xlvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



the name "P. Podd, Co. G. 13th N. Y. Cavalry" on the nm. 

 The badge, its thin silver tarnished with the years, is still in 

 possession of the family. 



Later, when his string of little sisters, all born after the 

 war, rambled about with him in the woods, he used to thrill 

 them by unearthing battered canteens and picking up rusty 

 bayonet points, or he would show them the grave where the 

 young Southern soldier — shot in a skirmish along that very 

 wood road — lay buried under a walnut tree at the far end 

 of the field. 



With the close of the war came the question of education. 

 Already the boy, who had been taught to read by his grand- 

 father, was beginning to be fascinated by the printed page. 

 Books were not plentiful in a young household in those stinted 

 years, and there were no children's books at all. But at 

 Strawberry Vale, the house on the hill to the west, just across 

 the upper pasture, were books in abundance. All the old Eng- 

 lish novels, Shakespeare and the poets, odd volumes of Scott, 

 old histories, and rows of leather-bound Latin and French 

 authors filled cupboards on each side of the fireplace, or were 

 stacked on shelves under the dim, wooden-faced portraits. 

 A successful school had once been maintained there and these 

 scores of volumes, like the old pianos in the upper hall, were 

 mementoes of the time. Here Andrew spent all his spare 

 hours. Here he could always be found, and here he learned 

 early what comes somewhat slowly into the consciousness of 

 a boy in a rural environment, that life and its expression in 

 other lands are as vivid and as strong as in his own. 



The attic at Strawberry Vale became for years a great 

 playroom for the Shipman children. Andrew transformed 

 the place into a theatre ; he built a stage and rigged up a cur- 

 tain that glided jerkily but safely back to each side, and in- 

 stalled the realistic feature of tallow candle footlights. He 

 wrote plays in which all the children took part, and drew 

 cartoons — mostly Indians in war-bonnets and hatchets — 

 which still adorn the whitewashed walls of the attic at Straw- 

 berry Vale. 



His first real school was a mile beyond Strawberry Vale. 

 A Miss Tyson taught a number of small sisters and brothers 

 and a few children of her neighbors. The road to the house 

 passed through the pines where the rusty relics of the war 



