The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-04

able as older lands in eastern Kansas
 and Missouri. They invested their al
 in quarter or a half section of land
 and settled down to labor and to walt
 Every locality out here has its heroes
 and it's heroines among this class of peo. pie. The long struggle many of then.
 have made to keep their farms on the
 plains, to win success, if labor an6
 pinching economy can accomplish 1t
 and to be free of debt are as pitiful as many touching narrative of fiction
 Some of the most pathetic heroes and
 heroines l ever knew said a former
 Senator John J. Ingalls, recently, lived in the sod houses and dug-outs of vest ern Kansas"
 An illustration of the privations that some such settlers in the arid regions of the west have endured and the life they
 have led is the following::. Among the
 people who went to live in Haskell
 county in 1886 was a young farmer and
 his bride. The husband was reared in
 well-to-do farmers home in Ontario
 county, N. T., and the bride was the
 daughter of rural clergyman in Os-
 wego county, N. Y. Both husband and
 wife had had superior educations, the
 former being graduate of Hamilton
 College, and the latter of the State Nor
 maj School of Albany. They had some
 $3,000 between them when they married
 and with that they started west to make
 their home in new region, and to grow
 up and prosper with the new country
 the same as young couples did in Illl-
 o hi Tt
 They settled in Haskell county, bought
 a quarter-section for $500 and built a
 house. There were good rains for two
 years and the young folks were happy in the thought that they had come west
 and settled so well.
 The boom was on at that time" said the husband to the writer the other day, and when I was offered $4 900 for my farm we were very happy. I caught the fever for speculation, and mort gage loan agent came to my house and asked me to borrow from him $2.000 on the farm, and then to speculate in hogs and sattle with the proceeds. I did so. The boom burst when the interest pay ing time came along with a season of no rain. lost our home and farm in the crash, and too proud to let our Eastern relatives know of our plight, by our own foolishness, we and our baby boy went to live on an abandoned farm near by We had no money and we sold our furniture bit by bit to buy food and fuel till spring came. Then my wife and I built sod house-a mere sunbaked mud house with a dirt floor, a rude door and a 50-cent window in 1t, for our home. I went to work at farming on shares for an Eastern man, who had taken a farm nearby on fore closure. The year of 1891 was another dry year. What few people there were who had braved 1890 left the country, and we were left with our two little children in a sod house with no human as a neighbor for eight miles No one can appreciate what privstions were endured In 1S91-92. We had but $9 and a lot of horse feed in our family store when winter came on. but we resolved to stick to 1t and to be brave. For weeks the snow lay deep all about our sod house and the earth was as solid as ice We went without fire once for four days in the depth of winter to save fuel and matches, and often we kept in 1ur blankets on the floor of our mud house all day to keep warm and save food When we did eat it was generally | l sort of bread my wife made from horse feed.
 For three years we never spent a | ,ent without deliberation, as to how we night economize the more. Postage | stamps were bought once in few | months. and we were as ignorant as Iottentots of the world outside. I did my thing to get living and to stick [ out I walked seventy miles once in ny barefeet to save shoe leather, to gat
 weeks work at ditching for an irriga- ion company. My wife and I got contract t~ board the men in the ditch- ng gang, and we walked over fifty niles with our children to fill the con- ract That gave us our first s70. We bought two cows with that and felt nee more prosperous. I bought choolbook for my boy. and at the age f six we taught him his letters. Then ve moved to a farm that had been for s3,000 in 1889, and that ad been abandoned for taxes. We had UT pick of about 32,0G0 acres of land n that region, for it had all been let o by Eastern mortga gees for taxes nd delinouencies and there was not erson left for miles around
 "Then we began dairying with two ows and a calf I worked for the rail- pad as track man and ran the farm and ows too. We lived like savages and aldom saw white folks except in the assing cars. We never spent a penny necessarily for seven years. It was Il work and planning to get a living.
 traded my cows for bunch of seven exas steers. and then with the increase agan to get ahead. When beef climbed p in value I made little more mon- 7 all the time I bought more cattle l trust and came out all right Two / ears ago I made $400 in one year and Ut it all in more cattle. Last year I . i'd the same and now I believe T have bout $l,700 in my little herd, and have house that cost me $f00. We live pret- f 7 fine nowadays, compared with what /
 used to be- but 1t is very primitive i'll. My wife and I indulged in S20 orth of new clothes last year. and it 4 emed like old times to spend money freely. We have had a hard rustic, Id we have managed to keep our 9alth. That is wonder. We have 4 UT children, and now We believe we e the sun breaking through the coluds 4 'er us. All these nine years we have