It seems strange to me that men will go to Alaska and contentedly freeze and dig all day in a mine--not of their own, but for wages--and not feel so greatly abused or unhappy; that they will swing an axe all day in a forest and live on baked beans and bread without feeling like martyrs; that they will go to sea and grub on hard tack and salt pork and fish without complaint and then will turn Anarchists on the same fare in the East. It seems strange too that these men keep strong and healthy, and that our ancestors kept strong and healthy on even a still simpler diet. Why, my father fought battles--and the mental strain must have been terrific--and did more actual labor every day in carrying a rifle and marching than I do in a week, and slept out doors under a blanket--all on a diet that the average tramp of to-day would spurn. He did this for four years and if the sanitary conditions had been decent would have returned well and strong as many a man did who didn't run afoul typhoid fever and malaria. Men who do such things have something in them that the men back East have lost. I call it the romantic spirit or the pioneer spirit and I say that a man who has it won't care whether he's living in Maine or California and that whatever the conditions are he will overcome them. I know that we three would have lived on almost rice alone as the Japanese do before we'd have cried quit. That was because we were tackling this problem not as Easterners but as Westerners; not as poor whites but as emigrants. Men on a ranch stand for worse things than we had and have less of a future to dream about. So I repeat that to my mind the house details don't count here for any more than they did in the lives of the original New England settlers, or the forty-niners, or those on homesteads or in Alaska to-day. However, I'll put them in and I'll take the month of May as an example--the first month after I was made foreman. It's fairer to give the items for a month. They are as follows: Oatmeal, .17 Corn meal, .10 About one tenth barrel flour, .65 Potatoes, .35 Rice, .08 Sugar, .40 White beans, .16 Pork, .20 Molasses, .10 Onions, .23 Lard, .50 Apples, .36 Soda, etc., .14 Soap, .20 Cornstarch, .10 Cocoa shells, .05 Eggs, .75 Butter, 1.12 Milk, 4.48 Meats, 1.60 Fish, .60 Oil, .20 Yeast cakes, .06 Macaroni, .09 Crackers, .06 Total $12.75 This makes an average of three dollars and nineteen cents a week. With a fluctuation of perhaps twenty-five cents either way Ruth maintained this pretty much throughout the year now. It fell off a little in the summer and increased a little in the winter. It's impossible to give any closer estimate than this. Even this month many things were used which were left over from the week preceding and, on the other hand, some things on this list like molasses and sugar and cornstarch went towards reducing the total of the month following.