Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/175

 BUSY time indeed we hill-dwellers have been having for the past six weeks! Such hurrying to and fro, such rushing in and out, such fetching and carrying, such toiling and moiling, as if the prosperity of the nation depended upon our individual activity,—surely I never saw the like of it before.

What is it all about? Why, we’ve been a-harvest-ing, and a-gathering in the sheaves, and a-threshing of ’em; and I’ve been a-standing over that fiery dragon of a kitchen, canning fruit, making a bewildering confusion of jams, jellies, marmalades, and preserves, with sweet-pickling and sour-pickling and chili-saucing, and all the other evils flesh is heir to thrown in as a side issue; and I haven’t had time to take a deep, full breath since the middle of August.

However, it was not of these things that I intended to write to-day; rather, of certain good fortune that has just come to me,—and on wash-day, too, when I never look for anything but sodden, suds-soaked misery.

Let me tell you, first, that this being forced to do one’s own laundry-work is the worst feature of ranch life. The shadow of the coming event actually darkens my Sundays, and by Monday morning I have generally reached the depths of gloom.