278 , DEEP FURROWS 



with not a thing in sight but water, sky, horizon? 

 Imagine the water to be land, and yourself living in a 

 one-room shack or a little low sod hut bewhiskered with 

 growing grass. The nearest railway was fifty miles 

 away and you got so lonesome that the howl of a coyote 

 or the cry of owls in the night nearly drove you crazy. 

 Neighbors so scarce your social pleasures were cut off 

 by distance and you reared your family on that home- 

 stead twenty-five miles from a doctor, a church or a 

 school. 



When you made the long trip in for supplies in those 

 early days you found you had to pay anywhere up to 

 twice as much as their market value while for what you 

 had to sell you had to take from twenty-five to fifty per 

 cent, less than the market value. The implements you 

 simply had to have for your work you bought on the 

 instalment plan with interest at ten and twelve per 

 cent, for the privilege. 



When you had survived three years of this and with 

 high hopes took your patent to the mortgage company 

 to raise a loan at ten per cent, you found you couldn't 

 get accommodation. Thereupon in marched your imple- 

 ment and other creditors with a chattel mortgage on 

 everything you had except the missus and the kids 

 and the baby's bottley-by ! 



Then in the beautiful hot month of August it blew 

 up black one day and the chickens scurried for shelter 

 and you and the wife stood with your noses flattened 

 against the window-pane unless it was only oiled 

 paper and watched the big ice-marbles bouncing and 

 heard the hail drumming flat in a few minutes the acres 

 of wheat you had worked so hard to produce. 



Or perhaps you escaped that time only to have your 

 wheat frozen later on and when you took three days on 



