“Aren’t you awful sorry for poor Jakie?  There he is, reading to God in German, and God can’t understand him.  I’m afraid Jakie won’t go to heaven when he dies.”

My wise little sister turned upon me indignantly, assuring me that “God sees everybody and understands everybody’s talk.”  To prove the truth of her statement, she rushed to the kitchen and appealed to grandma, who not only confirmed Georgia’s words, but asked me what right I had to believe that God was American only, and could not understand good German people when they read and spoke to Him?  She wanted to know if I was not ashamed to think that they, who had loved me, and been kind to me would not go to Heaven as well as I who had come to them a beggar?  Then she sent me away by myself to think of my many sins; and I, weeping, accepted banishment from Georgia, lest she should learn wickedness from me.

Georgia was greatly disturbed on my account, because she believed I had wilfully misrepresented God, and that He might not forgive me.  When Jakie learned what had happened, he declared that I had spoken like a child, and needed instruction more than punishment.  So for the purpose of broadening my religious views, and keeping before me the fact that “God can do all things and knows all languages,” grandma taught me the Lord’s Prayer in French and German, and heard me repeat it each night in both languages, after I had said it as taught me by my mother.

It was about this time, that Leanna confided to me that she was homesick for Elitha, and she would go to her very soon.  She said that I must not object when the time came, for she loved her own sister just as much as I did mine, and was as anxious to go to Elitha as I had been to come to Georgia.  She had been planning several weeks, and knew of a family with which she could travel to Sutter’s Fort.  Later, when she collected her things to go away, she left with us a pair of beautifully knit black silk stockings, marked near the top in fine cross-stitch in white, “D,” and under that “5.”  The stockings had been our mother’s.  She had knit them herself and worn them.  Georgia gave one to me and kept the other.  We both felt that they were almost too sacred to handle.  They were our only keepsakes.

Later, Georgia found a small tin box in which mother had kept important papers.  Recently, when referring to that circumstance, Georgia said:  “Grandma for a long time had used it for a white-sugar box, and kept it on a shelf so high that we could see it only when she lifted it down; and I don’t think we took our eyes from it until it was put back.  We felt that it was too valuable for us ever to own.  One day, I found it thrown away.  One side had become unsoldered from the ends and the bottom also was hanging loose.  With a full heart, I grasped the treasure and put it where we could often see it.  Long afterwards, Harry Huff kindly offered to repair it; and the solder that still holds it together is also regarded as a keepsake from a dear friend.”