62 Constructing the Country Dwelling 



of a cheap, improvised one. Actual test will show 

 that horses may be made comfortable in the summer 

 time with the use of a straw-thatched shed for a 

 barn, provided the drainage be reasonably good and 

 the earth floor be kept in good order. The thatched 

 covering may be made to keep out the rain. During 

 the winter, with the use of a few slender poles, the 

 entire shed may be inclosed with a hay or straw wall 

 and the place thus be made very satisfactory for the 

 time being. Similar sheds and protection may be 

 provided for the other live-stock, all to await the 

 time when the means are at hand for better con- 

 veniences. It is especially suggestive of a mean lack 

 of consideration of human rights in the case of the 

 farmer who has a big, expensive farm barn towering 

 up beside a little dingy shanty of a dwelling house. 

 And yet this thing is all too common, particularly 

 in new prairie regions. Such is the place out of 

 which beastliness and criminality and anarchy tend 

 to be germinated from the lives of boys and girls, to 

 say nothing about the hidden tragedies that surround 

 the lives of the many women who are forced to put 

 up with such an arrangement for half a lifetime. 



Just one illustration of a situation of the sort de- 

 scribed will suffice to point out the moral. On an 

 occasion two strangers drew up to a farmhouse. 

 One of them was a land agent, and the other a home 

 seeker. Their mission was that of purchasing a 

 farm. The owner of the farm showed them about 



