River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1907-01-17
HIS EYES OPEN
Why There Are No Mail
Order Catalogues In
One Home.
FARMER WILLIAMS LESSON
In Time of Adversely He Got to IN
derstand Who Were His Real
Friends-Prosperity in Stand
ing Together.

Copyright, 1906, by Alfred c.. Clark)
What " got there, Sis?" inquired
FaSmer Williams, as he kicked off his
felt boots and set them carefully be-
hind the sS~~e to dry. That's what
I thought it koked like, one of them
there Chicago catylogs, though l hain't
seen one clost fer quite few years
back. Me an your ma ust to buy
mighty nigh everything we used out
of them catylogs when we first come
to Kansas. Land sakes, l have to
laugh now sometimes when 1 think of
the way we would git ketched onct in
awhile. Theys some cheap things in
them catylogs, an then agin they's q
lot It amt so cheap. Y never kin
tell till they come, an then it's too
late to send 'em back. But as l was
a sayin', we hain't bought nothin' out
of catylog fer a right smart o. years
now, an the way it come about I had
as we'll tell y, cause I don't think
y really remember much about it.
When we come to Kansas long in
the first of the SOS we got along right
well. We was able to pay cash fer
what we got, and we got the money
fer everything we sold. We was pay
in out on the place right along; crops
was purity good an we was feelin'
like the Lord was a smilin' on our
efforts, and the happy home we
dreamed about when we first got mar
ried was in sight.
But they come change in Kansas
long in the last half of the SOS.
Times got hard and KEEP a gittin'
tighter. Four straight years it was
so dry y had to soak the hogs afore
they'd hold swill-though l will say
they was some extry reason on &C.
count of the swill bein' so thin-wheat
jest died in the ground fer want of
rain, and the hot winds billed the ever
lastin' sap out of the corn. They
wasn't no pasture, no nothing. You
can know we was a feelin' purity blue
about that time, but we was young
and strong, and thought with the
chickens an hogs we could git through
anyway.
"Then one day you got to complain
in and lookin' so thin it worried us.
Your ma is middlin' good doctor,
take it all around, but nothing she
could think of done you any good.
Well, you KEEP gittin' pindlier and
pindlier, till you got so'st y wouldn't
do nothin' but set in chair by the
Kitchen stove, wrapped in your mas
old shawl, an you looked so pitiful
that we made up our minds to have
the doctor, even if it took tn last
chicken on the place. Well, he come,
and after he'd looked at you awhile
an felt your pulse, he shet his watch
up with snap, an says, quiet like:
Better fix up warm place fer her
in the front room, don't have too much
light nor any drafts to strike her.
Then we knowed it want no small
sickness we had to fight, an when we
got you fixed up in bed follered Doc.
out on the porch an says: We'll,
Doc.,' SEE I, what's the matter with
our little grip
81 don't want to skeer We, Mr.. Will
liams,' says he, but I'm afraid she's
in for a siege of typhoid fever
well, after he was gone I went out
in the kitchen an told your ma, but
she says, brave as kin be: We'll, Ezra,
if the Lord has seen fit to put that
much more on our load we must bear
up an fight it out dom our duty the
best we kin, leavin' the rest to him.
An thought so too. So we jest KEEP
our hearts brave an done what
seemed right t. do.
"The hardest thing was to figure out
where t. git the medicine, an fruit,
an dainty things your sickness called