Beginning the Story

The greatest difficulty in writing a story of this sort is in beginning it. I do not know what to say first, and mother has no time to help me, for she is too busy spinning threads of nettle flax. This kind of work is very hard, but she must do it or we shall soon be without cloth for garments. The Indians are prowling around so thickly that we women and children may not venture into the flax field even though all the men and boys in the fort go to guard us.

It isn't to be supposed that any one outside our own family will ever see what I am writing, and yet I ought to begin it properly. Mother makes me laugh when she says that my grandchildren will be interested in reading of our life out here, where everything would be so beautiful but for the savages. The idea of a girl only fourteen years old writing something for her grandchildren to read!