The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-14

life, new plans for the work. work, work which is her sole law of existence. Perhaps she has memories of another time, other surroundings; but they must seem vague and far away. Even the weather is monotonous; there is practically always the cloudless sky,
 the brilliant sun, the strong. dry wind that curls the leaves of the young corn and turns the buffalo grass brown. Living on the dreary plains and amid such monotony, with nothing to appeal
 to ones aesthetic, social or literary na- \ ture, is wearing upon most settlers, even if they are contented. The life | makes women particularly prematurely old. A few years of residence apart from their sex usually makes them 1 careless in appearance, dulls their am- bitions and creates sordidness. Such | life must have it's inevitable mental and | moral effect. All the sensitive, the aesthetic, sometimes the moral sense itself. becomes atrophied. The trage- dies of a city are unearthed and
 brought to light, but the silent trage- | dies of these desolate lives are swallow ! ed up and lost in the remoteness and immensity of the prairie astes.
 It is a motely assortment of humanity l that takes claims and homesteads on the opening up of a country like this. 1 EX-coWboys, who have come to admit ! the claims of 8 wife and family; con- ! f1rmed pioneers, who move with the | advance of the railrods; people of re- \ f1nement and reverses of fortune, many Russian and German emigrants and sprinkling of all the other na- tions of the earth. After the first rush
 sitting process sets in, which soon separates them into three classes 1 those who stay through everything and make the prosperity of country; ! the non- progressive, who never get be- yond the original sodhouse, and the shifting transients, who move at
 sign of trouble and come back in time of prosperity. There is however
 no sitting social process during these ! first years. The sodhouse levels all ranks, and at the rare intervals when
 any of the people are brought togeth- equality: they simply take one another for granted, with no question of ante cedents, family history or social ad- vantages. They are people who are starting life anew and living in hopes
 of the future, with forgetfulness of the past and endurance of the present. The real pioneers, who survive ev- erything in the end, have comfortable homes, and have created some advan- tages for their children. They have lived in the sodhouse until the year of a good crop and a few household necessi- | ties are bought, and have had the small, | bare frame cottage built. The next sea- | son, if good fortune continues, a porch l and an IL" are added, and in few years it is enlarged and comfortably fit ted up. Often the old sodhouse is left standing near the new home for some purpose or sometimes as a matter of 1 sentiment.
 At one place, at one side of the house, ! is a diminutive nausoleun1iike struc- ture, with the date 1880 traced in tai on l the outside, above the low doorway. It does not look too large for the kennel of
 an average size St. Bernard or New | foundland, but the old man, Uncle Dan'l,' who owns the place, sits on the shady porch of his comfortable new house and smokes his clay pipe, and
 tells about the time when he lived, mov-
 ed and had his being in that humble place.
 "Ye see, bein' from the East 1880
 don't seem like nothfn' to ye, but it's ole times fer this country. We didn't have
 no neighbors fer six and seven year af- ter we come, an the cowboys was aw- ful down on the homesteaders; they done all they could to keep em outs | longs they could, but when we come,
 we carclated to set right along, an we | jest had to let 'em see tn want no foolishness bout 1t!
 Them buffalo walters round yere use
 t hev buffaloes in 'em oncet in while
 and we use t hev antelope steak and
 venison fer dinner-didnt git it at no
 butcher shop, neither.
 Them was the cowboy days fer vel An geniwine cewboys-r1one O these
 yere. sportin' round, dressed up like | BuffaloBill-that never seen no bigger
 herd than I got right down were in the | corral.
 Tt don't seem, to look at it, s if much
 had been done to this we're country vet.
 but ennybuddy thet seen it in them
 days'd know somethin' he'd been go-
 in on were, these ten year back.
 Yes, first my son Lem, an then
 me, we took the Nebrasky fever. Tn
 ole farm back East, 1t was purty much
 run down, want no encouragement to
 stay, so we pulled out. si, here, he
 b'longed on the farm next ourn; he
 come long to be a goin' and the three of us put up thet there shack, an kep' house in it, an got things to
 runnin' 'gainst mother and the chil- dren come.
 T don't know hardly myself how
 we got along in the shack till we could
 see our way to putin up the frame;
 folks don know what they ken do till they're put to it.
 NO, the house want like this at first; we jus kep' addn' to it in the
 good years and lettin' things go in
 the bad ones. No, sir, they aint noth-
 in like stickin' to a thing to git what you want outen it-be it county or be it house.
 No, some way, I couldn't never see my way to tearin' down the shack. My wife she says it don't add nothin' to the looks of the place, but say
 she can put milk and butter in it, an nT1 ylN NAT1T .s.oI