On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, Page 6

  When the mortgage is paid, in only a few more years, she said, and when the orchard is in bearing, if prices are good then, we will fence the whole place with wire and build the barn bigger; we will have more stock by then. And after that, we can begin to build the house.

  She woke from the dream with a start and a Goodness! it’s chore-time! I’d better take the milk pail to my father, she said, and feed the hens before they went to roost; don’t forget to fill their water-pans, and bring in the eggs; be careful not to break one. Oh, now that we had the cow, we’d have a treat for Sunday supper, French toast with that wild honey, to surprise my father. How wonderful it was to have a cow again.

  While I scattered corn for the hens, fetched water from the spring to fill their pans, and hunted for eggs that the broody hens hid in the haymow, in the straw stack, and even in the wild grasses, I heard her whistling in the cabin, getting supper.

  ∨ On the Way Home ∧

  Insert

  Laura and Almanzo shortly after their marriage in De Smet, Dakota Territory.

  I was 2 years 4 months old when this picture was taken in April 1889. I remember the picture-taking well, was impressed by the photographer’s stupid pretense that there was a little bird in the camera. The photographer also kept putting my right hand on top of the left, and I kept changing them back because I wanted my carnelian ring to show. And in the end I won out. R.W.L.

  Rose (4th from left) in her church’s ‘children’s exercises’ just before leaving De Smet in 1894.

  Laura (top) and Almanzo (bottom) at the time of These Happy Golden Years.

  Laura (top) and Almanzo (bottom) at the time of their trip to Mansfield, Missouri.

  A sewing box made of cigar boxes by Almanzo for a first anniversary gift to Laura. It came with us in the hack to Mansfield. R.W.L.

  Pa and Ma Ingalls’ house in De Smet. This picture was sent to us in Mansfield some years after we left Dakota. R.W.L.

  Calumet Avenue, De Smet, South Dakota, around 1900.

  The wooden bridge across the Platte River, Schuyler, Nebraska, as it looked when we crossed it. R.L.W.

  Marysville, Kansas. This is a ‘German Day’ parade, which may have taken place in the year we were there. R.L.W.

  Kansas Avenue in Topeka, Kansas, as it looked when we passed through. R.W.L.

  The main street of Fort Scott, Kansas, as it looked in the late 1880’s. R.L.W.

  Mansfield, Missouri, as it looked about 1894. This picture was probably taken on Memorial Day or on the Fourth of July.

  Two views of the lap desk that held the $100 bil.

  Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield after Almanzo had cleared a good deal of the land. Laura probably took this photograph about 1910. R.W.L.

  The cabin we lived in during the first winter in Mansfield. It was part of the barn when this picture was taken. The horses are the team which brought us down from Dakota. My father is sitting in a buggy for which he traded the hack, when we were rich enough to have a wagon and a buggy. R.W.L.

  This photo of Laura was taken in the ravine just below the spring.

  A neighbor’s cabin. My father is pictured by it in his ‘buffalo coat’, which was made from the skin of a buffalo killed in Dakota.

  Part of Rocky Ridge Farm as it looks today.

  When I was a little girl in the Ozarks, I had a donkey whose name was Spookendyke. R.W.L.

  Laura’s dream realized: the house that she and Almanzo built of materials from the farm. The wellhouse is outside the kitchen door. The home is now preserved as a memorial museum by the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association of Mansfield, Missouri. R.W.L.

  EOF