LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
the condition of the roads that we must travel to get them; but many boxes and packages from unforgetting friends at home had arrived the previous week, and been kept inviolate, as is our custom, until Christmas day. Very soon we were cutting cords and untying ribbons, with exclamations of delight and surprise as the various tokens of loving remembrance came to light,— rainbow scarfs as filmy as mist, late fichus, fancy aprons, exquisite doilies, chatelaine bags, cushion covers, books, magazines, pictures, calendars, and all such things. One would need to live a whole year in the solitude of the woods to understand my pleasure in again seeing novel and up-to-date things from the great world “that roars and frets in the distance.”
One little gift was rather funny; and though it seems ungracious, I can’t resist telling you about it. It was marked “From Christine,”—a Swedish girl who lived with us many years,—a bright, cheerful, lovable girl; and I wish to goodness she was flying about my kitchen this blessed minute, singing those queer old Scandinavian songs with a voice as clear and sweet as a lark’s. Though Christine can sing like a bird, she certainly is not an art connoisseur. Her gift was an offering in burnt wood, representing a large unhappy-looking lady with a badly swollen cheek and painfully protruding eyes. I had hardly sufficient courage to look at it, but, well knowing poor Christine’s pleasure in sending it, resolved to bear it as best I could. With
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