Every Thanksgiving, we visited our New York cousins and went shopping at Bergdorf's and Saks for long dresses to wear to the Homestead for New Year's Eve.

I find my greatest happiness in thinking of those days in Homestead when I labored to bring a thing to perfection entirely by myself. In the evenings, I would go into the hills and look down on my work, and I knew that it was good, and my heart was elated.