prairie-horizon for some promise or hope
of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull
monotony of toil?

"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm
paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to
school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not
actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and
development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives.
One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure
and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those
who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort
and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers
of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest
their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the
inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from
markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value
on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are
sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard
with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal
ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their
self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on
their lives, I think truly

The individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be
denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to
others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and
aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that
those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be
considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and
righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few?
Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to
liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude
who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little
existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider
opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for
these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal
beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment,
how can we pr