casting it in a more feminine, though hardly submissive, light: âBe such a woman, live such a life, that if every woman were such as you, and every life like yours, this earth would be a Godâs paradise.â
Melville, who was seven years older than his little sister and later would go off to join the army, had inherited his parentsâ sense of industriousness. He chose a simple quotation that embodied the very essence of the American dream, despite having first been uttered by the Roman historian Sallust, who lived from 86 to 34 B.C. : âEvery man is the architect of his own fortune.â
As for Mildred, she was a toddler, barely capable of speaking full sentences. Nonetheless, her high-minded family bestowed upon her some lines from Milton. The passage they chose was perfectly in keeping with the Augustine ethos, and Mildred, though she surely had no idea at the time that it was hers to aspire to, would live up to its sentiment for the rest of her life: âTruth, that golden key / That opens the palace of eternity.â
L IFE FOR CHILDREN in a small prairie town like Ladora was full of the outdoors, and Mildred and her friends were free to roam anywhere they pleased. Athletically inclined from the start, Mildred had a great deal of freedom and was a frequent sight at coed baseball games played in backyards around town, wearing dresses her mother made for herâshe herself despised sewing and left it behind as soon as she couldâand stockings, her red-gold hair swinging behind her in a long braid. In the summertime she also jumped ropeâher favorite grandfather would hold one end of the rope from his rocking chair and tie the other end to a porch supportâand made mud pies, which she sold for a penny apiece. In the deep, frigid winter, she went ice-skating, always alone, on a frozen creek nearby, and in the spring she helped her grandparents tap trees for sap and boil it into maple sugar. Even seven decades later, Mildred still remembered with perfect clarity going out to see Halleyâs comet with her family when she was six years old. The Augustines stood on the unpaved main street that ran past their door and âwatched the firey beast, with long devilâs tail, move low across the horizon,â she recalled. âThe ornery rascal seemed very close and unfriendly.â
Mildred learned to read so early that she couldnât even remember it, and got started on the classics straightaway. âI had a little affair with Peter Rabbit when I was just four or five years of age,â she remembered ruefully. âAnd I wanted that book so badly . . . so I went and copied it by hand.â Her parents, though they had the means, didnât realize how desperately their daughter wanted to own the store-bought version of Beatrix Potterâs tale, a slight that, while she revered her mother and father, Mildred never forgot. But literary riches, albeit borrowed, were soon to come her way nonetheless. On a summer vacation to Chicago, Mildred discovered an institution that was to be her saving grace, at many times and in many cities: the public library.
The grand building on Chicagoâs Michigan Avenue, built out of solid stoneâthe great fire of 1871 had changed that cityâs construction methods foreverâwas a product of the same kind of civic sentiment that led to the rise of Chautauqua. In the 1880s and â90s, Americans were just beginning to understand the public library as a means of disseminating information to all people equally, and Mildred was a part of the first generation to benefit from this new ethos. As the movement to provide free books to all Americans grew, it gained many notable champions, including Andrew Carnegie, who eventually spent more than $56 million to build libraries in towns and cities all over the country.
So it was that while Mildredâs father brushed up his surgical skills at Cook County Hospital and her mother
Melville, who was seven years older than his little sister and later would go off to join the army, had inherited his parentsâ sense of industriousness. He chose a simple quotation that embodied the very essence of the American dream, despite having first been uttered by the Roman historian Sallust, who lived from 86 to 34 B.C. : âEvery man is the architect of his own fortune.â
As for Mildred, she was a toddler, barely capable of speaking full sentences. Nonetheless, her high-minded family bestowed upon her some lines from Milton. The passage they chose was perfectly in keeping with the Augustine ethos, and Mildred, though she surely had no idea at the time that it was hers to aspire to, would live up to its sentiment for the rest of her life: âTruth, that golden key / That opens the palace of eternity.â
L IFE FOR CHILDREN in a small prairie town like Ladora was full of the outdoors, and Mildred and her friends were free to roam anywhere they pleased. Athletically inclined from the start, Mildred had a great deal of freedom and was a frequent sight at coed baseball games played in backyards around town, wearing dresses her mother made for herâshe herself despised sewing and left it behind as soon as she couldâand stockings, her red-gold hair swinging behind her in a long braid. In the summertime she also jumped ropeâher favorite grandfather would hold one end of the rope from his rocking chair and tie the other end to a porch supportâand made mud pies, which she sold for a penny apiece. In the deep, frigid winter, she went ice-skating, always alone, on a frozen creek nearby, and in the spring she helped her grandparents tap trees for sap and boil it into maple sugar. Even seven decades later, Mildred still remembered with perfect clarity going out to see Halleyâs comet with her family when she was six years old. The Augustines stood on the unpaved main street that ran past their door and âwatched the firey beast, with long devilâs tail, move low across the horizon,â she recalled. âThe ornery rascal seemed very close and unfriendly.â
Mildred learned to read so early that she couldnât even remember it, and got started on the classics straightaway. âI had a little affair with Peter Rabbit when I was just four or five years of age,â she remembered ruefully. âAnd I wanted that book so badly . . . so I went and copied it by hand.â Her parents, though they had the means, didnât realize how desperately their daughter wanted to own the store-bought version of Beatrix Potterâs tale, a slight that, while she revered her mother and father, Mildred never forgot. But literary riches, albeit borrowed, were soon to come her way nonetheless. On a summer vacation to Chicago, Mildred discovered an institution that was to be her saving grace, at many times and in many cities: the public library.
The grand building on Chicagoâs Michigan Avenue, built out of solid stoneâthe great fire of 1871 had changed that cityâs construction methods foreverâwas a product of the same kind of civic sentiment that led to the rise of Chautauqua. In the 1880s and â90s, Americans were just beginning to understand the public library as a means of disseminating information to all people equally, and Mildred was a part of the first generation to benefit from this new ethos. As the movement to provide free books to all Americans grew, it gained many notable champions, including Andrew Carnegie, who eventually spent more than $56 million to build libraries in towns and cities all over the country.
So it was that while Mildredâs father brushed up his surgical skills at Cook County Hospital and her mother
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