As she climbed along the banks of the dark river Carol listened to its
fables about the wide land of yellow waters and bleached buffalo bones
to the West; the Southern levees and singing darkies and palm trees
toward which it was forever mysteriously gliding; and she heard again
the startled bells and thick puffing of high-stacked river steamers
wrecked on sand-reefs sixty years ago. Along the decks she saw
missionaries, gamblers in tall pot hats, and Dakota chiefs with scarlet
blankets. . . . Far off whistles at night, round the river bend,
plunking paddles reechoed by the pines, and a glow on black sliding
waters.
Carol's family were self-sufficient in their inventive life, with
Christmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and "dressing-up
parties" spontaneous and joyously absurd. The beasts in the Milford
hearth-mythology were not the obscene Night Animals who jump out
of closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyed
creatures--the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in the
bathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oil
stove, who purrs and knows stories; and the skitamarigg, who will play
with children before breakfast if they spring out of bed and close the
window at the very first line of the song about puellas which father
sings while shaving.
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