IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V. // {./ ^ J'.ii. 4^ J <> 1.0 I.I 1.25 1il21 125 IM iiiJ4 z PhotDgraphic Sdences Corporation 33 WSSr MA(N r.'AWf wfb^^iO.N.y. 14510 (7t6) 673 4S03 ^ .<^difier une nage Tha copy filmad hara has baan raproducad thanks to tha ganarosity of: Library Diviiion Provincial Archives of British Columbia Tha imagas appaaring hara ara tha bast quality possibia considaring tha condition and lagibility of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha t liming contract spacifications. Original copias in printad papar covars ara filmad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad imoras- sion. or tha back covar whan appropriata. All othar original copias ara filmad baginning on tha first paga with a printad or illustratad impras- sion, and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad imprassion. Tha last racordad frame on aach microficha shall contain tha symbol ^^- (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol V (maaniny "END"), whichavar applias. Maps, platas. charts, ate. may ba filmad at diffarant reduction ratios. Thosa too larga to ba entirely included in one exposure ara filmad beginning in the upper left hand corner, left tc right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: L'exemplaira film* fut reproduit grlce A la ginArosIt* da: Library Division Provincial Archives of British Columbia Lm images suivantas ont AtA raprodui;es avac la plus grand soin. compta tenu da la condition at de la nattat* da l'exemplaira film*, at mn conformiti avac las conditions du contrat da filmaga. Les exempiairas originaux dont la couvarture en papier est imprimAe sont filmte an commandant par la premier plat at en terminant soit par la darnlAre paga qui comporte une amprainte d'imprassion ou d'illustration. soit par la second plat, salon le cas. Tous las autras axemplaires originaux sont filmte an commenpant par la pramiAre paga qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration at en terminant par la darnlAre paga qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la darniAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — »• signifie "A SUIVRE". le symbols V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc.. peuvent Atre filmte A des taux de reduction difftrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA. il est film* A partir de I'angle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite. et de haut en bas. en prenant la nombre d'imagas nAcessaire. Las diagrammes suivants illustrant la mAthoda. rrata to pelure. n 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ^ S 'kA v^, n p '» J i V A ' '>r. «■ 1- •'-.y ' .^' eyKrU/uvest C^LlectLorv H ^Vjuop >s> TV>'i ■ ■••■ ™ - p BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. DCCCCLXXXVII. JANUARY 1898. Vol. CLXIII. A LADYS LIFE ON A RANCHB. Living as we do about twenty miles from anywhere on a ranche in the North-West of Canada, we get our magazines rather late, and with more or less irregularity. But we read them attentively, and of course we read anything about ourselves with that absorb- ing interest which the subject naturally arouses. I was sur- prised to find myself rather a prominent person in the maga- zines of last year, and still more surprised to learn that I was a woman set apart, and an object of pity. I learned that "an English lady on a ranche" is a self-d voted being, a household drudge, to be regarded with respectful admira- tion and compassion. I learned that I had married a failure, for the young Englishman in the Colonies was set down as hopelessly incompetent, ^ith the best of in- tentions indeed, but the worst of methods. This part of the history VOL. OLXIIL— NO. DCCCCLXXXVII. I particularly resented, for it is so weak to marry a failure. Then I learned what our future lives were to be. He was to struggle hard, and perhaps, if he were very good indeed, to win a bare sub- sistence. I was to struggle even harder, in a virtuous and heavy- hearted manner ; and virtue would be its own reward — perhaps. We were to have no time for read- ing or amusement, no congenial society, and apparently no sport. We were to linger out an un- enviable existence in the bare- handed struggle to make existence self-supporting, and that was all. Now I cannot answer for all the English wives on all the ranches in Canada. I can only answer for one ranche which is flourishing, and for one small Irishwoman happily situated on it. There is perhaps a good deal of sympathy between Ireland and the North -West. In the old 42(38 '■''•'i»'»««fii«linn.<.*-.--*r**.---» •-^xv«nw*/".' 6 A Lady' If TAf« on a Ranch«. [Jan. honse as "ceiled with cedar and painted with vermilion." Having lived for some time now within cedar-panelled walls, I have come to the conclusion that no other walls are half so pretty. The warm brown-and-gold tints of the wood make a perfect background for water-colours, china, books, and anything else that may be con- veniently disposed of upon them. Then at home ceilings are usually a trial to the eyes, but cedar- panelled ceilings add a joy of their own to life. I cannot think that the look of one's rooms is unim- portant, for in winter one spends so many hours indoors; and the unbroken whiteness of snow with- out makes every feature of form and colour within more insistent. For nearly half the year, how- ever, we can lead a regular out-of- door life here, and that is what makes the real charm of the coun- try. That is what gives the health and brightness and hardiness to a life that acts with a kind of slow fascination on us all. Englishmen who have lived here will abuse the antry sometimes, go home for .od, bidding a joyful last fare- well to the prairie- -and come back within the year. They profess not to know what has drawn them back to these world-forsaken wilds, and they abuse the country again. But they can't keep away from it. The logic of such proceedings is quite beyond my grasp ; but speak- ing as a mere illogical female, I like the country so well myself that I think it is good to be here. I like the simplicity, the infor- mality of the life, the long hours in the open air. I like the endless riding over the endless prairie, the winds sweeping the grass, the great silent sunshine, the vast skies, and the splendid line of the Rockies, guarding the west. I like the herds of cattle feeding among the foothills, moving slowly from water to water; and the bands of horses travelling their own way, free of the prairie. I like the clear rivers that come pouring out of the mountains, with their great rocky pools and the shining reaches of swift water where we fish in the summer-time ; and the little lakes among the hills where the wild duck drop down to rest on their flight to the north in spring. When the grouse-shooting begins in the autumn, — or, as we say here, " when the chicken- shooting begins in the fall," — I like to ride with the guns to watch the sport,* and mark down the birds in the long grass. I like both the work and the play here, the time out of doors and the time for coming home. I like the summer and the winter, the monotony and the change. Besides, I like a flannel shirt, and liberty. I certainly never heard of any one^^ho could not enjoy some partof the summer here ; but most people are glad to get away in the winter. There seems to be a fixed idea that winter is nothing but snow and monotony and weariness of spirit. Well, I do not deny the snow, but there is even more sunshine than snow; nor the monotony — but then I adore monotony. For the weariness of spirit, that is an- other matter altogether ; and I really think it must be the people who never spend their winters here that find a Western winter so trying. In some ways it is quite as pleasant as the summer; and when one can get coyote- hunting, summer is not to be named in the same breath with it. The fun we had coyote-hunt- ing with our friends last Christmas- time passed all. But even when one can get no hunting, there is riding and sleighing; and always there is the lovely aspect of the m mont alon leve a hni betw less with thf, from the a fn s&iM^.imnmt [Jan. 1898.] A Lady's Life on a Ranehe, hills under snow, white against the radiant blue, softened as a face is softened by a smile, every dimple and delicate depression of the ground marked by a transpar- ent shadow on the snow, its sunlit whiteness set off by the dark of leafless willows that trace the windings of the frozen creek. " Fair as the snow of one night," was an old saying in Ireland: it often comes into my mind when I look out on a sunny morning here after a snowy night. Every- thing seems to be new-made, white and shining, and everywhere the wonderful blue shadows are rest- ing or drifting over the stainless valleys. The sky is a clear forget- me-not blue. The far-off line of the plains is sea-blue against it. Each hollow is pure cobalt blue, and each cloud passing above sends a blue shadow gliding over the earth. Under the log walls of the sheds at the foot of the hill, the shadow thrown on the snow might be painted in ultra- marine. Perhaps among the mys- terious effects of colour, blue on white has the special property of making glad ! — for all through the short, sunny winter day there is a light sparkle and exhilaration in the air which acts on the spirits like a charm. Then when the time of winter sunset comes, there is a half -hour of strange, delicate brilliancy, — a blush of colour across the snow like the flush on the leaves of the latest monthly rose, a dazzling whiteness along the ridges that catch the level rays of light, deepening into a hundred tones of blue and violet between dark stretches of the leaf- less V illow and cottonwood trees, with here and there a gleam like thr, green light of an opal coming from the ice that spreads upon the overflow round the mouth of a frozen water - spring. In the beauty of these winter sunsets there is something curiously un- earthly — partly by reason of the frozen stillness in the air, but even more, I think, because of the mystical purity of those col- ours shining on the snow. One can compare them only with the light of gems like the opal and the sapphire, or the bands of pure colour in the rainbow. Are there fountains of these colours spring- ing in Paradise, that they always seem to give our eyes hints of a fairer lifel Such are the still days ; but then we have wild wetvther here in winter, and enough oi; it too ! — days when the north wind blows and the snow flies before it as nothing but snow before the wind can fly, in a blind white fury. All the months of winter are months of conflict between the north and the west winds. We watch the powers of the air fighting over us, and feel as if wo lived in the heart of a myth of the winds. The north wind is the destroyer ; when " He casteth forth his ice like morsels : Who is able to abide his frost ? " While the north wind blows, every breathing thing shrinks and cowers. The mere holding on to life is a struggle for poor unshel- tered animals, and the longer it lasts the harder is the struggle, and the less their strength for it. But there comes a change in the air. Some night on looking out we see that the clouds have rolled upwards, as if a curtain were lifted in the west, leaving a well-defined arch of clear sky with stars shining in it. That arch means that the west wind, the preserver, is on his way; and sometimes we hear his voice beforehand in a long, distant roar among the mountains. When next morning breaks, the north wind has fled, overcome. 8 A Laity's Life on a Raneh«, [Jan. Yoa may go to the house door in a dressing-gown to look out on the snowy prairie, and the chinook blowing over you feels like a warm bath. It seems miraculous. All living things are revived and gladdened. Horses and cattle move slowly towards the sunny slopes, leaving lonp shining farrows behind them in the smooth suow, and there they stand or lie down, basking in the soft air. It is a kind of brief summer. Even those spiritless things the hens will come out of their house under the bank, where they have been sitting like so many motionless humps of feathers, and scratch about for a while in the sun, as though life had still something to offer in place of the toes they lost in the last frost. The snow-bunt- ings will whir past your face in a cloud, with a flashing of little white wings. I am told that snow-bunt- ings, if yon get enough of them, are excellent in a pie ; but I think they are more excellent in the sun- light. This may be a still chinook that has come, a soft warmth in which the snow melts away with extraordinary rapidity, while the sky wears all kinds of transparent lovely hues like an Irish sky ; and if you take a ten-minutes' ride to the top of the nearest hill, yon may see to the west a whole range of the Kockies, magnificent, ex- ultant — based on earth and piled against the sky like mountain altars, the snow-smoke rising from their dazzling slopes and melting away in the blue, as if the reek of some mighty sacrifice purer than human were ascending on high. But sometimes the chinook is far from still ; it blows with soft, steady force, and then the snow, instead of melting, blows away. A most curious sight it is when first the wind setp it moving; it flies along the ground as fast aq flowing water, with a kind of rippling n-otion, breaking into sudden eddies and puffs of white, the sunshine sifting through it and powdering tlie whole with sparks of light. Where all this snow blows to is a mystery to me still. I never see it blow up from the earth ; I suppose it can hardly blow out, \iVe the flame of a candle : all I know is, it blows away. And then the prairie lies bare, brown and tawny in colour, with stretches of pale sunlit gold ; and all life is safe and warm and comforted till the north wind gets his turn again. It is very reviving to have the tyranny of winter broken through every now and again by the chinook. But it is better still whan spring comes — not the fleet- ing but the abiding spring. Some day you see duck flying up the creek, or you hear the weird cry of geese float down from very high overhead. Perhaps some one re- marks that the creeks are run- ning, and very soon not only the creeks are fall of rushing dark- brown water, but every hill -top is a watershed sending streams of melted snow down into the valleys. Snow-birds vanish, and instead you may see "the hawk spread her wings to the south," whistling over the bare bluffd where by -and -bye a hawk's neat will be. Gophers wake up under- ground, and stick their smooth heads out of their holes again, with last year's familiar piping; and down by the water-side, where willows arj covered with their silver-grey buds, you can watch little blue-tits feeding on them, generally upside down in their own fascinating manner. As soon as frosts cease to bind the earth at night, the longed-for grass I as ■ [Jan. 1898.] A Lady's Life on a Ranche. 9 begins to push up and grow ; but before the first green bitide has sprung, we are sare to have wel- comed the earliest comer of all, the Pasque-flower, which is "merry spring - time'r harbinger" in the North -Wtbt. They call it the "crocus" here, and Anemme Pul- satilla is its name among the learned, I have heard ; but some- how I cannot regard flowers as belonging to the Latin races, and this one is such a perfect herald of Easter that the Easter name seems to fit it best. Some time in March out of the cold, cold earth it comes up into the light, and yon find its buds standing on the prairie, each wrapped up in a furry grey coat against the north blast. Perhaps for a week the shining fur coats are all that can be seen, tightly buttoned up ) but one sunny day the furs open wide, and out slip the nestling flowers. Oh, how glad we are to see them ! Hans Andersen would have made a pretty fairy tale about the open- ing of the Pasque-flowers. Their colours are beautiful and delicate — all the peculiar cloudy blues of the anemone, deepening almost tc violet, and veined with lilac and grey. Leafless and unattended, they come in crowds, in millions ; and gleaming all over the prairie among the withered, tangled grass, they show the fresh young year bom out of the old one. Many richer flowers follow in their time, some lovelier; but I think none meet with quite the same welcome as the Pasque-flowers, which an- swer to more than the pleasure of the eyes. One of the great charms of the prairie is, that the flowers grow in such masses and myriads over it. Until I came here '"' never knew what it was to see as many flowers as I could wish all at once. But here, — say it is the month of May ; May with the fleecy blue and white skies, the light • hearted breezes blowing, the sad - voiced plovers railing, when for a short while pools of clear water shine here and there over the prairie, " as if," some one said, " the land had opened its eyes to look at the sky." Beautiful duck are resting on these pools very often, mallard, teal, pintail, and others ; or cattle have come for a drink, and stand in groups that call for a Bosa Bonbeur, making bright reflections of themselves on the water. This is the time when violets blow ; blue and grey and golden, they come up by thousands in the short grass, and at the same time the " shooting- stars " make long flushes of criiii.s>.>Q where they stand in their regli. onts, nodding side by side. Sometimes a pure white one bends like a bride among the rest. They are little winged flowers, reminding one of cycla- mens, but "American cowslip" is their misleading name. About the last week in May or the first in June it is worth taking a long ride to find the forget-me- nots which grow in certain high spots. One calls forget-me-nots blue at home, but the bluest would look as pale as skim-milk beside these. Enamel or the deepest tur- quoise would be dulled by them. They shine from the ground like gems, and you may see them quite a long way off", though they have none of the glisten and transpar- ency of red and white flowers : they shine only from their pure, opaque intensity of blue. The place where we always go to find the first forget-me-nots is called " the Ridge," as though there were no other elevation of its kind in all this mountain country. It is a stony ridge, its top half covered 10 A Lady's Life on a Ranehe. [Jan. with dwarf poplars and a little creeping plant with tasteless red berries, the leaves of which Indians smoke for tobacco and call kinni- kinnick. As yon ride up and top this ridge^ there bursts upon you quite suddenly the widest and most gloi'ious view that can pos- sibly be imagined. The ground at your feet falls away to a great distance, on your left by a steep slope covered with dark willows; tbare is a long, wide valley with stretches of willow and a gleam of water, then the ground rises and falls for miles in a succession of high, curving ridges, for all the world as if the earth had broken into billows like the sea. Some of these land-billows have exactly the curve and poise of a sea-wave before it breaks on the shore, but the cliffs they break against are the feet of the Bocky Mountains. Nothing could be more splendid than the immense chain of the Rockies seen from here. They rise and rise against the west, and from their very roots upwards to their shining crowns, you can follow the magnificent lines of their building, — their vast bases, against which the billowing foot- hills dwindle to far-seen ripples, their towering heights and depths, the clefts and ledges piled with mountainous weights of snow, the jutting cliffs that catch at passing clouds, the great hollows that one guesses at from clear-cut shadows on the snow, and then the final glory of their sun-lit crests. So high and shining they are, they seem like some rampart to the world. If you look for a long while from here, you are seized with a fancy that all the earth is rolling towards the west, and there is nothing beyond the Rockies; they end the world and meet the sky. You lose this idea when you are actually between the moun- tains, for then you can only see two or three at a time ; but looking at them from this distance ou " the Ridge," it possesses you for a while. Yet, great as they are, I do not think their size is nearly so amazing as their beauty. Some of these mighty heights are built on such mysterious laws of beauty that they compel the eye to follow and cling to their lines, just as the ear follows and strains after sweet sounds, with a kind of yearning. As to their colouring, it is seldom two days alike. I think it is more joyous than any other mountain colouring I have seen. Though the Rockies have their seasons of rage, tempest, and fury, they never seem to mourn or brood over the things between earth and sky, as some mountains will. Perhaps they are too far away, too near the sun. In full sunlight, when their great fields of pure snow are dazzling the air, shot with silver- gleams and crossed by those trans- parent blue shadows of the slow- sailing clouds, what a stainless splendour is on them ! I have seen them scarcely less beautiful on a hot afternoon in midsummer, far, far withdrawn into a silvery haze, baseless, unsubstantial moun- tains, hanging like a picture in the sky, just made visible by the gleaming of their snows. Another wonderful aspect they wear in thundery weather, when the high- piled, motionless clouds seem rest- ing in heavy, gold-rimmed curves against the very edges of the mountains, which grow every hour more deeply, mysteriously blue; and there is yet another effect, when mountains and sky grow faint and pale together in the noonday heat, till the sky is a1 most colourless, and the moun- tains are mere outlines of shining [Jan. 1898.] A Lady's Life on a Ranch^. 11 we&r in ho high- em rest- curves of the Bry hour y blue ; effect, cy grow in the :y is a1 moun- shining lilac and snow. But on the whole, I think the commonest aspect of the Bockies is also the most beautiful — that is, under fresh fallen snow and in full sunlight. It is no wonder that even living out of sight of them, as we do among the foothills here, we seem to be always conscious of the great mountains so close at hand ; and the constant sight of them on one's ordinary rides and business lends a kind of splendour to our days. In the sightless hours, too, one sometimes wakes aware of them in their far-off places — " Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars." But now it is time to ride down from "the Ridge": we were sup- posed to have ridden up there only to look for forget-me-nots in June. So many other lovely flowers follow the forget-me-nots that the chief difficulty is to name them ; and that is no trifling task when you are without botanical knowledge of your own, and without books of reference. I think the flowers are especially puzzling here, because many of them are so very like some that we know in the old country, and yet not exactly the same. There is one like a white violet, but it grows half a foot high ; and one with the smell of a bean-flower, but it seems to be a yellow lupin ; and one that behaves like the little pimpernel, but it is as large as a buttercup, and pur'' coral colour. We call it the " coral-flower " for want of better knowledge. The " soldier - lily " was also christened at home — an upright i'ilj of a splendid scarlet that flames through the long grass in June. Here, as everywhere, the month of June is the rose-month. Then, while prairie larks are pfping their short, sweet tunes, the prairie roses blow in their myriads, white and pink, shell pink, blush rose, and deep carmine. The bushes are low and thick— they have no long sprays like the hedge roses at home ; but these low rose-thickets spread and run wild over the prairie, and along the edges of the trail you may be driving on, till the horses' feet scaiiiter scented rose • leave 3 as they pass. The scent is the most perfect thing in the world, very buoyant, very sweet, and just perceptibly aro- matic. One little bowl of prairie roses will scent a whole room, and remain sweet after every leaf is withered. So the month of June is very sweet in the house. With July there generally arrives a flood of blue and gold. Lupins in every shade of blue stand thick up the sides of the couUes. Blue asters, short and daisy-like, cover the bare and half -grassed places. Golden gaillardias, dark-centred, with bril- liant fringes, shine like miniature suns right and left, high and low, everywhere. Tortoiseshell and sul- phur-coloured butterflies, and black and little tiny blue ones, flitter about. Then come the " harebells dim." Instead of being shy and solitary, as they often are at home, they come in their thousands — in their millions rather: acres of harebells and the delicate blue flax wave together in the faintest breeze, and when the low sun strikes over them, if you happen to be riding with your face to the west, you see them like countless drops of light transparently twink- ling in the long grass. August withers the faint blue flowers, but brings instead the fireweed glow- ing on every hill and hollow, and slender sunflowers clustering in the loops of the creek. These 12 A Lndy's Life on a Ranche. [Jan. dark - eyed single sanflowers are among the moat uncertain of autumn's daughters. One year they are everywhere, the next year hardly to be seen. Then sooner or later comes the inevitable Sep- tember snowstorm, and after that you may say good-bye to the wild- flowers till next year, and turn your attention to shooting prairie chicken. August and September are the best months for camping out, first to fish, then to shoot. We like to go up into the mountains then. But camping is such a varied de- light, or else such a serious busi- ness, that it hardly fits into the space of this article. I mention it because it is one of the chief pleas- ures of our life here. " What a primitive life ! " some one will say ; " all animals, flowers, and open air. No society, no luxury, and no art. It must be stagnation." Or else — " What an admirable life ! " some one will say ; "work without hardship ; exercise, and leisure, a civilised yet unconventional life. It must be ideal." There will always be some people who think that life can be made ideal by its circumstances, and some who think that it can be interesting only by its excitements. De gustibus — "the proverb is some- thing musty." However, I am not concerned to prove that there is no life more enviable than this which we lead. I may think so, or I may not. But I am concerned to show that the coin*nnn belief about a lady's life on a ranche — that it consists necessarily and entirely of self-sacrifice and manual labour — is a delusion. That it does consist of these in hundreds of oases is unfortunately true ; and the reason why is not far to seek. Many people who would think it mad- ness to allow a son or daughter of their own to marry in England without i^iieans sufficient to keep a single house - servant, are yet easily persuaded to allow it in the Colonies, because they are told it " doesn't really matter out there." Once convinced that there will be no loss of caste, they are satisfied. They are too inexperienced in the meaning of work, or else too un- imaginative to realise that they are sending a son and daughter tv^ live a life of much harder toil than a common labourer and his wife would lead in England, with none of the labourers' alleviations of familiarity and congenial sur- roundings, but probably under circumstances which cause them to think with envy of the labour- ers' lot at home, and perhaps in a climate which makes existence a struggle for six months out of the twelve. Every one who has visited an English colony has seen people of gentle birth in this position, and has wondered, more or less super- ficially, if their life were worth living. I cannot pretend to decide that question. Only those who have had the courage to try the life for themselves can say whether it is a natural and justifiable one or not. There is an obvious dif- ficulty in putting the ouestion to them. But suppose that sur- mounted, I imagine that their answers would vary in accordance with their conviction of the endur- ance of love and the dignity of mutual service. Some are but im perfectly convinced . And surely it requires no great exercise of common-sense to realise that life cannot be made easy for people without money anywhere on this globe ; also, that however difficult ix, may appear for a lady to keep house without any servant in 1898.] A Lady's Life on a Banche. 13 England, it must be ten times harder in a country where she cannot call in a charwoman to scrub the kitchen - floor, or get water by turning a tap. But I want to make it plain that I am speaking of a lady's life on a ranche, without reference to those cases in which a pair of young people enter into matrimony with their bare hands and the labour thereof for sole support. Are there not plenty of people with small incomes, living busy lives and not desiring to live idle ones, yet released from drudgery or pressing anxiety, with health and leisure r>nd capacity for enjoy- ment 1 These are the people who ought to be able to find happiness on a ranche in a good country; and if they cannot, they must be either strangely stupid or strangely unfortunate. I must be allowed to take it for granted that the ranche -owner is neither a duffer nor a " tender-foot," for the ques- tion of his methods and manage- ment does not enter into this article; yet a certain moderate amount of prosperity is necessary to happiness. Granted this, what is there to prevent a lady from enjoying her life on a ranche t In England, on a narrow income there is no such thing as freedom. You carnot go where you please, or live where you please, or have what you please; you cannot join in amusements that are really amus- ing, because every form of sport is expensive; you cannot accept pleasant invitations, because you cannot return them. And I think there would always be a wrangle with the cook, a i lalway journey, or a dinner-party lying heavy on vour mind. But with the same income in a country like this, you can live on equal terms with your neighbours, and all your surround- ings will be entirely in your favour; you have only to make the most of them. Shooting, fishing, and hunting, just the things which would bring you to the verge of bankruptcy at home, yon can en- joy here practically for nothing. You can have all the horses you want to ride or drive. Your harness may show a certain dingi- ness for lack of the cleaning which no one has time to bestow on it ; and the panels of your *' democrat '' will not be adorned with your worshipful crest and motto. But then — solacing thought ! — neither will anybody else's be. Here all our appointments are the very simplest that will suffice. We are too utilitarian and labour-saving to accumulate more of the extras of life than we can help. It is not because we are all devoted to a high-thinking and low-living ideal ; I never found, indeed, that our thoughts soared much higher than other people's, though we live so largely on stewed apples. It is because we lack "minions to do our bidding" — a much nore credible reason. This is the coun- try in which to find out exactly how deep one's own personal re- finement goes, how many dainty habits and tastes will survive when all the trouble of them has devolved upon oneself. At home they are a form of unconscious self-indulgence ; here they involve a principle, and an active one. It may be thought that I am not describing a life that could possibly prove attractive to a ..oman. I can imagine some ont; saying — "It's all very well for a man, riding and sport and waiting on himself — that kind of thing. But a woman can't live without some sort of social amusement, and maids to harry." u A LtKiy's Life on a Banche. [Jan. Can't she? Well, I suppose women are of different kinds, and in Ireland we like sport. I never went in for maiming rabbits and missing fish myself, but all the same I like an eight-hours' day in the open air; and whether it's afoot on the springy heather of an Antrim grouse-moor, or riding over the slippery long grass of the prairie, still I must be glad when I see the sun glinting off the barrels of a pretty brown gun, or see the point of a fishing-rod dip to the water in that supple - quivering bow which means a lively trout at the end of the line. I think even a woman with n^. instinctive love of sport might come to care for it if she lived in the West ; but, of course, it is not in the least necessary that she should. Be she the most domestic creature that ever covered up her ears " when the gun went off," she would have here the finest field she could desire for the exercise of her special gifts. Nowhere else, I venture to say, do the domestic virtues shine with such peculiar lustre as on a ranche. Of course the scrupulous house- wife must look to receive some pretty severe chocks at the out- set. She may chance to find, as I have done, her best salad-bowl set down in the fowl-house with re- freshment for the hens, or a white tablecloth flapping on a barbed- wire fence to dry. Breakfast may be late one morning because the Chinan) i has taken a knife to one of I lO "boys," and the boy is holding him down on a chair in the kitchen. But this sort of thing only happens during the first week or mouth : after you have attained a strength of mind to disregard such trifles, they cease to occur. Then the notable woman begins her reign, and it is a glorious one. Praise and sub- mission surround her; soap and water sr-^ur her path, Rich jams and many-coloured cakes own her hand, and the long - neglected socks her needle. Alas that that woman and I are twain ! Still, besides the idle wife in a riding-skirt, and the busy wife measuring out things in cups, there are other sorts. Some wo- men are studious. If they can indulge their turn of mind at home, well for them ; but perhaps it is lucky they do not know how much better they could indulge it here. Not only that the hours are longer and more free from interruption, while the solitude favours abstraction, but that there are so few competing interests, so few and simple duties, and no ne- cessity at all for that daily divi- sion and subdivision of time which the making and breaking and re- arranging of engagements entails on the members of society. It ip not want of time so much as dis- traction which hinders half the would-be students ; and distrac- tion is far from the North- West ! Last winter I thought how easy it would be to take up a new language here, or a course of moral science, or the study of whist. I meant, how easy to some one else, — for I am too hope- lessly devoted to old joys and favourite authors. I have not yet half exhausted the curious plea- sures of listening to the old harmonies under the new skies. I read ♦' Borneo and Juliet " with quite a freah wonder beside a flowery creek where the king- birds fluttered. I read Burns's greatest Elegy by the late light of a winter afternoon, while the snowflakes blew against the win- dow-pane ; and the verses seemed to glow, each a coal of fire from [Jan. 1898.] A Lady's Life on a Ranchs. 16 the poet's heart. The ' Essays of Elia ' were sent me last ^^ring in two dainty green volumes by the kind editor who prepared them for issue among the " Temple Glassies." I would have him to know that never did the tender- hearted fun, the gleaming, ex- quisite irony of Elia so play and lighten in my dull wits before. I am sut-e the long, idle evenings by the lamp, and the indoor atmos- phere, helped in the happy eflTect. Oharles Lamb should never be read save by lamplight and in winter. We have so many summer authors. When the weather was very hot last August, and the haymakers hard at work, I used to find great refreihment in the shady side of a big hay- stack, and Bacon's 'History of the Reign of Henry VII.' That cold-hearted, able monarch and his wiles, as described in easy, modulated English by the cold- hearted, able historian, had an agreebly frigid effect that would have been simply wasted in winter. Nicol6 Machiavelli describes, some- thing in the same cool way, the riots of his hot and foolish Florentines, in words that hit their mark like pebbles delicately aimed. He too is a summer author. But I may not transgress into the mazy paths of literature. I only mean to say this much, that for reading of books and pleasures of the mind in general, a ranche is the choicest place imaginable. Still, to every woman there is something more attractive than the gratifying of her special tastes, )rting, literary, or domestic. Every woman seeks her vocation, and, consciously or not, desires a sphere in which to reign and serve, a place that no one else could fill, her own niche among "the polished corners of the Temple." Now the greatest attraction of the West ii that it offers such scope to the woman who really knows her mdtier de femrm. It is hard to say how far social and physical conditions can extend their sway against claims of in- stinct ; but we all know that the present state of things in England is somewhao out of joint. Socially speaking, women are a drug on the market, simply from their exceed- ing numbers. They feel it too, and try by all kinds of curious means to create to themselves new standards of value, of importance. All this is unnatural and unpleas- ant, and it makes the change to a country where a woman is, socially speaking, a thing of value simply as a woman, a very welcome change indeed. Of course it may be slightly demoralising too, if the woman's vanity should mislead her into setting down all the warmth of her welcome and the interest she arouses to the credit of her own charms, instead of to the scarcity of her species. But I think the most tough-skinned vanity would not secure her long from feeling the prick of an all - surrounding criticism which addresses itself to take note of her work and ways from very unexpected quarters and from unfamiliar points of view, but with a keenness of interest really Jess indulgent than the pass- ing comment of indifference which is all we have to expect at home. I sometimes amuse myself by imagining certain women I ha;'e known set down for a time to live and learn in the North- West. Especially I should like to trans- plant here one of those firm be- lievers in the natural depravity of man and the born superiority of. woman. She would arrive — the woman I mean — with a high pur- pose, and very, very kind inten- 16 A Lcuiy'a Life on a Ranche. !Jau tions towards her countrymen exiled in these wilds. She would be all for touching and softening and civilising them, poor fellows ! hardened and roughened as they must be by years of hard work umong wild horny cattle and buck- ing horses. Well, that woman would have a good deal to learn ; and the first of her lessons would be, respect for the primitive virtues. She has probably held them very light or taken them almost for granted hitherto; courage, honesty, and sobriety she has supposed to belong to every man of her own class by nature, or at least to cost him nothing in their exercise. Give her the object-lesson of young men in this country with all the desires and tastes of youth, and with recent memories of a life of ease, wording with a daily self- denial, working hard and living hard, cheerfully, patiently, and courageously, yet without the least notion that they are in any way admirable beings, and possibly it may occur to that superior woman to ask herself if her own life can i show anything as worthy of honour as this daily courage, industry, and | self-deniall— if it might not actu- ally profit by the example of the I poor creature man 1 How delight- ful it would be to see that woman I in the end touched and softened! herself, and with a dawning colour I of modesty about her moral pref tensions ! In time she might even! cOme tc revise some pretty theories! about the nature and habits ofl men which she has taken on trust I from Mrs Sarah Grand and herl like, to compare them with livingl examples, and let experience teach I her more wholesome views. That I were "a consummation devoutly I to be wished." MoiKA O'Neill. ithout the least tre in any way and possibly it superior woman ler own life can i orthy of honour ;e, industry, and j might not actu- example of the I 1 How delight- Bee that woman I d and softened! dawning colour! her moral pre- she might even! ) pretty theories! and habits of I taken on trustl Grand and herl iiem with livingl ixperience teach I ae views. That! nation devoutly I '*'?t •IRA O'NkILL. mm wi ^^1 r^m s 8 m m jjififvwJpSV ^k^^ ^^M L»9 -^e^ - m m P 1