Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/171

 Poyser. When I have an errand at this sylvan shrine, I have only to walk across a long porch, go down three steps, descend a steep little hill, turn a sharp angle, and I am there. Then I lift up the altar cloth, pull hard a leather strap hooked over a nail, turn the side-door down, fold back the upper one, reach in and drag out those monstrous cans, each dripping with water. The thing is not magnificent, but’t will serve; at any rate, it keeps our milk cool and sweet.

You perhaps have read that little story, “Twenty Miles from a Lemon.” Now we are twenty miles from a loaf of bread, which is worse. One can live without lemons, but not without the staff of life; consequently one must bake, though the heavens fall, twice or three times each week. Furthermore, we have learned here that it will not do to buy the roasted and ground coffee, as at home; having to be bought in such large quantities, sufficient to last for weeks, it soon loses both its strength and its aroma. An old coffee-mill nailed to the side of the woodhouse conveyed to us the hint that people living so far from town usually ground their own coffee. Thereupon we bought a new mill and a supply of the green berry, which must be roasted twice each week and ground twice daily.

Having neither electricity nor gas-lights, we had to fall back upon the fragrant kerosene; and dreary enough it seemed at first, Tom declaring a good healthy lightning-bug would be quite as satisfactory. For a time the care