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Show her friend, Call Mayhew, marched proudly in their white frocks carrying two of those bright banners. Her father once had an opportunity to dramatically demonstrate his love for his sweet Anna. She was ill with a fever, her face flushed, her lips parched, when she remarked that it would be so nice to have a snowball. Her husband disappeared, returning several hours later bearing a bag full of hard-packed snowballs which he had walked miles into the canyon to procure. There is poignancy in an incident from her childhood which has to be pegged prior to age 12 when she met Milford Shipp. It seems that she overheard her parents talking about a marriage offer for her which had been made by a young man in the neighborhood. She was shocked to know that anyone could think of her in that way, for she was still playing with dolls and considering herself a child. The parents decided not to tell her of it, wishing to prolong her innocence. But, thereafter, Ellis was forced to look at herself in a new light. By the mature age of twelve when she fell in love with the portrait of Milford Bard Shipp, her mind (and no doubt her body) had made an important transition. There is no chronology to her written recollections at age 83 nor her talk at age 85, but two other items which never reached publication are worthy of mention. Both underscore the harshness of frontier life. The poverty of her childhood sometimes produced, at Christmas, not much more in their stockings than fried doughnut dolls. Even |
