270 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



beasts of the prairie love life with their very last 

 breath ; they seem to thank you for the final effort 

 to save, and to hope on with you all the time. The 

 hardest thing required of one in the circumstance 

 and event of farm life is to kill. 



On April 3 came a blinding snowstorm. On the 

 4th I sold two pigs to the local butcher for the 

 sum of twenty-five dollars, but the bargain was 

 immediately followed by a fierce hurricane, with 

 another fall of snow and the wildest weather. The 

 sudden reverse was evidently too much for my 

 newly acquired patience, since, following an 

 account of the day, and in spite of the deal with 

 the butcher which was always for ready money, I 

 read in my diary the following words of a mood 

 of despair : " Clothesless, bootless, penniless, 

 wretched ! " 



The fact is that the winter in Canada demands a 

 very special outfit for the protection of hands and 

 feet : felt boots and leather-covered woollen mitts 

 made in the form of a baby's glove. Both hand and 

 footwear are useless directly winter is fairly away, 

 because the softening snow at once penetrates the 

 felt boots, and the mitts are in the way when one 

 requires full use of the fingers. There is nothing 

 in the wardrobe scheme that one is so thankful to 

 buy or so glad to burn as these particular symbols 

 of the Canadian winter. I had probably burned 

 mine all too soon, and the return of winter found 

 me minus armour. However, the mood seems to 

 have been as transitory as the weather, since the 

 recprd of April 6 reads : 



" Woke at sunrise to a perfect day. Fed oats 

 without hat or coat, Milled seed-wheat with 



