The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1905-04-20
THE PRAIRIE SOD HOUSE
Life on the Solitary Stretches
of the Western Plains.
WOMEN AGE QUICKLY
Settlers Grow Careless Of Their Ap-
pearance and Lose Ambition.
Creates a Worthless Mental and
Moral Sordidness-Field Mice
Burrow Through Walls of House.

Burrow Through Walls of House.
Life in a sod house away out on the
plains, where for months at a time
there is not thing in nature to cneer
the eye or vary the monotony, is GER
tainly close to first principles, says
Stanley Raymond. When the corn
waves on thousands of acres, or when
the plain is green with growing wheat,
there is something to interest the sod
house dwellers, but from October to
May no class of intelligent Ameri.
cans live more dreary lives III IN
these, One wonders what livelihood.
what future prosperity or pleasure
can repay man and wife to live in
such huge sameneSs. The shifting
clouds by day and sky of fine stars
at night are for weeks the only
sights to be seen. Yet some of the
most contented and aspiring people
we have ever seen are men and wo-
men who live among such hat sur
roundings and dead solitude for years.
To realize in how primitive and
solitary fashion people can live and
be happy one has only to imagine a
man and wife in a sod house, tiftC en-
miles from the nearest village, in one
of the sparsely settled districts of
western Nebraska or Kansas. For
days, and in some seasons for weeks,
they see no human beings outside OF
their own household Even begging
Indians and tramps are almost un-
known in this country. Prairie dogs
cast up their mounds and found
towns in the unmolested spots about
the place; gophers and field mIco
bnrrow through the sod walls of the
house; not infrequently snakes swing
themselves down from the rafters in.
side, or crawl in at the door to get at
any milk pans standing about. At
night coyotes and some OF the gray
wolves come up through the canyons
and skulk about the poultry yard or
howl close to the windows. Through
the day while the man is in the fields
the herding usually falls to the wo-
mans lot Probably each takes
noon luncheon in a paper, to save
coming back to the house until night
The woman attends to her neces-
sary household duties, throws a gun
ny-sack over her broncho's back,
jumps astride. rounds up her cattle,
and drives them down the canyons to
Craze on the steep sides, or in low
strip beside a creek. Canyons are not
sociable places; one can scarcely
have a conception of the primeval I'M
less he has walked through a canyon;
he thinks of the dawn of creation, of
the races of extinct mammoths, and
wonders if centaurs have not mere
ly retired into the inner caverns.
What the sod-house woman thinks
about, all day long in solitude like
that, is hard to tell-probably the
mortgage on the farm. diseases among
the stock, the prospects of crops, the
time when they can put up their
frame dwelling, the hard unadorned
facts in the treadmill of her life, new
plans for the 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 prac-
tically 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 never a
thing to appeal to ones esthetic so
cial or literary nature, is wearing
upon most settlers, even il they are
contented. The life makes women.
particularly, prematurely old. A few
years Of residence apart from their
sex usually makes them careless of
their appearance, dulls their ambi-
tions and creates sordidness. Such
a life must have its inevitable mental
and moral effect. All the sensitive,
the esthetic, sometimes the moral
sense itself, becomes atrophied The
tragedies Of a city are unearthed and
brought to light, but the silent trag-
edes OF these desolate lives are swal-
lowed up and lost in the remoteness
and immensity of the prairie wastes.