Letter 18950303

Leroy, Iowa
March 03, 1895
Sunday evening

Dear Brother & Sister,

I would much rather visit with you this evening than write to you. But it is to stormy (just imagine you live close.) We are having a real March blizzard snowing and blowing from the north. We are all tolerabley well. Bart has a boil on the side of his face. Charley & Clarence have just had the scarlet rash. We expect the other children to break out with it any time. But it is not bad unless they take cold. It has been a very hard winter for us & I guess everybody. We never had so much sickness in a winter before. Every since before Thanksgiving.  But it has not been very severe. We only had a doctor once. It has been colds, sore throats & sores. Three of the children are now losing finger nails from gatherings. I hope you will all be well when you get this. Martha you must take good care of yourself & if Elmer helps you good (which I hope he does) you will get stouter after while. I know you have a hard time now with two babies to care for. I know from experience. My first two seemed to be more trouble than all the rest & don’t let the hard times give you the blues to much. As long as you have enough to eat & wear to be comfortable. We think we have hard times but the people that have been west say we don’t know what hard times is. We just got a letter from All Davis. He is in Ok-- two years and he don’t know how they have lived trough this winter. They have had so little & could get no work he says. He knew people there that had only one meal a day & that bread & water. Things we have to sell are very cheap. Butter has been from 15 to 12 ½ cts. all winter. Eggs have reached 18 but are now 15 & I expect bt Saturday will be to 12. I have sold 45 lbs. of carpet rags in balls. For 21 lbs I got 8 1/3 cts & 8 for the rest. Hardly pays for the work. But I had the rags to spare & you know every little helps. Bart has been selling wood. It pays about as well as the rags. He cuts it and gets 50 cts. & a dollar a load. The dollar load they pile on as long as there is room for a stick. He has about all cut off our 80 acres & is cutting now on a twenty we bought this winter for pasture. It joins us on the west & has a good spring so we think we will always have plenty of water. We have to buy grain & will soon have to buy hay. Corn is 45 cts bu. & hay $10 a ton.. Potatoes are 80 cts per bu. I don’t know much about poultry & meats. We butch a hop & have had a good many rabbits & quails that we didn’t have to buy. When we eat rabbits we don’t think of them being worth 20 cts. a piece. Elmer as you have a nice home & good trade I advise you to stay where you are if you can possibley get along. Time will get better after while. We hope so any way. If we raise good crops Bart & I will come back to see you before many years & as times get better work will be plenty & you will soon be able to come & make us all a visit. Won’t that be nice. Oh how we will all enjoy good times again. Times are like everything else, we have to have some bad so we will appreciate the good. If we had stayed on a farm when we were doing well we would be better off now. But we thought we would go to town & have it easier for a while any way.

Put all our money in town property & five horses & when we got settled we worked harder than we ever had & managed close & couldn’t pay expenses. We got our money back for the property but the horses we have yet. The $12.00 one has not been out of the barn for a year, brings us in nothing & eats all the time & now we can’t sell him for $2.00. Though he as nice & good as ever. The other one we work. Now my advice to everyone when they have a home & a trade is keep it. Though it may be hard some times you know there is never clouds without sunshine & we couldn’t be Christians if we had no trials or troubles. Them that have the most hardships are generally the best Chris----. Elmer, you spoke about people not visiting. When we lived in town there was a family lived across the street that hardly spent a day alone. Relation & starangers it seemed like everybody went there. I thought they were imposed on. I had plenty of company but nothing compared with them. It would be very hard on Martha when she is not well to have Much company. It is better to have little than to much. You know how dissatisfied John Reitzel yoused to be with the neighborhood where they used to live. & now they have come back & bought as near their old place as they could get. We were up to see them last fall. They seemed perfectly contented. Grace graduates this spring in the Osceola school. She is the best scholar of her age that I know of. I expect you will think this letter is entirely to long for the little good there is in it. The boys have got Charley’s dresses. I don’t know what you will think of them. I had them get something for every day so he would get the good of them. My love to all, Lillie. Write soon.

I don’t know whether you can read Orace’s letter or not. He has made such a boch. I will send little Frank something some time after while.  Lillie