he did not occasionally fret or 
 cry in that disorganized way of the very young. But there was 
 always a physiological cause such as fatigue, sleepiness, a de- 
 layed dinner, a fall, not getting outdoors promptly — and he 
 fretted rarely because we protected his immaturity, and rarely in- 
 deed was there any delay or break in the wholesome routine of 
 his daily life. When he did cry unreasonably we did not attempt 
 explanations, only sought to remedy the cause of his loss of 
 self-control. We had learned that an occasional loss of control 
 is to be expected, is normal with even the most cherished little 
 children, and we were tender with him. If sometimes we failed 
 in our endeavor and were impatient we begged his pardon — ^but 
 ready as we were to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong we 
 couldn't keep pace with him, for a sweeter or more generous 
 spirit was never born and his "excuse me — I'm sowy" came 
 unsought when he knew he had offended or trampled on the 
 rights of others. He never bore a grudge five minutes against 
 any one — and indeed had no occasion to, for none wittingly in- 
 fringed upon his rights or coerced his will. 
 
 5 
 When Juliette had regained her norma, strength she resumed 
 the care of her nursling and at about that time moved to an- 
 
BRECKIE 95 
 
 other cottage across the road from her old one in Dairy Hollow. 
 This second home of hers entered into the very fibers of Breckin- 
 ridge's life, for he spent nearly every afternoon there and a 
 morning now and then. It is a picturesque little house, set in a 
 garden behind flowering shrubs and separated from the road by 
 a stone wall and picket fence. At the back was a good vege- 
 table garden and space to one side for the pigs, chickens, Bel- 
 gian hares, and bees which formed part of the establishment. 
 There was also a field of corn, and, just outside the property, 
 a fragrant pine grove. A wooded mountain rose straight up 
 at the back. 
 
 Breck had his own garden plot which he worked and planted 
 himself and from which he gathered a few sickly beans and a 
 handful of potatoes. Two of the latter were large enough to be 
 baked and eaten for his dinner. His pride and delight when he 
 brought them back to me in the early autumn fairly irradiated 
 his dirty face. He nearly always came in with dirty face and 
 hands and, though he had many suits and usually put clean 
 ones on twice a day (on arising in the morning and again after 
 his bath and nap), he never looked clean very long. He was not 
 bothered about his clothes. They were all washable, chosen 
 for their comfort primarily, and in summer consisted of only 
 underwaist and drawers and a low neck, short-sleeved romper, 
 with sandals and socks — which he took off whenever he felt like 
 it. So far from interrupting his happy play with reminders of 
 soiling or tearing his clothes, I should have been disappointed 
 had he stayed clean long at a time, because I should have been 
 fearful that he was not as spontaneously active as he might 
 have been. 
 
 On the way down to Dairy Hollow by the shortest cut we 
 passed through an abandoned park called Auditorium Park. The 
 Auditorium had been torn down and the grounds given over to 
 cows, except for one bit where stood the car barn, in which 
 lodged the funny little street cars that made the tour from the 
 station to the top of the mountain nearly every hour in winter 
 (except on slippery days) and in summer at twenty-minute inter- 
 vals. In this park was the Dairy spring, arranged to come out 
 
96 BRECKIE 
 
 of a sort of pump, and Breckie rarely passed it without pump- 
 ing the handle and ducking his rosy face under the spout for a 
 drink. He had a special fondness for the springs, those per- 
 petually flowing like the Harding, turned on by a faucet like the 
 Grotto, or worked by a pump as is the Dairy, and he loved to stop 
 and drink whenever he passed one. 
 
 In addition to the Dairy spring the Auditorium Park held other 
 attractions, notably several long ropes terminating in loops or 
 knots and swung from the limbs of tall oaks. Breck delighted 
 in gripping the knotted end of one of these ropes, taking a run- 
 ning start and swinging off into space above where the ground 
 sloped off. He had a firm grip and the adventure of the thing 
 appealed to him mightily. 
 
 I had constructed for him in the grounds of Crescent College 
 near his sand pile a slide, trapeze, swing, see-saw, and jumping 
 board. All this apparatus was designed and made by the house- 
 man on the place, Joe Morris, himself a father and child lover. 
 The slide gave the most pleasure. Breckie sometimes spent 
 twenty minutes or more at a time in climbing up the ladder at 
 the back of it and then joyously sliding down the polished sur- 
 face in front. This apparatus attracted other little children in 
 the neighborhood older than Breckie but friendly with him, and 
 especially Juliette and Mary Gertrude Franche. In the summer 
 when the Crescent was again turned over to a manager and 
 became a hotel, the children on the place reveled in all these 
 appliances. 
 
 6 
 
 We did not make an end of sickness that year until spring. 
 A dear uncle of mine came on a visit and fell ill with a neuritis 
 which kepi; him in bed for several weeks. Breck enjoyed running 
 into his room once or twice a day or stopping by his bedside for 
 the humorous, playful talk with which this great-uncle diverted 
 him. His friend Camille was also ill and when she got con- 
 valescent I moved her to my apartments, where Breckie climbed 
 up on her bed with his toys whenever he was in the house. 
 After she had gone home for a few weeks' rest she sent him at 
 
BRECKIE 97 
 
 Easter a box of rabbits and chickens with one long-tailed roos- 
 ter. He played with these happily for a few days and then 
 I gathered them up and put them away. Several weeks later he 
 suddenly asked for them. 
 
 "Dose fings I had, you know, what Camille sent me — fings wid 
 a wooster . . ." he said. After he had played with them again 
 they were once more set aside and this time he forgot them and 
 it was I who brought them out one day when other more usual 
 playthings had palled. Clothespins of two varieties, the more 
 unusual kind discovered and presented by his great-uncle, were 
 satisfying toys with him this spring. 
 
 When the dandelion season came in March Breckie, who liked 
 greens of all kinds, went out every day with Juliette digging 
 them. He brought in the leaves and stems for salads for us, 
 presenting them proudly with : "Dere, Boppie." Some were 
 cooked for his dinner. It pleased him to eat things in the pro- 
 viding of which he had had a part. Later in the year he 
 frequently supplied his own vegetables, gathering beans or okra 
 or greens himself. Sometimes he worked diligently for half an 
 hour and then again his interest died out before the task was 
 done and he began playing at something else. When the dande- 
 lions bloomed he brought me the blossoms, and when many of 
 them were just white puff balls in the grass I drew his attention 
 to the plant — its leaves such as he had eaten, its yellow flowers he 
 had picked, and the flyaway seeds he blew from his hand — 
 "souffler la lampe," Juliette said they called it in Switzerland. I 
 explained as best I could its life cycle and he listened atten- 
 tively. 
 
 He took the liveliest interest in Juliette's setting hens and great 
 was his delight when she lifted one and let him see the newly 
 hatched chicks. She even put one egg against his ear and let him 
 hear the pecking of the little creature about to break its way 
 through. This intimate knowledge of the hatching of little 
 chicks bred a tenderness in him quite different from the destruc- 
 
98 BRECKIE 
 
 tive tendencies natural to him until he understood. Only the 
 summer before, about the time Juliette first took charge of him, 
 when he was two and a half years old, he had rushed at one of 
 her newly hatched Brahmas and stamped the life out of it. Then 
 when Juliette sat him down at a distance and told him he had 
 killed the chick his only reply was : "Let him kill anudder one." 
 Upon his return to the house he ran to me with an account 
 of the affair — but after I had talked to him earnestly about 
 the pain little chickens could suffer and how wrong it was wan- 
 tonly to destroy life he was "so'y" and never tried to harm 
 another little young creature. 
 
 A few hundred yards beyond the Crescent grounds, to the 
 right, a forest began, but just before one reached it stood the 
 house of those good neighbors and friends Breck called "Mr. 
 and Mrs, Rosy." Their stable had a horse for a weather vane, 
 and piles of wood lay against their fence, which nobody minded 
 his using to make pig pens, criss cross, if we piled it back again 
 carefully. In the woodland further on there was, this spring, 
 a thrush's nest low enough for him to see when we tip-toed 
 near it. In dark spots under the trees we found toadstools 
 and I explained to him how poisonous they were. Hereafter 
 he was generally the first to call attention to those we met and 
 uproot them with a stick. 
 
 8 
 
 From Saturday, April twenty-eighth, through May fifth of 
 nineteen seventeen we put on a big celebration of Child Welfare 
 Week in the town. We had motion picture films from Wash- 
 ington, magic lantern slides from New York, exhibits of various 
 kinds from various places, baby improvement contests, a model 
 baby bath, several plays, talks by specialists, lullabys played on 
 the organ or sung. Mother Goose rhymes in costume and other 
 lighter pieces — all, except the motion picture films, in the Cres- 
 cent chapel. We also had special services in the churches and 
 the Saturday before began with a parade under the direction of 
 the Boy Scouts and a committee of Crescent students. It was 
 
BRECKIE 99 
 
 really a pretty parade. All the school children in town took 
 part in costumes representing the childhood of many nations, 
 and the Crescent students went as babies and nursemaids, negro 
 mammies and anything else their fancies hit upon. Other people 
 took part, many banners with striking mottos were flaunted, and 
 the whole thing was headed by Uncle Sam and Columbia in an 
 automobile carrying a baby — Dr. Phillips' lovely little daughter, 
 my godchild. 
 
 Breckinridge rode in this parade on Peter Pan attended by 
 Juliette and me, and I felt in looking at his splendid body and 
 brilliant color, his noble head and happy face, as he rode by on 
 his donkey that nothing I could ever teach or write or talk on 
 Child Welfare would ever make an impression equal to the ap- 
 pearance of my little son. I thought: "I am busy with small 
 beginnings locally. You will carry on large conclusions nation- 
 ally; and even now the best of all I do is through you." 
 
 An incident happened at this parade which both touched and 
 amused my mother and me. Breck had never forgotten Mammy. 
 A picture of Taylor's Southern Girl and Her Mammy hung over 
 his indoor crib and he often said it was Boppie with Mammy. 
 She had sent us this spring a big flour sack full of greens from 
 her own garden and no one among us enjoyed them more than 
 Breck. In the parade his eyes fell upon a Crescent student 
 blackened with charcoal, stuffed out with pillows, and dressed 
 like an old-fashioned colored nurse. He went up to her at once 
 and said with his charming smile : "Fank you Mammy for dose 
 gweens." 
 
 Breckie surprised his father one day this spring by announc- 
 ing at the breakfast table, when he heard his elders discussing 
 honey : "I'm going to have some weal countwy honey." He had 
 walked with me out to a farm house to look for it, but it was 
 not until late summer that we located honey at a place in town 
 where a woman kept a few bee hives. Breckie did enjoy going 
 after it with Juliette and bringing it home in the comb. He had 
 plum and blueberry, grape and apple jellies also, put up as the 
 fruits came in season by Mrs. Jordan and Juliette for his winter 
 rations. His dessert at dinner was often a little country honey 
 
loo BRECKIE 
 
 or home made jelly on his brown bread. He knew very well the 
 source of each product, saying that the bees made the honey and 
 Juliette the jellies out of fruits and sugar. 
 
 Juliette, Liliane, a neighbor of hers, Breck and I picked lots 
 of blueberries when the season came on. He liked to know that 
 those he picked were going into his jellies and he was entirely 
 trustworthy about not eating them raw. But sometimes he came 
 to one or another of us with several berries clutched in his hot 
 little palm — offering them. Incidentally we amassed ticks in the 
 woods as well as berries and Breckie became fairly expert at 
 locating those on his own person. 
 
 In this his fourth year he noticed that his diet differed in 
 many ways from ours, but my explanations as to certain things 
 not being good for him sufficed. He had never known any 
 other way but the quiet serving of his food at regular hours 
 and. so ate it without questioning and with a large appetite. One 
 day when the strawberries were coming in, as he, Juliette and 
 I were walking together up the mountain road the other side of 
 Dairy Hollow, he asked us: "Est ce que les fwaises (f raises) 
 sont bon pour moi?" That was always his way of putting an 
 inquiry about foods he heard discussed but had never tasted : "Is 
 dat good for me ?" 
 
 Although of course his diet excluded many things unsuited to 
 his years it also included the special dishes that were "good for 
 little boys" and he knew that we went to any lengths to secure 
 these for him. Did not the hens he personally knew lay his 
 morning egg in even the coldest weather when eggs were so 
 scarce that grown people went without? Did not Mr. Ripply's 
 cows give him a quart bottle of milk every day ? Even his bread, 
 made from specially ground flour, was specially baked for him 
 because the baker's bread and the hot table breads were "not 
 good enough" for him. He helped too in gathering and stringing 
 the tenderest of the beans — for such only could make part of his 
 dinner. Many were the things to eat "good" for him and he 
 took a normal interest in each addition to his dietary. 
 
 His pleasure over the ripe peaches he was allowed this sum- 
 mer and the slices of uncooked apple in the autumn — the deli- 
 
BRECKIE loi 
 
 cious peaches and apples of our Ozark mountains — were only 
 equaled by that with which he greeted crisp bacon the first time 
 we gave it to him. Juliette occasionally made him little flat tea 
 cakes she called "bricelets" — such as I had never seen before 
 and made in a special iron Mrs. Jordan had brought from Swit- 
 zerland. Breckinridge loved them and when he brought back 
 a sack full from the Dairy Hollow to put in the glass jar in th^ 
 Milk room he sometimes came to me to tell me Juliette had made 
 them for him, adding : "Wasn't dat kind of her ?" 
 
 When the warm weather had definitely settled in and Breckie 
 was sleeping outside all night again he got into the trying habit 
 of climbing out of bed as soon as he was left alone and of 
 making raids on my various possessions, carrying the booty 
 back to bed with him to examine at his leisure. Sometimes I 
 came up from supper to discover his crib littered with the contents 
 of my portfolio or work basket and once, in addition to the usual 
 loot, I found two American flags, a dish of prunes, and a raised 
 umbrella. I remonstrated, reasoned, explained — but the exuber- 
 ance of his spirits was at that stage too strong for reasoning. 
 He had learned to let down the sliding side of his outdoor crib, 
 so I tried putting him back in the indoor one. But here the sides 
 were lower and he climbed over, or else climbed from his crib 
 to the top of my chest of drawers — taking everything he found 
 there. Back into the outdoor crib I put him, tying up the sliding 
 side with a rope. But he was a far more agile youngster now 
 than he had been the year before at the time of that disastrous 
 fall, and scaled the high sides like a monkey — showing me with 
 pride how he got up and over and slid down. 
 
 Not for worlds would I have punished the dauntless spirit 
 which was, I felt, going to lead him to lofty heights some day. 
 But I racked my brains for some measure of restraint that 
 would keep him safe in bed without destroying his initiative. 
 I tried tying one wrist with a large, soft handkerchief and the 
 other end of the handkerchief to the bars of the bed — slipping 
 
102 BRECKIE 
 
 out on the balcony as soon as he fell asleep to untie it. But this 
 fretted him and prevented his turning about in bed. Finally one 
 night just after supper he came darting out onto the east 
 veranda clad only in a little low-neck shirt, having removed 
 his night drawers before leaving his own apartments. The hall 
 leading into these apartments was shut off by a fence and gate, 
 made by Clifton on one of his visits, which he could not ordinar- 
 ily open — but he had gotten through by taking his little wicker 
 chair to the gate and climbing up on it. This last escapade 
 stimulated my brain and I sought out Joe Morris who co- 
 operated with me perfectly. He made a top for Breckie's tall 
 outdoor crib of chicken wire, set in a wooden frame, and fastened 
 it securely to the side of the crib next the stone wall of the 
 house. When the crib was unoccupied and the sliding outer 
 side down, this top lay thrown back against the stone wall, — 
 but when Breck had gone to bed and the side was up the 
 chicken wire came down like a roof across the top of the crib 
 and I fastened it in front with a rope fastener. 
 
 This device was open, airy, easy, cheap, and absolutely effec- 
 tive. After that when Breckie was put to bed he and the Teddy 
 Bear, who always slept with him, had the range of a generous- 
 sized crib and nothing more. Nobody blamed him, nobody was 
 displeased — but he learned that the restraint was to stay there 
 until he could be trusted to go to bed without it, and that it 
 would be a proud day for his mother when he could be so 
 honored. As a matter of fact this particular phase of his passed 
 in a few weeks and I was glad I had restrained its danger- 
 ous aspects without crushing the gallant spirit which because 
 of its untrained judgment, and only because of that, had failed 
 in reliability. By the end of the summer the chicken wire top 
 was no longer in use and it was never needed again. After that, 
 though less than four years old by several months, Breck could 
 be trusted to stay in his bed whenever put there and his daring 
 and initiative had both emerged from that irresponsible period 
 unimpaired. 
 
 He liked immensely to receive our congratulations whenever he 
 had made a moral triumph — like that of taking the castor oil in 
 
BRECKIE 103 
 
 his third year. All through his fourth year the occasions for our 
 so honoring him were legion and when he knew he had con- 
 quered himself, as in the crib episode, he was apt to say: "Con- 
 gwatulation me, Boppie. I didn't get out of bed." And, to 
 Juliette : "Vous pouvez me feliciter." 
 
 10 
 
 One day early in June, in that delightful mid-school and hotel 
 season of our domesticity, Breckie went fishing. I heard Dick 
 and my father with others planning the trip to the reservoir and 
 suggested to Breck that we go out there too, a little later, and 
 fish with them. It was a matter of two miles or more out of 
 town and we took Peter Pan, Breckinridge riding him some- 
 times and leading him sometimes but oftenest running on ahead 
 or lagging behind as he liked to do — while I led the donkey. 
 We hitched him just below the big dam and climbed up through 
 the bushes, brambles and weeds to the picturesque body of 
 water which lay in the hollow of the mountains with the sun- 
 light dancing over it. 
 
 When we had passed the dam we followed the shore by a 
 narrow path which took us too high above and seemed to lead 
 ofif into the hills. While Breck and I were discussing the situa- 
 tion — his interest and suggestions quite as fertile as mine — we 
 happened to look down and there sat my father by a vast rock, 
 fishing placidly while Patch and Dixie ran excitedly about. 
 Breck and I called to them. Both dogs at once darted towards 
 us, crossing an inlet of the reservoir on a submerged stone em- 
 placement, while my father shouted directions to us. We were 
 to descend the hill to the very water's edge and follow a trail 
 into the woods which came out by his rock. Breckie under- 
 stood him as well as I and though descending the hillside through 
 its tangle of brambles and weeds meant many lacerations on 
 the face, hands, and knees of a person his size he plunged 
 through without objection. He rarely objected to anything when 
 he knew the reason for it. His eager activity brought him many 
 falls and in summer his little unprotected knees were often 
 
I04 BRECKIE 
 
 scratched and bruised. He always came with his injuries to be 
 healed, first: "Kiss it, kiss it." . . . and then suitable applica- 
 tions and a sterile dressing. 
 
 We got down to the water's edge on this occasion without 
 any large mishap and, following the trail into a bit of woods, 
 came out upon the great rock beside which my father sat alone 
 — for the others had wandered further on. Patchie and Dixie 
 greeted us ecstatically. They were springing about my father 
 begging for bits of the raw meat he had as bait. For Breckie 
 there followed a thrilling hour. His grandfather gave him a rod, 
 reel and all, and with it his first lesson in casting. Breck set 
 himself to the business with the extreme gravity he bestowed 
 upon all his play-life and of course with no realization of receiv- 
 ing his instruction from one of the most experienced fishermen 
 in the land. He only knew that "Bobo" was, as always, very 
 good to him and I deferred telling him of Bobo's catches, rang- 
 ing from the Nipegon to the Gulf in our country, and as far as 
 the Arctic circle in Finland in the old world. 
 
 Unfortunately Breck did not catch a fish — but even then it was 
 a magic day. In many ways his life ran in an unbroken fairy- 
 land — happy outdoor things to do succeeding each other kaleido- 
 scopically without his knowing in one moment but that the 
 next would reveal yet another wonder more delightfully, more 
 peculiarly suited to a little boy's desires than the last. There 
 came distressing accidents sometimes. One does not grow 
 friends with nature without having to learn many hard things. 
 Brambles tear when little hands and knees push through them, 
 ticks stick all over a fellow and itch after you pull them out, the 
 ground hurts when you tumble and fall against it, and when you 
 light a camp fire the match will burn if you don't let go of it 
 quick. Wasps and bees sting and a Belgian hare at Juliette's bit 
 an inquisitive finger nearly to the bone. But for all that life 
 was a wonder tale and its mischances but a part of its dear 
 realities. 
 
 Juliette and I especially, his father, grandparents and Camille 
 occasionally, were apt in devising new glories for the common 
 day. When the hot afternoons were succeeding one another 
 
BRECKIE 105 
 
 he took off his rompers in the Dairy Hollow and played about 
 in his little drawers and underwaist only. A favorite play was 
 with a dishpan of water Juliette put on the grass, a hole in the 
 ground and a kitchen spoon. He poured water into the ground 
 and stirred up the mud. Then he filled and refilled his watering 
 pot, sprinkling all around him. Just before his bedtime, at 
 Crescent, when he was going to be undressed anyway, I gave 
 him the hose to play with and let him water the flowers and 
 grass as he had seen "Uncle Bill" do. Nobody minded his getting 
 wet or muddy. Was not the body more than raiment? His un- 
 hampered little body throve in contact with the kind earth. On 
 June twelfth at three years and five months old his weight was 
 thirty-four and three-quarter pounds and his height thirty-eight 
 and three-quarter inches. 
 
 His observance and remembrance of things seemed to me 
 exceptional. One day he and I were about to leave Juliette 
 down in the Dairy Hollow and climb back to the Crescent alone 
 and we were in a hurry. Juliette asked me if I had ever taken 
 the path which began at the edge of a field back of her neighbors 
 the Hancocks (whom she and Breckie called 'Ancocks). I had 
 not, but Juliette said: "Breckinridge le connait. II pent vous le 
 montrer." Breckinridge looked up, interested. "Oui, Boppie," 
 he said, "je le peux." 
 
 So we started off, he leading. He passed down the Hollow, 
 turned to the right, climbed the sloping field back of the " 'An- 
 cocks," and turned immediately into a narrow path tucked away 
 in among the trees. On this path, crunchy with its old oak leaves, 
 he led and I followed until it had wound over a ravine, which 
 it circled, above where a spring dripped down into a barrel much 
 frequented by the Dairy Hollow horses and cows. Beyond this 
 the path came out into the open road again. 
 
 It was either that day or another at about the same time, for 
 I made note of it in my journal in July, that Breckie and I 
 were passing the garden back of the little house my father called 
 his "shack" and I remarked casually that the beans looked wilted. 
 
 Quite as casually he answered: "Potatoes, not beans " and 
 
 he was right. 
 
io6 BRECKIE 
 
 He liked, as of course all children do, to help other people 
 at their work, and when Juliette was busy putting up fruits and 
 vegetables on her half holidays she often got things ready in the 
 morning with his assistance. He handed her the peaches and 
 tomatoes while she peeled them, helped in stringing and wash- 
 ing the beans and in shelling the black-eyed peas. In gathering 
 cow peas and string beans he was as particular as a grown 
 person. 
 
 When Juliette rinsed out any of his things he liked to wash 
 too, using a child's board and standing on a bench we had made 
 for him which put him on the proper level at the lavatory in my 
 bathroom for performing his ablutions. He had a little shoe 
 bag which hung on the closet door just below mine and in 
 which he put away his own slippers, sandals, overshoes and 
 shoes. A pair of felt bedroom slippers, red and with pussy cats 
 around the cuffs at the top, are sticking over the edge of one 
 of the compartments of this bag now. When he outgrew his 
 clothes we usually gave them to Juliette's nephew, Edouard, 
 who had once been to her on a visit and was a year younger than 
 Breck. But Juliette and I made a point of asking Breck if he 
 would give them and smiling at each other over his ready : "Yes, 
 sir." He usually said sir to men and women both. 
 
 II 
 
 He was fond this summer and the next autumn of borrowing 
 one of my typewriter brushes and taking it with a cup of water 
 out to his sleeping porch or to a window sill and "painting" 
 with it by dabbing the water over things with his brush. I 
 showed him what he could paint and what not — explaining why 
 — and he could generally be counted on not to damage any- 
 thing. 
 
 One of his traits was an instant owning up to anything wrong 
 he had done. If I said: "Breckie, did you paint father's desk?" 
 He replied at once : "Yes, Boppie. Please excuse me." Or 
 if I saw the door to the refrigerator in the Milk room left open 
 and asked him if he had done it he said : "Yes, sir, I was eating 
 
BRECKIE IN THE DAIRY HOLLOW 
 Age Three and a Half Years 
 
BRECKIE 107 
 
 pwunes." He knew of course that even prunes were not allowed 
 except at the regular meal hours — but it never entered his head 
 on those rare occasions when he raided the provisions to attempt 
 concealment or denial. He was never punished for it. He knew 
 no dealings with his people that were not loving and kind and 
 it was not often he grieved them by transgressing the natural 
 laws of health and conduct they interpreted to him. When he 
 did we showed our distress and sometimes our displeasure, and 
 were sorry we could not congratulate him. Then we patiently 
 explained again the reasons for things. Gradually, slowly, but 
 truly, he became more responsible, more trustworthy, more de- 
 sirous of our approbation — and through all this process his in- 
 tegrity gleamed like a jewel untarnished. No pitiful need of self- 
 defense had ever taught him evasions, no dread of punishment 
 bred in him lies. He never obeyed me from fear of me, but 
 often, when he could not understand the reason, he obeyed from 
 love. Frequently he failed in obedience, but less frequently with 
 every passing month. His obvious imperfections were plainly 
 the results of his immaturity and in growing older he out- 
 distanced them more and more. His virtues were the rather 
 splendid ones of honor, courage, reasonableness, sweet temper, 
 courtesy — such virtues as respond readily in a child's character 
 to patient and honest dealings. 
 
 Breckie's courtesy was one of his marked features — I think 
 because we were very polite to him. We did not take things from 
 him without a thank you or ask for them without a please. 
 When Juliette arrived in the morning and he ran into her arms 
 she said : "Comment allez vous, cheri ?" And he replied : "Twes 
 bien, merci, et vous meme ?" If he thanked us and we forgot to 
 reply "You're welcome" he remarked reproachfully : "You didn't 
 say you're welcome." He did not forget to say it when we 
 thanked him. 
 
 We noticed this courtesy in its especial contrast to the gen- 
 erality of little children coming to the Crescent Hotel in the 
 summer. These children in the main lacked the amenities of 
 life, even when naturally amiable and thoughtful, as many were — 
 as all had it in them to be. Breck had just begun to enjoy com- 
 
io8 BRECKIE 
 
 panionship in his fourth summer and so we let him play with 
 the other children in the grounds when he seemed to wish it. 
 I overheard him one day talking over his blocks with a six 
 year old boy who had just announced that he would invite him to 
 his block house, or some such civility, and I caught the sweet 
 tones of Breckie's reply. "Dat would be vewy kind of you." 
 
 One little girl in particular of about Breck's age who was 
 left chiefly to the care of a young negro nurse, attracted me 
 because her clothes were exquisitely embroidered and her mind, 
 as well as I could gather, as undeveloped as a little animal's. 
 She was a pretty child with a face full of potential intelligence, 
 but her manners were bad, her understanding meager, and her 
 only idea of play seemed to be to establish a corner on her own 
 possessions. We met her in the sandpile where Breck shared 
 generously his trowel, kitchen spoon, and various vessels he 
 carried out. The little girl had become the owner of a gay bucket 
 and shovel, a sifter and tin shell dishes, upon which she kept 
 exclusive control. Breckie continued sharing his belongings and 
 I could see that he was puzzled over never being permitted to 
 play with the shovel and sifter. Juliette and I watched but said 
 nothing. 
 
 One day when Breckie came in off the balcony from his nap he 
 found in a window .seat a gay bucket, shovel, sifter, and shell 
 dishes. His eyes took the wide open dreamy look I often noticed 
 in them when confronted suddenly with a wondrous vision. He 
 said nothing. Then he drew nearer the vision, still without 
 speaking. Then he reached out his hand and took the handle of 
 the shovel. It was real and he uttered this half doubting, half 
 ecstatic exclamation : "Juliette, Juliette, c'est a moi cette pelle ?" 
 
 12 
 
 A game the older children played in the long twilight after sup- 
 per was Drop the Handkerchief without the kissing features, and 
 several youngsters from the neighborhood joined in. Breck was 
 considerably younger than the others but they were very good 
 about Ictliiig Iiiiii join in, nnd no other word than profound will 
 
BRECKIE 109 
 
 describe his interest. I kept him up until seven thirty because 
 the light and noise prevented his getting to sleep on the balcony 
 any earlier. Usually it was his dear friend Camille who finished 
 supper first and got in the grounds to relieve Juliette for the 
 evening. When I followed I found her with him in happiest com- 
 panionship. Breckie was sliding or swinging or climbing as a 
 rule. He was not partial to the seesaw after one hard fall, but 
 when he did seesaw he generally sang softly : 
 
 "Seesaw, Margewy Daw, 
 Johnny shall have a new master. 
 He cannot earn but a penny a day 
 Because he can't work any faster." 
 
 Or: 
 
 "Seesaw, Jack in de hedge, 
 
 Dis is de way to London Bwidge." 
 
 Sometimes he slid down a grassy bank instead of the made slide. 
 He and the little Tranches were almost the only children who 
 could play freely in the evening for the rest were generally 
 so perishably dressed and so mindful of their clothes that they 
 could not slide or climb after supper. But they were very good 
 about letting Breck join in with such favorite old games as 
 Pussy Wants a Corner played against the oaks, and Drop the 
 Handkerchief, which I organized. He really impeded things 
 quite a bit, never understanding perfectly the rules of the game — 
 which he played with his accustomed gravity. He loved to join in 
 singing : 
 
 "A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket — 
 
 I sent a message to my love and on the way I dropped it." 
 
 Nothing could have been greater than his joy over having the 
 handkerchief dropped behind him, unless it was the deep serious- 
 ness with which he walked around outside the circle when it 
 was his turn to drop it and finally laid it on the ground behind 
 one of his companions. 
 
 He brought me presents when he came back from his walks in 
 the woods or up from the Dairy Hollow — or else he brought 
 
no BRECKIE 
 
 back old rusty wheels, nails, bits of iron junk, horseshoes or 
 sticks for himself. These he took to me at once with a proud : 
 "Vegardez, Boppie, ce que j'ai." While they were in bloom he 
 constantly came back with flowers : honeysuckle, roses, sweet 
 William, snow-on-the-mountain, from Juliette's garden — which 
 he presented proudly to either his grandmother or me. Above 
 the nosegays his grimy litttle face gleamed with an expression 
 some one described as "shining." It could not be said of him 
 that he had "Moved about among his race and showed no glorious 
 morning face," for the sunlight itself hardly seemed more 
 dazzling than his common smiles. 
 
 His delight in mimicry expressed itself this summer in imitat- 
 ing the ways of a comical little fuzzy dog named "Dolly," \vfho 
 was stopping at Crescent and who, when told to pattycake, 
 would perch on her hind legs and clap her fore legs together. 
 If any one called her she pattered forward on her hind legs 
 with the fore legs bobbing up and down. Breckie often became 
 a little dog and when he did his name was "Toto" after the pic- 
 ture in a book of his by Anatole France called Nos Enfants — 
 which Lees had given him. If we told Toto to pattycake he 
 squatted a little and clapped his hands together, and if we called 
 him he trotted forward in that ])osition. 
 
 There had stood on the .mantle in my study since before 
 Breck was born a charming picture of a two year old baby hold- 
 ing a ball. This was Jim, a small l^ritishcr, some six years 
 older than Breck, th-e child of my friend hVances J in Sus- 
 sex, and my godson. Breckie loved this picture. He often 
 talked to it and kissed it and at last he began calling himself 
 Jimmie. Soon it came to be understood that Jimmie was a lit- 
 tle baby, that he could hardly walk and sometimes cried. But 
 Juliette early persuaded him that Jimmie was too good a baby 
 to cry much, that he smiled a great deal instead — and so if 
 Breckie gave way to tears about anything and she exclaimed : 
 "Ou done est Jimmie?" he generally stopped crying to smile and 
 reply: "Le voila!" 
 
 But Jimmie's leading characteristic was his tenderness. It got 
 to be almost impossible for either Juliette or me to caress 
 
BRECKIE III 
 
 Breck very much and show him special tenderness without his 
 at once beg^inning: "Dis is Jimmie — C'est Jimmie," and nestling 
 up to us in the way he thought suitable to a baby, with the re- 
 sult that he became Jimmie many times each day. He told me 
 that when he was Jimmie I must be "Sheepblossom" — a name 
 entirely of his own invention. After that when he said: "Dis is 
 Jimmie" to me he added: "Who is dis?" And I always had to 
 reply that it was Sheepblossom. I was never Boppie to Jimmie 
 and never Sheepblossom to Breckinridge, while to Bright Eyes 
 I was always Bobtail. 
 
 Breck called a handkerchief a "hankispuss" and one day he 
 said: "Jimmie is so little he can't pwonounce handkispuss. He 
 says 'hankiker.' " He liked to mispronounce other words when 
 talking as Jimmie and he always explained that Jimmie was too 
 little or too young to do anything else. 
 
 14 
 
 During this his fourth summer Breckinridge was on even hap- 
 pier terms with the natural forces playing about his outdoor 
 crib than ever before. He liked Zephyr, the gentle south wind, 
 for all its gentleness, less than Boreas. Sometimes he said : 
 "Boweas is my fwiend." They were all his friends — the birds, 
 the katydids, the tree frogs, the waving branches of the maples, 
 the sun's first rays. The lights way down in the valley, above 
 which his balcony hung, mingled as one to his untrained gaze 
 with the stars in the sky above him. He became more com- 
 panionable than ever with the moon and often talked to me about 
 Diana and the boy she had come down to kiss. But when I 
 recited : 
 
 "The man in the moon came down too soon, 
 And asked his way to Norwich. 
 He went by the south and l)urned his mouth 
 With eating cold pease porridge" — 
 
 he caught me up at once and said the man wouldn't have burnt 
 his mouth if the pease porridge had been cold. 
 
112 BRECKIE 
 
 "That was a joke, Pidgy darling," I answered, and explained it 
 briefly. Afterwards he had me say it sometimes with the por- 
 ridge cold and sometimes with it hot — but if we agreed to call 
 it cold he explained over again about its being a joke. 
 
 On those rare occasions when any one tried to kiss him, be- 
 fore whoever was taking care of him could intervene, he drew 
 back, saying: "I am not allowed to kiss stwangers," and when 
 asked why he never kissed any one, even his dearest, on the 
 mouth, he replied automatically : "Cause it isn't hygienic." 
 
 He knew something of bacterial life for I talked to him about 
 the little invisible creatures and the different kinds of harm 
 some of them could do. If we asked him why he washed his 
 hands before eating he said: "To get off de germs and mi- 
 cwobes and bactewia." They were as real to him as flies and he 
 liked to question me about them. 
 
 15 
 
 When the eighth of July came around again, the anniversary 
 of his only sister's birth and death, Breck was still talking of her 
 occasionally — her image kept alive through her mother's per- 
 petual remembrance. One of the things I quoted to him some- 
 times was that part of Rabindranath Tagore's Crescent Moon 
 about the seashore of endless worlds where the children meet 
 with shouts and songs and dances. He loved it and often spoke 
 of his little sister Mary as being there, dancing with Tidy and 
 Camp and Jock. The contemplation of so much jollity naturally 
 led him into a wish to share it and sometimes he said he wanted 
 to go to the seashore of endless worlds himself, but when I said 
 I couldn't stay behind without him he replied either that I must 
 go too or that he would come back. 
 
 Since our entry into the war I had become so very busy 
 that every hour of the day had to be mapped out pretty much 
 into its routine duties and I gave up the long afternoon rambles 
 in which I hitherto delighted. Instead on four afternoons a week 
 through the summer I met with classes we were organizing for 
 the making of surgical dressings. My committee work for the 
 
BRECKIE 113 
 
 Red Cross nursing service kept me many hours each week at 
 the typewriter and the National Organization for PubHc Health 
 Nursing, for which I was a state representative in Arkansas, 
 took further time. In addition I had planned as a sequel to the 
 interest excited among the students during Child WeFfare Week 
 a course in Child Welfare for our curriculum the coming winter 
 — and to planning it, corresponding about it and reading more 
 widely on the subject considerable time was devoted. 
 
 All of this meant giving up much leisure and accustomed oc- 
 cupations — but seldom did it involve abandoning one of my 
 hours with Breckie. We began and ended each day together and 
 throughout the intervening hours our lives constantly interwove. 
 When he came in at eleven for his bath and long midday nap 
 he ran like a homing bird into the corner of the room I had 
 taken for my workshop — where I was the least liable to inter- 
 ruption. There I had a large office desk, my files, and on an 
 adjacent table, my typewriter, and there it was understood 
 Breckie could always come. He loved to rummage in the drawers 
 of the desk of the typewriter table, after first getting permission, 
 among the brushes, note books, keys, typewriter ribbon boxes, 
 rubber bands, clips — all that sort of paraphernalia. Sometimes 
 he didn't wait for permission, but if I saw him with my keyrings 
 and said : "Breckie, you didn't ask," he put them back in the 
 drawer and came to me, requesting politely : "May I please play 
 wid your keys?" and then bounded off after them again. 
 
 The typewriter was a frequent source of delight. He enjoyed 
 sitting in my lap and playing on the keys, moving the carriage 
 back and forth and handling all of the other movable parts. It 
 was clearly understood that there was to be no playing with the 
 machine in my absence and he rarely transgressed that rule — 
 because I had explained to him how easy it was to injure the ma- 
 chine. When he did transgress I explained all over again. A 
 favorite play was to take my stamps and stamping ink down to 
 the floor and stamp my address all over a sheet of paper. 
 
 But the thing he most frequently did on coming in at eleven 
 and running to me was to climb in my lap and nestle against me 
 with : "Dis is Jimmie. Look at him." Then perhaps he added : "He 
 
114 BRECKIE 
 
 wants to kiss you," or he would stroke my face with one chubby 
 hand, saying : "He is petting you." After we had caressed each 
 other for a moment he suddenly became Breckinridge and de- 
 manded : "Tell me about Fwed and Lucy and Bumbleton." 
 
 It was during this summer when he was three and a half years 
 old that he began to love the continued story. I started one day 
 a story about a little boy named Fred, a girl called Lucy and a 
 dog — Bumbleton. This story was destined never to have an end. 
 The doings of these three creatures pleased him and thereafter 
 not only every day but several times a day he demanded fuller 
 accounts of them. Long years before with my younger brother 
 I had kept up such a sequel — for over seven years — about "Jack 
 and Machinery Jim" and I now saw that the age of passionate 
 love for continued stories had begun with Breckinridge. 
 
 At first Fred and Lucy did tame every-day things about 
 their home and its grounds and at night, out on their balcony with 
 the mountains, the lights, the stars, tree frogs and birds, they 
 slept in twin beds with Bumbleton lying underneath as Jock had 
 lain for Breckie. But gradually they fell upon wilder ways and 
 faced sterner realities. In their walks through the woods they 
 were frequently beset by savage beasts and had to climb the 
 trees to escape. It was than that a fourth character, a big boy 
 named Roger, began coming to their rescue in every crucial mo- 
 ment, like a medieval knight, always just in the nick of time. The 
 usual procedure was for Fred and Lucy, when beset to ex- 
 tremities by the savage beasts, to give a loud call like this: 
 "Ouououououou" — which was answered almost simultaneously 
 by another thundering; "Ououououou" — and here would come 
 Roger tearing through the underbrush. Then bang would go 
 Roger's big gun, for he was old enough for a real gun, and 
 the fiercest of the beasts fell dead. 
 
 Breckie's faith in Roger, his omnipresence and his ability to 
 overcome all obstacles was invincible. Roger became his beau 
 ideal and my highest praise of him, next to saying "soldier," was 
 to call him a Roger boy. I did not neglect to have Roger 
 shine in many aspects for the little hero-worshiper. Was there 
 a sick horse by the roadside? If Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton 
 
BRECKIE 115 
 
 couldn't handle the situation Roger always could and did. A 
 lost baby ? A man with a broken leg ? Roger, the good Samari- 
 tan, intervened if the matter overtaxed the obliging resourceful- 
 ness of Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton. In fact to Breckie's 
 mind a problem was settled when Roger tackled it. One day I 
 had Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton hanging midair on the edge of 
 a precipice, unable to climb up or down. But an exit out of 
 danger immediately suggested itself to Breckinridge "Here will 
 come Woger wid a wope." 
 
 If I began the accustomed adventure like this: "When Fred 
 and Lucy and Bumbleton were walking through the forest sud- 
 denly they heard a rustling in the sumach bushes and there sprang 
 out in front of them four wild pigs" — Breckie gave me an un- 
 easy look. 
 
 "Did dey call out 'ouououououou ?' " He asked anxiously. 
 
 "Yes, and then they heard all at once, way off in the 
 distance, an answering 'ououououou,' very faint and far off, and 
 they knew Roger was coming." 
 
 A look of eager confidence succeeded the anxiety on Breck's 
 face and he made little gurgling sounds expressive of relief and 
 delight, 
 
 16 
 
 On July eighteenth I wrote in my journal as follows : "Yester- 
 day Breckinridge climbed a peach tree over and over. He went 
 up several limbs and out on others, handling himself with 
 dexterity and grace. 
 
 "Last night he pulled out Cock Robin for me to read for 
 his goodnight story — and then answered every query himself, 
 as: 
 
 *I, said de wook, 
 
 Wid my little book, 
 
 I'll be de parson.' 
 
 He also brought the Pied Piper of Hamlin to me (the copies of 
 both that and of Cock Robin were in our nursery in Washing- 
 ton thirty years ago) and turning to Kate Greena way's charm- 
 ing pictures began : 
 
ii6 BRECKIE 
 
 'Wats! Dey fought de dogs and killed de cats. . . .' 
 
 When he turned the leaves he invariably stopped at the picture 
 above the Hne 'Little hands clapping and little tongues chatter- 
 ing' and said, pointing to the tiniest child in dark green with a 
 hood, coming out of a door, 'Dat's de little girl I love.' " 
 
 Other books, special favorites of his in his fourth summer, 
 were The Story of Jemima Puddleduck, Mr. Jeremy Fisher, 
 Pigling Bland, and Mr. Todd. He did not seem to care quite as 
 much for Mr. ]5enjamin Bunny — which was another of the 
 series his grandmother had given him. He was fond too of 
 Fanchon, in the "Nos En f ants book" of Anatole France and 
 of many French rhymes of which he was constantly learning new 
 ones with Juliette. One often sung that summer, and which 
 he had in a book of French songs Mrs. Jordan gave him, and 
 later in two others his godmother sent him and in one I gave 
 him, was: "11 ctait une bcrgcrc." Another loved song he sang 
 after this fashion : 
 
 "Bon gar^on, commengons notre marche et nos chansons ; 
 Bien au pas, marchons has, ne reculons pas." 
 
 He came back from Mrs. Jordan one day and said to me : 
 "Boppie, nous chantons 'ne reculons pas' et Madame Jordan 
 chante 'n'etourdissons pas.' " 
 
 He had never tired of the first song Juliette ever sang to him, 
 "Dormez, petite fille," but she sang it of course: 
 
 "Dormez petit garQon 
 
 Mettez vous au dodo — 
 
 Dodo dodo, bien sage et bien gentil, 
 
 Endormez-vous bientot." 
 
 I heard him once singing it to Teddy, "Dormez, petit ours . . .'* 
 He loved to climb into Juliette's lap and be rocked while she 
 sang this and often he stayed there until she had sung over most 
 of the songs she knew. Sometimes he interrupted her by patting 
 her face with his hands, saying: "Juliette, je veux vous cawesser," 
 or "Juliette, vous etes si bonne." Occasionally he said to her : 
 
BRECKIE AXD JULIETTE 
 
BRKCKIE 117 
 
 "Votre nom est Juliette Carni IJwcckinwid^c I hompson, parceque 
 vous prcncz soin de moi ct vous ties dc la famillc." 
 
 1 think that liis favorite ImciuIi rhyincs were three of those 
 found in a collection called "Voyez comme on dance," illustrated 
 by CJcorpc Delaw and jircfaccd by Madame lulmond Rostand. 
 After Lees had made us another brief visit and j^one on to New 
 York to study she chose this book for me at Hrentano's, It 
 reached us July twenty-third and from that time on was one of 
 Breck's prime favorites. I Ic did not care for some of the 
 rhymes in it as much as for others, but of the three in c|uestion he 
 never tired. They were "C'etait un roi de Sardai^Mie," "]je 
 Hon Koi Dagobert," and the Loraine version of "La Legcnde de 
 Saint Nicholas," beginning: "lis etaient trois petits enfants qui 
 s'en allaient glaner aux champs." When he looked at the 
 picture of King Dagobert chased by the rabbit he clnukled and 
 said: "C'est Bwight Eyes qui court apwes lui." His preference 
 among the three was for the legend of St. Nicholas, the bulrher, 
 and the three little children. He fre(iuenlly rejjealed it himself 
 and when he came to the [)art where the saint brings the children 
 back to life he always stuck out three fat fingers, saying: "ICt le 
 Saint etendit twois doights." The speeches of the children he re- 
 peated in a voice pitched very high and thin : 
 
 "Lc pwcmicr, flit: 'J'ai bicn tlormi,' 
 Lc second rcpondit : 'VA moi aussi — ' 
 Lc twoisicme dit : 'Je cwoyais ctrc au pawadis.' " 
 
 Another l)Ook he was fond of in bis fourth year and even be- 
 fore was "Slovenly I'eter," of which he had copies in both (ierman 
 and English. He knew no German, of course, but the pictures 
 in the Cicrman edition are more satisfying. The American edi- 
 tion contains a number of added rhymes of which "(^Id Doctor 
 Wango Tango" was a favorite with Breck. Another one which 
 thrilled him mightily was about "Idle Fritz" and his untimely end 
 at the hands of a wolf : 
 
 "A wolf had made that cave his den, 
 Fritz never saw the light again." 
 
ii8 BRECKIE 
 
 After a time Breckie began playing he was a little woolly wolf, 
 and then he would promptly ask, nestling back in my arms : "Is 
 dis de muvcr woolly wolf?" Usually he continued the play by 
 adding: "Muvcr woolly wolf, I had hVitz for my supper. But 
 I didn't eat his shoes and his buttons. I spit dem out." 
 
 The story of Pauline and the Matches, in his Struvelpeter, 
 made a wholesome impression and he thrilled over the Long 
 Red Legged Scissor Man. As a smaller boy once, in his third 
 year, he said, jwiiiting down a dark hall, that he saw the Long 
 Red Legged Scissor Man down there. So I explained very care- 
 fully that the man was only in a book and couldn't get out of 
 the book to bother my lamb. 
 
 lie was fond of his Little Pigs book, which had belonged to 
 Lees, even in his second year, and in his fourth year he liked 
 to act out the story of the three little pigs which built houses 
 of straw, wood and bricks. Sometimes he was the pigs and 1 the 
 wolf and sometimes he the wolf and I the pigs and he thundered 
 "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in, let me in !" while I replied 
 defiantly "No, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin !" Often he 
 built the pigs' houses with his blocks and we had a real chimney 
 through which the wolf climbed down into the pot of boiling 
 water where he meets his end. 
 
 He often acted the stories I read to him. Once climbing up 
 the steep mountain path from Oil and Johnson springs he pre- 
 ceded me with a long stick which he kept thrusting into the roots 
 of the trees, quoting from his loved Pied Piper : "Go, said 
 de mayor, get long poles — Poke out de nests and block up de 
 holes." Then he turned to me with a charming smile and his 
 hand outstretched as in the picture while he said : "First, if you 
 please, my fousand guilders." 
 
 The Child's Garden of Verse, its pictures and rhymes, afforded 
 him pleasure off and on and another favorite was an old 
 "Nursery Colored Picture Book" which had belonged to my 
 brother Carson before I was born and bore the date of its presen- 
 tation — 1880. He liked the tale of "Young Mousie Mouse" and 
 the "Farmer's Cheese" and the rhymes about the "Robin Red 
 Breast " the same gentle robin who was cold when "the 
 
BRECKIE 119 
 
 north wind doth blow," who covered the Babes in the Wood with 
 leaves and the story of whose sad death as Cock Robin he knew 
 by heart. I tried to siiow the continuity of thought running 
 through his stories whenever they were linkable, whether we re- 
 cited or read or told or played or acted them. He often caught 
 at this idea himself. Once, for instance, I was telling him about 
 Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton and the yarn, as it spun itself, 
 took the shape of having Lucy play with a baby bear and nearly 
 get devoured by the mother bear before Roger could save her. 
 A little later I '.reck nestled against mc, saying that he was a baby 
 bear, and "is dis de muver bear?" I took the cue of course and 
 sprang to my part. 
 
 "Muver bear," he went on, "I was fwightened when Lucy 
 picked me up." 
 
 "But she wouldn't have hurt you, darling," T replied. "She 
 wanted to play with you. 1 didn't know enough not to see she 
 wouldn't hurt you." 
 
 "No," he said, pleased, "you fought she would hurt me — but 
 she wouldn't have hurt me. You didn't know." 
 
 When we found a real hollow tree not far out of town on the 
 Blue Spring road, with a big opening in front for Breckie to get 
 in and a little opening at the back, high up, through which I 
 could shake hands with him, we often played Mother and i'aby 
 Bruin — after we had first poked out the dead leaves in a pre- 
 cautionary hunt for possible snakes. 
 
 Several natural histories were among Breck's most prized books 
 and in especial one in five large volumes. He kept his books 
 on the bottom shelf of one of the bookcases in our study and 
 frequently I have seen him go there, pull out one of these natural 
 histories, lay it on the floor and begin turning the pages with oc- 
 casional comments on the creatures he found. He liked me to 
 turn the pages with him and read him their names, giving bits of 
 information about them. 
 
 Just at this time he began to love a copy of "The Jungle 
 Book" my father had given me in London when I was thirteen 
 years old. The story of Rikki Tikki Tavi the mongoose and the 
 graphic illustrations fascinated him and later, in the autumn, he 
 
T20 BRECKIE 
 
 liked parts of the tale of "Mowi'li" and the wolves read to him. 
 ikit he never wanted it read through. He grew tired after ten 
 or fifteen minutes of it. 
 
 An 'VVrtinir Rackham" and a "Kate Grecnaway Mother 
 Goose" were treasure-books — but as I knew the greater part of 
 the "Mother Goose" rhymes by heart and Juliette as large a 
 number of r>ench nursery rhymes and songs he mostly learned 
 these from us direct without the medium of books. Almost from 
 the time he was old enough to climb into my bed in the morning 
 he demanded rhymes of all sorts, and favorites were: 
 
 and 
 
 and 
 and 
 
 "What docs little birdie say 
 In his nest at peep of day?" 
 
 "To whit to whit to whec. 
 Now will you listen to me? 
 Who stole the four eggs 1 laid 
 And the nice little nest I made?" 
 
 "Where did you come from. Baby dear?" 
 
 "Three Blind Mice." 
 
 Tn his fourth year, it is true, he grew to prefer Fred and 
 Lucy and lUimbleton stories and to play at being Bright Eyes, 
 the little woolly wolf, Bruin the cub bear, and Tweet Tweet — a 
 baby bird — but he never ceased loving and occasionally demand- 
 ing the old verses and songs. He was fond of several rhymes 
 from Lewis Carroll's books, especially the "Jabberwocky," and 
 "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and "1 sent a message to the 
 Fish — " the ending of which plainly left him puzzled, for he 
 asked, when 1 first repeated it, "Is dat all?" He liked the song 
 beginning: "Good Morning Merry Sunshine," and he sang a 
 part of "Tipperary" this summer and the opening bars, and those 
 only, of the "Star Spangled Banner." 
 
 He was fond of the story of "The Three Goats Gruff" and of 
 acting it out, and of "Punky Dunk so fat, the black and white 
 cat." He had once owned goldfish, like those which tempted 
 runky Dunk, but he did not care about them, except for want- 
 
BRECKIE 121 
 
 ing to catch them with his hands, and as they are the most unin- 
 teresting creatures on earth to me I suggested that he give them 
 to Liliane. So they traveled down to the Dairy Hollow in their 
 pretty bowl, where they gave much pleasure to Liliane, who was 
 old enough to feed and care for them and not old enough to be 
 bored, and where, just lately, they have been eaten by "Edna" — 
 the Carnis' large sow. 
 
 One of the poems Breckie loved best was Tennyson's "Sweet 
 and Low" — and I think this was partly because of the lovely 
 illustration of it by Taylor which stood, framed, on my mantle. 
 He frequently, in our half hour before bedtime together, climbed 
 up on a chair or his toy box to get it down and then climbed into 
 my lap before the fire with it, and, while I repeated the exquisite 
 verses for him, his eyes never left the picture. 
 
 Another poem he occasionally asked for after supper is found 
 in an English book called "Little Lays for Little Folk," pub- 
 lished in 1882, which had been given me in Washington by my 
 brother Carson. It is by Lord Houghton and begins : 
 
 "A fair little girl sat under a tree, 
 
 Sewing as long as her eyes could see; 
 Then smoothed her work and folded it right, 
 
 And said : 'Dear work ! Good night ! Good night !' 
 
 "Such a number of rooks came over her head, 
 Crying 'Caw ! Caw !' on their way to bed : 
 
 She said, as she watched their curious flight, 
 'Little black things ! Good night ! Good night !' " 
 
 Breck's father is very fond of the "Message to Garcia" and 
 we told Breck about it, and often after that when we asked him 
 to do anything we said : "Can you carry this message to Garcia ?" 
 Sometimes he came and told us of something he had done or 
 could do, involving responsibility, and added: "I took dat mes- 
 sage to Garcia." 
 
 One couplet which carried its heroic message to him in easily 
 understood words was : 
 
122 BRECKIE 
 
 "Hurrah for Bobby Bumble ! 
 
 Who never minds a tumble — 
 But up he jumps, and rubs his bumps, 
 
 And doesn't even grumble." 
 
 17 
 
 The middle of August I dropped my work of all kinds for 
 three days and left Breckie with Juliette while I went out to 
 three of the farmers' Chautauquas held in our county by the 
 field workers of the Extension Division of the University of 
 Arkansas. They were mostly dairy and machinery experts with 
 a specialist to talk on Finance, another on Home Economics, and 
 a third, the Field Secretary of the Arkansas Public Health Asso- 
 ciation, on Public Health. The last two were women with whom 
 I was charmed. These workers let me handle the prenatal and 
 child welfare subjects with the mothers and talk on the tremen- 
 dous good public health nursing could bring to them and their 
 little ones. I have always found eager listeners in mothers and 
 these were most friendly and interested — but it went to my heart 
 that all their devoted and so difficult maternity got them only a 
 little on the way towards efficient motherhood — and some of them 
 no way at all. I longed to show them how to make children 
 healthy and happy with just the resources they had, and when 
 each evening I came back to my own bonny boy and put him 
 and Teddy to bed in the sweet solitude of his balcony I thought 
 the old thought which had first come before his birth: "I do 
 so little — but you, you will dispel ignorance — my great man that 
 is to be." 
 
 18 
 
 In August Breckie had another dream — another that is which I 
 have recorded with the date, for I find written in my journal 
 on August seventeenth the following: 
 
 "Last night Breck woke up suddenly out on his balcony and 
 called out that he didn't want to be fried. When I ran out to 
 
BRECKIE 123 
 
 him he said a man wanted to fry him. So I told him he had 
 dreamed it and fell to wondering how soon children learn to 
 recognize their dreams as such. 
 
 "He spun a top this morning, unassisted, for the first time. 
 
 "Yesterday afternoon, Thursday — Juliette's holiday, — Breck 
 and I went to the woods together, he on Peter Pan and wearing 
 my hunting horn on a red ribbon around his neck. He was 
 looking for the fox in the "Story of Jemima Puddleduck" and 
 frequently wound his horn to call up the "fox hound puppies." 
 We did not find the fox, but spent interested moments by a 
 puddle looking at dragon flies and near an ants' nest watching 
 the ants carrying fat grubs from across the road." 
 
 My brother Clifton came to us August eighteenth for a week's 
 visit before receiving his new assignment to duty. He had left 
 Cornell, of course, as soon as we came into the war and now ap- 
 peared before Breckie's dazzled eyes as a second lieutenant in the 
 infantry of the Regular army. Breck hung about him worship- 
 ing. We have pictures of them taken together on horseback 
 one afternoon when Clifton and I were starting off for a ride and 
 Breck perched for a moment in front of his uncle, clinging to 
 the pommel. 
 
 Another afternoon we all went out in Dick's car to the Sani- 
 tarium Lake, put on our bathing suits and had a fine swim. 
 Breck wore his bathing suit too and splashed about the edge of 
 the water with occasional excursions into the depths on his 
 father's shoulders. 
 
 Our friend and physician, Dr. Phillips, had entered the service 
 of his country and his wife and baby, Mary Catherine, came to 
 visit us at about this time. The baby, just the age mine would 
 have been, was too young for a companion for Breck but old 
 enough for a very sweet relationship as of brother and sister to 
 exist between them. Sometimes he was rough with her — a trick 
 he had was of petting her gently on the head and, while she cooed 
 
124 BRECKIE 
 
 responsively, pushing her suddenly so that she had to sit down 
 too abruptly for her comfort. But oftener he behaved towards 
 her with chivalrous devotion and kept a watchful eye out to pre- 
 vent her picking up and swallowing things. 
 
 Once in a while he forgot and put things in his own mouth — 
 such as the end of a stick he was holding, for outdoors he 
 nearly always carried a stick. But if I spoke of it he promptly 
 took it out and if I asked: "Breckie, what are the only things 
 we put in our mouths?" he answered at once: "Fings to eat 
 and dwink and toof bwushes." Sometimes I said : "Your 
 precious little mouth is too sweet and clean for us to put dirt into 
 it" and he agreed, — and also as to the desirability of denying 
 entrance to such "germs and micwobes and bactewia" as might 
 be harboring in the dirt. 
 
 20 
 
 My journal throughout this late summer and early autumn is 
 so crowded with war details and impressions and with bits of 
 special work Dick and I were doing individually that I have not 
 as many records of Breckinridge as at an earlier period. Under 
 date September thirteenth I find recorded, after a sympathetic 
 allusion to Russia, home of my early girlhood, the following: 
 
 "I don't write enough of Breck. His life and mine thread in 
 and out at every turn, busy as I am and much as he lives in 
 the Dairy Hollow with Juliette. The other day he said to me: 
 'Boppie, I love you more dan I do stwangers.' 
 
 "He goes to bed at seven, gets up at six-thirty and takes a 
 nap of about two hours every day. He is outdoors about twenty 
 hours out of the twenty-four. He comes in at eleven for his bath 
 and nap, all eager with tales of his explorations and nearly al- 
 ways carrying something. Yesterday he had acorns to plant and 
 make oak trees, the day before an apple, the day before that 
 morning glories and three rusty links of an old chain. He told 
 me he was a morning glory and added: 'J^ dois gwimper 
 (grimper) sur une palissade.' 
 
 "That evening when he built a more fantastic block house 
 
BRECKIE 125 
 
 than usual my mother said: 'Breckinridge, that looks like St. 
 Basil's cathedral in Moscow,' and it did. But Breck replied: 
 
 " 'But it isn't, Hoho. It's a hide-de-chain house.' We peeped 
 through the crevices and sure enough there lay the rusty links 
 of the old chain. 
 
 "I must find a Geographic Magazine of last spring, which I 
 have packed away with others to keep until I can afford to 
 have them bound for Breckinridge, because in it I remember see- 
 ing a picture of St. Basil's cathedral. I like when his building 
 takes on even a faint resemblance to something greater to find 
 and show him a picture of the something greater. The Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica helps out wonderfully in that. Long ago he 
 strove to imitate the outlines of Stonehenge and now his light- 
 houses and acqueducts bear a real resemblance to those illustrated 
 in the Britannica." 
 
 Building with his blocks was a daily joy to Breck, I bought 
 a large stout basket to hold them, which he could take up by 
 the handle and carry from one room to another — though as the 
 blocks accumulated the load got almost too heavy for him to 
 lift. He had the large, flat blocks he inherited from our child- 
 hood (a quantity of them) and the square ones I bought for him, 
 with several smooth pieces of wood of various sizes he had 
 picked up and used for roofs. In some were brass headed tacks 
 he had hammered in himself with his own tack hammer. All this 
 he supplemented sometimes with kindling from the kindling bas- 
 ket on the hearth, out of which he made fences or with which he 
 built pens, laying them criss-cross as he had seen real log pens, 
 and as he had imitated them before with sticks from the wood- 
 pile in the woodland back of the "Rosy's house." 
 
 Building with blocks was, like all his play, a serious thing 
 to Breck and sometimes he breathed heavily (like a runner) while 
 building. But whenever he stopped to discuss his handiwork 
 the dancing light of his smiles played over his rosy face. 
 Later in the autumn he often said he was making a house to live 
 in "and dis, Boppie, is our woom. We have de same woom but 
 sepawate beds." 
 
126 BRECKIE 
 
 On September thirteenth I recorded this incident in my jour- 
 nal : "The other day, so Juliette tells me, Breckinridge, who was 
 walking backwards, fell and lying prone addressed her thus: 
 'Juliette, je devwais (devrais) avoir des yeux par dewwiere 
 (derriere). Le bon Dieu devwait me faire encore des yeux 
 dewwiere.' " 
 
 He stumbled and fell constantly. His habit was to forge 
 ahead with eager curiosity, bent on reaching some desired goal 
 and utterly oblivious of the uncertain ground and its loose rocks 
 under his feet. I never walked out with him, even in the latter 
 part of his fourth year, that he didn't fall down several times. 
 He did not cry over these falls unless they hurt exceptionally — 
 when he ran to Juliette or me sobbing : "Kiss it — kiss it." 
 
 21 
 
 The summer hotel season came to an end, the manager left, 
 and we had our usual brief period of precious domesticity before 
 the opening of school. Breck remembered the former students 
 by name — although he had seen very little of them except for 
 breakfasting in the big dining room with them at his father's 
 table. (These two did not make use of our private dining room 
 for breakfast in the school season.) Breck's relations with the 
 faculty and students were cordial — although his schedule and 
 theirs rarely brought him in contact with them — which was much 
 better for him. He never noticed that he was observed by many 
 in his comings and goings and a real rabbit could hardly have 
 been more unconscious of its ego than was the little boy who 
 played at being Bright Eyes. 
 
 When Breck's cousin Florence returned in September she 
 brought him an alert-looking little black and white toy dog 
 with pop eyes which squeaked if one banged on its head. We 
 christened it "Toto" and I found it after a few days with the 
 head nearly severed from its body. Breckie, when questioned, 
 gave just the reply I had expected : "I wanted," he said, "to find 
 de squeak." 
 
BRECKIE 127 
 
 23 
 
 In the latter part of September the western section of Carroll 
 county had a fair in the grounds of the Auditorium Park, which 
 lasted three days. The first came on a Thursday and Breck 
 and I went together. There were the usual stalls of fancy work 
 and in them a Child Welfare Exhibit I had sent down, a good 
 display of country produce, and cattle and poultry among which 
 we recognized some of Henri Carni's Brahmas. His biggest 
 Belgian hares were there too. Of course booths had been put up 
 all over the grounds for the selling of deadly sweets, the letting 
 off of noises, the telling of fortunes, and the shooting at marks. 
 Breck and I took in as much as we wanted of everything but 
 the food and drinks and made for the merry-go-round, which 
 was our prime object in coming. 
 
 Here then into the fairyland of the little child's life appeared 
 this wonderful new pleasure. He chose a brown horse and 
 climbed up on it without fear. But the thing was slow in 
 getting up steam and he got tired sitting there, so we took another 
 turn around the familiar grounds and when we came back 
 Breck's horse was bestrode by another rider. He tried to explain 
 to the big boy on it that it was his — ^but gave it up after a 
 moment with his accustomed good nature. Fortunately there was 
 one remaining horse unoccupied, a white animal, and Breck 
 climbed up on it contentedly. Then the music set up and the 
 thing began whirling around with the horse going up and down 
 and Breckie sitting upon it entranced, while I stood on the plat- 
 form by him. 
 
 The remaining two days of the fair, Friday and Saturday, I 
 sent Breckie back for more rides with Juliette and Liliane. He 
 repeated slowly : "Amewican childwen call it mewwy-go-wound 
 and Fwench childwen call it cawousel (carousel) — Swiss chil- 
 dwen too, Boppie." With Jackanapes in mind I told him that 
 English children called it "giddy-go-round." His interest in this 
 delight of many names grew ; and then, as mysteriously as it had 
 come, the wonderful creation of music and motion passed out of 
 
128 BRECKIE 
 
 his life. But there were always other pleasant things happen- 
 ing in this little boy's fairyland. 
 
 The next real event, however, was a tragedy. Dixie and 
 Patchie were not Breck's dogs, although Patch had once belonged 
 to him. But she had taken up permanently with my father as 
 had Dixie, who deserted Dr. Phillips for him. My father paid 
 their taxes, fed and fondled them, and they followed him every- 
 where — even through the mazes of a Virginia reel when he tried 
 to dance it. During his absence from Eureka Springs for a few 
 days the taxi drivers told us the dogs went to the station and met 
 every train until his return. The two little fox terriers were 
 so constantly together that it is not unnatural Breck, strumming 
 a piano one day, should have replied to some one who asked 
 if he were playing Dixie : 
 
 "No, I'm playing Patchie." 
 
 But Dixie fixed his affections early in October on a bull ter- 
 rier belonging to one of our neighbors and her mistress shot 
 him with a twenty-two rifle. Fortunately Breck was not by 
 and did not see the death agonies of the poor little creature — 
 but he was concerned over the whole episode and the feeling it 
 aroused, and once or twice he objected to passing by the house 
 of the woman who had done the shooting, saying in explanation : 
 "She might shoot me." He had probably overheard remarks 
 about the dangers to passers-by from guns fired in a town and 
 this caused his objection, and I am confident too that he was only 
 
 repeating the comment of others when he said : "If Mrs. X 
 
 had fired in de air she wouldn't have killed Dixie." 
 
 The idea of shooting, which the visits of one of his soldier 
 uncles and our daily talk of the progress of the war brought home 
 to him, was undoubtedly more indelibly fastened on his mind by 
 this household tragedy and he talked about guns, pistols, and 
 cannon a great deal. Often he said, playing gun with a stick: 
 "I will shoot de Germans." Once he said to me : 
 
 "Dere are some good Germans." 
 
BRECKIE 129 
 
 "Yes, my blessing," I answered, "there must be some." He 
 considered a moment before replying and then said : 
 
 "I will shoot de bad ones only." 
 
 Juliette said that he went over with her the whole ques- 
 tion of the treatment of Belgium by Germany. He said: 
 "Juliette, c'est parceque le Kaiser n'a pas tenu sa pwomesse. II 
 a pwomi aux Beiges qu'il n'allait pas passer dans leur pays, 
 mais il est alle la et il a tue leurs femmes et leurs enfants. 
 Juliette, je ne suis pas comme le Kaiser. Je tiens mes 
 pwomesses." 
 
 When he came in at eleven every morning for his bath, milk, 
 and nap, I could hear him climbing the stairs with Juliette and 
 his eager voice talking rapidly, supplemented by her interjec- 
 tions. 
 
 Breck : "Juliette, quand je sewais gwand je vais tuer le 
 Kaiser." 
 
 Juliette : "Vous allez !" 
 
 Breck: (With proud confidence) "Oui. Et je vais tuer des 
 lions et des tigres." 
 
 Juliette : "Vraiment !" 
 
 Breck: (Still confidently and proudly) "Oui, je vais." 
 
 He overheard Juliette and Henri talking about the cow for 
 which they wanted to save up money that they might buy her, 
 and he asked Juliette : 
 
 "Pourquoi ne pouvez-vous pas acheter ga ?" She answered : 
 
 "Parceque je n'ai pas assez d'argent pour acheter une vache, 
 et ga coute passablement d'argent." Then he said to her, his 
 face all eagerness and glowing with smiles : 
 
 "Et bien, quand je sewais gwand je demandewais mon livre 
 de banque a Boppie et nous iwons a la banque chercher I'argent. 
 Puis nous iwons vous acheter une vache. Parceque, vous savez, 
 Juliette, j'ai beaucoup de pennies." 
 
 He often said to her: "Juliette, quand je sewais gwand 
 comme mon pere j'auwais aussi une automobile comme lui, et 
 vous n'auwez pas a marcher jusque dans le Daiwy Hollow. Je 
 vais vous pwend'e dans mon automobile. Never mind, Juliette, 
 vous westewez toujours aupwes de moi." 
 
I30 BRECKIE 
 
 He talked frequ'^ntly of when he would be a man. Evidently 
 he had seen pies and questioned Juliette about them for she said 
 he asked her once : "JuWette, quand je sewais gwand vous allez 
 mc faire dcs 'pies,' n'est ce pas?" and he seemed quite satisfied 
 with her promise that she would. 
 
 ITc liked to be told little incidents of his babyhood which were 
 too far back for him to remember, and went about repeating 
 with a pleased expression: "When I was a weency, tiny baby 
 I called duck 'guck.' " When he told it to Juliette he said: 
 "Quand j'ctais un tout petit bcbc. . . ." Sometimes he said to 
 mc : "Boppie, don't you 'member when I was a weency tiny baby 
 I called duck 'guck ?' " 
 
 When he was only two and a half years old he had seen a 
 woman nursing her baby and came to me, trying to tell me about 
 it. He never forgot the incident and as he grew older I ex- 
 plained to him as well as I could the wonder and beauty of this 
 natural function. "Was dere plenty of milk in your bweasts for 
 me, Boppie? When I was a little baby?" he used to ask me in his 
 fourth year and when I assured him that the supply had never 
 failed while he needed it, he looked at me with an indefinable 
 expression. It had in it a confidence that all the sources of life 
 would be as ready for his needs as that had been, and even a 
 partial comprehension of the imperishable bond which united him 
 and me. Would the breasts of a woman have ever been anything 
 but sacred to him afterwards? I had no fears on tliat score, 
 little son, 
 
 24 
 
 His long mid-day naps out on the balcony were wonderfully 
 refreshing. By the time they fell due such an early riser as 
 Breckie had begun to get sleepy and fretful and, after splashing 
 about in his tub, he began calling: "I want my good milk," and 
 drank it eagerly. Juliette called his feet in his winter night 
 clothes "dcs pattes d'ours," which pleased him immensely as he 
 and 'J eddy went out to the Sandman together. 
 
 Two or three times it happened that he did not go to sleep 
 and, after he had been out on the balcony an hour, he called to be 
 
BRECKIE 131 
 
 allowed to come in, saying: "Boweas disturbed me." On one 
 of these rare occasions I replied : "But, Breckie, you haven't 
 slept. You always come in after you have slept." 
 
 To that he answered: "f sleeped alweady," and began to cry. 
 Then I heard him stop and say in his natural voice to Teddy: 
 "Boppie oughtn't to leave me out here, ought she, Teddy?" After 
 which he replied in a small, high voice, intended for Teddy : "No, 
 sir," and then resumed his wailing to come in. 
 
 I went out and said : "Teddy, won't you go to sleep like a 
 good little bear?" 
 
 Again came the small, high voice adjudged suitable for Teddy: 
 "No, sir — " after which Breckie replied in his natural tones : 
 "He say he won't do it." 
 
 Breck loved mimicry and always spoke for a creature in- 
 capable of speaking for itself. If he had out Fanchon, Kitchener, 
 Cadichon, Junker, or any of his "cweatures" and one of us 
 addressed a remark to one of them Breck replied at once in the 
 small, high voice he assumed they would use and kept up their 
 end of the conversation. 
 
 He was fond of teasing now and then. I was ordering Juliette 
 some new aprons and Breckie said to her : "Juliette, je vais 
 vous acheter des tabliers noirs." Then, after she had exclaimed 
 over not wanting black aprons, he chuckled and said: "C'est 
 pour wire seulement que je dis ga," and again "c'est pour vous 
 chicaner." 
 
 The colors I preferred for him, because of his fair skin and 
 vivid coloring, were blue and dark green — but Juliette had set 
 her heart on his having a red dressing gown and slippers this 
 winter, and Breckie heard her persuading me to order them. I 
 was demurring, preferring to duplicate the light blue ones he had 
 outgrown. He decided the matter by throwing in his vote with 
 Juliette, thus bringing a majority against me, and he said to her : 
 "II faut que Boppie achete quelquefois ce que vous pwefewez, 
 Juliette." 
 
 When the red wrapper had come he said to her sometimes, as 
 she put it on him: "Juliette, Boppie n'aime pas ga, mais il faut 
 
132 BRECKIE 
 
 que Boppe achete aussi des choses que vols aimiez." — That red 
 wrapper — it is hanging now by my closet door. 
 
 Among his bibs were several feather-stitched in red and sev- 
 eral in blue sent him by the mother of one of our "old girls." 
 I preferred the blue and Juliette the red ones. He appeared 
 indifferent, for his own preferences lay with a bib which had a 
 goose embroidered on it and another with little bears. But some- 
 times he pulled out a blue feather-stitched bib to wear, saying 
 it was because I liked it, and again a red feather-stitched one, 
 telling Juliette: "Maintenant je vais porter la bavette wouge 
 pour vous faire plaisir." 
 
 Some of his suits were middy blouses and when he saw me 
 dressed for a mountain tramp in tweed skirt and middy blouse 
 he usually wanted to wear one of his middy blouses, if he didn't 
 already have one on. He was delighted when I bought him a 
 pair of Ground Gripper shoes like mine. His shoes and sandals 
 wore out even before he outgrew them, so rocky is the Ozark 
 country and so constant in their travels over it were his little 
 feet. 
 
 25 
 
 Early in October Breck's father went to Washington for a few 
 days on business connected with the State Highway Commis- 
 sion. He had intended getting Breck a train and tracks while 
 he was up there — for Breckie had been wanting them since early 
 in the summer when he saw another child playing with them. 
 But his father was hurried in transacting his business and getting 
 back, so all he handed Breck on his return was a corkscrew — 
 which he pulled out of his suitcase. However, this gave pleasure 
 to a child as easily pleased as Breck, especially as he had not 
 known of his father's intention to return with the train and 
 tracks. He was therefore all the more surprised when Dick 
 brought back a train and tracks from downtown the next day 
 and presented them to him. But his enjoyment of them was 
 short lived. Like many modern toys they seemed made to fall 
 apart. The tracks were so bent by Mary Phillips's baby fingers 
 
BRECKIE 133 
 
 the first day as to be unusable and the train soon broke into many 
 tin pieces. 
 
 Jack Frost as a character took the same personal hold on 
 Breckinridge's imagination as did Boreas, though much less 
 known and less loved. Still Breckie liked to see him on the 
 roof in the early morning and snuggled down under his covers 
 at night when Jack Frost was abroad in the land. He came this 
 year early in October and I find the following record in my 
 journal, dated October ninth, which begins with a reference to 
 him and proceeds with an account of Breck's first notable draw- 
 ing: 
 
 "This morning Breckinridge and I ran out to tell 'Uncle Bill' 
 to be sure to cut the tops off the sweet potatoes — because they 
 had frosted. Afterwards we went over to the bit of concrete 
 sidewalk in front of Dr. Ellis's house for Breck to use a piece 
 of chalk Camille had given him. I suggested he draw a circle — 
 but the resultant object was rather angular and had two horns 
 at an upper end and one leg at a lower. So I said : 
 
 " 'Breckinridge, if you add another leg and a tail to that you 
 will have a cow.' 
 
 "Very gravely he added the other leg and a long tail — then 
 stood off and surveyed his work. Whereupon without a word 
 he promptly drew two more legs. This followed exactly what 
 I had read about the drawings of little children never being in 
 profile, or if in profile showing all the legs just the same. 
 
 "Then Breck surveyed his work again and announced: 'I 
 must put a head on dat cow.' So he drew a roundness in behind 
 the horns, put a dot in it and said that was the eye. After that 
 he stood off and looked some more, thus discovering another 
 omission : 'She must have a bag for de milk.* 
 
 "So he drew one in the right place, looked at it and said : 
 'Dere have to be buttons on dat bag,' whereupon he added the 
 teats, — then danced about the completed whole, exclaiming : 'See 
 dat cow !' 
 
 "Of course it was on a large scale and he could never have 
 done it on paper — but how I wi.sh I could keep it. Greatly re- 
 duced it looked somewhat like this — but more angular. . . ." 
 
134 BRECKIE 
 
 (Here follows a tracing from the drawing made in my journal, 
 which was copied as exactly as I could do it from the original 
 drawing done in chalk by Breckinridge on the square of concrete 
 sidewalk.) 
 
 26 
 
 Breckie's friend, Camille, breakfasted with him and his father 
 every morning and usually kept him with her a few minutes 
 afterwards before bringing him up to Juliette or me. Breck 
 enjoyed the excursions he made with her into his father's offices 
 or the college chapel where he delighted in playing on the pipe 
 organ. It gave forth a much more bewildering rangQ of sound 
 than a strummed piano, when Breck climbed up on the long 
 bench, touched the electric button, and alternately pressed the 
 keys or pulled out the stops. The pedal tones were of course 
 beyond the reach of his little feet. 
 
 In the school supply room, when Breck visited there, his father 
 and Camille showed him over and over the different pieces of 
 money in the cash drawers and he had learned them all by 
 name from pennies to dollars — but not the value of course of any 
 of them. A favorite reply of his in games, when asked the price 
 of anything, was "a dollar and a quart," although he did not 
 stick exclusively to the one figure by any means. When he came 
 upstairs to get ready for outdoors he climbed up on his bench 
 in front of the lavatory and washed the "germs and micwobes 
 and bactewia" from the money off his hands. 
 
 Camille sometimes told me the things he said at breakfast 
 and afterwards. Once he said to her: "Camille, I have eaten 
 my calowies (calories), have you?" Now as no one had ever 
 
BRECKIE 135 
 
 used the word calorie directly in speaking to him he must have 
 gathered not only the word but a connection between it and 
 food from overhearing a conversation, probably with the dietician 
 and some other person interested in food values. 
 
 I was talking with the dietician one day about the Binet- 
 Simon scale — in my study where Breckie, just up from his nap 
 and waiting for his dinner, was playing with some of his be- 
 longings on the rug. We had been speaking of one of the seven 
 year tests — that one which consists in handing the subject a 
 picture lacking eyes, nose, mouth or arms, to see if he can detect 
 the defect. 
 
 I said that I believed an intelligent child of less than four, like 
 Breck, could pass that seven-year-old test — basing the belief on 
 the fact that the children of the professional and university 
 classes habitually test about two years older mentally with the 
 scale than equally normal children less advantageously situated, 
 and upon Breck's having passed easily in his third year the three 
 and four-year-old tests. 
 
 I didn't have a picture at hand lacking mouth or nose but I 
 suddenly thought of "Alice in Wonderland" and pulled the dear 
 old volume down off its shelf, opening at the picture heading the 
 "Pool of Tears" chapter, where Alice has the long telescopic 
 neck. I then called Breck over to my chair. 
 
 "Breckinridge," I said, "this is Alice. Does she look like other 
 little girls ?" 
 
 He looked at the picture doubtfully and indicated that she 
 didn't. 
 
 "What part of her is different ?" I asked him. 
 
 He seemed at a loss for the words in which to reply, looking 
 from me to the picture. Then I said: "Breckie, put your finger 
 on the part that is different." 
 
 Without a moment's hesitation he laid one chubby finger on the 
 long neck. 
 
 The question about the calories was only one remark among 
 many indicating a previous assimilation of certain words or 
 things. On those rare occasions when I went to a motion pic- 
 ture show I explained to Breck, before going, as was my custom 
 
136 BRECKIE 
 
 if at any time I left the house in the evening, where I was going 
 and that some one else would be on hand in my study should he 
 wake up and need anything. He questioned me closely about the 
 motion pictures and asked why he didn't go. So I gave him 
 several of the reasons. He had also seen peanuts and asked 
 about them, and why he didn't eat them, and I had explained. 
 
 There came to the school this autumn the father of one of 
 the students, who met Breckinridge and greeted him in a jolly, 
 companionable way. 
 
 "You come off with me," he said, "and we will get some pea- 
 nuts." 
 
 Breckie looked at him with serious eyes. "I don't go wif 
 stwangers," he replied, "I don't eat peanuts, dey aren't good for 
 me. 
 
 His friendly visitor appeared nonplussed for a moment, then 
 tried again. 
 
 "Well, let me take you to the moving pictures," he said. 
 
 "I don't go to de moving pictures," said Breckie, still patiently 
 explaining, "dey hurt my eyes." 
 
 At this the man, so Dick reported to me afterwards, doubled 
 up and made no further advances, while Breckie, all unconscious 
 of the sensation he had sprung, ran with Juliette out into the 
 glorious world of rock and tree and garden — which was his 
 nul^ery. 
 
 Though social and cordial still with those he met, Breck, in 
 the latter part of his fourth year, objected to people more than 
 he had done formerly. He never avoided an introduction or a 
 greeting but was fuller of eager plans than of old and impatient 
 of anything which detained him from the things that really mat- 
 tered, the running and growing things, the things for digging 
 and climbing and building and throwing and tooting and calling 
 • — the really worth while things whose music was the gladness of 
 his world. 
 
 Then too he grew fonder of a few people. The little circle of 
 adoring faces, grandparents, parents, nurse, cousin, a few dear 
 friends who saw him every day, these symbolized love to him and 
 he began consciously to seek love and return it. Often he 
 
BRECKIE 137 
 
 dropped his play to climb up in my lap and pat me with his 
 little hand, saying: "Boppie, I want to pet you." Never a day 
 passed that he did not slip up to me more than once with the 
 exclamation : "Boppie, I love you." Whereupon I caught him 
 to me, repeating all the endearments which came to me. Once I 
 used the expression : "I love you stacks and stacks," and after 
 that he often said : "I love you wif all my stacks." Once I was 
 singing : 
 
 "Rise, Breckie, Rise, 
 
 Wipe out your eyes — 
 
 Fly to the east, and fly to the west, — 
 
 And fly to the one that you love best — " 
 
 when he said to me : "Boppie, you are de one dat I love 
 best." 
 
 At night when I was tucking him in we sometimes vied with 
 each other in large comparisons expressive of the magnitude of 
 our affection. He slept out all night this year until the second 
 week in December and I caught at natural phenomena, viewed 
 from his balcony crib, for my imagery: 
 
 "Breckie Thompson, I love you more than the moon is far 
 off." 
 
 "Boppie, I love you more dan de Cwescent is big." 
 
 One night in December, after he had come in to my bedroom 
 to sleep and it was bitter cold, I threw open both windows and 
 was about to slip out, having previously kissed him, when he 
 began to cry and said: "You haven't loved me." That didn't 
 mean so much the expressions of affection as a final hug. He 
 liked, the last thing, to have me put my head down by him, he 
 saying: "Boppie, I want to lie on your arm," and often whis- 
 pering to me one or two special things. Every day and evening 
 I let him know of his dearness to me and the high opinion I 
 held of him : "He's so precious and good, this baby — such a dear 
 little boy, such a brave soldier." We did not "run him down" 
 ever. He knew, whether he understood it or not, that he stood 
 well in the eyes of those who made up his world, and, quick as we 
 were to beg his pardon if we had made a mistake, he, the ever 
 generous, was even quicker to set himself right if he had offended 
 
138 BRECKIE 
 
 one of us. If I said: "Breckinridge, it wasn't right to do that 
 and I am vexed, or provoked, with you about it," he begged 
 pardon at once. Not from fear — he never had occasion to fear 
 any one — but because he wanted a restoration of the harmonious 
 relations which tied him to his people. 
 
 The same entire absence of any sense of fear governed his 
 admissions of wrong doing. He never denied transgressing. 
 Sometimes Juliette asked him: "Qui vous a dit de faire qa?" 
 and he answered: "C'est la terre," or "c'est cet arbre," or, if 
 in the house, "c'est le plancher," or "c'est la chaise." Some- 
 times he said : "c'est Teddy." But he was willing to tell at once 
 just what he had done. He made of course at times the most 
 fantastic statements and went ofif into the wildest flights of 
 imagination, after the manner of all normal little children, — 
 but of deliberate deception, the seeking to hide a wrong doing 
 or to deny it, there is not in all his history a single trace. 
 Potentially fearless and honorable he came to us and his 
 escutcheon was still unblemished when it passed out of our 
 keeping. 
 
 His physical development during his fourth year continued to 
 keep pace with his mental. At three years and nine months his 
 weight was thirty-six and a half pounds and his height thirty- 
 nine and three-fourths inches. I had weighed him every week 
 the first year of his life, every month the second, and every three 
 months thereafter — deducting always the weight of his clothes 
 (which I ascertained by weighing them separately) before chart- 
 ing the pounds and ounces on his record. With his gorgeous 
 color, straight back and broad chest, firm flesh, and face alight 
 with intelligence and good humor from under its crown of 
 yellow curls, he presented a superb picture of childhood — nor- 
 mal childhood, but so rarely seen in its perfection that among 
 the ignorant there was often the impression that something must 
 be wrong with him somewhere. A woman stopped Juliette once 
 to tell her of a prescription which might get the red out of his 
 cheeks and a laborer suggested that such a buxom child must 
 be bloated. After he was dead his fine appearance was often 
 
BRECKIE 139 
 
 recalled and the comment made that "they had always said he 
 couldn't be natural." 
 
 27 
 
 We wanted Breck to acquire early an appreciation of the dig- 
 nity of labor and the value of earnings. I find the following 
 brief record in my journal dated October eleventh: "Breckin- 
 ridge worked this morning with Juliette's husband, Henri Carni, 
 at digging potatoes and received for wages one for himself. This 
 he will have for his dinner." I well recall his radiant delight 
 over this potato when he brought it to me, full of eager explana- 
 tions, and the pleasure it gave him to eat what he had won 
 by the labor of his own hands. 
 
 Naturally he liked to do whatever any of us did. Juliette 
 was learning the Marseillaise this October to sing on the evening 
 of the twenty-fifth at a church social, while she waved a French 
 flag. The idea seized instant hold of Breck's imagination and 
 nothing answered but that he must learn the Marseillaise too. 
 We called his attention to the Tri-color of France hung with the 
 Union Jack and the Star Spangled Banner on our wall — silk 
 flags his godmother had sent him — and told him of that won- 
 derful land, whose language he spoke, which had always been 
 friendly to ours and which suffered now so cruelly under the 
 merciless attacks of Germany. 
 
 Breck learned the first verse of the Marseillaise with the ease 
 with which he memorized everything that interested him, and 
 sang it after this fashion : 
 
 AUons enfants de la patwie, 
 
 Le jour de gloire est awwive 
 Contre nous de la tywanie — 
 
 L'etendard sanglant est leve — 
 
 (Here he repeated, rather short of breath) 
 L'etendard sanglant est leve — 
 
 (Sometimes he repeated this again, as if he couldn't quite let 
 go of it — but he always skipped the next line, the one beginning 
 
140 BRECKIE 
 
 "Entendez-vous — " and came out deep and full, like the pedal 
 tones of an organ, on this :) 
 
 Mugir ces foweces soldats? 
 
 (Then very rapidly he continued) 
 
 lis viennent j usque dans nos bwas 
 Egorger nos fils, nos campagnes. 
 
 (Here he stopped, got a new start, pitched his voice high, ex- 
 tended one arm and pealed:) 
 
 Aux armes ! citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons ! 
 
 Marchons ! marchons ! qu'un sang impur abweuve nos sillons." 
 
 His voice ran away with him at the last and he stopped, quite 
 out of breath. He liked to sing the Marseillaise, but needless 
 to say he never sang that or anything else in public, and was 
 never in his life kept up at night on any occasion for any- 
 thing. 
 
 28 
 
 Breck and Juliette once in a great while went down Spring 
 street in the little town for their morning walk on an errand 
 for me. At such times, Juliette told me, if they had more than 
 one thing to do, Breckie said to her: "Qu'est ce que Boppie 
 pense que nous sommes? EUe nous tiens bien occuper." 
 
 He enjoyed stopping at the springs, en route, to drink — but 
 on the whole liked to get back to more informal surroundings 
 and those remoter spnngs which the tourists rarely frequented. 
 
 Soon after the first frosts a cricket took refuge in our apart- 
 ments, to my great delight. Breck too was excited over his chirp- 
 ing and when I showed him the funny brown fellow he agreed 
 that we should invite him to spend the winter with us. Unfor- 
 tunately we forgot to tell Juliette of our invitation and she had 
 no sooner laid eyes on the cricket, which she failed to recog- 
 nize as a "grillon" of her native Switzerland, than she blotted 
 out his too optimistic existence. When I heard of it I grieved 
 
BRECKIE 141 
 
 and Breckie said to her : "Ce n'etait pas bien, Juliette, de tuer ce 
 gwillon. Mais vous n'avez pas fait ga expwes. Vous ne saviez 
 pas." 
 
 A few days later our joy was renewed with the advent of 
 a second cheery intruder, which Juliette and the chambermaid, 
 her sister Blanche, now cherished as carefully as Breckie and I. 
 But the death of the first still weighed on Breck's mind, for he 
 said again to Juliette : "II ne faut pas tuer les betes que Boppie 
 mette dans la maison." 
 
 He continued in the latter part of his fourth year to say on 
 Thursdays and Sundays when I went out to take him up after his 
 nap: "Boppie, are you taking care of me dis afternoon?" While 
 I helped him dress (for fie had not gotten very far along with 
 dressing himself, and laced his shoes every which way, though 
 he could undress himself nicely because of his underwaists but- 
 toning in front) we sometimes discussed where we would spend 
 the afternoon. 
 
 A favorite walk of his, which we took now and then on that 
 account, although I was not partial to it myself, was down to 
 the railroad station in the valley at the edge of town. He loved 
 to explore there, visit the big water tank, climb the stacks of 
 lumber, throw rocks in a creek bordering the railroad yard, 
 examine into the coupling of the cars on the siding and investi- 
 gate a thousand things of no interest whatever to me. But as, 
 owing to the smallness and remoteness of our town on its one 
 little road, there were no trains for hours at a time and we didn't 
 seem in any one's way, I could not but take him to a spot so 
 delectable to him and where there was so much valuable ma- 
 terial for his education. I specified that we were not to cross 
 a track, even the siding, without looking both up and down and 
 listening for a possible train. This he never failed to do — his 
 expression quite absorbed, his yellow head bent sideways, as he 
 looked earnestly in both directions. 
 
 Below the station about half a mile was the septic tank where 
 terminated the water supply of the town. Breck knew the city 
 water works from A to Z in a general way quite as well as the 
 city commission. We had gone more than once to the reservoir 
 
142 BRECKIE 
 
 in a basin among the hills two miles above the town. We passed 
 along the winding rocky road by the Oil and Johnson springs 
 to get there and, as we descended into the romantic looking 
 valley, Breck liked me to repeat : 
 
 "Adown the glen came armed men, 
 Their trampling sounded nearer." 
 
 He knew that the water in this reservoir was pumped by the 
 big engine below it up into the standpipe on the mountain just 
 above the town and that then it passed into pipes which carried 
 it direct to his bath tub. He commented on this often when he 
 turned on the faucets and it was after he had questioned me 
 as to where the water went when he pulled up the stopper that 
 we paid a visit to the septic tank and he learned that the water 
 ran on down through other pipes, called sewers, into this recep- 
 tacle. 
 
 Breckie liked variety in his walks and play as much as any 
 child and had caught up an expression of Juliette's, when she 
 suggested the substitution of one accustomed thing for another: 
 "pour changer." One morning early I was preparing his orange 
 juice in the Milk room when he came running in with his red 
 wrapper and slippers on. 
 
 "I want my owange juice now, Boppie," he begged, "wight 
 now." 
 
 "But, Breckie," I protested, "you know you never drink it 
 until you have brushed your teeth and we haven't brushed them 
 yet." 
 
 "O," he said, "let me have it first for a change." 
 
 He and his father had a sort of game which they called asking 
 foolish questions. It developed out of Breck's saying, when he 
 first saw his father after an absence of several days : "Faver, 
 did you come back?" 
 
 Dick answered: "O, no, I'm still in Little Rock." Breck 
 caught the point at once and after that if he asked : "Faver, 
 are you shaving?" and Dick made an absurd, inconsequential 
 reply he expected Dick to ask him something equally obvious, 
 based on his occupation at the moment, such as : 
 
BRECKIE 143 
 
 "Breckinridge, are you building with your blocks?" Then he 
 rejoined with quite evident amusement : "O, no, I'm playing 
 tennis." 
 
 They had another game which they reserved for drives in 
 the car with Breck sitting on the front seat by his father. This 
 was to see which could first call attention to the passing objects. 
 One would exclaim : "I see, I see a telegraph pole." 
 
 "I see, I see a bwoken fence." 
 
 "I see, I see a jack rabbit crossing the road." 
 
 "I see two men walking and I got dem first." 
 
 Breck seldom used, in fact I never remember his using, the 
 words nobody, nothing. Instead, he said anybody, anything with 
 a negative meaning. If I asked : "What did you bring back 
 from your walk, Breckie?" and he had nothing, he replied: 
 "Anyfing." If he wanted to tell me nobody was in a room he 
 said: "Anybody in dere." He was speaking once to a guest 
 at the breakfast table and didn't get a reply. Then he said: 
 "Anybody at home." 
 
 In conversing with us at this period he frequently vouchsafed 
 an "O" after any remark of ours which he seemed to be con- 
 sidering. For instance, if he asked for a cracker between meals 
 and I said : "Not until supper," he replied : "O," and made no 
 further comment. If I explained the meaning of something 
 unusual he was apt to reply just "O" — questioning again later if 
 he had not understood. 
 
 29 
 
 When I first put on the Red Cross cap and brassard with my 
 white uniforms to give lessons in the making of surgical dress- 
 ings and Breckie saw me he asked what they were. Then he 
 went to Juliette and explained to her : "Juliette, Boppie est une 
 garde malade de la Cwoix Wouge (Croix Rouge)." 
 
 Dr. Bolton, the school physician, introduced the innovation this 
 autumn at Crescent College of inoculating the entire student body 
 with typhoid and paratyphoid vaccine, as well as such of the 
 
144 BRECKIE 
 
 faculty and employees who desired it. Among others he inocu- 
 lated Breck. I explained to him beforehand that it would hurt, 
 but that all soldiers had to have it done, and he came up 
 proudly with bared arm eager for the experience. However, it 
 was a shock to him and he cried for a moment, saying with 
 emphasis : "No, I don't like it." 
 
 That same night, Sunday, October twenty-seventh, I left for 
 Fort Smith to give an address on Public Health Nursing before 
 the State Federation of Women's Clubs. I had not left Breckie 
 for a night since I went to Fort Smith a year and a half before, 
 and I hated to do it even though I knew that with his grand- 
 parents, father, and Juliette he was as safe and as cherished 
 as with me. I felt this to be an urgent matter for which the 
 times were ripe, so I steeled my heart and went. 
 
 Daily letters came during my brief absence of less than a week, 
 telling that Breckie continued in as glowing health and spirits 
 as when I was with him and was constantly alluding to the 
 overalls (his first pair) which I had promised to bring him when 
 I returned. On the Tuesday after I left his father wrote me: 
 "Breckinridge thrives quite as he does when Fm away. He 
 occasionally forgets you are gone and then smiles and laughs 
 at his mistake. He scarcely ever refers to your being in 'Smort 
 Smiff' without mentioning the overalls." 
 
 My mother wrote the same day about his waking in the morn- 
 ing, which she could hear very well since one end of his balcony 
 joined her bedroom: "He slept all night. This morning he 
 called his father instead of you. I could not hear Dick's reply 
 but suppose he said it was too early to get up. Breckinridge's 
 reply to that was : 'Well, I heard a dwop of de bell.' Still Dick 
 did not seem convinced, for Breckinridge said: 'But, faver, I 
 heard a dwop of it.' " 
 
 She wrote the next day: "Breckinridge is as perfectly well 
 and good as a boy can be. He has no trouble at all from his 
 arm (the inoculation). I asked him what I was to tell you and 
 he said: 'Venez et apportez mes over/ialls.' I am quite afraid 
 the Father of his Country may be the occasion of confusing 
 his morals. Dick was trying to have him tell the cherry tree 
 
BRECKIE 145 
 
 episode and Breckinridge wound it up after this fashion : 'I cut 
 it down, faver. I cannot tell de twuf.' " 
 
 I had written that I would be back Saturday night and that 
 Breckie would see me when he woke up Sunday morning. Of 
 course I saw him as he lay sleeping but he did not awaken 
 until his friends the birds had set up their early symphony. Then 
 Breckie called me by name from his balcony, perfectly mindful 
 of the fact that I would be on hand, and when I ran out to him 
 his charming face, in its outdoor sleeping cap, beamed at me as 
 he exclaimed: "Boppie, did you come back?" 
 
 30 
 
 I found my loved Aunt Jane and her little grandson, Brooke 
 Alexander, here on my return — following the plan which had 
 been formed months before of their spending the winter at 
 Crescent College. She was ordered south by her physician for 
 her health and brought Brooke, another only child, to be with 
 Breckie that there might be companionship for them both. As 
 a matter of fact, this companionship, daily and constant, was not 
 interrupted while Breckie lived and it added the one thing he 
 had begun to need to complete the normal tenor of his days. 
 
 Brooke was a year and a half his senior, better poised and 
 more responsible, a highly imaginative and intelligent child — 
 but not so robust as Breckie at the time of his coming south. 
 He looked thin and pale and was just recovering from an opera- 
 tion for cervical adenitis. But in the bracing air and sunshine 
 of our Ozark mountains, living in the rugged outdoors with 
 Breck, he soon put on pounds of flesh and his cheeks glowed 
 with deep red blood. He was as dark as Breck was fair, with a 
 shock of thick brown hair to offset Breck's yellow curls, and the 
 two Bs, as Aunt Jane called them, formed a jolly and well con- 
 trasted pair in their play together. 
 
 With them it was share and share alike in everything and we 
 tried to duplicate the cherished possessions of each. The first 
 rainy day disclosed the fact that Breckie had a little umbrella 
 
146 BRECKIE 
 
 with a dog handle and Brooke a new raincoat. We promptly 
 ordered rain hats for them both and a coat for Breck so that 
 they might play out in the rain as freely as on other days with- 
 out the need of carrying umbrellas. Dick took out member- 
 ships in the Red Cross for them both at one and the same time 
 and Breck wore his pin on the left side of his blue winter coat. 
 They built marvelous houses with the contents of the basket of 
 blocks and used the insets from Breck's Montessori cylindrical 
 insets as men and creatures and the long pieces of wood for 
 trains. 
 
 Brooke's more advanced mentality devised new games into 
 which Breck entered with his accustomed seriousness. One they 
 called a "monkey game," but my uninitiated eyes never saw them 
 do anything except hold sofa pillows on their heads and run 
 from the study into my bedroom and, through the bath room, 
 into Dick's, calling out : "Bogieman, bogieman." 
 
 "Breckinridge," I asked one evening when this had filled 
 in the interval between coming in and eating supper, "what is a 
 bogieman ?" 
 
 "He's a bad man," he answered, "Bwooke knows about him." 
 
 "Who told you about him?" I asked Brooke. 
 
 "Two children," he replied briefly, and the range of knowl- 
 edge of the subject appeared to stop there. When I said: "But 
 he isn't really a man, only a play man," neither child seemed con- 
 cerned about it one way or the other. 
 
 Another game devised by Brooke and entered into with zest by 
 Breckinridge was to take bits of Brooke's modeling clay, make 
 it up into assorted shapes and carry it about on a box top, calling 
 out: "Jewelry for sale, jewelry for sale." 
 
 Dick played with them like another boy. As I came in one 
 evening I heard a roaring sound accompanied by scuffling and 
 was made aware, even before I had heard an explanation, that 
 all three were playing bear. As if further to emphasize the fact 
 of its being a game Breckie ran by without noticing me — his face 
 solemn as an Indian's. Then all three began rolling over and 
 over. 
 
BRECKIE 147 
 
 31 
 
 Brooke's taste in books was decidedly more mature than 
 Break's. In fact there was hardly anything in the way of a story 
 which he did not enjoy and his capacity for a more prolonged 
 concentration kept him from getting tired of the same thing as 
 soon as Breck did. One day I pulled out a copy of "Jack the 
 Giant Killer," illustrated by Hugh Thomson, for which Breckie 
 had not hitherto cared and began reading it to both boys. But 
 I soon saw that Breck was not old enough for it yet. Not only 
 did it fail in holding his attention but it made him distinctly 
 uneasy. "O Boppie, don't wead about it," he begged. "I don't 
 like giants." 
 
 Brooke took to the Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton stories 
 with a zest quite equal to Breck's and I enlarged them consider- 
 ably in my daily recitals of the interesting trio. A permanent 
 villain in the piece now came to the front in the shape of a 
 wicked radiator from their own home, who chased the children 
 through the forest depths, breathing out hot steam as he ran. 
 Bullets glanced off this desperado as did arrows (for Fred, 
 though not old enough for a gun, could and did shoot with a 
 bow and arrow and Breck's father made him one like it) but 
 when Roger slipped up behind him with a long pole and turned 
 him over, there he had to lie flat on the ground and would have 
 lain so forever had not Mr. Todd, his friend the fox, sneaked 
 along and turned him back upright again. 
 
 Down at the foot of a long flight of steps, which led out of 
 the Crescent grounds into the road above the Catholic chapel, 
 there was a leaky pipe connected with the radiation of the col- 
 lege out of which the steam poured on wintry days. If I passed 
 there with Breckinridge he was instantly metamorphosed into 
 Fred and called to me : 
 
 "Lucy, dat's de wicked wadiator, Lucy. Wun, Lucy, wun." 
 
 On the Thursday and Sunday afternoons when Aunt Jane and 
 I took the children out with us our favorite rendezvous was a 
 wagon on the edge of town near the standpipe just outside the 
 
148 BRECKIE 
 
 yard of a man and his wife we knew pleasantly. Our real 
 acquaintance began over this wagon, which Breck and I had 
 visited occasionally during the summer. It belonged to Mr. 
 Daily, the owner of the yard, and he was always most kind about 
 letting Breck climb in and out of it, work the brake, and have a 
 delectable time with it generally. Near by it in the summer there 
 lay a log on which Breck and I walked until he tired, balancing 
 ourselves so as not to fall in the water we played flowed by on 
 both sides. The Bailys had also a collie dog, a wonderful fellow 
 who drove their cows in every night, and in appearance so 
 strongly resembled the wise Kep in "J^^^i"^^ Puddleduck" that 
 when I first saw him I said aloud : "There's Kep." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Breck, with emphasis, agreeing at once. But 
 when we found his name was Mac we held Kep in reserve for 
 other yellow collies. Never did we meet one that Breck or I 
 didn't exclaim : "There's Kep." 
 
 To this delightful region of wagon, Mac, a pump, chickens and 
 one guinea, horse, buggy, cows, and friendly faces who encour- 
 aged the play of little boys, Breck and I early introduced Aunt 
 Jane and Brooke, and while she and I sat on a plank by the 
 fence, planning the future of these children, or on the porch for 
 a chat with Mrs. Baily, the two little cousins explored to their 
 heart's content — and indeed nothing could have contented their 
 hearts more. I meet Mac sometimes now, following his master 
 on horseback over the country roads, and the sight of him re- 
 calls with singular clearness the details of those late autumn and 
 early winter days. 
 
 One place we passed on our way to the wagon was a gully 
 spanned by a little bridge. Here Breck and I had sometimes 
 acted the story of "The Three Goats Gruff" and here we brought 
 Aunt Jane and Brooke to act it with us. With them we did it in 
 fine style. I was the Goblin under the Bridge and the voice for 
 the Bridge, while Aunt Jane, Brooke, and Breck tramped sol- 
 emnly over one by one as the Three Goats Gruff — Big Goat 
 Gruff being of course the most favored part on account of the 
 heavy way he walks across the Bridge and the fight in which he 
 vanquishes the Goblin later. We kept up the game until both 
 
I'lPfjokc ,'iii(l l'>rc(k had hccii cm li in turn all the (jf).'i(s (ini(T and 
 llic (iohlin and I'ridj^c. I'.rcck as the I'.ijj float CindT, walking 
 heavily over the I'ridj^c — trip lr<)|), lii|» Irop -wilh his earnest 
 cxprcssifjn, and Hicn darling onl to hull nut so ihal I hlcw up 
 hkc a puff hall, caused nie to (|uake in my (iround (irijjpers when 
 1 was llie (johliii. 
 
 I'rookc vied with P.rerkinridj^e in dclip;ht over the station w<llk 
 and l)f)lli were; especially altracled to a heap of rusly scraj) iron 
 in llial ncif^hhorhood from which they drew forth occasional 
 ticasurcs such as hciit liooj)',, iron handles, spikes, and nails. 
 Su( h trophies set me thinking of my yoim^cr hrotlurr at ahoiil the 
 same aj,'e when lie said: "These may seem like trash to you, 
 hut they're ^old to mc." 
 
 f)nc afternoon we tof)k the chihhen to ;i hlacksmith's shf)p 
 where they watched with int(;nse interirst \\u-. heatin/^ atid :.ha|)inj^ 
 of shoes in a forge and then the actual slu)einj( of a hors<* who 
 stepped in opportunely. After we. had thank(rd the blacksmith 
 and were about to leave we nolicitd a bnlj^inj^ ap|)earanc(t about 
 the sweater pockets of both little boys aufl ;in exainination re- 
 vealed that they had stuffed them full oi nails. 
 
 In their relations with each otlutr the children Sf|uabbled and 
 ff)Uj(lil at least once or twice a flay and pl;iye»l tf)j(ether with 
 lli<r utmost sweetness the balance f)f the lim<r. Aunt Jan<t was all 
 for havinj^ l)i( k teadi them to wrestle so that their (juarrels 
 could spend themselves in this manly form of sj)ort, and, as 
 IJreck was usually tlur aj^j^ressor, w<' told l'>rook<r, when at- 
 la( ked, tfj clinch (jiii« kly and throw him down. They w<Me build- 
 ing with the bIo< ks one eveninj^ and I'rooke, ;i more lapid 
 builder than I'.re* k, had taken more than his share. I'r( < k, who 
 was lackinj^' in subtleties, usually met such a situation by starting 
 a fi^dit, but on this occasion he said to Aunt J;ine: 
 
 "Aunt Jane, do you know why I don't hit I'.ooke in th(* head 
 wif a block!' I'.ecause he would fwow me down." 
 
 Another tim(; after l'.r'*oke liarl aJ^■lin appropriated the lion's 
 share of the blocks hi'. Iieail iclenlcd ;ii the ■.ii'lit of I'reck's 
 
I50 BRECKIE 
 
 unfinished mansion and he returned a portion of them. Breck 
 instantly melted into sweetness and gratitude. "Dat was kind 
 of him, wasn't it?" he said to Aunt Jane, "to give me my 
 blocks." 
 
 Their affection for each other was tender and real. Breck 
 careened into a zinc table one late afternoon when he was run- 
 ning after Juliette in the pantry and gave his head a terrific 
 blow. He turned white and fell into Juliette's arms, but was 
 able to cry and presently beg: "Embwassez — embwassez." 
 Brooke's distress was keen and he kept begging: "Don't cry, 
 Breckinridge, don't cry." 
 
 Another day when Brooke caught his finger in the toy pistol 
 and snapped it he began to wail for help and as I ran to unloose 
 it Breckie chimed in with his tears, saying: "O, I don't want 
 Bwooke to cwy." (Sometimes he called him Bwooke and some- 
 times Booke.) 
 
 There was a marked tendency on the part of both to com- 
 bine together upon occasions against adults. One afternoon after 
 the snow had come they were climbing a hill with Aunt Jane 
 and me and Breckie kept lagging behind. Ordinarily I let him 
 go his own gait pretty much, but this particular afternoon was 
 far advanced and we had barely time to go where we had 
 planned and get back before night. So I explained to Breck 
 why we hadn't time to linger, and when he dawdled anyway I 
 went on without him. By the time I had reached the top of the 
 hill he was calling to me to come back. I answered that I would 
 wait for him but not return. Brooke, however, ran down a little 
 way to meet him and Aunt Jane and I could hear them con- 
 ferring as they approached us, Breckie vergmg on tears and ex- 
 plaining to a sympathetic Brooke: "Boppie went up de walk 
 wifout me and it wasn't wight. I am vexed wif her." Brooke's 
 solicitude was inaudible but it succeeded in drying his cousin's 
 tears. 
 
 Brooke had to take the inoculations too and he did it with 
 a fine spirit, stipulating only that his grandmother hold his 
 hand. 
 
BRECKIE 151 
 
 33 
 
 The two little boys did not sleep together. Brooke had a bed 
 in his grandmother's room. But Juliette gave them their baths 
 at the same time in the one big tub and they took all their meals 
 together. First they had breakfast (preceded before they were 
 dressed by the juice of two oranges each) downstairs with Dick, 
 who carried their bowls of oatmeal and cups of milk with him 
 on a tray. Oatmeal, ten ounces of milk, and a slice of wheat 
 or rye bread with butter formed their invariable breakfast. 
 The next meal was eight ounces of milk and a graham cracker, 
 at eleven thirty, just after their bath. Then came dinner at two- 
 fifteen. This consisted of a poached or coddled egg with a bit 
 of bacon, or a piece of broiled rabbit, young chicken or steak, 
 a baked potato or boiled brown rice with butter, a green vegetable 
 and, for dessert, a baked apple, custard, gelatine, a "bricelet" or 
 tea cake or animal cracker made by Juliette, or a simple pudding. 
 Their supper, served at five-thirty, was always brown bread 
 and milk with either stewed prunes or apple sauce. Breck had 
 only the pulp of the prunes but Brooke could eat the skins as 
 well and the skins of the baked apples. 
 
 Breck's little white table was not large enough for both boys, 
 so we had had sent up from Fort Smith a somewhat larger table 
 and the chair that went with it which belonged to Clifton's baby- 
 hood in Russia. There was ample room on it for a tray for each 
 boy and, as they sat at the ends, their feet didn't tangle up in 
 the middle — thus eliminating scuffling at meals. Dinners and sup- 
 pers were taken at this table. 
 
 34 
 
 Breck's fondness for rabbits and chickens as companions led 
 me into the consideration of how to make them a part of his 
 diet without fostering in him a callous indifiference to eating his 
 friends on the one hand or a morbid aversion to meat on the 
 other. So I began explaining to him, even before curiosity 
 about the matter had awakened in him, that when he ate a little 
 
152 BRECKIE 
 
 chicken or rabbit he let its body come into his and in so doing 
 released its spirit for a higher form of life. I tried by every 
 possible analogy which he could understand to explain to him 
 that the life in the body was not all body with anything — not 
 even with the trees. A fairy story I had read in my childhood 
 and the source of which I have altogether forgotten gives as the 
 chief ambition of a loaf of bread to be eaten by a good child. I 
 could not truthfully tell Breckie that the desire of the chickens 
 and rabbits was to be eaten by him (we did not go into par- 
 ticulars about the chops and steaks) but I did tell him that I 
 thought it good for them as well as him that their bodies should 
 enter his, else it wouldn't be like that, and that their life was 
 probably as immortal, though less individual, than his. Some- 
 times I talked for the chicken, as he ate it, saying : 
 
 "Thank you, Breckinridge, for letting my body come into 
 yours. Thank you, Breckinridge, for letting me go without my 
 body to the seashore of endless worlds." 
 
 Breckie always answered most politely : "You're welcome," 
 and several times he said : "Dat was kind of me to eat dat 
 chicken, wasn't it Boppie?" 
 
 But often, after I had attempted these explanations and felt 
 how floundering and inadequate they were to explain the mighty 
 fact that all creation lives at the expense of life, I said to him: 
 "O, little boy, this is what Boppie thinks — what she is think- 
 ing now. But you must think things for yourself when you get 
 bigger." I had no doubt but that his thoughts, when he evolved 
 them, would inspire and sustain him. 
 
 35 
 
 On Thanksgiving day I showed Breckinridge a colored picture 
 by Ferris which had come out in a current issue of one of the 
 magazines of the First Thanksgiving, and I told him the fine old 
 story. I told him that the people thus rescued from starvation 
 were early Americans and because they had fought hard fights 
 with primal conditions (I enumerated the conditions in simple 
 language) he could play happily in the woods to-day. I told 
 
BRECKIE 153 
 
 him that those particular men hadn't been his grandfathers be- 
 cause his grandfathers had landed further south, but that all of 
 us made a special feast of Thanksgiving day in honor of them. 
 
 "Since that time, Breckie," I said, "when Thanksgivng day 
 comes around every American thanks God for something he is 
 glad to have, just the way these men in the picture are doing — 
 thanking Him on their knees for something to eat. Since you 
 came, Breckie," I continued, "I have thanked Him every Thanks- 
 giving day for you. Now don't you want to thank Him this 
 Thanksgiving for something you are very glad to have ?" 
 
 Ever ready, he said at once, with his responsive smile : "I will 
 fank Him for my shovels." 
 
 With that, down he flopped on his chubby knees and said: 
 "Fank you, God, for dose shovels." 
 
 It was one of his rare prayers and like all he ever uttered, 
 individual. 
 
 I did not write this down at the time, although I spoke of it 
 to the other members of the family, but nearly two months 
 later, on the seventeenth of January, when I happened to be 
 writing in my journal, I recalled the incident and decided to 
 record it then. It was the first evening of Breck's brief illness, 
 when he only seemed a little unwell but was sleeping badly, — 
 and while I was writing he called to me several times. Upon 
 one of these occasions when I had run in to him and was bend- 
 ing over him I said : "What was it, Breck, that you thanked God 
 for on Thanksgiving day ?" 
 
 Instantly eager comprehension lit up his face as he replied: 
 "For my shovels — I fanked Him for my shovels." 
 
 He did not then or on the previous occasion vouchsafe a rea- 
 son for his exceptional gratitude for shovels and I never asked 
 him. We had not, in fact, alluded to the subject at any time in 
 the two intervening months. 
 
 36 
 
 Juliette and Henri had two pigs and each little boy laid claim 
 to one and was much interested in the discussion as to what dis- 
 
154 BRECKIE 
 
 position was to be made of them. It was decided that Brooke's 
 pig should be bred and Break's killed, cured, and smoked. Both 
 little boys were promised a pigling apiece from "Edna's" litter 
 when it arrived and the black and white pig, Breckie's, was 
 slaughtered early in December. Brooke was expatiating at 
 length over his pig being chosen for the high office of maternity 
 when Brcck interrupted him with: "i?ut Juliette will have 
 much good to eat out of mine," and to Juliette: "N'est ce pas, 
 Juliette, que vous aurez de la viande a manger du mien?" 
 
 All through November the joy of the two little boys was 
 to go out in the woods with Liliane's wagon, which Breck had 
 helped give her on her birthday, and fill it with acorns for the 
 pigs. The feeding of pigs, chickens, and Belgian hares was a 
 daily recurring delight. They liked sometimes to hunt for dry 
 pieces of wood instead of acorns and to fill the wagon and load 
 their arms with this kind of kindling. The Carnis bought a tall 
 pine tree on the hillside back of their home for seventy-five 
 cents, to cut down and use for firewood. But they didn't plan 
 to cut it before February as they had enough to last until then. 
 I grieved over the loss of the big tree, but Breckie was not 
 troubled with sentimental regrets so long as the others in the 
 forest remained, and he vied with Juliette in describing how 
 fine and tall a tree this one was and how wonderful it was go- 
 ing to be to see it fall. 
 
 The satisfying regularity of the wholesome lives of our two 
 little boys reminded Aunt Jane and me of a little book which 
 gladdened the memories of us both called "From Do Nothing 
 Hall to Happy Day House." In Happy Day House lived Lady 
 Love, who looked at the children and all they did through rose 
 colored glasses, and Dame Duty, whose work box was opened 
 by a key called "Do It Yourself." 
 
 37 
 
 Another member of my family now went into war service 
 when my only sister sailed from New York the day after 
 Thanksgiving for a port in France. She was accepted by the 
 
BRECKIE 155 
 
 Y. M. C. A. for canteen work over there earlier in the month and 
 when my mother learned of it she went on to New York to stay 
 with her until she sailed. Before she left she made both little 
 boys helmets such as she knitted in great numbers for the 
 soldiers — except that theirs were dark blue instead of olive drab 
 or gray. 
 
 The cold came swiftly about the second week in December, 
 just at the time of my mother's return, and more terribly than 
 any of us remembered it in this region. Breckie continued to 
 take his naps out of doors, for he was equipped with all the 
 suitable paraphernalia, but I became alarmed the second night 
 of the first bitter spell lest his nose might freeze and brought 
 him in. He had stayed out all night the night before when the 
 thermometer tumbled below zero, but this second night when 
 Dick came to bed after eleven with the information that it was 
 already ten below and going down, we agreed that it would be 
 better to bring the soldier in. His indoor crib had been taken to 
 the attic, so he had to come into my big bed for the remainder of 
 the night and was so excited over the novelty of the situation he 
 found it hard to sleep. The next day the little crib came down 
 from the attic to occupy its accustomed place next my bed and 
 Breckie went to sleep indoors at night but with open windows 
 and plenty of Boreas. 
 
 38 
 
 I mentioned a toy pistol as having been given Breck before he 
 was old enough to play with it. He had a gun dating back to 
 about the same period and was just beginning to enjoy them 
 both, in the latter part of his third year, when his father asked 
 me to put them away quietly as he was afraid Breck would 
 learn from his play with them a careless sense of the use of fire- 
 arms. So they vanished out of Breck's life but he never ceased 
 to remember them. As the months passed he made guns and 
 pistols for himself out of sticks of wood and often told Juliette 
 and me that he had lost his gun and that he thought he left 
 his pistol at his grandmother's island. His father promised him 
 a real gun when he should be old enough to use it — but the de- 
 
156 BRECKIE 
 
 sire for its toy predecessor continued so pronounced that I sug- 
 gested to Dick that if he would let me give the little gun and 
 pistol back to Breckie I would, so far from letting them teach 
 him a careless handling of firearms, make them a means of 
 teaching him their real use and value. To this Dick readily 
 agreed and so one day in December I appeared before Breck's 
 dazzled eyes with the little old gun and pistol, and I told him 
 quite truthfully that I had taken them out of my trunk where 
 they had been lying all of this time, 
 
 "Now, Pidgy darling," I said, "yo" ^^e going to have them 
 both to play with so long as you don't point them at any 
 one. Guns and pistols are dangerous. They kill people. So 
 we never point them at anything we do not expect to kill. And 
 you must be as careful with these little guns as you will be 
 with the real one we are going to give you when you are big- 
 ger." I had a rifle and a shot gun with which I hunted in my 
 girlhood and I often told Breckie they should be his 
 some day. Meanwhile I began his education with the toys 
 as I had promised his father, and as my own father and 
 uncle had taught me when I learned to shoot. He could do 
 anything he liked with either except point them, even in fun, at 
 one of us. That was absolutely forbidden and the penalty for 
 disobedience to this law was a forfeiture of the offending 
 weapons. 
 
 They never had to be forfeited but once. Breck was as 
 cautious and particular with them as if real shot poured out 
 of the barrels. He and Brooke played alternately with pistol 
 and gun and I think nothing Breck ever had gave him more 
 constant pleasure than both. He came to me in triumph as soon 
 as he could pull the trigger of the pistol, which was stiff, by 
 himself. He shot all the chairs, killing imaginary lions and 
 tigers, and Germans, including the Kaiser, over and over. But I 
 cautioned him about not hurting German women and children. 
 *Tt is they who kill women and children," I explained, "but we 
 don't do that. Their women and children will always be safe 
 with our soldiers." 
 
 One day when we started out and he and Brooke had pistol 
 
BRECKIE 157 
 
 and gun Breck announced that he was going to shoot birds. 
 "Not the dear little song birds," I begged, and he replied: 
 
 "I will shoot a chicken hawk only." 
 
 One night he begged to take the pistol to bed with him and 
 Teddy and I said he might if he wouldn't play with it in the 
 night. I was afraid the unaccustomed privilege would excite him 
 too much for continued sleep — and I was right. Some time be- 
 fore dawn he woke suddenly, perhaps the result of rolling over 
 on his hard bed fellow, and began snapping the pistol. Naturally 
 that wakened me and I requested him to desist. Temptation 
 proved irresistible ; the snapping continued, so I took the pistol 
 away as I had said I would do. Whereupon Breckie wailed: 
 "I can't defend myself wifout my pistol." But he did drop off 
 to sleep again promptly and so did I. 
 
 He had gotten so that he could use his hands with some 
 skill, not only in pulling triggers and hammering nails but in 
 cutting with a pair of blunt pointed scissors. One day just about 
 the time he was to come in I laid a large catalogue and the 
 scissors on the rug in front of the door. He needed no other 
 invitation. I heard him run in. There followed silence and I, 
 looking through the doorway, saw him busily cutting — his face 
 intensely serious, his mind absorbed. If the basket of blocks 
 happened to be standing near the door when he dashed in, down 
 he sat at once, pulled off his worsted gloves and, without wait- 
 ing to be divested of coat, leggings, cap, helmet, and goloshes, he 
 began to build. When he and Brooke came in together a sort of 
 rushing sound accompanied them, like Boreas in the pine trees 
 or a swollen stream down Leatherwood Hollow. Two tongues 
 talking at once, four little feet pattering, and that general com- 
 motion which precedes the headlong entrance of two sturdy 
 boys . . . well, it was a good sound, more musical to me than 
 music. 
 
 Another recent source of development in Breck appeared to 
 be his sense of smell. I could never notice until the last month 
 or two of his fourth year that he had an acute sense of smelL 
 Taste, hearing, sight, touch, all seemed pronounced enough — 
 but he made no observations about smell. True he did some- 
 
158 BRECKIE 
 
 times even in his first and second year bury his nose deep in 
 flowers — but that was because he saw us do it. I could not see 
 that he got pleasure from their fragrance or that passing a de- 
 cayed object in the woods afforded him any disgust. In fact 
 he never volunteered an original comment upon either. 
 
 Quite suddenly in the latter part of his fourth year he be^ 
 gan noticing all odors and was so quick at it that often before 
 I had become conscious of an olfactory impression he ex- 
 claimed : "Boppie, what do I smell ?" 
 
 This was his usual exclamation when we returned along the 
 streets towards evening and odors of cooking came out of the 
 houses. He couldn't always place them, his mind not con- 
 sciously associating them with anything, but he had become 
 curious about them. 
 
 39 
 
 I had begun my experimental class in Child Welfare with 
 twenty-six enthusiastic students, all but two High School grad- 
 uates and in the first and second year college work — which is 
 all the college work given by our junior college. I was intensely 
 interested in devising and planning this course as well as in 
 the immense amount of reading I had to do in preparation. As 
 the first semester's work pertained largely to the physical care 
 of little children, the second being reserved for more general 
 aspects of Child Welfare, I did a good deal of demonstrating — 
 for which I needed live subjects. Baby Mary Phillips, while she 
 stayed with us, supplied a perfect model for bathing and dress- 
 ing and I had plenty of the best nursery equipment, while for 
 modifying and pasteurizing milk and preparing diets we did not 
 need an actual child to feed. 
 
 Later in the term, when I was demonstrating the care of 
 sick children, Breckie became my willing patient. I asked him 
 if he would let his temperature be taken and treatments be given 
 him so that I could show the girls how to do it and he agreed at 
 once. Clad in his red wrapper and slippers he accompanied me 
 to the classroom, but when he saw among my equipment a bowl 
 of steaming water he said: "Dat's too hot, Boppie," and eyed 
 
BRECKIE • 159 
 
 it anxiously. After the demonstrations, when I had taken 
 him back to Juliette, I thanked him for his courtesy in helping 
 us and received his "You're welcome, Boppie," in return. 
 
 One day he saw a pair of woolen stockings belonging to me 
 hanging out to dry on the white enameled clothes rack where 
 his little white woolen stockings and his underwear dried. 
 Both Juliette and I had omitted to ask his permission but he 
 ran to her at once, saying: "Juliette, vous pouvez mettre les bas 
 de Boppie sur mon wack — vous pouvez." 
 
 He heard his father questioning me about something and evi- 
 dently thought his tone too serious for he went up to him and 
 said earnestly : "Boppie is not to blame." 
 
 He was fond this December of imitating the bellow of a bull 
 in words his father had taught him, like this : "I'm agoin' down 
 yonder to dat man's field and get me some new gwass, new 
 gwass, new gwass." 
 
 He learned a new song, a sort of dialogue in French which he 
 recited with Juliette. I overheard them going through with it 
 together one day, both gravely courteous, in the characters of 
 shopowner and customer_, and several times I begged them to re- 
 peat it for me. It ran like this : 
 
 "J. Madame, vendez-vous du cafe? 
 
 B. Tirelot lot lot j'en ai du tout bon. 
 J. Combien le faites-vous payer? 
 
 B. Tirelot lot lot twois fwancs (trois francs) le kilo. 
 J. C'est trop cher, Madame — 
 
 B. Ah, mais non, Madame. 
 J. Voyons, laissez-moi le cafe pour un sou. 
 
 B. Twes (tres) bien, Madame, puis-ce-que c'est vous. 
 B. (extending one hand) Voici le cafe. 
 
 J. (ditto) Et voici le sou. 
 J. and B. together — Ah, ah, ah, ah— 
 
 Je vous recommende la bonne marchande. 
 Qui vous laisse tout, tout pour un sou." 
 
 40 
 
 On the sixth of December a girl of sixteen, the daughter of 
 one of Juliette's neighbors in the Dairy Hollow, died after a 
 
i6o BRECKIE 
 
 lingering illness. Breck told me of it. He said: "Ammeline 
 Wobertson is dead, Boppie. You wegwet it?" (He frequently 
 carried over into English Juliette's expression "vous regrettez?" 
 He heard Juliette and her neighbors discussing the death and 
 mourning over the youth of the one who had died. Juliette, as he 
 knevir, sat up through the night v^^ith the family, and many of 
 those neighborly acts of kindness which both soothe and glorify 
 our human tragedies passed before his observant eyes. The 
 day of the funeral as he went down into the Dairy Hollow with 
 Juliette the hearse stood before the Robertsons' gate. Juliette 
 took him into her garden before the coffin was borne out but 
 she told me long afterwards of the questions he had asked her 
 and her rei)lies. The whole thing made a profound impression 
 on Breckinridge's mind, but how deep an impression I was not 
 to know until later. 
 
 Christmas was again approaching and the air of Crescent full 
 of preparations for the big tree by means of which the Crescent 
 students gave clothing and toys to the poorest children of the 
 city. The thing began every year with Dick's reading aloud one 
 Sunday night in chapel "The Birds' Christmas Carol." Then 
 the school divided into committees which did the work. Breckin- 
 ridge and Brooke both attended this tree and appeared pleasantly 
 impressed with its towering appearance and with an excellent 
 impersonation of Santa Claus. 
 
 In the evenings by the fire when I had my boy gathered in my 
 arms I talked to him often of the meaning of Christmas and of 
 the birth of the Christ Child. He had always liked a Murillo 
 Madonna and Child which hung in my bedroom and sometimes he 
 commented on it. This Christmas I told him the Bethlehem 
 story more fully and graphically than at any previous time and 
 when I came to the manger I said: "You don't know what a 
 manger is, do you, Breckie?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," he answered at once, "it's selfishness — dog in de 
 manger." 
 
 For the first time, this December, I spoke to Breck of Jesus 
 
BRECKIE i6i 
 
 as other than a child, as One who had grown up but kept a love 
 for little children, whom He understood and to whom He was 
 kind. I told of His gathering them around Him and blessing 
 them. But I gave no details of His life except those bearing on 
 His childhood and His adoration of childhood. 
 
 Brooke's letters from his mother, always frequent, but at 
 Christmas time so numerous and supplemented by so many 
 gay cards from other absentees who loved him as to suggest a 
 Pentecostal shower, excited Breck's desire for similar favors. 
 "I want some mail," he pleaded whenever Brooke became the 
 recipient of an adult's share. I began handing my own Christ- 
 mas cards over to him unopened and I had a little talk with him 
 besides in which I explained that Brooke had letters and cards 
 from his mother because he was away from her — but that Breck 
 had his mother close by, which he agreed was better yet. 
 
 Just before the holidays two of the teachers brought in a gray 
 kitten — a waif — around whose neck they had tied a bow of 
 lavender ribbon. I asked the boys if we should keep the kitten 
 and when they decided they wanted to I suggested to Breck that 
 we call her "Punky Dunk." Breck rarely failed to have a de- 
 cided opinion pro or con for any suggestion. He replied at 
 once: "No, I will call her Wibbon. Here, Wibbon, Wibbon." 
 Later he said she might be "Wibbon Punky Dunk" — but the 
 gray kitten showed a preference for the warm kitchen and the 
 society of another cat residing there and soon deserted us. 
 
 Shortly before Christmas I suggested to the boys that they 
 each buy their grandmothers a present with some of their own 
 pennies. The idea pleased them and we went down town on this 
 errand where, after much bewildered choosing, they selected 
 jumping figures. We have no real toy shops in Eureka Springs 
 — but several of the stores carry a large assortment of toys at 
 Christmas — wonderlands they were to Breckie, who knew noth- 
 ing finer, but not so imposing to Brooke, who could remember the 
 Christmas shops of New York. Brooke on the other hand 
 fairly reveled in the pigs, chickens, and other charms of the 
 Dairy Hollow. 
 
 The day before Christmas Dick took the children down to the 
 
i62 BRECKIE 
 
 shops and let them choose from among the moderately priced 
 playthings whatever they liked best. Each boy chose a whip, a 
 folding fence, and a cow bell. There they divided, Brooke 
 selecting a horn and Breckie a small merry-go-round. 
 
 Meanwhile Breck had given some of his possessions to the 
 Crescent Christmas tree and an armload more, including that 
 one of his two boy dolls which still bore the name of Mammy's 
 first husband, to a little girl named Montana whose mother 
 cooked for us during the Christmas holidays. He chose him- 
 self the toys he wanted to give with only such help from me 
 in deciding as he seemed to need. I was careful not to sug- 
 gest the things he especially loved and which I knew were as 
 strongly bound up in his associations as my dear possessions 
 were in mine. 
 
 "Dat was kind of me," he said, "to give my fings to Montana 
 — " — and he said it quite as naturally as he said "Dat was kind 
 of Juliette to make me dose animal cwackers, wasn't it. Bop- 
 pie ?" — munching as he spoke on a fish or a bear. 
 
 Both children hung up their stockings Christmas night by 
 the chimney in my study and dashed in, clad in wrappers and 
 slippers, early Christmas morning to open them. They had many 
 similar things, for Aunt Jane had given them both new buckets 
 and shovels, Florence balls, Juliette little aluminum cooking 
 utensils, Liliane small horses and wagons, and Dick and I sets 
 of sailors and boats. But from others came separate things and 
 Breckie was more taken with a diminutive cannon and a whistle 
 which Brooke's mother had sent for his stocking than with 
 everything which fell to his own share. He did not ask for 
 them or appear to think himself unfairly dealt with because he 
 had no whistle or cannon, but the wistful look on his face when 
 he spoke of them so acted upon Juliette that she took him down 
 town at once and bought a whistle for him quite as noisy as 
 Brooke's and a goodly green cannon with a handle in its rear 
 which could be pulled out and snapped back by investigating lit- 
 tle hands. 
 
 In Brooke's box from his mother had come some candy which 
 
BRECKIE AND BROOKE 
 
BRECKIE 163 
 
 went into his stocking and which Breck regarded with awe. 
 Later, when he saw Brooke nibbhng the end of a pink and white 
 stick, he asked : "Are you eating poison ?" 
 
 Several new books fell to the share of both boys. My mother 
 gave Breck a copy of "Uncle Remus" — such as had gladdened 
 our nursery when she read to us tales, some of which had been 
 told to her on the plantation in her own childhood. We thought 
 Breck old enough for "Brer Rabbit," "Brer Tarrapin," "Brer 
 Fox," "Ole Sis Goose," "Miss Medders" and "De Gals" and all 
 the rest and he did listen attentively to bits at a time — but, like 
 the stories in the "Jungle Book" and "Hollow Tree Nights and 
 Days" (which came to Brooke from his mother), they were still 
 too far in advance of his development for him to give them pro- 
 longed attention. 
 
 He liked better the "Story of Little Black Sambo" which 
 Brooke received and a copy of the "Volland" edition of "Mother 
 Goose" sent him by his Uncle Clifton. He wanted this read to 
 him every evening and often several times a day as well. One 
 day he opened it up before Juliette and recited rhyme after 
 rhyme, slowly turning the pages. But when he came to the old 
 woman in the shoe he said: "I won't wead about her. She's a 
 wicked woman." 
 
 Sometimes he sat in my lap while I read this loved book and 
 laid one plump hand right over the print, then looked up at me 
 and smiled to show me he knew which the print was and that I 
 couldn't see to read when he covered it. He quoted from 
 "Mother Goose" often. One afternoon he said to his Aunt 
 Jane : "Teddy lives on fiddles and dwink and, Aunt Jane, he can 
 never be quiet." 
 
 Three Mother Goose rhymes which he seemed especially to 
 like were the one about the snail who "stuck out her horns like 
 a little Kyloe cow," and this one: 
 
 Ride away, ride away, Johnny shall ride, 
 And he shall have pussy cat tied to one side ; 
 And he shall have little dog tied to the other, 
 And Johnny shall ride to see his grandmother. 
 
i64 BRECKIE 
 
 And this one: 
 
 There was an old woman 
 
 Sold puddings and pies; 
 She went to the mill 
 
 And dust flew in her eyes. 
 While through the streets 
 To all she meets 
 
 She ever cries 
 
 "Hot pies— Hot pies." 
 
 I wrote in my journal: "The thought of food runs much in 
 Breckie's mind. Not long ago he sat in my lap announcing that 
 he would have four children when he grew up. 'And, Boppie,' 
 he said, 'I will give dem plenty to eat — and I will give my wife 
 plenty to eat — and I will give you plenty to eat, too, Boppie — 
 and I will have plenty to eat myself.' " 
 
 One day he was blowing his nose on a handkerchief of mine of 
 which he had the use and remarked : "Dat's a big hankispuss for 
 a little boy like me." 
 
 He heard the word "camouflage" used at about this time and 
 asked its meaning. His father then told him that when a girl 
 painted her face that was camouflage. "Did you camouflage 
 your face?" some one asked Breckie, whose cheeks were like 
 a Ben Davis apple. "God camouflaged my face," he answered 
 at once. 
 
 42 
 
 The Christmas season changed for awhile the trend of the 
 Fred and Lucy and Bumbleton stories. This adventure- 
 some trio happened upon a cave in the forest inhabited by a 
 gnome who was wholly good natured if only you didn't waken 
 him when he wanted to sleep. He had a Christmas tree in his 
 cave and all sorts of wonderful toys and when the children es- 
 caped in there from the sallies of the wicked radiator or the wild 
 pigs they each chose something they wanted to play with while 
 Bumbleton rolled a ball around with his nose. 
 
 Now when Breckie asked me to tell him about Fwed and 
 Lucy and Bumbleton he added "Tell about de gnome's cave." 
 
BRECKIE 165 
 
 He often repeated these stories to Juliette — at first beginning 
 them in English, because he insisted they couldn't be told in 
 French, but later, when she insisted that they could be, he told 
 them to her in French. 
 
 43 
 
 During all of the Christmas holidays the unusual bitter cold 
 continued and far on into January. The children played out 
 in the snow every day but one, when the temperature never 
 rose above zero, with Breck's sled which held two nicely. The 
 trains were running most irregularly and sometimes not at all, 
 but the school re-opened on time and, amongst the other students, 
 there came back Breck's cousin Foncie. She brought both lit- 
 tle boys some tiny beasts from amongst which there fell to 
 Breck's share a diminutive monkey. Late one snowy afternoon 
 my aunt, sitting before her open fire with the children playing 
 near her, heard Breck say to Brooke: "Why can't de monkey 
 play wid de bear? He would be fwiendly." 
 
 They were fond of taking possession of every chair in her 
 room except the one she sat on, even casting covetous eyes upon 
 that (Breck suggested in a whisper to Brooke, on one occasion, 
 "Let's gwab it away fwom her!"), inverting them and then 
 covering them with a shawl for caves. From such a dark recess 
 she overheard them confabulating one day, and what was her 
 horror at the same time to see Brooke's large wooden cannon 
 which shot real balls trained upon her and to hear Breck de- 
 clare bloodthirstily : "She's de Kaiser, isn't she, Bwooke?" Here 
 she raised an outcry and Breckie was the first to reach her and 
 soothe her by saying: "You're not de Kaiser, Aunt Jane; we 
 won't shoot you. I was playing only." 
 
 On another cold afternoon when we had to come in earlier 
 than usual the children popped corn over the coals of my 
 sitting room fire and ate what they had popped, honorably spit- 
 ting out the hard centers of each grain. 
 
 Breck had a wholesome respect for fire. His attitude towards 
 all blazes was one of caution, but he was still so young that we 
 made it a law he should never try to take down the heavy screen 
 
i66 BRECKIE 
 
 from in front of our sitting room fire. Once or twice I found 
 him slipping the poker in behind it and held his hand close 
 enough to the flames to show him how it would feel to burn. 
 One day after breakfast, when he had run out of the dining room 
 ahead of his father, Dick found him poking the big wood fire in 
 the great hall. To his reproachful : "Breckinridge, you might 
 fall in and burn up," Breck replied: "If I did Teddy would turn 
 me into a bear and pull me out." 
 
 Teddy, in appearance as meek and unassuming a little brown 
 Teddy bear as one could wish, had become a sort of omnipotent 
 creature with Breckie, who exalted him on all occasions. Their 
 relations were at first of a far simpler character. Teddy had 
 been a loved possession since Breck's second summer, and his 
 little master was quite content as he matured to call himself 
 first Teddy's mother, then his father, to rock him, sing to him 
 sometimes, talk with him often, and sleep with him always. But 
 latterly he had begun to ascribe to Teddy superhuman char- 
 acteristics. One day Brooke was talking of earthquakes and 
 said he could shoot his pistol and cause an earthquake. Breck 
 replied at once that Teddy could do that. Teddy, he said, could 
 make the Crescent fall down and all the houses in Eureka 
 Springs. He could make the houses fall in the ocean, and, re- 
 ported Juliette, who told me of the conversation, "ecwaser (ecra- 
 ser) tout le monde." 
 
 "Pourquoi laissez-vous Teddy faire ga?" she asked, when she 
 had listened to this deification of Teddy. 
 
 "O, Teddy veut le faire," replied Breckinridge. "11 n'ecoute 
 pas. II fait ce qu'il veut." 
 
 He and his father were one day working together and dif- 
 fered over some detail of construction about which each had 
 positive convictions. Breck at once said that Teddy had told 
 him to do so and so. 
 
 "But I tell you not to," said Dick, "and I say that I am the 
 boss of this job." 
 
 "Teddy say he is de boss," replied Teddy's master, nothing 
 daunted. 
 
 I find written in my journal : "The crisis does not arise which 
 
BRECKIE 167 
 
 Teddy can't meet nor the situation exist which Teddy can't dupli- 
 cate or excel. When B, bless her, just before the holidays be- 
 came Mrs. Paul, some remark was made to Breckie, always fond 
 of her, that Dr. Paul had gotten ahead of him. He replied at 
 once : "Teddy got ahead of Dr. Paul." 
 
 44 
 
 Soon after New Year's we began simple plans for Breck's 
 fourth birthday on the twelfth, which led Brooke to describe 
 the orgie of dissipation he intended to have on his birthday the 
 following May. When the two children were in the Dairy Hol- 
 low with Juliette one day he began planning for this May festival 
 and enumerating the things he would have to eat : 
 
 "Ice cream," he said, "and cake and candy." 
 
 "And castor oil," supplemented Breckie, looking solemnly at 
 him. 
 
 A few days before Breck's birthday Juliette fell ill, first with 
 a heavy cold and then with a frontal sinus infection which made 
 it necessary for her to go to the hospital for a slight operation 
 on her nose. Of course she was absent for the twelfth, but what 
 hurt her most was the fact that the small drums which had been 
 in town at Christmas time were all sold out and she couldn't 
 get one for Breck. She had told him he was to have it on his 
 birthday and although he, most reasonable of children, appeared 
 satisfied with the finality of explanation that the drums were all 
 sold out, she said she knew he had set his heart on one and she 
 couldn't bear to have him disappointed. I told her we would 
 send oflf and get one later and that he had so much he was not 
 missing it now. 
 
 I explained to him, when Juliette failed to appear one morning 
 just before his birthday, that she was sick. 
 
 "Will she die?" he asked, turning his large eyes full upon 
 me. 
 
 "Why, no, my darling," I answered, "she is not very sick. 
 Why did you think she would die?" 
 
 He answered : "Ammeline Wobertson was sick and she died." 
 
OF THE FIFTH YEAR— ELEVEN DAYS 
 
 The passing of the sweetest soul 
 That ever look'd with human eyes. 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
BRECKINRIDGE'S birthday morning was bitter cold but he 
 went out with Aunt Jane, Brooke, and me in the snow. We 
 came in at the regular hour and I gave the two boys their bath 
 and crackers and milk, after which I put Breckie to sleep with 
 Teddy out on his balcony, where a very icy Boreas tried vainly 
 to reach his snugly enveloped little friend. It was only after his 
 nap that the real celebrations for the day began. 
 
 The children had dinner as usual except that for dessert there 
 was the birthday cake. Mrs. Jordan had made it, not the sponge 
 of the year before but of war flour, covered with powdered 
 sugar. I asked Breckie if he wanted me to light it before 
 bringing it in or would he rather stick the candles on and light 
 it himself. Naturally he chose to do it himself. He stuck the 
 four candles on in their holders and then, his little hands trem- 
 bling with eagerness, struck a match and lighted the candles. It 
 took more than one match, for the lighter was not expert and 
 had a wholesome dread of burnt fingers. 
 
 After we had all stood around the cake admiringly, came the 
 added joy of blowing out the candles and cutting the cake. This 
 Breckie did himself, with a little help, and then handed the slices 
 around, beginning with the ladies and ending with his father and 
 Brooke. Then he chose a comfortably spacious piece for himself 
 and sat down in the chair that had been his Uncle Clifton's to eat 
 it — his expression one of unmixed satisfaction. 
 
 When the dinner trays had been cleared away I brought out 
 two bowls of warm water and Japanese flowers, presented by 
 cousin Foncie, which delighted the children as they opened up 
 before their eyes. Next I handed around (and there were 
 enough for us all) a new variety of soap bubble pipe — and when 
 this pleasure had been exhausted I produced two little books, 
 
 171 
 
172 BRECKIE 
 
 all by the same loving donor, with pictures to paste in them — one 
 for each boy — and the pasting began. 
 
 Breckie's special birthday presents from the rest of us were 
 also given him. First two dozen large new flat blocks, whose 
 addition to the basket made it so heavy that Breck could scarcely 
 lift it, in gay colored boxes. We handed one to each little boy 
 to open. Next several new books, among them two his father 
 and I gave him which we had had Brentano import from France. 
 Both were illustrated by Georges Delaw — the one a collection of 
 mythological tales, and the other the immortal Contes de Per- 
 rault. Breck had these books such a short time before leaving 
 them that I can't say what impression they would have made 
 on his mind. I read him "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" and "Le 
 Chat Botte," which he liked well enough, but not as yet in the 
 adoring way with which he greeted Mother Goose and such 
 jolly old French equivalents as "Le Roi Dagobert" and "La 
 Legende de Saint Nicholas." 
 
 The day closed with a run out of doors and the usual bedtime 
 stories. Weeks afterwards Brooke sometimes said reminiscently 
 to his grandmother : "Didn't we do beautiful things on Breckin- 
 ridge's birthday?" 
 
 The morning after Breck's birthday as soon as he waked, and 
 while he still lay in his covers with Teddy, he asked me if a 
 four-year-old boy was old enough to eat pie. Upon my replying 
 in the negative he said: "Teddy made me a pie, but I didn't 
 eat only de apple part. Teddy ate de wooden part." 
 
 The thirteenth was Sunday, with Juliette still sick, but I per- 
 suaded Aunt Jane to go to her church and let me scamper out 
 in the snow with the two little boys. As we were returning to 
 Crescent along the ridge of the mountain Breck suddenly an- 
 nounced : "Boppie, I don't want to die." 
 
 I turned to gaze at him in astonishment. There he stood, 
 firmly planted in the snow, an embodiment of sturdy childhood, 
 informed with life in every hardy fibre of his make-up. How 
 could I divine that in less than twelve days he would be dead ? 
 
BRECKIE 173 
 
 No psychical sense in me was stirred, I had no prophetic pre- 
 monitions. On the contrary my first almost unconscious exclama- 
 tion, as I looked down at him and smiled, was : "But, my 
 darling, you aren't going to die." 
 
 Then I recollected myself and asked : "Why don't you want 
 to die?" 
 
 "Ammeline Wobertson died," he replied at once, "and dey put 
 her in de gwound." 
 
 "O, my baby," I cried, deeply moved, "it was only her body 
 that they put in the ground and she didn't want it any more. 
 She had left it behind her. She did not need it any more 
 than you do the clothes that are too small for you. She 
 went . . ." 
 
 "To heaven," said Brooke. 
 
 "To de seashore of endless worlds," said Breckinridge. 
 
 With all my heart in my voice I tried to put before these lit- 
 tle children a vision of that principle of life "which does not 
 admit of death." I reminded Breckie that his sister had died 
 and what happy things we said about her. I told him again of 
 the little dogs he had loved, and soon the thought of the baby 
 and the dogs romping together wrought its old charm upon his 
 imagination. But he hadn't finished with the subject. "Will 
 you go dere, Boppie ?" he asked. 
 
 "Pidgy, darling," I answered him, "it's likely Boppie would go 
 ahead of you — but she doesn't want to go and she doesn't see why 
 she should have to go before you are a man grown up and don't 
 need her here. She isn't going to be separated from you ever 
 if she can help it. If you ever do go ahead of her she is com- 
 ing to you just as soon as she can. And everybody goes there, 
 you know, some day. Nobody is separated long." 
 
 "Will my mother be there?" asked Brooke, "and my Jam- 
 mie?" 
 
 "Will gweat f aver be dere ?" asked Breckie, meaning his great- 
 grandfather Breckinridge, of whose picture in his uniform of a 
 Confederate general he was fond. 
 
 I answered them as the charioteer once did Prince Sidhartha, 
 that everybody not now living had died and that those of us 
 
174 BRECKIE 
 
 who lived would all taste of death. But I bore in concluding 
 on the aliveness of being dead and the happy times people 
 could go on having wherever they went. I could not give 
 descriptions and the children did not ask for them. When I told 
 them they would be happy I knew I had said enough, since both 
 were happy children and would naturally translate the idea of 
 a happy condition anywhere into such pleasing images as their 
 lives had experienced and their minds could comprehend. 
 
 When we had finished talking about it and were nearing the 
 house Breckie came close to me and, slipping his little hand in its 
 worsted glove into mine in the way he so often did, said: "Bop- 
 pie, I love you." 
 
 We had expected to inoculate the new students with the 
 typhoid and para-typhoid vaccine that afternoon and I had got- 
 ten out a small electric sterilizer of Dr. Bolton's which we used 
 for boiling up the needles. But the doctor telephoned that his 
 little daughter Phyllis was too ill with pneumonia for him to be 
 willing to leave her and the inoculations were deferred. Breckie 
 had observed the sterilizer on top of a bookcase and with an 
 anxious look at me asked : "Are we going to be stuck ?" He 
 was relieved at once when I told him that my soldier had finished 
 with inoculations for some years to come. 
 
 Dick had planned to take both boys in his car that afternoon to 
 get them out of the way of our little clinic, and when we didn't 
 hold a clinic he took them anyhow to give me a couple of 
 hours in which to get caught up with some important Red 
 Cross nursing correspondence. They left the car about a mile 
 out of town, he told me, on the site of the great highway soon 
 to be constructed, and went on foot to a hog farm — both children 
 collecting such treasures of nature as the snow-covered ground 
 afforded en route. When they retraced their steps towards the 
 place where they had left the car somebody dropped the sup- 
 position like a bomb in the group — suppose they didn't find it 
 there? However, when they rounded a bend in the road it came 
 in sight and Breck cried out : "Dere it is !" 
 
BRECKIE 175 
 
 The next three days continued cold — but ideally clear and in- 
 vigorating. Our little boys coasted every day, especially down 
 the road known as the Crescent grade. No automobiles were 
 running and only a few wagons loaded with wood or coal inter- 
 rupted their sport. Brooke sat in front on the sled and guided, 
 while Breckie, with his serious play-expression, seated himself 
 behind and planted his goloshes well up out of the snow on 
 either side. I gave shoves or ran ahead with the rope to get a 
 good start for them. Then the coasting began — only to terminate 
 after a few feet in the snow drifts on one side or the other of 
 the road. Sometimes I pulled them both on the sled or one of 
 them pulled the other. Usually when the time came for going 
 in and the children seemed a bit tired and fretful I enlivened 
 the last few hundred yards of our way back with a Fred and 
 Lucy and Bumbleton story. 
 
 These three immortals had lately taken to encountering floods 
 of water and being carried off on driftwood and landed on tiny 
 islands. Just as starvation would seem to be staring them in 
 the face a basket or a small boat came floating by and in it 
 they found prunes, bread, butter, sometimes even bottles of milk 
 like those in which I pasteurized the two quarts of milk drunk 
 daily by the two Bs. This unexpected succor, floated down to 
 them often by the friendly gnome from the mouth of his cave, 
 consumed and want again staring them in the face, suddenly one 
 of them spied a white sail in the offing and Roger, like a glorious 
 bird, came swooping to their rescue, or else they heard a sharp 
 putt, putt, putt and Roger in a motorboat skudded across the 
 water and took them in. 
 
 On the morning of the sixteenth there came an unexpected 
 pleasure. One of the grocers' assistants in town, inspired by 
 the protracted reign of snow and ice, made some runners for the 
 body of his delivery wagon, hitched a horse to the combination 
 and glided about town with his deliveries on the only sleigh I had 
 ever seen in this region. This dazzling object dashed past us 
 one day and I had made up my mind what I should do if we 
 met it again. Sure enough on the morning of the sixteenth here 
 it came and I hailed it, asking the good-natured driver if our 
 
176 BRECKIE 
 
 two little boys could not climb in with the groceries and take a 
 ride. The words were hardly out of my mouth and permission 
 had not yet left his before they had scrambled in and settled 
 themselves in part on the seat beside him, in part among his pro- 
 visions. He touched up his horse and away they glided over the 
 snow on what was for Breck at least an entirely novel adven- 
 ture. 
 
 Aunt Jane and I followed, dragging the sled, to join company 
 with our enchanted boys at the last delivery in that neighborhood. 
 It was a wonderful experience and Breck sang with me "Jingle 
 Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way" when I was getting him 
 ready for his nap. Another chapter had closed in his book of 
 Happy Day House. 
 
 Word reached us one afternoon this week of the death by 
 pneumonia at a camp in Arizona of a young cousin In the regu- 
 lar army, Lieutenant Breckinridge Ten Eycke, my father's great- 
 nephew — the first of our family to give up his life since we 
 entered the war. I was reading to the children before Aunt 
 Jane's fire when my mother came in with this sad news. I had 
 Breckie on my lap. Instinctively I held him closer while I 
 tried to keep back the tears, so that he would see the glory 
 rather than the pain in the explanation I gave him of a soldier's 
 death. 
 
 The morning of Thursday the seventeenth Breckie woke in his 
 accustomed splendid health, drank his orange juice and later 
 ate his breakfast of oatmeal and milk and bread and butter with 
 his father and Brooke with his usual full appetite. Afterwards 
 Aunt Jane and I took the children out and they played as they 
 had been doing at coasting on the sled down the Crescent grade. 
 Often they tumbled off in the snow without feeling the least 
 inconvenience or pain. 
 
 At the bottom of the hill I pulled them both on the sled and 
 while I was toiling along I said "fiddlesticks" in reply to a 
 
BRECKIE 177 
 
 foolish comment of theirs. I heard Breck, sitting very com- 
 placent and fat on the sled, in his blue military coat and soldier's 
 helmet, say to his cousin: "She's fiddlesticks herself, isn't she 
 Bwooke?" 
 
 Everybody seemed very cheerful and well until we had climbed 
 the mountain and were nearly home. Then we remembered that 
 we had to stop at Mrs. Jordan's for bread. We turned into 
 the little side street, much encumbered in its snow drifts with 
 the sled, and I suggested to Breck that he stay there with Aunt 
 Jane while I ran to the house for the bread. To my surprise 
 Breckinridge began to cry in what seemed like the most unrea- 
 sonable manner. I left him with Aunt Jane talking soothingly, 
 saw Mrs. Jordan, got the bread and fresh eggs, and returned to 
 find Breckie now crying loudly and beyond explanations. I knew 
 of course that there was a physiological cause back of this un- 
 wonted outburst, though how grave a one I could not suspect, 
 and my first thought was that he must be over tired and sleepy, 
 I attempted to soothe him, but he wouldn't let me, crying out : 
 "Boppie, I am ashamed of you." Then, as we moved on to- 
 wards Crescent I tried to divert him with Fred and Lucy and 
 Bumbleton, only to receive the retort: "Don't speak to me, 
 Boppie, I am vexed wif you. I am ashamed of you." 
 
 I realized that he was not in a frame of mind to listen to 
 me then but I thought that after he had slept we could talk to- 
 gether and come to an explanation of his exceptional conduct, and 
 what had led to it. He had quieted somewhat before we reached 
 the college but was still disposed to be contentious. As the chil- 
 dren were undressing and I ran the water for their baths I re- 
 marked upon having overlooked weighing Breck on his birthday 
 and said I must do it that afternoon without fail, and Brooke 
 too. 
 
 Whereupon Breckie, not ordinarily in the least self-seeking, ex- 
 claimed : "Weigh me first." 
 
 "There is a verse in the Bible," I replied too sententiously, 
 "about the man who wants to come first being last." 
 
 "In my Bible," said Breck, "it say weigh I first and Bwooke 
 afterwards." 
 
178 BRECKIE 
 
 However, when he had had his warm bath and warm milk 
 and graham cracker, and had been cuddled and loved a little 
 with fond endearments, he seemed to feel soothed and went to 
 sleep with Teddy out on his balcony in the cold, clean air. 
 
 He woke while I was at dinner and Blanche had him nearly 
 dressed when I came up stairs. I saw nothing unusual in him 
 and proceeded to get his and Brooke's dinner ready for two-fif- 
 teen. It consisted of rare tenderloin steak, baked potato, aspara- 
 gus tips, with a cup of milk and a baked apple for dessert — 
 such a dinner as Breck usually attacked with an irreproachable 
 appetite. To my complete astonishment he refused it. He did 
 not even want to taste it. I asked him if he felt badly and he 
 said no — but naturally I did not urge his eating. 
 
 A little later he began to vomit and said that his stomach felt 
 sick. I told him to put his hand on the place and he laid it over 
 the pit of his stomach. I was not at all uneasy though per- 
 plexed as to what could have upset his perfect digestion. It 
 had been arranged that Blanche was to take the children out 
 that afternoon so that Aunt Jane and I could get some impor- 
 tant letters written — but I sent her off without Breckie and 
 dropped everything to take care of him. I suggested a dose of 
 castor oil and he replied at once : 
 
 "Boppie, I will take it like a soldier." Many hours later it 
 was a relief to my mind to remember that he vomited it at 
 once as well as a second dose for which he begged, thinking it 
 would make him feel better. 
 
 This vomiting did not come quickly. He always had time to 
 run to the bath room. I ran with him and supported his fore- 
 head, and once, when he got there ahead of me, I found him 
 holding his own forehead with one little brown hand. He rinsed 
 his mouth carefully every time afterwards and sometimes said: 
 "Dat's better, Boppie." 
 
 He did not seem to be in the least pain or to be ill — but was 
 listless and indifferent to his usual pleasures. I suggested his 
 blocks, but he wasn't interested in them. Then I tried books. 
 He climbed in my lap and I began to read the Mother Goose 
 rhymes for which his appetite was usually insatiable. But after 
 
BRECKIE 179 
 
 I had read only two he pushed the book away, saying: "Dat's 
 all, Boppie." 
 
 All he wanted was to sit quietly in my lap with his head on 
 my shoulder or, as he put it: "Boppie, I want to lie in your 
 arms," and so we sat most of the afternoon. Once when his 
 nausea seemed to have cleared up I suggested that we go down- 
 stairs and get weighed on the big scales. He consented, but 
 they were locked up in the store room. So he didn't get weighed. 
 The sight of Joe's plumber's fire in the pantry and Joe's work 
 with it excited only a flickering interest. 
 
 I then brought him back, his little feet climbing the familiar 
 stairs for the last time had we but known it, and undressed 
 him, putting on his night clothes with the "pattes d'ours" and 
 his fleecy red wrapper and Puss-in-Boots slippers. Then I held 
 him again until supper time. I got Brooke's supper ready and 
 ofifered Breck milk, but he took only a swallow or two before 
 pushing it away. 
 
 During the remainder of this first evening of an illness that 
 seemed so light and was to be so terrible I sat and held him, 
 until it was time to lay him in his little indoor bed by mine, 
 and as we sat we ran over in imagination some of our loved 
 fancies. He was the little woolly wolf and I the mother woolly 
 wolf in the cave, he the cub bear and I the mother bear in the 
 hollow tree, he Tweet Tweet and I the mother bird — but mostly 
 he was Jimmie, very cuddly and loving, and I Sheepblossom who 
 petted him. 
 
 When I had put him to bed I sat in the adjoining room writ- 
 ing in my journal. I wrote : "My Breckie has not been well 
 to-day, nauseated — so rare in his hearty Hfe." I was not in the 
 least uneasy about him. Although digestive disturbances were 
 rare with him he had been nauseated before and at times equally 
 without apparent cause. I recalled to mind and told my mother 
 and Aunt Jane of a day in his third year when he had vomited 
 off and on all day and had had no other symptom, not even a 
 temperature or weakened pulse, appearing to be affected just 
 about as he was now. The thing had cleared up of itself during 
 the night and the next day found him as well as usual. Never- 
 
i8o BRECKIE 
 
 theless I would have had the doctor look him over, as I had done 
 on previous occasions of digestive disturbance, if Dr. Bolton's 
 little daughter had not been dangerously ill just at this time 
 and his mind and time wholly given over to her needs. 
 
 On the night of the seventeenth Breck did not rest well, wak- 
 ing several times to vomit or just to call out to me. I reached 
 him in an instant. Upon one such occasion I said out loud: 
 "Thank you, God, for giving me this little boy." 
 
 "You're welcome," came the response in a high-pitched small 
 voice and then Breckie said in his natural tones : "Dat was God 
 speaking in your heart." 
 
 A moment later he added : "Boppie, I love God." 
 
 At another time when I laid him down and was caressing him 
 I exclaimed: "Such a dear little boy, such a good little boy." 
 He said: "Boppie, I twy to do wight." (O, my imperishable 
 child, the sustaining power which now raises me is just a simple 
 trying to do right.) Often he pulled me down with "Boppie, I 
 want to kiss you." 
 
 I went early to bed and we slept fitfully, for his nausea con- 
 tinued at intervals and he often woke and seemed in discom- 
 fort. About one in- the morning he cried out for the first time 
 that he was in pain — that his stomach hurt him. I put my hand 
 over his abdomen and found on pressure that the pain and ten- 
 derness were both in the lower right abdomen. I took his tem- 
 perature but he still had no fever, pulse but slightly quickened. 
 The pain passed almost at once but I called his father and left 
 Breckie with him while I went down to telephone the family 
 physician and give him the symptoms. I told Breckie where I 
 was going and why and when his father came in he vouchsafed 
 the information : "I am not vewy well." 
 
 Dr. Bolton gave me directions and when he came later in the 
 morning said that he would get the operating room ready at the 
 little hospital so that he could operate at any time in the day 
 if it seemed best. He could not make a clear diagnosis of any- 
 thing on examination — although he suspected appendicitis more 
 than anything else. The nausea meanwhile had stopped and the 
 pain did not recur. Breckie seemed better. There were no 
 
BRECKIE i8i 
 
 pronounced symptoms of any kind — only a local tenderness and 
 a temperature and pulse slightly elevated. 
 
 Dr. Bolton told me to call him up every hour or two during 
 the day and that early in the afternoon if not sooner he would 
 probably decide whether or not to intervene surgically. 
 
 So Breckie and I passed a day together which I recall as hav- 
 ing been inexpressibly precious in its early hours. He did not 
 appear to be in any particular discomfort, and I sat by his bed 
 with my head down by his as we both loved to be. I had given 
 him a flat little pillow I always used and I said : "This four-year- 
 old boy is big enough for a pillow. You can have this one, 
 preciousness. Boppie gives it to you to keep. It's yours." His 
 face lit up with a pleased smile and thereafter until he died he 
 used it constantly. 
 
 One time when I had to leave him for a few moments and my 
 mother had taken my place he asked her: "What are you knit- 
 ting, Hoho ?" 
 
 "Helmets," she answered, "for the soldiers." 
 
 "Did you knit a helmet for me?" he then asked her, and when 
 she replied how happy it had made her to do it he said: "Fank 
 you, Hoho, for dat helmet. It keeps my neck warm." 
 
 The latter hours of the day were hard. Although he had been 
 given salines since two in the morning and had retained them 
 all, Breck's thirst became excessive and he begged piteously for 
 water — "a little only." I telephoned the doctor and he said that 
 when he returned Breck could have water, since if he were better 
 he might safely be allowed it in small quantities, and if he were 
 not he could have a drink before his operation anyway. 
 
 I came back and told him he could have a drink as soon as 
 the doctor returned and thereafter my little soldier, reasonable 
 even in the pangs of his terrible thirst, ceased begging, and 
 began instead to ask when Dr. Bolton would come. "O, Boppie, 
 don't you hear his automobile?" "Isn't it time for him to come?" 
 "Telephone him to come and give me water." 
 
 That was an agonizing afternoon for Breck and me. But never 
 once did he try to climb out of bed, or even to raise himself, 
 or make any effort whatsoever to get a drink. Even when I 
 
i82 BRECKIE 
 
 stepped into adjoining rooms I knew he was to be trusted. 
 "Boppie, I pwomise you I won't get up." A promise, my four- 
 year-old, to be trusted unto death. 
 
 We spent the most of these leaden hours with my head down 
 by Breck's as he liked to have it and both of us saying over rather 
 often that we loved each other. The pain returned suddenly 
 before the doctor's visit. I telephoned him and when he came he 
 said it was essential to operate without delay and for us to get 
 Breck to the little hospital at once. 
 
 He went to this hospital and to the operating table in his 
 father's arms. I prepared him for the operation and he made 
 no objection to having his painful side shaved after I explained 
 to him that it was one of the things to do towards getting him 
 well. When we took him into the operating room he cast rather 
 a frightened look at the instruments and said: "Are dose fings 
 to hurt me?" I reassured him and then told him that all he 
 would have to do would be to breathe in a bad smell, that he 
 wouldn't like it but that it was something to help him get well 
 and that he could take it like a soldier. His only reply to this 
 was: "I will smell it like a soldier," and he did. Not until he 
 was partly under the ether did he struggle or cry out, for the 
 reasoning habit of mind common to him did not fail him even 
 here. 
 
 I stayed with him until he was anaesthetized and then left the 
 room, only to be summoned back a little later and shown where 
 the trouble lay. Not in the appendix — but so much more 
 dreadful — intussusception, an abdomen already full of pus, gen- 
 eral peritonitis. 
 
 When he came down from the operating room he was con- 
 scious and looked a little wild-eyed. "Boppie, Boppie," he said, 
 "let's go home." I soothed and quieted him. 
 
 Then began our fight of nearly five days' duration with its 
 alternations of hope and sinking fears — "the hopes and fears of 
 all the years" — a fight in which we were to lose out at the 
 last. We had two excellent nurses, both of whom had nursed 
 at the college and whom I knew well. Miss Riley took day duty. 
 The other nurse, who took night duty, Miss Booth, came from 
 
BRECKIE 183 
 
 Fort Smith and was twenty hours in reaching us owing to the 
 heavy snow and consequent derangement of traffic on the rail- 
 roads. I helped them both, resting at such intervals as Breck 
 seemed at his best. The doctor seldom left the place and never 
 for more than two or three hours. He told my mother, who 
 stayed with Dick and me, that Breckie had the strongest powers 
 of resistance of any child he had ever treated — more like a ten 
 than a four-year-old boy. To me he said: "He has the finest 
 constitution I ever saw and is putting up a wonderful fight." 
 
 But I think the thing which impressed both doctor and nurses 
 more even than his vitality was his attitude of mind — its sweet 
 reasonableness at all times, even the most painful. To this we 
 were accustomed but others found it extraordinary in a four- 
 year-old child and it was this which caused the doctor to tell me : 
 "He is a marvelous child." 
 
 When his wound was dressed for the first time they fastened 
 his hands and arms with a sheet. But I told them it wasn't neces- 
 sary, that he wouldn't touch the sterile towels or the wound if 
 they explained to him about them. To Breck I said: "The 
 doctor has made a little window in your abdomen, darling, to let 
 out some germs and microbes and bacteria which made you sick. 
 Now he must clean out this window and you mustn't touch while 
 he does it." He replied that he would not and I stayed at the 
 head of his bed, gently holding his hands or petting and kissing 
 his forehead. 
 
 In this supreme crisis of the littk child's life he kept the 
 simple ideal he had cherished every common day — that of being 
 a brave soldier. Many a weak and selfish desire, many a dread 
 of small pains and ills, had he sacrificed in acquiring an attitude 
 of mind now so habitual that almost instinctively he "twied to do 
 wight." Not once in all the days and nights of his desperate 
 illness did he cry, or whine, or fret. Not once was he anything 
 but amenable to reason. When his wound had to be dressed 
 again and he objected the doctor said : "It's necessary, Breck." 
 
 "O," said Breckie, and made no further objection. 
 
 After his hypodermics, to which he submitted without a 
 
i84 BRECKIE 
 
 shadow of resistance, he generally asked : "Was I bwave as a 
 soldier?" 
 
 Once he said, thinking of Breckinridge Ten Eycke : "My 
 cousin died, what was a bwave soldier," 
 
 Once he cried out when something hurt him very much and 
 Dr. Bolton said : "You weren't really crying, Breck. You were 
 just squealing." 
 
 "Yes," he answered, pleased to be restored to his ideal, "I was 
 des squealing." 
 
 I am sure that he must have felt very ill and have been in 
 frequent pain — but when the doctor asked : "How do you feel, 
 Breck?" he generally answered: "All wight." Once I heard 
 him reply : "O, not vewy well." 
 
 On the first night of his illness he recalled that I had told him 
 the doctor's little daughter had pneumonia and asked: "Dr. 
 Bolton, how is Phyllis?" 
 
 His individuality stood out almost until the end. When he 
 vomited he sometimes wanted one pus basin, a curved one of 
 Miss Riley's, and sometimes another — a little round basin we had 
 brought with us. When he was allowed the small amounts of 
 water with which his intense thirst was at intervals assuaged 
 (O, my baby, did it make for the grandeur of your evolving 
 soul that you should have been tortured thus? Ah, but you 
 must have grown a thousand years — ) he always had a prefer- 
 ence in what he was to take it. "My little silver cup — " "A 
 long glass wif a tube — " "De wed and white glass and a 
 spoon — " "De little boat — " When I said once: "A drink of 
 hot water is good for little sick boys," he repeated it, looking 
 pleased. 
 
 Once he became interested in the proctoclysis with its tubing 
 and I promised him that when he was better he should have it 
 to hold and play with if he liked. On another occasion he told 
 me his nail was "bwoken" and to trim it with the little scissorc. 
 Sick as he was few things escaped his observation. He noticed 
 for instance that his arm was scrubbed with a bit of cotton before 
 and after each hypodermic and reminded his nurse to "wash" 
 his arm. 
 
BRECKIE 185 
 
 Upon one occasion I heard him pronounce an r distinctly — 
 the first time he had done it. He said "already" and the r sound 
 in the word was plain. 
 
 Two or three times with me he became alive to the flood of ten- 
 derness habitually passing between us in better days. Once, 
 when I bent over him and whispered: "This is Sheepblossom," 
 he answered, "Dis is Jimmie." Once he asked me to lay my head 
 down by his, and once he looked up with a flash of his old 
 radiance, saying: "Boppie, I want to kiss you." Then I felt 
 his lips brushing my cheek. 
 
 On the morning of the fourth day we were encouraged. Up 
 until then he had held his own but on that morning certain 
 favorable symptoms led us to believe that he was doing a little 
 more than that. I said to him: "Pidgy, darling, when you are 
 better Boppie is going to get you a drum." 
 
 He looked at me seriously and replied: "De dwums are all 
 saled." 
 
 "I know, my blessing," I said, "the ones here are sold and that 
 was why you didn't have one on your birthday. But Boppie is 
 going to send off to a big city and have them send you a drum — 
 all the way from a big city." 
 
 Somehow, though it's only a little thing, it hurts me to remem- 
 ber that he never had that drum. It's the only promise I ever 
 made him which I couldn't keep. 
 
 His uncle Carson had sent a draft to buy him his Christmas 
 present and it came during his illness. My mother went in to 
 him the morning of this fourth day and told him about it, saying 
 that when he was well he should take the draft to the bank and 
 get money for it and then take the money down town and buy 
 whatever he liked best in the shops. He looked pleased and he 
 even smiled. Just before she left him she said : "May I kiss 
 your hand, Breckinridge?" And for response he held it out to 
 her. 
 
 About the middle of this day when we had been most hopeful 
 and all the symptoms were growing favorable, except possibly 
 the pulse, his poisoned, tired heart began to give way. If the 
 infection had been a little less virulent, or a little less general. 
 
i86 BRECKIE 
 
 he would not have succumbed to it. As it was he grew slowly- 
 worse that afternoon and with the coming of night hope folded 
 her wings and prepared to take flight. 
 
 He had been so stimulated that in spite of morphine he was 
 fearfully excited, and very tired from all the things we were 
 constantly doing to restore him and from a little nervous cough 
 that set in that last night. Even then he did not complain or 
 fret, only once again he said to me : "Boppie, let's go home." It 
 seemed to me that he thought, poor child, that if we were back 
 in the old familiar surroundings things would be with him as they 
 were before. 
 
 It became imperative for him to sleep. But he could not and 
 always he kept picking at his coverings. At last I leaned over the 
 head of his bed and, while the cool air blew in through an open 
 window from the snowy night outside, I pressed the ice cap 
 filled with snow against his hot little head and began talking 
 in a low voice such soothing nonsense as formerly delighted 
 him. 
 
 "Sandman is coming with a great big bucket of sand to put 
 my baby to sleep. Boreas, blow on the baby and put him to 
 sleep. All the little stars have gone to sleep in the sky. The 
 little woolly wolf is curled up asleep in the cave with the mother 
 woolly wolf, the little cub bear lies asleep in the hollow tree, the 
 birdies are sleeping in their nests, the little tree frogs have gone 
 to sleep in the trees. The Sandman threw sand at the little 
 tree frogs and put them to sleep. Jimmie is asleep in his bed and 
 Breckinridge is going to sleep too in his bed, for the Sandman 
 has come with a great big bucket of sand to put my baby to 
 sleep. Boreas blow on the baby and he will sleep." 
 
 I talked like this for a long time and my darling slept at last, 
 except nearly always for that restless picking at the covers with 
 his left hand. 
 
 Those were the last hours before hope left us altogether. I 
 don't know just when, but some time before dawn I began to 
 read in the sorrowful faces of my sister nurses and from the 
 tears which stood in the doctor's eyes what was all too plainly 
 written on the gallant little figure that lay before me dying. 
 
BRECKIE 187 
 
 Then I put my head down by his in the old familiar way and 
 whispered : "This little baby will soon be well." 
 
 He died at five minutes after three in the afternoon — ^but I had 
 lost track of time as I sat by him through the hours. Towards 
 the last he was allowed to have all the fresh snow he wanted and 
 so long as he could swallow I fed it to him, first with a spoon 
 and then with my fingers. While he could speak he asked for it 
 and seemed eager for it while he was conscious of anything. You 
 little boy, who never passed one of your mountain springs with- 
 out drinking, have you drunk of the river of life freely and shall 
 you thirst now no more ? 
 
 He wanted to be turned from one side to the other — but doing 
 it hurt him. However he did not fret or complain but played his 
 part of brave soldier so long as conscious life remained to 
 him. 
 
 There followed the unconscious hours when he lay with one 
 chubby hand under his cheek as I had so often seen him in his 
 sleep. Like so many years they seemed to me, those hours, sitting 
 there with the sword that was piercing through my own soul 
 also. It came over me, as I sat there, how truly he had spoken 
 when he said he "twied to do wight" and how hard it must have 
 been at four years. But he had measured up to the magnitude 
 of it. He had done right as he saw it. He had taken all the 
 unaccustomed suffering terminating his happy life without ques- 
 tioning why it had come, because he believed it was right for a 
 soldier to be brave. 
 
 I felt as if I were in the presence of a great law that had 
 been obeyed and, further, that the laws of pain accepted and used 
 might become a force as mighty as, for instance, the laws of 
 fire which bless or burn according as we understand and obey 
 them. With Breckinridge we had ever tried to teach him obedi- 
 ence to law, not blind obedience to us who only deserved his re- 
 spect when we too obeyed the laws we interpreted to him. Now 
 the little child had learned his lesson and I knew that only by 
 becoming like him could I enter with him into the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 I decided then, in those vaster reaches of the mind where my 
 
i88 BRECKIE 
 
 spirit seemed to be brushing his, that the Power which had 
 placed him here had a right to withdraw him — a right exercised 
 perhaps not the less purposefully because it operated through 
 natural law — and that if I could accept the action of law as I 
 understood it I might become worthy of being the mother of 
 my son. When I came to this conclusion I leaned over to the 
 unconscious child and told him that I too would try to do what 
 was right. 
 
 By his bed at the last besides the doctor and trained nurses 
 and his father and me were his grandfather and grandmother, 
 Aunt Jane, his nurse Juliette, his cousin Florence, and those loyal 
 friends of his — Camille and B. These were the people on our 
 side, the human group, all that we, restrained by the limitations 
 of our senses, could perceive; but who shall say that a valiant 
 host of the heroes he worshiped were not present also to 
 welcome my Greatheart when he passed over to the other 
 side? 
 
AFTERWARDS 
 
 Hence in a season of calm weather 
 
 Though inland far we be 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore. 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
AFTERWARDS 
 
 WE, my father, mother, Dick, and I, carried the little body 
 down to Fort Smith for burial by the side of our baby 
 girl. All morning Thursday it lay in the home where he was 
 bom while inexpressibly tender friends gathered around us. 
 Juliette had chosen the clothes to put on him — one of his white 
 and blue middy suits and the sandals in which he had tramped 
 about the hills through the summer. In his arms I laid the Teddy 
 Bear that had slept with him for over two years. 
 
 He was not much less chubby, and though I had cut close his 
 curly hair because of the fever and the gorgeous red had gone out 
 of his cheeks and the radiance from his face and the eyes were 
 closed and dead, yet it seemed a part of Breckie still which lay 
 there — and this part I knew that I should never see again. 
 Precious little body, eager little hands and feet, — I am glad I 
 gave them freedom while I had them, if Breckinridge no longer 
 needs them in his development then let them, go. 
 
 He lay, with the flowers massed all about and the Teddy Bear 
 in his arms, under the Sully portrait of his great, great, great 
 grandfather Breckinridge who was a good and useful man in his 
 day. I never saw marked likenesses in Breckie to any one — 
 but something in the shape of the forehead as he lay there re- 
 sembled the picture looking down at him and I was proud when 
 I thought of their meeting that Breckie, like the soldier cousin 
 just preceding him, had measured up to the best traditions of his 
 race. 
 
 "Mammy" came, his negro mammy, and sobbed in Dick's arms. 
 She thought her baby had grown "awful long" since the days 
 when she nursed him. 
 
 We had no services of any kind in our home or at the grave. 
 God didn't need to be told about Breckie. Friends carried 
 the little casket across the grass and, with Boreas blowing over 
 
 191 
 
192 BRECKIE 
 
 him and the sunshine in which his short life had been spent 
 sparkling down on the patches of snow, — with only the wind 
 he loved speaking and the sunshine listening, — this child of the 
 open air was given back to the Immensity from which he 
 came. 
 
 On his grave and that of our girl baby the flowers were 
 heaped, and there, on the high ground above the Arkansas river, 
 facing its lofty bluffs, there stands my nursery. Let Boreas 
 blow ever so wildly he cannot waken the little sleepers in my 
 nursery, and I know that, whatever the ultimate outcome, my 
 human children are dead. But sometimes I feel that subcon- 
 sciously perhaps I come in touch with them and that even now, 
 while one part of me sits crushed beyond the sound of sweetest 
 voices and pattering feet, a larger and better part is playing 
 with Breckie and his sister on that seashore of endless worlds 
 where the children meet with shouts and songs and dances. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 O sister, sister, thy first-begotten! 
 
 The hands that cling and the feet that follow, 
 The voice of the child's blood crying yet, 
 
 Who hath remembered me? Who hath forgotten? 
 Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, 
 
 But the world will end when I forget. 
 
 — Sivinburne. 
 
SPRING has come again to the Ozark mountains. March with 
 warm light has dispelled the bitter winter. The red bad and 
 dogwood are in bloom in the forests and underfoot the wild 
 flowers. In my garden the crocuses have come and gone and the 
 jonquils and yellow tulips are blooming. 
 
 The hens in the Dairy Hollow are sitting on their nests and 
 the Belgian hares have new young ones. The process of smoking 
 the black and white pig is long since completed. On many hill- 
 sides are women picking dandelion greens and Juliette, with 
 Brooke, is among them. The great tree the Carnis bought for 
 firewood has been cut down — but Juliette says that she could not 
 see its fall because of her tears. She and I are making Breckie's 
 garden and planting it as he had planned. "Le pauvre petit," 
 she says, "il faisait tant de projets." 
 
 There is not a rod of ground within miles over which I walk 
 where his little feet have not trudged, not a spring at which his 
 sunny face was not turned to drink, not a creeping thing, hardly 
 a stone or bush or tree, or puff of wind which does not recall 
 the gallant-hearted child who fraternized with them. At night 
 on his balcony I look at the moon and stars thinking: "These 
 perhaps we hold in common even yet." 
 
 And still, although my human heart is so broken as not to 
 make the fragments worth gathering together again, my mind has 
 accepted Breckie's death from the first and is not tortured about 
 him at all. 
 
 It is otherwise of other deaths. No one has really been a 
 mother who has not yearned over children everywhere. Breck- 
 inridge's happy childhood has passed indeed but left only golden 
 memories. The brief suffering at the end cannot obliterate the 
 joyous whole where one day of delight succeeded another in his 
 fairyland. 
 
 But what of other children — the majority of all children? 
 
 195 
 
196 BRECKIE 
 
 What of childhood? From the desolated shores of Armenia to 
 the Balkan mountains, from the plains of Poland to the Belgian 
 and French coast and over at last to the streets of our great 
 cities and the farms of our remoter hills travels that cry of 
 childhood which throughout the ages has been the cry of 
 martyrdom. This my reason cannot accept — this tortures the 
 devout in my soul. 
 
 Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning? 
 
 What are these desperate and hideous years? 
 Hast thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning, 
 
 Sighs of the bondsmen, and the children's tears? 
 
 There is a work beside which all other strikes me as puerile — 
 the work which seeks to raise the status of childhood every- 
 where, so that finally from pole to pole of this planet all of the 
 little ones come into that health and happiness which is their 
 due. If every one who had ever loved a child would but do his 
 part this might come to pass. What if we do not understand? 
 What if we cannot be held responsible for the way God has 
 ordered His world? There lies nevertheless deep in the heart 
 of every child lover a feeling of responsibility which will not 
 let him put the thing aside. If God cherishes His little ones only 
 in my breast, says the child lover, He cherishes them there, and 
 I fight for them — fight until that ancient saying has come true, 
 until He shall gather the Lambs ... in His bosom, and gently 
 lead those that are with young. And when the crooked paths 
 are made straight and the waste places smooth it will be time 
 enough for me to understand. 
 
 One morning, some days after Breckie's death, Brooke said 
 reminiscently to his grandmother : "Once when we were coming 
 back from the Dairy Hollow Breckinridge said that he was a 
 bird and could fly." After a moment he added reflectively : "He 
 was always falling down, but he said that he could fly." 
 
 Such was my Greatheart. Even so did his soaring spirit 
 overreach the limitations of its embodiment. "He was always 
 falling down — but he said that he could fly." 
 
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