ying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When
the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can
hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other
debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be
taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law
of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the
mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a
mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied.
Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding
creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a
city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence,
moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward
failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and
entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also,
and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that
can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.

Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years
of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This
comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up
in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what
they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has
many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the
avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are
in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the
State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the
women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual
life is all the world to them, and if that is encompassed with toil and
hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and
their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped
resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning
for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few
social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to
buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in
many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What
wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they
were always searching the flat