The Bergsons had a log house, for
instance, only because Mrs. Bergson would not live in a sod house.
She missed the fish diet of her own country, and twice every summer
she sent the boys to the river, twenty miles to the southward, to
fish for channel cat. When the children were little she used to
load them all into the wagon, the baby in its crib, and go fishing
herself.
Alexandra often said that if her mother were cast upon a desert
island, she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden,
and find something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with
Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of
Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild
creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid
ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon
peel; and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She
had experimented even with the rank buffalo-pea, and she could
not see a fine bronze cluster of them without shaking her head and
murmuring, "What a pity!" When there was nothing more to preserve,
she began to pickle.
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