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Show 160 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER The relationship of Madelyn and Harold seems to have been harmonious and happy. On May 10, 1940, Madelyn wrote: "Harold makes me feel the most desired, the most beautiful, and the most charming woman in the world. I stand in awe before the miracle of his love." 1 In the summer of 1940 Madelyn and her three children were at the Ranch with Aunt Sarah Scott, Grandma Stewart, Aunt and other families-the Annie, Romneys and Robert and Nora Snow. The hydraulic ram Harold had installed that pumped cold water from the river quit working and they had no water in the house. Madelyn went out in the evening to fix the ram. To get to the ram, she had to cross the river on a fallen tree. When she got back to the house, she had a bad cut on her leg from a sharp branch on the fallen log. She bandaged the bleeding gash and then drove to Woodland to get medicine and medical help. She did not draw undue attention to her obvious pain and distress; all present were proud of her courage and determination. Whether the family was at the ranch or in the Silver home in Denver, Madelyn encouraged her children in reading. She would have been pleased that one of her daughters, in referring to her, quoted the poem "The Reading Mother": "Richer than I you be; I had a mother who read to me." Her children still have books that she gave to them, such as Eugene Field's poems. She took them to see a statue of Wynken, Blinken, and Nod in one of Denver's public parks. The children also read juvenile books by A. A. Milne: Now We Are Six When We Were Very can never Young, and Winnie-the-Pooh. She introduced them to Robert Louis Stevenson, and as they grew older, to Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Service, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Vincent Benet, and of course, Shakespeare. She discouraged them from reading such "light" and "waste-time" literature as the popular Nancy Drew mys teries. On March 1, 1941 Madelyn celebrated her fortieth birthday. She wrote: Today I am forty years old! And out of the events of the day has grown a strong feeling: I must stop rushing, and |
