A Long Ago Kansas Christmas. 



"Well, what do you think of it?" said friend Dave, as he 

 swung down from. the seat. His wife stood in the door, and as 

 we entered, she said : "It is not as nice as the old Iowa home, 

 but you are as welcome as you would be to a palace if we had 

 it to offer, and the longer you stay the better it will suit us." 



While the busy little woman is flying about singing "Beu- 

 lah Land" and getting dinner I will tell my readers about this 

 primitive Kansas home and its occupants. 



In building his dug-out Dave had dug back into the bank 

 of the draw about fifteen feet, and laid up walls of magnesia 

 stone, which extended out from the bank about nine feet. The 

 roof was made by putting on a strong ridge pole, on which 

 lighter poles were laid for rafters, then a covering of light 

 brush, and, lastly, a layer of sod. The inside walls were plas- 

 tered with magnesia, and the ceiling covered with strong sheet- 

 ing. The dug-out faced east with a door and two windows in 

 the front, and half windows on the north and south. It was 

 neat, clean, and comfortable, if not pretentious. Dave's father 

 was among the well-to-do men of their native Iowa town. Dave 

 and his wife grew up from childhood together, and were en- 

 gaged to be married at the time Mr. H - died. Upon set- 

 tling up the estate it was found there would only be a few hun- 

 dred dollars left after everything was sold and the debt paid. 

 This brave little woman married her "Davie" and gave up the 

 old home and friends in a cultured college town and went west 

 to help her husband carve a home out of buffalo sod of western 

 Kansas. Here I found them five years later, away out on this 

 lonely prairie, and she doing her work as cheerfully and singing 

 as blithely as she used to in the old home kitchen. 



We read much of the hardihood and heroism with which 

 our pioneers confronted the perils of the trackless wilderness ; 

 of the disregard of danger shown by the men who marked the 

 pathway of civilization across plain and mountain to the distant 

 Pacific ; of the privations and hardships endured by the agri- 

 culturists and stockmen when wilderness and plain were being 

 converted from the wilds. We are asked, and not vainly, to 



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