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Updated: June 9, 2025
We gathered up the peaches, and Father was not hurt, though he fell so close to the top of the steep ledge that his head and shoulder hung over and his face got red in his struggle to hold himself back. Then in the early nineties he bought the land and built Slabsides, clearing up the three acres of celery swamp; and for a while he spent much time there.
He called it Woodchuck Lodge, and the last years of his life were spent largely there, going out in June and returning in October. At the time the following letter was written, Father spent much of his time at Slabsides and his interest in both the celery and lettuce grown there, as well as the grapes at Riverby, was most keen.
Yesterday, as I stood on the hill above Slabsides and looked over the landscape dotted with farms just greening in the April sun, the thought struck me afresh that all this soil, all the fertile fields, all these leagues on leagues of sloping valleys and rolling hills came from the decay of the rocks, and that the chief agent in bringing about this decay and degradation was the gentle rain from heaven that without the rain through the past geologic ages, the scene I looked upon would have been only one wild welter of broken or crumpled rocky strata, not a green thing, not a living thing, should I have seen.
When they returned to Riverby, in the still, lonely house, they missed me, and Father wrote of it all: Slabsides, Oct. 16, 1897. ... We reached home safely Thursday night after a dusty ride and tiresome. It is very lonesome in the house. I think we both miss you now more than we did before we left home; it is now a certainty that you are fixed there in Harvard and that a wide gulf separates us.
You can put those statements in the form of a syllogism. I hope you are better of your cold. Some building burned up in Hyde Park early last night. Robert Gill shot himself in N. Y. the other day suicide. We shall be very glad to see you again. Your loving father, A long line of ducks just flew over going north. The last letter from Slabsides was on May 23, 1900: MY DEAR BOY,
Most of the flies and beetles, wasps and hornets, moths, butterflies, and bumblebees die. The grasshoppers all die, with eggs for next season's crop deposited in the ground. Some of the butterflies winter over. The mourning cloak, the first butterfly to be seen in spring, has passed the winter in my "Slabsides." The monarch migrates, probably the only one of our butterflies that does.
It seems to me that they were both right and the snake, though innocent himself, had to suffer. It was about two miles to Slabsides, a good part of it through the woods, and some of it up a very steep hill. I can see Father starting off with his market basket on his arm, the basket as full of provisions and reading matter as his step was full of vigour.
We have in this latitude but one species of hibernating mouse the long-tailed jumping mouse, or kangaroo mouse, as it is sometimes called from its mode of locomotion. Late one fall, while making a road near "Slabsides," we dug one out from its hibernation about two feet below the surface of the ground. It was like a little ball of fur tied with a string. In my hand it seemed as cold as if dead.
It was like going home to hear him say quietly, "So you are here really here," as he took my hand. The feeling of comradeship that I had experienced in reading his books was realized in his presence. With market-basket on arm, he started off at a brisk pace along the country road, first looking to see if I was well shod, as he warned me that it was quite a climb to Slabsides.
Father had a flock of sheep which yielded wool enough for our stockings, mittens, comforts, and underwear, and woollen sheets and comforts for the beds. I have some of those home-made woollen sheets and bed covers now at Slabsides. Before the sheep were sheared in June they were driven two miles to the creek to be washed. Washing-sheep-day was an event on the farm.
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