Life in Arkansas

When I was a little girl, my name was Elsie, and I lived in Arkansas. You know Arkansas is not all the same; some of it is low and flat, and people living there often have malarial fever, but in the northern part of the state there are great, high mountains. These mountains are called the Ozarks and they are very beautiful. They are covered with all kinds of trees and have little streams of water scattered about here and there. Everywhere are wild flowers and such lovely ferns.

Did any of you ever go wading in a small creek and catch crayfish, or ‘crawfish’ as they are sometimes called? Did you ever gather watercress from the edge of a sparkling brook? Did you ever play ‘catch’ with the tiny balls of a sycamore tree? Did you ever see a maiden hair fern growing in its natural way in a shady nook? Did you ever go out into the woods to gather walnuts, hickory nuts, chinkapins, or chestnuts, in the Autumn? Did you ever chew a twig from a sassafras tree, in the Spring, after the sap has begun to flow? Did you ever sit on a board and slide down a steep hill so thickly covered with pine needles that it was as slippery as ice? Did you ever brush back the dead leaves and find dainty little blossoms in February? Did you ever watch the tiny pink leaves on a red-oak tree grow as large as squirrels’ ears, so you would know it was time to plant corn? Did you ever live in a house which had four or five large rooms, rambling around on the ground, the whole thing covered with black tar paper, and a white oak tree growing right up through one room because the people who built the house did not want to cut down the tree? Did you ever live in a house which had an outside door and a fireplace to every room?

Now, I suppose all of you would like to go to Arkansas to see if these things are true, which I have told you. Well, Arkansas is a place where boys and girls can have all kinds of fun, and all kinds of jolly things, and I shall tell you more about them some other time, but Nebraska is a pretty good place to live.