In a letter to her sister, Matilda, Mother Maddalena shows her playful side:

Dick is a good, gentle fellow. — Dick was an old horse that someone had given them. -- When I walk about, he frisks and tries to seize the veil…  If you would see the family: two horses, a cow, a calf one year old, which is so strong that, if one does not pet it, it tries to butt one from behind; a she-goat that does the same thing; forty-two chickens, one big dog, two cats, and a quantity of mice. Yesterday they were all at large in our yard, and all pawed and ran about; it was too laughable. The dog licks the face of one of the horses and is afraid when the other one approaches.

 

 While the goat was being milked, Mother Maddalena sometimes sat on the ground and feed little tufts of grass to the appreciative animal.