Los Angeles herald., 1905-03-07
IN A PRAIRIE SOD HOUSE
Life In One a Primitive and Solitary
Existence


Existence
From the Pilgrim
Life in a sod house away out on the
plains, where for mCnths at a time
there is not a thing in nature to cheer
the eye or vary the silent monotony,
is certainly close to first principles.
When the corn waves on thousands
of acres, or when the plain is green
with growing wheat, there is sonle-
thing to interest the sod-house dwell
ers, but from October to May no class
of intelligent Americans live more
dreary lives than these One wonders
what livelihood, what future prosper
ity or pleasure can repay a man and
wife to live in such huge sameness.
The shifting clouds by day and a sky
of fine stars at night are for weeks
at a time the only sights to be seen.
Yet some of the most contented and
aspiring people we have ever seen are
men and women who live amid such
fiat surroundings and dead solitude
for years.
To realize in how primitive and soli-
tary fashion people can live and be
happy, one has only to imagine a man
and wife in sod house, fifteen 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
DelHSS OulSlue Oh their OWN
household. Even begging Indians and
tramps are almost unknown in this
country. Prairie dogs cast up their
mounds and found towns in the un-
moested spots about the place; go
piers and field mice burrow through
the sod walls of the house, not in
frequently snakes swing themselves
down from the rafters inside 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 usu-
ally falls to the woman's lot. Prob
ably each takes a noon luncheon in
a paper, to save coming back to the
house until night.
The woman attends to her necessary
household duties, throws a gunnysack
over her bronchos back, jumps astride,
rounds up her cattle, and drives them
down the canyon to Craze on the steep
slides or in low strip beside a creek.
Canyons are not sociabe places; one
can scarcely have conception of the
primeval unless he has walked through
canyon; he thinks of the dawn of
creation. of the races of extinct mann
moths, and wonders il centaurs have
not merely retired into the inner cav
erns. What the sod house woman
thinks about all day long in solitude
like that is hard to tell-proba bly, the
mortgage on the farm, disease 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, 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 al
ways 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 thing TO
appeal to ones aesthetic, social or lit
erary nature, Is wearing upon most
settlers. even If they are contented.
The life makes women particularly
prematurely old. A few years of resi-
dence apart from their sex usually
makes them careless of their appear
ance. dulls their ambitions, and creates
a sordidness. Such a life must have
its inevitable mental and moral enect-
All the sensitive, aesthetic, sometimes
the moral sense itself, becomes afro
phied The tragedies of city are un-
earthed and brought to light. but the
silent tragedies of these desolate lives
are swallowed up and lost I'm the re-
moteness and immensity Of the prairie
wastes.
Some men. who take the ffdgets at