Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

CHANGES IN THE OLD HOME 191
would need. It was agreed that mother was to handle the
board money and spend it in improving the house.
On the appointed day Mr. and Mrs. Winans came, bringing
tiieir young daughter of perhaps ten years of age. Her hair
was just coming in after her recovery from fever. To make
the story shorter, the plan for getting money to repair our
home was a success. Mother called one of our Carthage friends
to paint the old weather-beaten house white and the shutters
green, and hang them and lay new porch floors. Next a
mason came and finished lathing and plastering the entire
unfinished part. I can scarcely tell you what it meant to us.
Eor years we had seen our home grow more dmgy looking with-
out, and we needed all the room there was within, which yet
required much to be done to make it comfortable and complete.
When all was at last finished we young people felt more
self-respecting, as we then looked about as well housed as our
neighbors. I love to think of what a joy came to us each at
the renewing of the dear old home.
Years before father had placed shade trees about the
house — a mulberry tree bearing large, sweet, white mulberries
and later a couple of ailanthus trees bought from the
nurseryman added their shade. The common and more
expressive name for these trees was theirs in their East Indian
habitat — Tree of Heaven. They had leaves something like
the walnut tree, pointed and growing on long twigs. When
in bloom the odor was far from heavenly, but the umbrageous
canopy was delightful and refreshing on a hot afternoon of
summer. Then there was a coffee nut tree, with pods and
beans which latter we sometimes roasted, but they did not
seem to us in the least to resemble coffee as to the taste.
To catch a glimpse of our dear home through the trees was
to us a most charming sight. I remember well the day when
father planted a wild grapevine some friend had brought him
from the woods. They dug a hole in which to place this vine,
and then a trench along the edge of the porch, placing grafts
of the Isabella grape in the prostrate vine. These grafts grew
well, and in after years climbed up to the eaves and clung to
the banisters about the upper porch and made a bower of it.