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I loved to visit him. In the daytime I'd sit in Central Park, feed the pigeons, and watch the people carrying on their flirtations. "Oh, if it would only happen to me!" I thought. And I assured myself it would someday. After I helped my aunt get supper and do the dishes, I would go down with Uncle Sam to his mission. He'd let me sit by him on the platform and I'd join in the singing. "The Old Rugged Cross" and "We'll Be Standing at the River" were rousers. Then I'd help pass out the coffee to the derelicts. Sometimes they'd grin vaguely at me, mumbling, "Hadda little girl like you once," and wanting to help Uncle Sam get in a few licks for a better life, I'd say, "I bet she misses you— you better sober up and go home to her."
Uncle Sam was able to take me on a wildly exciting tour of Chinatown. He could get in anywhere. We visited a Chinese woman who said she was an actress. She was smoking opium. Uncle Sam didn't lecture her; just talked to her like any friend. He told me that before you could help people you had to gain their confidence. I must remember to try that sometime.
I loved Uncle Sam and had a fine time sitting in the park or helping him hand round coffee at the mission. "You must come and visit us again," he said when it was time for me to go home to Altoona. He said it the way people do, not thinking that you'll really come. He reckoned without his niece Elda.
In this life you can take poverty, you can take failure, you can take the big things; it's the little griefs that destroy you inside.
In our house there was a bamboo love seat which I adored. It was one of those curlicue double things; sitting in it, you face the person who is sitting in it with vou. I have no idea where it came from. I just dreamed of the dark and handsome man who would someday sit in it with me.
I protected that love seat, whipping the other kids away from it to save it for the day. When its legs got wobbly, I cemented them; I kept the seat brushed, the frame dusted, watching over it jealously.
One day when I had just finished inspecting the love seat my father happened to stop in the parlor. My brother Frank came in and said, "Dad, will you give me five dollars?"
"What d'you want that much money for?" asked my father glumly.
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