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Show 40 The usual rate of birth was a child every two years, but Tommy had upset Mama's schedule. There was only one year between Tommy and I. When I was two Macel was born; when she was two Revo was born. The baby who should have been born when Revo was two didn't make it. Mama had learned she was pregnant only the day before we went to Three Creek for the summer and the hard work was too much for her. Papa had no experience with miscarriage and was more annoyed than worried when she said she was haemorrhaging. He felt he couldn't get away, so sent Uncle Will to take her and us children back to town, jolting along in the wagon. What none of them knew was that she was a "bleeder. " By the time she had ridden twenty miles she was nearly dead, so weak that she fainted every time she heard a noise. When the doctor saw her he was furious with Papa, and sent Uncle Will post haste after him. Papa came white-faced with fear, almost killing the horse on the way. We had to be taken away, so we lived at Aunt Medie's for eleven weeks. Mama had eleven hired girls in as many weeks. They had to be still as death, even take the washing to the shed to scrub. We got so lonesome for her we could hardly bear it, but were allowed only to tiptoe in and look at her after a month, lying white as paper against the pillow. But she recovered enough to have another baby, Vetris, next year, on the fifth day of August, 1910, the year David Starr Jordan, upon arriving from England, in an interview, said that war would never come. That year an airplane flew 132 miles in some 150 minutes, and a car came came to Joseph. |
