Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-10-14
RALlEEN.
BY ISABELLA T. BLAKE.

| DARE say you would have thought it
was funny little house in which little
Nels Oleson lived, away out in Minnesota,
and an odd-looking barn where Ralleen,
the red COW, lived winters; but they
thought it was very nice. When the Ole
sons first came there to live they had only
I a shanty ten by twelve feet in size; and
| what with the father and the mother and
Nels and Ole and Hans and Hulver and
Lars and large and Lisa and Christina,
and Ingebert Nicholson, whom they took
for boarder while he was getting his
shanty built and his land broken, they did
not live in the house much.
The stove was out of doors and the big
wagon that had brought them made a bed
room for the men and one or two bows.
The mother and the rest at night unFolled
their beds from some mysterious corner
where they had been tucked away through
the day. The box they used for table
was put out to make room for the beds
Sweeter sleep never invited their eyes than
they enjoyed in that lonely spot, with no
neighbOrs for miles around, no markets or
stores, no doctors, schools or churches,
and no roads to reach them by if there had
been ever so many.
AS for Ralleen and the oxen, they
wished for nothing better through the
lovely summer weather than to roam
about over the green, luxurious prairie,
where there was, strictly speaking, no
end of grass and plenty Of delicious water
in the slOughs to be had for the drinking,
| hope you won't suppose that slough
| in Minnesota is in the least like the one
in the Pilgrims Progress. That was a
| wretched place, as you all remember,
These are pretty little ponds, which are
not deep and in the summer are wholly or
partly filled with luxuriant green grass
and rushes. The water is quite clear and
they are the homes Of multitudes of wild
fowl and the delight Of warm and thirsty
cattle. They are sprinkled about =" as
thick as spatters" among the knobs of the
rolling prairie. Slough with this mean
| ing is pronounced slew, and there ought
| to be another way to spell it.
Before winter the blossoms, little and
| big, COW and oxen, were provided with
what seemed to them very comfortable
| quarters; and SO they were. A log house
of one big room for the people, and a
| barn built of sods, two feet thick, and
| covered all over the north side and top
with a great hays stack, for the cattle In
the house they had bedstead in each of
two corners, made by mailing beams to
| the log walls, and under each was a capa-
| cious trundle-bed. leave you to guess
how they slowed themselves away.
What clothes they couldn't wear
and in winter there were not many
they hung up around the walls; and
they had hole under the floor
that answered for cellar. In the fall
they went with the oX-team forty-five
back flour and meal and bran to last all
winter; and they had deer and bear meat,
and wild ducks and prairie chickens, and
splendid white, mealy potatoes that they
had raised themselves from their new
land, and some other good things There
+ was Il great ucdI ILldt you NOulu nave
thought necessary that they had to 60
without; but they all kept healthy and
hearty and happy and warm, even when
it was so cold they could not have found
the mercury in the thermometer-if they
had had one, which they hadn't
When the snow lay on the prairie all
around, glistening white, as far as the eye
could see, the father and the big boys
would strap on their snow-shoes, which
were eight feet long and as wide as the
boot-sOle only, and turned up in front like
skates, and scud away uphill and down at
the rate of mile in five minutes. How
would you like that, boys?
One warm and pleasant spring Gay, when
the grass was fine, Ralleen Yyas wandering
about eating her fill and thinking how nice
! it was, when all at once she raised her head
and found herself very near to large
drove Of cattle.
They were scattered about feeding and
looked at her in a friendly way and she,