helping to pay for ploughs and reapers, brood-
sows, or steers to fatten.

One result of this family solidarity was that
the foreign farmers in our county were the first
to become prosperous. After the fathers were
out of debt, the daughters married the sons of
neighbors, -- usually of like nationality, -- and
the girls who once worked in Black Hawk
kitchens are today managing big farms and
fine families of their own; their children are
better off than the children of the town women
they used to serve.

I thought the attitude of the town people
toward these girls very stupid. If I told my
schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather
was a clergyman, and much respected in Nor-
way, they looked at me blankly. What did it
matter? All foreigners were ignorant people
who couldn't speak English. There was not a
man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence
or cultivation, much less the personal distinc-
tion, of Antonia's father. Yet people saw no
difference between her and the three Marys;
they were all Bohemians, all "hired girls."

I always knew I should live long enough to
see my country girls come into their own, and
I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black

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