This was when I was working eighteen hours a day, more than half of
it by lamp-light, in the darkness of our Northern winters. When the
accident came, I had been doing the cooking for half a dozen men,
who were getting in the wheat upon which our future depended. I fell
in my tracks, and lost my child; yet I sat still and white while the
men ate supper, and afterwards I washed up the dishes. Such was my
life in those days; and I can see before me the face of horror with
which Sylvia listened to the story. But these things are common in
the experience of women who live upon pioneer farms, and toil as the
slave-woman has toiled since civilization began.
We won out, and my husband made money. I centred my energies upon
getting school-time for my children; and because I had resolved that
they should not grow ahead of me, I sat up at night, and studied
their books. When the oldest boy was ready for high-school, we moved
to a town, where my husband had bought a granary business. By that
time I had become a physical wreck, with a list of ailments too
painful to describe. But I still had my craving for knowledge, and
my illness was my salvation, in a way--it got me a hired girl, and
time to patronize the free library.
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