Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1886-02-18

FALLING. bore it all, not with
he passive, silent endurance of a
slave, but with the high resolution of a
heroine Amid the MONDAY raid and
midnight burning she. bravely stood; she
heard the rutfian' oath, the Indians yell,
the wolf s hungry cry and still she stayed by
Kansas, and like Deborah, of old, prophe-
sled Of the future triumphs of her people.
She faced not only visible, but
more terrible, because invisible.
enemies. She sat pale but undaunted in
her Lowry home amid the parcEei and des-
olated fields. while gaunt Famine stood on
the threshold or looked in at the window
She not only saw and suffered. but she
was her own and our historian. Before
the destroying angel had passed. or the
blood on the lintels was dry, she
| wrote the story down, and among
the first and brightest and clearest of the
MANY books in which the wonderful record
OF Kansas is set forth, is that of a Kansas
woman, Mrs. Sarah T l.. Robinson, who
wrote ali that she saw and part of which
she was.
The Kansas woman was our first teacher.
She is not an old woman yet as years are
counted. but she is older than
the Agricultural college, or the
Normal school, or the State university.
She gathered the children in an academy,
the walls Of which were of sod and the
roof of brush and earth, and taught them
to spell such words as truth. liberty, free
dom, independence, and instructed them
in their geography that the earth revolves
every twenty-four hours around its center
which is Kansas. In consideration
of her services to the cause of educa-
tion III those early days, the law of
Kansas allows her to act as county super
intendent, if she can get votes enough, and
gratefully appreciating her love of learn
ing for its own sake, We allow her to
teach school and receive half as much
wages as a man receives for the same lii
Dor
The Kansas woman has manifested ut
all times that highest quality of the mind,
endurance of daily ills, hourly discomforts,
petty and perpetual annoyances. She has
lived in a dug-out; she has existed in
claim shanty, with stovepipe for a
chimney. She has cooked without wood
or coal, and she has battled with the Kan
sas zephyr. Every Kansas woman who
has run cooking stove with corn stalks,
straw or buffalo chips, O: who has seen her
clothes line snatched bald a thousand
times by the Kansas wind, ought to have
homestead for nothing, and a
pension for life But that same wind has
developed the grace and muscle of the
Kansas woman. Talk about your yachts
your Puritans and Genestas! A more in
spring sight than ocean ever saw is
Kansas woman beating up Kansas ave-
nue. in the teeth of a roaring gale.
But the worst is over; gone are border
ruffians and drouth and privation; gone
danger and difficulty. The sunhowers
are growing on the roof of the
abandoned dug-out and within the roof.
less walls of the old sod house. The claim
is farm with broad green, or golden, OF
russell acres now. The family is sheltered
in a stately mansion now, having brought
Kansas about where she wanted it, is de-
voting attention to culture, to literature,
to music. to art. She discusses all the artists
from Henry Worrall to Praxiteles;
all the musicians from Neva
da to the piper, who according
to Irish tradition, played before Moses. She |
belongs to the Kansas Social Science club. |
and traverses the fields of human knowl- |
edge and investigation from hired girls to
the most obtuse problems of society and
government In the summer she goes to |
Long Branch and Saratoga, and is accom-
panied by her daughter, born in Kansas, a
girl who has caught in the meshes of !
her hair the light of the Kansas
sun, and in her eye the violet shadow
that girts the Kansas sky at evening. |
With this beauteous companion she goes
about the world, blessed with that calm
{y 81, ohnr oSa 0uhn
have IN assured position; who do not |
want the earth, because they already poss-
ess all Of it worth having. But if you
would disturb this digni6ed repose; if you
would see the frown of Juno, and hear
something like the thunder of Jupiter,
Just intimate TO her that Kansas is not
the best country in the world, or that it
was ever anything else.
1t was Kansas woman who was the first |
of her sex to climb to the summit of Pixies
much less railroad, she clambered on her
little woman's feet over rocks, through
SHOWS. up into the rare, cold atmosphere,
up. hig cher than the birds wing
beats the air, up to the very
woman's eyes ever seen before. And
SO to-uay III hdhsas sung anu s'oiJ :eaAus
the Kansas woman. She has climbed
through difficulties to the realms of the
stars. Below her lower the dark clouds, and
mutter the reverberating thunders of civil
strife; below her are the mists of doubt
and difficulty; below her are the cold SHOWS
and bleak winds of adversely; above her
Gods free heaven, and before her Kansas
as she shall be in the shining. golden
tomorrow.