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(Camp Song, addition by Dr. Taylor and Clara Waite.)
No event is ever quite the same to any woman as the birth of her first child. No child ever saw the light of day
in any spot with a more beautiful view than that from the Farm, which we occupied from late May to the last day
of September, 1910. The
smell of new-mown hay, and of balsam boughs brought in, pervade the memory as I recall "the front sitting-room"
downstairs, (now tenanted by old photographs of Grandfather Little, etc.). A verse was added to the old Welcome
Song that year by my sister Clara with much advice from Dr. Taylor, (who over-ruled the first version, "A
little Coleman in the pen"):
"In summer time of 1910
A little Coleman in the Glen,Her name it was Miss Catheren,
Hurrah for all the Colemans."
Mrs. John L. Jarrett of London, Peru, and Colombia, was our nurse--and became my life-long friend. (She and her
husband were both trained at Harley House in London, rounded by Dr. Harry Guinness, Mrs. Taylor's brother, and
went to South America under his "Regions Beyond Mission". They were later under the Presbyterian Board.
He was starting work in the Sinu River District of Colombia while she was with us at Camp. Both visited in Norristown
and the Camp later, and my children knew them well and enjoyed the story of Mr. Jarrett's welcome back to Peru,
after a generation's absence, as "founder of football" in the schools there; and knew their three children,
of whom only Kathleen came to Camp, from Northfield, with Mrs. L. Taylor. Dear good Mr. Jarrett, "Don Juan",
as he was called in Spanish, died this Spring, 1941, in Costa Rica.) Mrs. Jarrett was beautiful, thirty-five, and
called Catherine "the child of her age". My sons may be said to be nice boys--but their birth certificates
are not from New Hampshire,--so Catherine remains the Camp Baby. Her father thought she was a nice child. (In this
chapter I am attempting the use of the literary method known as understatement. )
Dr. McCreary officiated,---his 800th baby,--Mrs. McCreary assisted, and Nancy was invaluable. A good time was had
by all--the lighting was of course by oil lamp(as in Pre-Edison days). The pioneer mama walked three miles a day
till 'the day before the infant's arrival; digged potatoes and cut down trees when infant was six weeks old, --and
was feeling pretty superior until she received a message from our neighbor Mrs. Cummings that she had had eleven
(maybe nine?)--but "never had a nurse or doctor."
We had with us loyal, laughing Maggie Kurtz--who cried when she had to leave me after ten years (no one ever had
such friends as Maggie for ten years and Irene for nineteen),--and I cried too; and we had Rosa Sands, my first
cook; writer, preacher, diarist, student of Bible and Esperanto, weight 200 lbs. When she thought to leave us she
said, "Mr. Coleman, I want a position as companion, --and you know what a good companion I would be. Cooking
is all standing. Dress-making is all sitting. I want a position half-sitting and half standing." But Fate
willed otherwise for Rosa. She was wooed and won at Camp, by La Forest Heath, "the swineherd", a very
gentle, knightly swineherd. They were married and lived in a sort of colony in California for many years into old
age.--whence she wrote us regularly,--another Camp romance, a true idyll.
The Littles hospitably left home until the end of summer, for their children all had mumps! This was carrying New
England hospitality to its highest heights, as a Southerner wishes to attest.
We did not participate extensively in Camp events in 1910, but Catherine won the blue ribbon in the Field Sports,
as the best baby. Maxie separated the milk and cream-going nightly to his task with profound gravity and framing
himself like a noble canine statue in the great open window of the upper barn. He .was big enough for a man to
ride on,--(feet touching ground) ,--too dignified for sports except his daily stroll to the Big Pond, where he
would superbly lie down in the Lake--and we always saw its surface rise. The kittens played in the barn (ancestors
of present kittens). Earl (when at last returned from quarantine) resumed his care of the active creatures he always
called "my chickens". Grandma Little showed us her quilts.
A number of the Frosts were at Camp. Folger fell out of the barn 16ft. Dr. and Mrs. Taylor came to the Glen (and
later to the Farm), after the death of Mrs. Taylor's father in London. They had with them Mrs. Taylor's two nephews,
Henry and Karl Kumm, then called Helmy and Daydie,--(Henry now a Rockefeller research physician in far corners
of globe; Karl an Anglican clergyman in this country, both married); also Fraulein Johner, the Swiss governess,
and a secretary, Miss Healey, (who revisited the Camp years later, after her marriage).
The Stones came late, after the second Ecumenical Conference of 1910 at Edinburgh,--where the Speers first knew
the Barbours, I may say--they will all be back in the story directly.
I think it was in 1910 that our dear friend Tien Fuh Wu came to Camp, from San Francisco; after her training in
the Presbyterian Home there, she had lived with the Frosts in their own home in Germantown, attending a finishing
school with their daughters, and later the Toronto Bible School with Elsa Frost. Among all the Nationals of other
races, Tien has been close, congenial,--like one of our own family. (A few years later, confronted with a foundling
infant on their doorstep in San Francisco, Tien calmly adopted it for some time along with all her other duties,
saying, "I know what to do for babies. I will do as I did for Catherine Coleman.") She is haw head of
a branch of the home in which she grew to her own very lovely maturity-called "Auntie" by a thousand
girls.
My sister Clara came to visit us from Eastern Point in September just before my grandfather's death at the aged
94 1/2. Gay, frail, unselfish, selfiess, sporting, perfect Clara,--as usual she was sought out by a "beau",
an old friend who called and took her for the customary entertainment of the day, a buggy ride. My husband having
been called to Philadelphia early on business, Clara was the man of the family on our journey home on September
30th, my first with a three-months old infant, and a new young nurse. In the early morning, as the "sleeper"
was delayed in reaching New York, Clara made her way the length d the long train to the locomotive and beguiled
the engineer's own coffee from him in a nice tin can and brought it back to me. She could make any occasion into
a party.
It was on the arrival at Camp in that late May of 1910 that Mr. Covill first brought us up in a car from his Colebrook
"livery stable". Cars were still new, and Klebe's Hill was already high. The car broke down below the
schoolhouse (Canada Road), and we walked the last long mile. Mr. Covill and I never fail to laugh about it to this
day.
This was the summer of Halley's Comet, we watched it from the farm-house porch in June, across the high expanse
of sky.
This seems to the chapter to tell about the Litties; although they kindly left their farm-house to us for most
of the summer and went to live at their old home near Stewartstown while their children had the mumps, they returned
and we were house-mates for September.
Mr. Herbert Little's father, "Grandpa Little", had died before this time; he lived to be over ninety-three
and was a picture of venerable strength and dignity, as I remember him. His wife, (our Mr. Little's stepmother),
was the maker of "hook rugs" (or hooked rugs); this skill she taught her grand-daughters, and the hook-rugs
at the Chalet "with Indian patterns" are products of her art and teaching; also the maker of quilts,
of which she always said, "These are my life". She was a collector of curios, and the missionaries from
all over the world sent her objects for her curio cabinet in the second story hall of the farm-house. The pictures
of Grandma and Grandpa Little may be seen at the Farm.
Mr. Herbert Little, who was brought from Stewartstown to manage the farm, it is hardly necessary to describe. Everyone
who ever came to Camp has known and loved him all these forty years. Mrs. Little was a very lovely mother, a pattern
for us all. Originally French-Canadian, we have mementoes of her in the hand-woven hangings at the Ch&let doors
which came from near her early home, "up Chicoutimi way"; and in one priceless story which I have always
treasured. When Mr. and Mrs. Little and Earl, then a small boy, visited us in Norristown the winter after we were
married, 1910, the Camp friends vied in entertaining them; one hostess in Philadelphia to outdo all prior grandure
invited them to the opera (I think the Metropolitan in one of its Philadelphia performances); she had secured good
seats and Earl was to be left at home with her small brother, but Mrs. Little was perturbed; "There would
surely be room for Earl". Like mothers all over the world, she felt it would be no concert at all that did
not make a place for her young son. The hostess assured her this was not like a country concert in Colebrook---she
was to see a different world. Earl was left at home, but as things
turned out the opera was "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame", sung in French. Mrs. Little was the only one in
the party who understood it, and it seemed to her "very natural", like a scene in any of the Churches
of her girlhood. She refused to be ruffled. And in fact I never saw her ruffled. She lived to enjoy her golden
wedding. In her later years at the house in Colebrook one of her joys was to listen for Harold to speak on the
Radio. She was intensely proud of him but never spoke with excess of boasting just as she had never raised her
voice in admonishment when they were little.
Harold is indeed an excellent speaker. He went into Government Agriculture Conservation work in the last war and
has a responsible position in New York State, near Saratoga, where he married. Una May is just such another mother
as her mother was. She married a young war veteran, Walter Klebe of Portstown, Pa., described elsewhere and often,
(another inter-state romance). They preside over the Farm today, with their numerous and delightful brood. Curtis
is a second Walter; Doris carries on the domestic tradition. Walter is more carpenter than farmer, and this conforms
with the new age, when building must be kept in repair, and the Farm has no longer need to raise all the food for
itself and the Camp. In early days this included "butchering" the beef and pigs--and the little lambs
whose bells resounded Swiss-like on the hillside sheep-pasture, in the gloaming of so many years. Viney Grace (Mrs.
Perry) died young, in the same week with her husband in a pneumonia scourge, leaving five young children who were
adopted by various friends, the eldest being Glenwin. We remember Viney with her lovely wistful face, first as
a little girl in pigtails, then starting out so young to teach in neighboring school house, and crowding so much
of wifehood, motherhood and home-making into her short life. Earl married Isabel Nelson of Norristown, and after
a season at the Farm went into educational work; they are now at his Alma Mater, the State College at Concord.
The acres of the Camp property, as I first knew it, have been increased recently to include all the shore around
the Lake; the arrangements being completed by my son, Horace Junior, in about 1938. Hurricane and all it is still
there, --part of America.