Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/112

108 and she says continually, "Please take me home; oh, I want to go so much!" At times, it seems quite impossible for her to recover; but then, again, she brightens up, seems more comfortable, and the utter impossibility to conceive of myself trudging along in the world without her, gives me temporary faith to believe that she will recover.

For two months we have slept upon straw, with our skirts folded at night, to make pillows, and every garment within reach spread about us, to keep off the piercing winds, which, from the non-arrival of our boxes, put our lives in peril.

There is one impression to which my friends, in writing, often allude : it is this that I looked too much on the bright side of Kansas life, and should thus suffer more in the reality. Mother, I don't believe YOU see me in that light. There must be a defect in me, whereby I sometimes give an impression quite opposite to what I intend. I suppose, if I was going to have a limb amputated, instead of looking forlorn, and uttering sighs and moans, I should be more likely to joke and laugh over the matter; quite as much to keep up my own