They Had All Their Experience
To Learn, And They Have Bought It By Losses And Hardships.
That
they have learnt so much surprises me.
Dr. H. and these two
ladies built the upper room and the addition to the house without
help. He has cropped the land himself, and has learned the
difficult art of milking cows. Mrs. H. makes all the clothes
required for a family of six, and her evenings, when the hard
day's work is done and she is ready to drop from fatigue, are
spent in mending and patching. The day is one long GRIND,
without rest or enjoyment, or the pleasure of chance intercourse
with cultivated people. The few visitors who have "happened in"
are the thrifty wives of prosperous settlers, full of housewifely
pride, whose one object seems to be to make Mrs. H. feel her
inferiority to themselves. I wish she did take a more genuine
interest in the "coming-on" of the last calf, the prospects of
the squash crop, and the yield and price of butter; but though
she has learned to make excellent butter and bread, it is all
against the grain. The children are delightful. The little boys
are refined, courteous, childish gentlemen, with love and
tenderness to their parents in all their words and actions.
Never a rough or harsh word is heard within the house. But the
atmosphere of struggles and difficulties has already told on
these infants. They consider their mother in all things, going
without butter when they think the stock is low, bringing in wood
and water too heavy for them to carry, anxiously speculating on
the winter prospect and the crops, yet withal the most childlike
and innocent of children.
[11] The story is ended now. A few months after my visit
Mrs. H. died a few days after her confinement, and was buried on
the bleak hill side, leaving her husband with five children under
six years old, and Dr. H. is a prosperous man on one of the
sunniest islands of the Pacific, with the devoted Swiss friend as
his second wife.
One of the most painful things in the Western States and
Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen
any children, only debased imitations of men and women, cankered
by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete
independence of their parents at ten years old. The atmosphere
in which they are brought up is one of greed, godlessness, and
frequently of profanity. Consequently these sweet things seem
like flowers in a desert.
Except for love, which here as everywhere raises life into the
ideal, this is a wretched existence. The poor crops have been
destroyed by grasshoppers over and over again, and that talent
deified here under the name of "smartness" has taken advantage of
Dr. H. in all bargains, leaving him with little except food for
his children. Experience has been dearly bought in all ways, and
this instance of failure might be a useful warning to
professional men without agricultural experience not to come and
try to make a living by farming in Colorado.
My time here has passed very delightfully in spite of my regret
and anxiety for this interesting family. I should like to stay
longer, were it not that they have given up to me their straw
bed, and Mrs. H. and her baby, a wizened, fretful child, sleep on
the floor in my room, and Dr. H. on the floor downstairs, and the
nights are frosty and chill. Work is the order of their day, and
of mine, and at night, when the children are in bed, we three
ladies patch the clothes and make shirts, and Dr. H. reads
Tennyson's poems, or we speak tenderly of that world of culture
and noble deeds which seems here "the land very far off," or Mrs.
H. lays aside her work for a few minutes and reads some favorite
passage of prose or poetry, as I have seldom heard either read
before, with a voice of large compass and exquisite tone, quick
to interpret every shade of the author's meaning, and soft,
speaking eyes, moist with feeling and sympathy. These are our
halcyon hours, when we forget the needs of the morrow, and that
men still buy, sell, cheat, and strive for gold, and that we are
in the Rocky Mountains, and that it is near midnight. But
morning comes hot and tiresome, and the never-ending work is
oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times
in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other,
and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner
stuff and to possess more adaptability.
To-day has been a very pleasant day for me, though I have only
once sat down since 9 A.M., and it is now 5 P.M. I plotted that
the devoted Swiss girl should go to the nearest settlement with
two of the children for the day in a neighbor's wagon, and that
Dr. and Mrs. H. should get an afternoon of rest and sleep
upstairs, while I undertook to do the work and make something of
a cleaning. I had a large "wash" of my own, having been hindered
last week by my bad arm, but a clothes wringer which screws on to
the side of the tub is a great assistance, and by folding the
clothes before passing them through it, I make it serve instead
of mangle and iron. After baking the bread and thoroughly
cleaning the churn and pails, I began upon the tins and pans, the
cleaning of which had fallen into arrears, and was hard at work,
very greasy and grimy, when a man came in to know where to ford
the river with his ox team, and as I was showing him he looked
pityingly at me, saying, "Be you the new hired girl? Bless me,
you're awful small!"
Yesterday we saved three cwt.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 20 of 74
Words from 19390 to 20393
of 74789
