Excerpt from Book entitled A Frontier Family in Minnesota162
FI
THE RST CHILD
up the house and put on their best dresses. Today (Sunday) I u
less tired than usual because yesterday I slept a little [longera v
worked a little less because of a fine shower that did us a gra,
deal of good. Everything was suffering from a long drought.
last Monday I began my haying and shall be at that unt,
next Thursday, the day when I hope to start mowing my wheat,
which promises a fairly good harvest, especially considering Ilia;
this is only the second plowing after the land was broken and that
the soil was virgin [forest] only fourteen months ago. Next year
the crop will be even better if the weather is as favorable as thi,
year. I've had to suspend work on breaking my big field owing to
the heat, but I plan to resume it at the beginning of September.I
want very much indeed to catch up with those neighbors who havr
made the most progress, but my health has been so poor this year
that I haven't been able to finish all that I set out to do. Although
I'm not in very good shape at present, I am in better condition to
make my hay and harvest my grain than I've been in many years,
Perhaps because I haven't worked as hard as usual this spring.
I think I've told you that we've been hoping to see Minnesota
recover this year from the slump we've been suffering from up to
now. Our magnificent harvest will in fact, I think, pull us out of
the morass, but our Democratic President, probably in order to
pay us back beczuse our state has just voted against his administra.
tion, is now resuming the [collection of money due the govern.
ment for the] sale of land which had been postponed last year.
This will remove something like a million dollars from the poor
farmers' pockets;'moreover, it will depress the prices of all food.
stuffs until sometime in November, but from all indications there
will then be a general recovery and the people of Minnesota who
up to now have had nothing but disappointments will begin to see
better days. We ourselves, though thanks to our parents we have
not been in actual want, have still felt the pinch on many oc.
casions.
People knew so little about this region that they often made
unnecessary outlays and wasted an enormous amount of time on
crops which, as is now evident, were not at all a paying propo-
sition and require a tremendous amount of time which each of us
could have used to clear practically twice as much land as we did.
Oh well, we learn by experience.
[ur great Ot ibulatneighborhood,now has been
ons,has just su to nedt a terrible loss. Mr. and Mrs.
168
THE FIRST CHILD
tlraveland went away with their four children on the Fourth of
Ill it, to visit their sister and brother-in-law, who is a minister in
Minneapolis.° On the fifth the two families went to bathe in a
,rlv lake famous for its rocky shore and gradually sloping bot-
o,tn. The two older Cleaveland girls (ten and twelve years old) ran
min the water, but all of a sudden one of them began to struggle
and call for help; the second one went to give her a hand and also
lost her footing. Their twelve -year-old cousin ran to rescue them
and also got into deep water. Then Mr. Cleaveland threw himself
into the water and his brother-in-law too, then his sister-in-law and
everyone else. One after the other they sank without a word. Mrs.
Cicaveland wanted to rush in after the others, but two men who
tame running up held her back while trying to save the drowning
people, but one of them got tangled up in a shawl and his friend
had a hard time rescuing him.
So there was poor Mrs. Cleaveland in a strange town, alone in
a hotel with the dead bodies of her husband, her two oldest girls,
her sister, her brother-in-law, and her nephew, with nobody to
console her except two little girls of seven and four years of age
and a nephew of two and a half. Twenty-five of us went to hoe
her crops the other day, and we intend to do her harvesting for her
if we can spare the time. The poor, dear woman! Her health is so
feeble, and she bears up under this terrible affliction with so much
resignation. Because none of the farmers hereabouts has offered to
take her in, Soso and I have invited her to live with us for a while,
perhaps spend the whole winter; but she says she has her cows and
other animals to care for. I've told her to let her next-door neigh-
bors attend to that while she stays with us. The very idea of leav-
ing a sick woman all alone like that with her two small girls—and
after what she has been through! Of course, she would be no bur-
den to us. Her crops would enable her to repay anything we spent
on her. And at least she wouldn't have to get up in the terrible
cold to start a fire, living all by herself after having enjoyed such a
happy family life. She has been the only one with a family of fine
children brought up as they are in our old country, and she is the
only neighbor of ours we would want to have living with us. She
seemed to feel such a great sense of relief when we suggested the
idea to her. We had thought that her close neighbors would have
offered her shelter, since they are her friends, fellow -countrymen,
and Christians, but we didn't want to wait till she was dead before
we issued our invitation. Anyway, between now and winter a great