THE SCENES OF MY CHILDHOOD

A fragmentary, fond recall by the brother of Kathleen Norris, based on the diaries of their mother, and intended originally as a family memoir. It still is chiefly that, with little of great moment to the outsider. The diaries open in 1895, four years before her death, nineteen years after her marriage -- and the setting is the San Francisco home which housed her sister-in-law, and her own six children. There are details of domestics, of menus, picnics, gardening, visits, illnesses, birthdays, the excitement of the installation of electricity, the tragedy of the death of a child, and finally her own death in 1899.