rd, and stick to these home regions until the ice forms. And our
most mountainous troubles, after all, can't quite survive being
exteriorated through the ink-well. It relieves me to write about them.
But I wish I had a woman of my own age to talk to. I get a bit lonely,
now that winter is slipping down out of the North again. And I find
that I'm not so companionable as I ought to be. It comes home to me,
now and then, how far away from the world we are, how remote from
everything that counts. The tragedy of life with Chaddie McKail, I
suppose, is that she's let existence narrow down to just one thing, to
her family. Other women seem to have substitutes. But I've about
forgotten how to be a social animal. I seem to grow as segregative as
the timber-wolf. There's nothing for me in the woman's club life one
gets out here. I can't force myself into church work, and the rural
reading-club is something beyond me. I simply couldn't endure those
Women's Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up with
sponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty
of Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad.
We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with the
belief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must get
along without. But that is only the flaunting of _La Panache_, the
feather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, so
much, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must see
go to others! So much we must never even hope for! Oh, pioneers, great
you are and great you must be, to endure what you have endured! You
must be strong in your hours of secret questioning and you must be
strong in your quest for consolation. If nothing else, you must at
least be strong. And these western men of ours should all be strong
men, should all be great men, because they must have been the children
of great mothers. A prairie mother _has_ to be a great woman. She must
be great to survive, to endure, to leave her progeny behind her. I've
heard the Wise Men talk about nature looking after her own. I've heard
sentimentalists sing about the strength that lies in the soil. But,
oh, pioneers, you know what you know! In your secret heart of hearts
you remember the lonely hours, the lonely years, the lonely graves!
For in the matter of infant mortality alone, prairie life shows a
record shocking to read. We are making that better, it is true, with