I never have been in favor of making good resolutions on New Year’s Day just because it was the first day of the year. Any day may begin a new year for us in that way, but it does help some to have a set time to go over the year’s efforts and see whether we are advancing or falling back.

If we find that we are quicker of temper and sharper of tongue than we were a year ago, we are on the wrong road. If we have less sympathy and understanding for others and are more selfish than we used to be, it is time to take a new path.

I helped a farmer figure out the value of his crops raised during the last season, recently, and he was a very astonished person. Then when we added to that figure the amount he had received for livestock during the same period, he said: “It doesn’t seem as if a man who had taken in that much off his farm would need a loan.”

This farmer friend had not kept any accounts and so was surprised at the money he had taken in and that it should all be spent. Besides the help in a business way, there are a great many interesting things that can be gotten out of farm accounts, if they are rightly kept.

The Man of the Place and I usually find out something new and unexpected when we figure up the business at the end of the year. We discovered this year that the two of us, without any outside help, had produced enough in the last year to feed 30 person for a year — all the bread, butter, meat, eggs, sweetening and vegetables necessary — and this does not include the beef cattle sold off the place.

I do not know whether Mr. Hoover would think we have done as much as we should, but I do think it is not so bad. I had been rather discouraged with myself because I have not had so much time to spend with Red Cross work as some of my friends in town, but after I found out just what we have done, I felt better about it.

The knitting and making of garments for the Red Cross is very necessary and important but the work of making the hens lay and filling the cream can is just as commendable. Without the food which the farm women are helping to produce, the other work would be of no value.

If you have not already done so, just figure up for yourselves and you will be surprised at how much you have accomplished.

“Make a New Beginning”  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, January 5, 1918

The walls were made of one thickness of wide boards with cracks between and the enormous stove that stood nearly in the center of the one room could scarcely keep out the frost tho its side were a glowing red. The children were dressed warmly and had been allowed to gather closely around the stove following the advice of the county superintendent of schools, who on a recent visit had said that the only thing he had to say to them was to keep their fee warm.

This was my first school, I’ll not say how many years ago, but I was only 16 years old and 12 miles from home during a frontier winter. I walked a mile over the unbroken snow from my boarding place to school every morning and back at night. There were only a few pupils and on this particular snowy afternoon they were restless for it was nearing 4 o’clock and tomorrow was Christmas. “Teacher” was restless too, tho she tried not to show it for she was wondering if she could get home for Christmas Day.

It was almost too cold to hope for father to come and a storm was hanging in the northwest which might mean a blizzard at any minute. Still, tomorrow was Christmas — and then there was a jingle of sleigh bells outside. A man in a huge fur coat in a sleigh full of robes passed the window. I was going home after all!

When one thinks of 12 miles now, it is in terms of motor cars and means only a few minutes. It was different then, and I’ll never forget that ride. The bells made a merry jingle, and the fur robes were warm but the weather was growing colder and the snow was drifting so that the horses must break their way thru the drifts.

We were facing the strong wind, and every little while he, who later became the “man of the place,” must stop the team, get out in the snow, and by putting his hands over each horse’s nose in turn, thaw the ice from them where the breath had frozen over their nostrils. Then he would get back into the sleigh and on we’d go until once more the horses could not breathe for the ice.

When we reached the journey’s end, it was 40 degrees below zero, the snow was blowing so thickly that we could not see across the street and I was so chilled that I had to be half carried into the house. But I was home for Christmas and cold and danger were forgotten.

Such magic there is in Christmas to draw the absent ones home and if unable to go in the body the thoughts will hover there! Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred and we are better thruout the year for having become a child again at Christmas-time.

“As a Farm Woman Thinks (33)”  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, December 15, 1924

Alphonse was in the battle of the Marne, the battle of the Somme and at Verdun. Once he was buried beneath the ground for 40 minutes and at another time he was hurled into the air and fell to the ground unconscious where he remained for some time apparently dead.

After three years of fighting he was given a 30 days furlough and permission to spend the time with his friends in San Francisco. During his stay in San Francisco, Alphonse was persuaded to tell in public of the life of the soldiers and of his experiences in the war. He made several speeches to large audiences and, because of the sympathy he aroused for the French soldiers and his habit of wishing they might enjoy the good things that were making his visit so pleasant, his friends decided they would supply him with some gifts to take back with him for the soldiers over there.

The idea was given a little publicity in the papers with the result that besides donated gifts, $600 was raised for the purchase of other gifts. Alphonse went back to the battle front loaded with presents for his poorly paid, ill-fed comrades; happy because he can, in this way, share with them his visit home.

Alphonse says it is a different world over there, a world of kindness and friendship where people do things as a matter of course for each other, which would be thought very remarkable in any but a war world. He says, “My friend saves my life today and I save his life tomorrow and nothing is thought of it and always we share with each other.” Friendship is not just a name over there. It means braving danger for, suffering for, and sharing with one’s friends. Alphonse could not have been happy with the good things showered upon him during his visit unless he had known he could share them with his soldier friends.

And so amid the awfulness of war, we find the spirit of loving and giving which three terrible years of fighting at the front has not killed but greatly strengthened. It certainly gives us cause to believe in the ultimate triumph of that spirit, if only we who stay at home can stand the test as well.

How will we be affected by the stress and strain, the anxiety and perhaps the grief which we must go thru together? Will struggle brighten and strengthen our good qualities as it has those of Alphonse and his soldier friends of France? Will our feeling of comradeship grow until we cannot be happy unless others share the good things which we enjoy and until we will do the helpful thing for friend and neighbor as a matter of course?

If when anyone is in difficulty we would all help instead of taking advantage of the situation; if when trouble comes to those we know, we would do our utmost to make it lighter instead of gossiping unkindly about it; and if we would not be satisfied until we had passed a share of our happiness on to other people, what a world we could make!

When our soldiers come home from the “war world” of which Alphonse has told, what a delightful surprise it would be for them if they should find themselves at home in a world of that kind — where the loving and sharing and good comradeship reached all year around.

“Santa Claus at the Front”  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, January 20, 1918

Ma had taken the swan’s skin from its careful wrappings, and cut from it a little hood. The skin was so delicate that Ma trusted no one else to handle that; she sewed every stitch of the hood herself. But she let Laura and Carrie piece out the lining, of scraps of blue silk from the scrap bag. After Ma sewed the swan’s-down hood to the lining, it would not tear.

Then Ma looked again in the scrap bag, and chose a large piece of soft blue woolen cloth, that had once been her best winter dress. Out of it she cut a little coat. Laura and Carrie sewed the seams and pressed them; Mary put the tiny stitches in the hem at the bottom. Then on the coat Ma sewed a collar of the soft swan’s-down, and put narrow swan’s-down cuffs on the sleeves.

The blue coat trimmed with the white swan’s-down, and the delicate swan’s-down hood with its lining as blue as Grace’s eyes, were beautiful.

“It’s like making doll’s clothes,” Laura said.

“Grace will be lovelier than any doll,” Mary declared.

“Oh, let’s put them on her now!” Carrie cried, dancing in her eagerness.

But Ma had said the coat and the hood must be laid away until Christmas, and they were. They were waiting now for tomorrow morning to come.

From Chapter 19: Christmas Eve, By The Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

These ringing words were spoken by Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford University.

As a nation we have made a great reputation, it now remains to live up to it. Just what is this American spirit that our overseas force of fighters and helpers have carried into Europe? It is a spirit of helpfulness and courage, of sympathy and sacrifice, of energy and of fair play.

We have sent our fighting men to the aid of the wronged and helpless and food and clothing to the starving and destitute. Never before in history have the people of a whole nation denied themselves food that they might feed the hungry of other nations.

I am sure that a great many persons felt a sort of flatness and staleness in life when the war ended. Altho they were glad and deeply thankful, there was an unpleasantness in going back to ordinary things, a letting down from the heights to which they had attained, a silence in place of the bugle call to duty, to which their spirits had become attuned.

But here is a chance to exercise still further those qualities which, in spite of all the horrors, have made of the war a glorious thing by showing how the good still rises triumphant over the bad in the heart of humanity.

The appeal of Dr. Wilbur comes most appropriately at this time for the American spirit as it has been displayed is really the spirit of Christmas or in other words the spirit of Christianity, a practicable example of loving and serving and giving.

It is a wonderful thing for us to have accepted as our own such national ideals, but we cannot hold them as a nation unless we accept them for our own as individuals. So the responsibility rests upon each of us to keep our country true to the course it has taken and up to the high standard it has reached.

“The American Spirit”  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, December 20, 1918

We were living on the frontier in South Dakota then. There’s no more frontier within the boundaries of the United  States, more’s the pity, but then we were ahead of the railroad in a new unsettled country. Our nearest and only neighbor was 12 miles away and the store was 40 miles distant.

Father had laid in a supply of provisions for the winter and among them were salt meats, but for fresh meat we depended on father’s gun and the antelope which fed, in herds, across the prairie. We were quite excited, one day near Thanksgiving, when father hurried into the house for his gun and then away again to try for a shot at a belated flock of wild geese hurrying south.

We would have roast goose for Thanksgiving dinner! “Roast goose and dressing seasoned with sage,” said sister Mary. “No not sage! I don’t like sage and we won’t have it in the dressing,” I exclaimed. Then we quarreled, sister Mary and I, she insisting that there should be sage in the dressing and I declaring there should not be sage in the dressing, until father returned, — without the goose! I remember saying in a meek voice to sister Mary, “I wish I had let you have the sage,” and to this day when I think of it I feel again just as I felt then and realize how thankful I would have been for roast goose and dressing with sage seasoning — with or without any seasoning — I could even have gotten along without the dressing. Just plain goose roasted would have been plenty good enough.

This little happening has helped me to be properly thankful even tho at times the seasoning of my blessings has not been just such as I would have chosen.

From “Thanksgiving Time”  by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, November 20,1916

The simple fact, of how music came to have written form, takes us away into the days of chivalry, in the 16th Century. To guide the choir boys in following the melody when singing masses, the monks wrote the Latin words, not in a straight line but up and down to indicate their place in the musical scale. Later, to shorten the time and labor of writing, the words were replaced by circles and horizontal lines of the staff were added to more clearly indicate their position. Slowly, from time to time, the different forms of notes were made and music was standardized into the base and treble cleffs, so that our music of today takes its printed form directly from the manuscripts so laboriously written by hand in the monasteries of the 16th Century.

This is only one of many things I learned about music, but I learned also that it isn’t what one already knows that adds interest to the preparation of a club paper so much as the learning something new in order to be able to go on with it.

Learning things is most fascinating and I think it adds joy to life to be continually learning things so that we may be able to go on with it creditably.

“As a Farm Woman Thinks” (29), by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, April 1, 1924

What a beautiful world this is! Have you noticed the wonderful coloring of the sky at sunrise? For me there is no time like the early morning, when the spirit of light broods over the earth at its awakening. What glorious colors in the woods these days! Did you ever think that great painters have spent their lives trying to reproduce on canvas what we may see every day? Thousands of dollars are paid for their pictures which are not so beautiful as those nature gives us freely. The colors in the sky at sunset, the delicate tints of the early spring foliage, the brilliant autumn leaves, the softly colored grasses and lovely flowers — what painter ever equalled their beauties with paint and brush? I have in my living room three large windows uncovered by curtains which I call my pictures. Everchanging with the seasons, with wild birds and gay squirrels passing on and off the scene, I never have seen a landscape painting to compare with them.

As we go about our daily tasks the work will seem lighter if we enjoy these beautiful things that are just outside our doors and windows. It pays to go to the top of the hill, now and then, to see the view and to stroll thru the wood lot or pasture forgetting that we are in a hurry or that there is such a thing as a clock in the world. You are “so busy”! Oh yes I know it! We are all busy, but what are we living for anyway and why is the world so beautiful if not for us? The habits we form last us thru this life and I firmly believe into the next. Let’s not make such a habit of hurry and work that when we leave this world we will feel impelled to hurry thru the spaces of the universe using our wings for feather dusters to clean away the star dust.

The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.

I strolled today down a woodland path–
A crow cawed loudly and flew away.
The sky was blue and the clouds were gold
And drifted before me fold on fold;
The leaves were yellow and red and brown
And patter, patter the nuts fell down,
On this beautiful, golden autumn day.

A squirrel was storing his winter hoard,
The world was pleasant: I lingered long,
The brown quails rose with a sudden whirr
And a little bundle, of eyes and fur,
Took shape of a rabbit and leaped away.
A little chipmunk came out to play
And the autumn breeze sang a wonder song.

“An Autumn Day”, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, October 20, 1916

We have been gathering the fruits of the season’s work into barns and bins and cellars. The harvest has been abundant and a good supply is stored away for future needs.

Now I am wondering what sort of fruits, and how plentiful the supply, we have stored away in our hearts and souls and minds from our year’s activities. The time of gathering together the visible results of our year’s labor is a very appropriate time to reckon up the invisible, more important harvest.

When we lived in South Dakota, where the cold came early and strong, we once had a hired man (farmers had them in those days), who was a good worker, but whose money was too easily spent. In the fall when the first cold wind struck him, he would shiver and chatter and always he would say, “Gee Mighty! This makes a feller wonder what’s become of his summer’s wages!”

Ever since then, Harvest Home time has seemed to me the time to gather together and take stock of our mental and spiritual harvest, and to wonder what we have done with the wealth of opportunity that has come to us and the treasures we have had in our keeping. Much too often I have felt like quoting the hired man of other days.

Have we found a new friendship worth while? Have we even kept safely the old friendships, treasures worth much more than silver and gold? People in these  history-making days hold their opinions so strongly and defend them so fiercely, that a strain will be put upon many friendships, and the pity of it is that these misunderstandings will come between people who are earnestly striving for the right thing. Right seems to be obscured and truth is difficult to find.

But if the difficulty of finding the truth has increased our appreciation of its value, if the beauty of truth is plainer to us and more desired, then we have gathered treasure for the future.

We lay away the gleanings of our years in the edifice of our character, where nothing is ever lost. What have we stored away, in this safe place during the season that is past? Is is something that will keep sound and pure and sweet or something that is faulty and not worth storing?

As a child I learned my Bible lessons by heart, in t he good old-fashioned way, and once won the prize for repeating correctly more verses from the Bible than any other person in the Sunday school. But always my mind had a trick of picking a text here and a text there and connecting them together in meaning. In this way there came to me a thought that makes the stores from my invisible harvest important to me. These texts are familiar to everyone. It is their sequence that gives the thought.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break thru and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do no break thru or steal.” (Matthew 6:19-20)

And then: “Why say ye. Lo here and lo there. Know y e not that the kingdom of Heaven is within you?” (Luke 17:21)

“The Farm Home” (30), by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, October 20, 1920

Laura woke up suddenly. She heard singing and a queer slapping sound.

“Oh, I am as happy as a big sunflower (Slap! Slap!)
That nods and bends in the breezes, Oh! (Slap! Slap!)
And my heart (Slap!) is as light (Slap!) as the wind that blows (Slap! Slap!)
The leaves from off the treeses, Oh! (Slap! SLAP!)

Pa was singing his trouble song and slapping his arms on his chest.

Laura’s nose was cold. Only her nose was outside the quilts that she was huddled under. She put out her whole head and then she knew why Pa was slapping himself. He was trying to warm his hands.

He had kindled the fire. It was roaring in the stove, but the air was freezing cold. Ice crackled on the quilt where leaking rain had fallen. Winds howled around the shanty and from the roof and all the walls came a sound of scouring.

Carrie sleepily asked, “What is it?”

“It’s a blizzard,” Laura told her. “You and Mary stay under the covers.”

Careful not to let the cold get under the quilts, she crawled out of the warm bed. Her teeth chattered while she pulled on her clothes. Ma was dressing, too, beyond the curtain, but they were both too cold to say anything.

They met at the stove where the fire was blazing furiously without warming the air at all. The window was a white blur of madly swirling snow. Snow had blown under the door and across the floor and every nail in the walls was white with frost.

Pa had gone to the stable. Laura was glad that they had so many haystacks in a row between the stable and the shanty. Going from haystack to haystack, Pa would not get lost.

“A b-b-b-b-blizzard!” Ma chattered. “In Oc-October I n-n-never heard of…”