Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1908-12-02
she crossed over and sat down by her
husband 49,. n.

i' ~ -oS 80 '
corners 'when Mary ana MADE our
start at housekeeping, the OLD boy
went on, crossing MS legs ana leaning
back and putting away at his pipe Not
many scrumttferous fxin's OF any kind,
FOR the matter OF that.
Fact Is, 1t was shack. And, on top
OF that, one-room shack Built 1t
myself after working hours. Cut the
scrub spruce and FIR to build 1t, too.
II was a timberman then In new
silver mine sixty miles from railroad
Got S25 a week, which wasn't much,
counting how costly it was to live.
well, after l got the shack built l
went down to Boise and asked Mary
she was teaching school there. Mary
was agreeable about it-we'd been
beaus since we'd met a year before, al
though after went to work in the
new mine l didn't have much chance to
see her.
"But Mary was ready, and we got
married in Boise City, and took her
to the shack I'd built. Marvellous days,
those-both of us young, you see and
not botherlng much about anything nor
Winding any sort of inconvenience, SO
long as we were close enough to each
other SOS l could holler across the
gulch on my way to work and on my
way home. And 1t was home, plumb
and proper-never had any such home
since.
81 made the stove myself, too, out Of
an old rusty two-horse-power boiler
that ]. cribbed from the engine house
Made most of the furniture, too, includ-
Ing the bed, spare times. Wagon
freighting was costly, and beds and
gear like that ready made, cost heap
of money out there those days-any-
how, they were beyond me.
Had rag carpet on the floor of the
shack that Mary'd been making herself,
after school hours, for year.. Dishes
were mostly wooden-I was pretty
handy with jackknife those days.
Had calico curtains In the one window
Mary had an artistic eye, and the
way she draped those curtains sure was
something dainty.
Il got the water from the crick,
about 400 yards back Of the shack.
Used to fill up the three big barrels
once week, and let the water settle.
Didn't have any fresh meat, unless
I shot 1t O. sundays-freighters used
to fetch In the salt meat once week,
over the trail. Canned vegetables, too,
and scandalously high they were.
I'D started truck patch, but the
soil wasn't adapted to truck raising.
All right for flowers. though. Mary
got hold Of some flower seeds-sub
scribed to a dollar-a-year weekly, be.
lieve, and got the seeds as subscrip-
ton prize-and she had the prettiest
little garden of flowers in front of the
shack you ever saw; sweet William and
pansies and bachelors buttons and
china asters and marigolds and old
things Ike those.
she used to Sit In that teenchy
flower garden Of summer evenings and
play on the little old ten-strlnged
either, liked out with numbers for each
string that l got for her down at Boise.
Mighty Fetching and sweet the music
from the either sounded, too. out there
In the open air, with the wind stirring
through the branches overhead, and
Mary with her pretty head, and n flow.
er In her dark hair, tilted back against
a tree, humming the tunes she played.
OuA AkoS OOAh AAANCi Ill LudL SHACK,
Inc tneuicai man VINO othciated on that
oeeas,on Mas ,e..om whoa oeen ar