Laura Ingalls Wilder Quote

And What I Think About It...

Several years ago, I bought a postcard at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield, Missouri, that has the following quotation on it.

It is always best to be honest and truthful;
to make the most of what we have;
to be happy with simple pleasures;
to be cheerful in adversity;
and have courage in danger.
Things of real value do not change
with the passing of years.

-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

I have always been curious what the source of the quotation was. I've also wondered if the two sentences were written together, and whether they were just combined to make the postcard.

Tonight I searched the internet for the phrases in the quotation. It seems that the first sentence came from Laura's letters to children. These letters are reproduced in numerous websites. This is the closing paragraph of a 1950's letter:

The "Little House" books are stories of long ago. Today our way of living and our schools are much different; so many things have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong. Great improvements in living have been made because every American has always been free to pursue his happiness, and so long as Americans are free they will continue to make our country ever more wonderful.

--Laura Ingalls Wilder

I found the second sentence included as part of another quotation. I could find only one instance of the quotation -- on a Mansfield, Missouri, bed and breakfast website:

Things of real value do not change with the passing of years. Remember, it is not the things you have that make you happy; it is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good.

-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

It seems that the two sentences were probably from separate writings, though they are combined on the postcard. It doesn't really matter. They contain good, wholesome principles to live by, and Laura's intention was that they should be shared, especially with children.

Technorati tags: Laura Ingalls Wilder, motto, values

Pioneer Life on the Prairie: A Wagner Matinée

History and Old Stuff...

When we look back at pioneer days on the prairie, it's easy to imagine the lives of the settlers as more idyllic than most actually were.

We've all watched "Little House On the Prairie," and many of us have read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books! The world would be a poorer place without the wonderful stories of her childhood that Laura recorded for us. She truthfully recorded many of the difficulties and dangers that her family faced, and she wrote with great good cheer and a determined optimism. I don't doubt that her family had that attitude and that it helped them to survive many hardships, but it gives a rosy hue to the picture that Laura paints.

Willa Cather wrote realistically about the grim circumstances some homesteaders found themselves in. In her stories about Nebraska, she noted that many were ill-suited for life on the raw prairie. Some came from cities and had no experience at all with farming. They knew nothing about plants and animals. Others lacked the financial resources and emotional strength to hang on through droughts, grasshopper attacks, tornados, blizzards and prairie fires.

Here is a vignette of one woman's life from Cather's short story, "A Wagner Matinée"

My Aunt Georgiana had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends by going with him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who, of course, had no money, had taken a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they had measured off their quarter section themselves by driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief, and counting off its revolutions. They built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates so often reverted to primitive conditions. Their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. For thirty years my aunt had not been further than fifty miles from the homestead.

Quoted from "A Wagner Matinée" by Willa Cather. Originally published in Everybody's Magazine in 1904.

"A Wagner Matinée", source of the quotation above, is the story of a woman and her nephew. He was brought up as a rough homestead boy, though he learned Latin and music under his aunt's care and training. As an adult, he goes to the city and becomes a suave and polished gentleman (on the surface at least). His aunt has undergone an opposite transformation, from a talented lady musician to an overworked prairie pioneer and farm wife. Both aunt and nephew have opportunity at the matinée to recall and marvel at their former and current lives.

It's a poignant and touching look at a relationship, and I found myself identifying to an extent with the nephew, a person who left the homestead and went far away. I'm sure the nephew is a representation of Willa Cather herself. She went to New York City and became a successful editor and writer, but she could never forget where she was from -- Red Cloud, Nebraska, was part of her. She knew it deeply. That's what makes her stories so powerful and authentic, even 100 years later.

"A Wagner Matinée" is also a look at the darker side of the homestead experience. Loss and sacrifice are part of the great story of America's homesteaders. I pay lip service to that fact often, but I was still surprised at the bleakness I saw and felt as I was drawn into this story.

I took my Mennonite neighbor to the chiropractor today. While I was waiting, I read a couple of Willa Cather stories. I have been thinking about this one ever since.



Technorati tags:

Willa Cather
A Wagner Matinée

Wilder, Cather, and Sandoz - Writers of the Prairies

History and Old Stuff...

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) saw the Great Plains when it was still virgin prairie and wrote about it from a child's viewpoint for children. I am a big fan of Laura's writing. We have visited the Little House on the Prairie Museum at Independence, KS, and also the Wilder House and Museum at Mansfield, MO (twice!) What a thrill to see Pa's fiddle and to visit the very room where Laura wrote her stories by hand on a tablet of paper.

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was born only six years after Laura, but she wrote about the settlement of the Great Plains with an adult viewpoint for adults. Willa Cather's birthdate is similar to my great-grandparents. Some of my great-grandparents came to America and the Nebraska prairies as immigrants, very much like those around Red Cloud (Nebraska) whom Willa Cather wrote about. I have always loved Willa Cather for seeing and recording the very soul and spirit of that historic place and time.

Many people have told me that I should read Mari Sandoz (1896-1966). She wrote many books about the Nebraska Sandhills and the Great Plains, but I have only recently bought several of her books. I have started reading Love Song To The Plains, and I've posted a quote from it -- the opening paragraph of the book -- here in the sidebar.

My mother's family were early residents of Sheridan County, Nebraska, as was Mari's family. My grandmother and many other people from Gordon thought Jules Sandoz was a crazy, dangerous old coot, and that Mari painted too glowing a picture of him in her book, Old Jules. I heard this talk when I was a child, and my opinion of Mari Sandoz was tainted by their remarks. I didn't know that Mari herself had been abused both physically and mentally by her father, yet wrote of his accomplishments as a pioneer with respect.


Technorati tags:

Laura Ingalls Wilder Willa Cather Mari Sandoz

A beautiful old house

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... History and Old Stuff...

Here are a few photographs from the tag sale I attended today. This nice old house in one of Hopkinsville's historic districts was once owned by Frank Bassett, a highly regarded and much beloved gentleman who served in county government for many years. He had trained as a physician, but did not practice. I heard at the tag sale that Mr. Bassett's granddaughter had inherited the house upon his death and that it has now been sold to new owners.

I don't know who actually built the home. According to a fellow at the sale who was examining the architecture of the basement, the house was probably built between 1910 and 1920. It's reasonable to guess that it was built before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. I personally think its construction date was closer to 1920 than 1910, based on my observations of the style of the home, but I'm certainly no expert.

The house has many features of a luxurious home of its time -- a butler's pantry, servant quarters off the kitchen, a library, beautiful hardwood floors, built-in cabinets in nearly every room, and a matching carriage house. The exterior walls of the full basement are cut limestone. At one end of the basement, a door opens to the outside. I suppose coal might have been brought in there to fuel a furnace. The upstairs was closed off, so I don't know how many rooms are there. In the main level, there are 4 (I think) bedrooms not counting the small servant's room.

Here is a rough sketch of the general layout of the house. This is my inaccurate impression of the house's floor plan, but you can see how the house is divided into thirds with a hallway along each side of the center rooms. Note the small room with a nice view of the back yard off the master bedroom. I didn't draw in the servant's room and pantries in the kitchen area .

This chest of drawers isn't a detail of the architecture, but it was so beautiful I had to photograph it. It had a matching piece (a dressing table, I think) which I did not photograph.

A safe is built into the wall beside one of the fireplaces.

Looking from the sunroom doors through the dining room to the front parlor and main entrance. This home has 10-foot ceilings and exposed beams in the dining room and front parlor.

An example of the built-in cabinets. This is in the dining room near the door to the kitchen area.

Both bathrooms have ceramic floors with this border and white tiled walls up to about 5 feet. Here you see more of the built in storage. One of the bathrooms has a vintage commode. I don't know what year it might be from, but it's older than me, I think. Its tank is mounted on the wall, and a pipe about a foot long runs from the bottom of the tank to the back of the bowl.



The carriage house has been converted to a residence, but you can see where the doors used to be.

I enjoyed visiting this interesting old house. My photos don't do it justice. Something about its atmosphere reminded me of the "Rock House" that Rose Wilder built for her parents, Almanzo and Laura (Ingalls) Wilder. If you've ever been there, you'll know what I mean.