looked out. The foremost
wagon had stopped just in front of the door. 'What is it?' I called.
'Which way do you go to get to Grassville?' I told him, he thanked me,
and I shut the door. The wagons creaked and moved away. _I had not been
afraid._ Perhaps it is faith in God which keeps us out here. If that is
so, then this life _is_ favorable to moral development, is it not?"

"Homesteading," says one college girl and successful homesteader, "is
not simply one means for leisure, outdoor life and freedom from
conventionality--it is an opportunity to test one's caliber in
withstanding privations, in braving blizzards, in conquering the fear of
rattlers and that greater fear of being alone on a seemingly limitless
prairie. It is also a chance to recognize in those sturdy men and women
of the West their big heartedness and clean mindedness. A girl too timid
to stay alone over night in a city apartment may feel a sense of safety
alone in her shack in the West that the civilized East would not
understand. It does not take long to realize that the old cow-boy
courtesy of protecting women holds good still. As a result of it all we
might say that besides gaining a new view point on life, besides the
moral strength attained in conquering that desire to return to the ease
of civilization, comes that mental and physical vigor which seems to be
inherent in the girl who has held down a claim for fourteen months and
who has successfully proved it up."

To take a place like this in the community such as homesteading
involves, requires the assumption of responsibility, and responsibility
always develops. Cases are mentioned where a young woman has been
strengthened morally by the evident necessity for rectitude. Young women
who have not before been interested in church work have been drawn into
it, for they saw that somebody must do this between the times when the
circuit preacher could come around.

A well-balanced judgment comes from Elinore Rupert Stewart, whose
homesteading experience has been detailed in a delightful book and whose
record of a working day has been shared with us in an earlier chapter.

To her homesteading offers one solution of poverty's problem; but she
adds, if the would-be homesteader is afraid of coyotes and work and
loneliness, she had better let ranching alone. Nevertheless, any woman
who can endure her own company, who can see the beauty in a sunset, who
loves growing things, and is willing to put in as mu