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Daniel took pictures of everything, herself included in garden clothes!
by Helen M. Pcttengill
Art by Ben E. Denison
Iomorrow would be his last day in
Vermont. Called back from
Chile by his company, he was
taking a few days to revisit his home
before starting to work in New York.
He had been an exile for 20 years,
hunting copper all over the world.
Yesterday he had driven around the
old college campus and now he was
driving through the river valleys.
Stopping on the crest of the hills,
seeing the red barns and white
houses, the cattle and sheep grazing
on ancient pastures, the old folks sit
ting under the elms and young house
wives weeding their gardens, he said
to himself: "Maybe I should have
stayed." Copper country, had no such
scenes as these.
But that was water over the dam.
Maybe, now that he was to be in one
spot for some years, he would get back
home once in a while.
Today he must visit his birthplace,
burned to the ground when he was
two years out of college and not re
built. Had the fire killed the big
maples, the lilacs, the tiger lilies?.
When he reached "High Mowing"
as his mother had named it, he was
glad to find the trees unscathed. The
lilacs had been spared, too, but were
bent by the wind until they looked
like question marks asking why they
had been left alone so long.
They were past their bloom. But
surrounded by a tangle of brush and
briars, the tiger lilies were in blossom,
lifting toward the sun. They had been
his mother's favorites, in part because,
as she said, they came up by them
selves and withstood the cold Winters,
and so required little care.
Farm wives had little time for a
M Family Weekly. August 10, 195