Harlan’s stay in Springfield was to prove a blessing to the entire family. He had left home, but fortunately he had not gone as far as Fanny and Fred, or as Homer later was to go. He was near enough to come home for week-ends. It also gave an added thrill in going to Springfield on shopping trips; it afforded an opportunity to see Harlan. It is doubtful if those living today realize what life was on the farm, or understand the role Harlan was able to play, in the life of the family as a whole. Since Harlan worked in a wholesale grocery, at Christmas time he would bring whole buckets of candy and bags of oranges, to fill the stockings of the younger member’s of the family, and there would always be enough for all the servants in the house, and for those who lived in the tenant houses. The day that Harlan and Isabel Smith were married in Springfield, was a red-letter day in the history of the family. Most of the family did not get to attend, including Fred, who somehow manages to stay away from such events. Father and Mother were there, and the story of the wedding, written by Mother to the family, was a classic, as nothing seems to have escaped her. Another thrill had come to take away the drab of the home life on the farm. It seems that Harlan was following the family pattern, when soon after his marriage, he decided to go west. Uncle John, Father’s brother had gone west; a number of cousins had also gone west, and although urged to remain with the wholesale grocery firm in Springfield, even being offered a partnership, he decided to go west. His story, his marked business success and the fine family which he and Isabel reared, is more fully recorded in another place; but no narrative how ever long and intimate could tell all that Harlan meant to the old homestead, even though it was not to be his lot to remain on the farm, and to become what for a time it seemed that he would become—a successor to his father. In indulging in this bit of family history which so easily comes to mind and is a pleasure to recall, there is an interesting glimpse recently brought to light, which I am sure the family would want to have recorded, as it pertains to the comfort which Mother evidently got from her correspondence with Harlan and Isabel, especially Isabel. She was the one who wrote the letters over a long period of years, and the one who has preserved the letters, 28
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=