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Show Joy to Gather My Share 27 their adventures in the ages twelve, thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen, to augment the their New War in Civil attempts England, home, family's meager income, their friendships with other girls, and their later love affairs. Madelyn pictured herself as "Jo," the fif teen-year-old unconventional and enterprising girl who wanted to be a boy because of the things boys could do, and who even tually became a writer of melodramatic fiction. As Madelyn remarked later in leading a class discussion of Little Women the free-spirited March girls were wonderfully flawed, so much more realistic than the pious and sweet girls in other books. Moreover, the book was filled with the philosophy of the Transcendentalists, led by Louisa May Alcott's parents and oth ers, who were "progressive" in giving freedom and independ ence to their "little women." Later, Madelyn enjoyed Oscar Wilde, his short stories and sparkling comedies as produced in the Salt Lake Theater, to which her Aunt Annie took her. She specifically remembered how much she enjoyed "Lady Windermere's Fan," a British play of social comedy. Other books which Madelyn read as a youth included Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, a striking romance of the South American forest of which the central fig ure, Rima, was the semi-human embodiment of the spirit of the forest; The Little Minister and Peter Pan, by James Barrie; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde; Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter; and novels by Dickens, Mark Twain, and Booth Tarkington. Madelyn had a rich imaginative life that carried on into her adult years. III Actually, not all of Madelyn's youth was spent in town. The ranch played an important part in her growing years. Papa Barnard was an expert horseman and maintained several spirit ed horses, one each for himself and Nora, and one for each child. Madelyn's Indian-bred pony was named Buckskin, per haps because of his color. When young, Madelyn rode on the horse behind Papa; when older she rode bare-back on her own mount, and still later in a saddle. Sometimes Mama and Aunt |
