l. She writes to
the Department of the Interior at Washington, asking for full
information about the method of taking up land, about the unappropriated
lands and instructions for homesteaders. These pamphlets are promptly
received. Or she applies to the Chamber of Commerce of the biggest city
in the State to which she wishes to go. She carefully regards the
warnings set up along the path of the would-be homesteader, which are
these: see the land itself before deciding; decide that the home you are
seeking is to be a permanent one; be sure that you are adapted for
silence and solitariness; and finally, this all-important rule--have
enough capital for buildings, for cattle and horses, for machinery,
wells, cisterns and seed, and enough more to carry you over a bad year
or two, before you undertake the great task.

Having met these requirements, she gaily packs her carefully selected
goods on a gigantic prairie barge and convoyed by an efficient freighter
(a freighter is a human being), she rides the fifty miles from the last
station out to her claim, paying the freighter twenty dollars for his
service.

She is very busy, that instinct for the practical that has been
developed in the ingenious American through centuries of pioneering
comes to her rescue now. She resorts to all manner of tasteful
makeshifts; she works miracles with hammer and saw; she makes easy
chairs out of barrels and dressing tables out of packing boxes. As soon
as possible a piano is installed in the soddy. The tiny shack becomes an
orderly little combination of laboratory, boudoir, and study. The
little house acquires a charm of its own. Wherever the American girl is,
it is a home. She sits at the door of her soddy with her faithful tabby
in her lap and is content.

She loves it all. The wild surroundings have a charm for her. Said one:
"I certainly fell in love with life on the ranch. I still have my place
and have bought more land adjoining it. I guess I am a sort of Indian
myself. I love the big outdoors and I love every rock in our mountains.
There is something in the somber green of the pines that creeps into
one's heart and I am lonesome away from them."

A young woman in Wyoming writes: "This country is so different, so big,
that the horizon alone seems to set the limit. I visited on one ranch
that is fourteen miles from one end to the other. There are no green
wooded hills here, but great rocky slopes and rushing water and great
sandy fla