other big public movements of his day which had
his interest and sympathy. He wrote to us regu-
larly and sent us occasional remittances, as well as
a generous supply of improving literature for our
minds. It remained for us to strengthen our bodies,
to meet the conditions in which he had placed us,
and to survive if we could.

We faced our situation with clear and unalarmed
eyes the morning after our arrival. The problem
of food, we knew, was at least temporarily solved.
We had brought with us enough coffee, pork, and
flour to last for several weeks; and the one necessity
father had put inside the cabin walls was a great
fireplace, made of mud and stones, in which our food
could be cooked. The problem of our water-supply
was less simple, but my brother James solved it for
the time by showing us a creek a long distance from
the house; and for months we carried from this
creek, in pails, every drop of water we used, save
that which we caught in troughs when the rain fell.

We held a family council after breakfast, and in this,
though I was only twelve, I took an eager and determined
part. I loved work--it has always been my favorite form
of recreation--and my spirit rose to the opportunities of it
which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first
thing to do was to put doors and windows into the
yawning holes father had left for them, and to lay a board
flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls, and these