Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/86

82 coolness. The eyelids cease to quiver; quietness is in the cabin ; my portfolio is at hand and takes the place of the knitting work; you are in my thought and close by me, with your womanly wisdom. The pencil, however, has no fears in limning for you, and through you, for others. You will smooth the defects, take in at a glance the divided thoughts between the sick and the well, the discomfort of writing without a table or an easy posture, day or night, without change of ideas or condition, from the fifteen-feet square of cabin, in which, look up or down, you feel as though every utensil and every article of apparel had been suddenly stricken with spasms, or gone irrecoverably out of its place.

Oct. 10th. Our milkman called to say there was a very sick man in his cabin, he would like me to come in and see what I thought of him. I asked if his wife was well; whereupon he said he had no family but this man, who had been sick some time, though not dangerously; but now he seemed worse, and he thought if I would stop with