halcyon hours, when we
forget the needs of the morrow, and that men still buy, sell, cheat,
and strive for gold, and that we are in the Rocky Mountains, and that
it is near midnight. But morning comes hot and tiresome, and the
never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two
or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each
other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner
stuff and to possess more adaptability.

To-day has been a very pleasant day for me, though I have only once sat
down since 9 A.M., and it is now 5 P.M. I plotted that the devoted
Swiss girl should go to the nearest settlement with two of the children
for the day in a neighbor's wagon, and that Dr. and Mrs. H. should get
an afternoon of rest and sleep upstairs, while I undertook to do the
work and make something of a cleaning. I had a large "wash" of my own,
having been hindered last week by my bad arm, but a clothes wringer
which screws on to the side of the tub is a great assistance, and by
folding the clothes before passing them through it, I make it serve
instead of mangle and iron. After baking the bread and thoroughly
cleaning the churn and pails, I began upon the tins and pans, the
cleaning of which had fallen into arrears, and was hard at work, very
greasy and grimy, when a man came in to know where to ford the river
with his ox team, and as I was showing him he looked pityingly at me,
saying, "Be you the new hired girl? Bless me, you're awful small!"

Yesterday we saved three cwt. of tomatoes for winter use, and about two
tons of squash and pumpkin for the cattle, two of the former weighing
140 lbs. I pulled nearly a quarter of an acre of maize, but it was a
scanty crop, and the husks were poorly filled. I much prefer field
work to the scouring of greasy pans and to the wash tub, and both to
either sewing or writing.

This is not Arcadia. "Smartness," which consists in over-reaching your
neighbor in every fashion which is not illegal, is the quality which is
held in the greatest repute, and Mammon is the divinity. From a
generation brought up to worship the one and admire the other little
can be hoped. In districts distant as this is from "Church
Ordinances," there are three ways in which Sunday is spent: one, to
make it a day for visiting, hunting, and fishing; another, to spend it
in sleeping and abstinence from work; and the third, to continue all
the usual occu