Children come running out of the house, three of them; a fourth, a small boy, has been helping his father; Mrs. Settler goes indoors and comes out with a fifth in her arms. This looks good. I think we must land here.
We all sit down and chat under the shade trees that father was careful to leave when he cleared the land for his garden. It turns out that the man and his wife were a country boy and girl who drifted into the city, as so many do. “But when the babies began to come,” says the lady, “we both made up our minds to get out where they could grow up in freedom as we did, and learn to do things for themselves, as they never would in town. That more than makes up for not having quite such a good school, even if we hadn’t the education to help them keep ahead of the school work all the time, as we do. And as for us, we’re not crazy about the white lights and all that; we get all the white light we want from Mr. Sun—when he gets up he don’t wait long for us! No, we’ve never regretted coming out here, and only wish we’d come sooner.”
“You don’t find the work too much for you, then, with your five children?”
“Five! There’s seven—the two biggest are out stacking hay, Jim on the stacker and Jenny riding the sweep. They just love to handle the teams alone, without being interfered with, and made me promise to take [a]“Living Simply, Living High”] the cream to-day so they could. They seem to think the farm work is just a big sort of play.”
“I guess they find it pleasant because they never hear you and your husband talking as if it was unpleasant.”
“No, indeed; why should we? Of course, we don’t let them overdo it—nor ourselves either. We study, and plan, and find out all sorts of labor-saving dodges and devices; and we cut out the frills, too, in clothing and cooking and everything else. I reckon we’ve got the ‘simple life’ down to a pretty fine point, and enjoy it all the more. The West has got to work out a way of living for itself, and not make itself miserable trying to follow fashions that grew up where people had servants to do everything for them. We’ve got to choose: we can either have children and happiness and health, with the simplest possible life, or wear ourselves out with drudgery, trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. If the Joneses talk to me about a ‘high standard of living,’ I say that’s just what we’ve got and they haven’t.”
Yes, the high standard of living we have to set before ourselves, and before the people we ask to join us, is a high standard of working, a high standard of learning and thinking, with a high standard of family life and public spirit. In these we shall enjoy a high standard of living indeed.
“The wife is right,” says her husband, laughing, as I look to see how he is taking all this. “I wouldn’t say so if she starved us, or sent the children to school in rags, would I? But it seems to me, the more she has to do, the better she gets things done. Planning does it, I reckon—just thinking and planning.”
“Use your brains and save your hands, eh?”
“That’s the size of it. Next time the Prince of [a]The West and the War] Wales comes out to his ranch, you send him along, and I reckon she’d cook him a four-course dinner on a chip-and-a-half of firing, if he was keen on style, which he doesn’t seem to be. Of course we’ve got a fireless cooker; she planned it from one she saw in a paper, and little Jim made the box. But, listen! There they are.”