A Lady's Life On A Farm In Manitoba By Mrs. Cecil Hall































































































































 -  To turn back was as
bad as to go on, and as we saw wheel-tracks along the fence we - Page 26
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To Turn Back Was As Bad As To Go On, And As We Saw Wheel-Tracks Along The Fence We Stuck To Them, Thanking Our Stars When We Got Through Safely.

* * * * * June 12th.

We have had a real visitor lately - I mean one who has brought a change, and a toothbrush; and for the auspicious event we rigged him up a stretcher bed, the most comfortable of things, canvas stretched on to a wooden frame, with a mattress on the top. You could not wish for anything softer. He was one of our ocean companions; his nickname of Mike still sticks to him. On getting to Winnipeg at night he had great difficulty in finding our whereabouts; even at the Club he was told the only W - - known kept a store in Main Street. Luckily from the Club he went to A - - 's livery stable, which is exactly behind it, where a man offered to drive him out forthwith, having driven another man here only four days ago; but he preferred waiting till the morning, getting here somewhere about 9 o'clock, when he was set down immediately to work to stone the raisins for a plum cake, and when tired of that had to help A - - planting potatoes. He declares he never will come here with his best clothes and a "boiled" shirt on again, as we have worked him so hard.

The accounts he gives, in an exaggerated Irish brogue, of his experiences in Minnesota have kept us in fits of laughter. The description of their first drive, when both he and his companions were all bogged; and how that twenty-seven mules and twenty-eight horses bought at St. Louis all arrived one night at the station about 5 o'clock, after sixty hours' travelling with no food or water, had to be unloaded from the cars, and they hadn't a halter or even a rope to do it with. Eventually they got all the poor beasts into a yard with wooden pailing round, but, something startling them, they made a rush, the fence gave way, for which damage the proprietor charged them ten pounds, and all galloped straight on to the prairie, and it took the men all night getting them together again. One pair of horses disappeared altogether; but were brought back when a reward of thirty dollars was offered; they had wandered nineteen miles.

Mike slept in A - - 's room. They talked so much, and told so many funny stories, that we despaired of ever getting them down to breakfast; Mike declaring he would like to bring his bed along with him, as he hadn't slept in one, or been between sheets since leaving New York, six weeks previously. We drove him over one afternoon to fish in the creek about two and a half miles off; but as we had to go in a light waggon, and with only one spring seat, both Mike and A - - had to hang on behind, with a plank as seat, which was always slipping and landing them on their backs at the bottom of the waggon.

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