

CHAPTER IV 



" THAT MAN PARTRIDGE !" 



/ 



Any man can work when every stroke of his 

 hand brings down the fruit rattling from the tree 

 to the ground; but to labor in season and out of 

 season, under every discouragement, by the power 

 of faith . . . that requires a heroism which 

 is transcendent. And no man, I think, ever puts 

 the plow into the furrow and does not look back, 

 and sows good seed therein, that a harvest does 

 not follow. Henry Ward Beecher. 



T was a handy place to live, that little tar-paper 

 shanty around which the prairie wind whooed and 

 whiffed with such disdain. So small was it that it 



as possible to wash oneself, dress oneself and get 

 breakfast without getting out of bed. On the wall was 

 a shelf which did duty as a table. There were also a 

 little box stove and some odds and ends. When the 

 roof leaked, which was every time it rained, it was 

 necessary to put pans on the bed to catch the drip. 



But it was better than the tent in which 

 E. A. Partridge and his brother slept through their 

 first star-strewn winter nights on the open prairie 

 more pretentious than the tent and assuredly not so 

 cold. The two boys were proud of it, even though they 

 were fresh from civilization from Simcoe County, 

 Ontario, where holly-hocks topped the fences of old- 

 fashioned flower gardens in summer and the houses had 

 shingles on top to keep out the weather, and where 

 there were no coyotes to howl lonesomely at night, 



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