Excerpt from The Bent Twig

This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a good many years. Home was home, as it is to children. It did not seem strange to them that instead of living in a small rented house on a closely built-up street near the campus in the section Of the city occupied by the other faculty families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old farmhouse with five acres of land around it, on the edge of the West Side. They did not know how heartily this land owning stability was condemned as folly by the rent-pay ing professors, perching on the bough with calculated impermanence so that they might be free to accept at any moment the always anticipated call to a larger salary. They did not know, not even Sylvia, for many years, that the West Side was the quite unfashionable part of town. It did not seem strange to them to see their father sweeping his third-floor study with his own hands, and they were quite used to a family routine which included housework for every one of them. Indeed, a certain amount of this was part of the family fun. Come on, folks! Professor Marshall would call, rising up from the breakfast table, Tuesday - day to clean the living-room - all hands turn to! In a gay helter-skelter all hands turned to. The lighter furniture was put out on the porch. Professor Mar shall, joking and laughing, donned a loose linen overall suit to protect his University clothes, and cleaned the bare floor with a big Oiled mop; Mrs. Marshall, silent and swift, looked after mirrors, windows, the tops Of bookcases, things hard for children to reach; Sylvia flourished a duster and Judith and Lawrence out on the porch, each armed with a whisk-broom, brushed and whacked at the chairs and sofas. There were no rugs to shake, and it took but an instant to set things back in their places in the clean-smelling, dust less room.

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