Dear Editor and Friends: Letters from Rural Women of the North-West, 1900-1920

1918~Prairie Maid: Brave Little Girl

Dear Editor and Friends Not the horrid compound you everywhere meet; Who knows how to fry,to broil, and to roast, Make a good cup of tea and a platter of toast; A woman who washes, cooks, irons and stitches, And sews up the rips in a fellow's old breeches; A common sense creature, but still with a mind To teach, and to guide, exalted, refined, A sort of angel and house maid combined." I should like correspondents of the other sex between 35 and 40, if they live near town and own good farms and good houses, not shacks.1 am a good cook and buttermaker, and am fond of poultry. SASKATCHEWAN NANCY HOME LOVING HEARTS, Free Press Prairie Farmer January 2, 1918 BRAVE LITTLE GIRL Dear Members,— I have often thought of writing and I hope that this short letter will be welcome. I am only fifteen, but that doesn't matter, I hope. I am keeping house for my brothers and sisters. My mother died last winter. She used to be a member of the H.L.H.'S page. There are eight children all younger that myself, and I don't find much time for writing. I think Wa Bun's letter just fine, and I quite agree with her about working on Sunday and speaking ill of other people. That's one thing I do hate—to hear people calling their neighbors and friends down to the lowest degree. We are all human beings and one person has faults just as much as another. Well, it is winter again. Today is the first snowstorm we have had this fall. We are all threshed. But didn't have much grain this year.—I remain, a new member, PRAIRIE MAID 138 ~ 1918 1918- Letters HOME LOVING HEARTS, Free Press Prairie Farmer January 2, 1918 ANOTHER TRAGEDY Dear Editor,— In reply to the letter signed "One of Us," I would like to say a few words. I do certainly feel grateful for the kind letters that I have received in answer to my letter in your paper. A Discouraged Woman, Maybe I am a little selfish and inclined to dwell too much on my own trouble and sickness, but God knows I wrote with the full intention of helping some other woman to stop before she gets in such bad shape as I am in. Since writing the last letter the kind neighbor I spoke of is dead. She has four little children, and was always so strong and well I can't realize she is dead, and her three days' old baby as well. They are getting on fine as far as money goes. Her husband put up a beautiful new barn this fall. It did not matter that his family still lived in the two-roomed log shack he built when they homesteaded here. As long as his horses and cattle are warm and dry what matter, if the log shack was cold and damp. He will build a house after a while. Now the poor women is in her grave he won't need to. There seems to be something terribly wrong on the prairie. A woman gives up her life for her child and it is all right, but if a man's best mare if sick, how quick he can get a veterinary in. How terrible to lose a mare worth 250 dollars! But there are lots of women now. As one man said to my husband the day of the funeral: "Do men ever stop to realize what it means for a woman to bear his children, give the best years of her life for him and them, and then be glad to die?" I think a man should be compelled to build a decent house and have a well near the house before he can take a wife on the farm. Also he should be compelled to have a doctor in times of confinement and not depend upon a neighbor at such a time. My trouble all comes from that cause, too little care and getting about too soon. Well, dear Editor, this is a long letter, but will you kindly print it. If it only helps one woman I shall be satisfied. Again thank the other members for their kindness and sympathy. DISCOURAGED WOMAN 139 Dear Editor and Friends HOME LOVING HEARTS, Free Press Prairie Farmer January...