A COUPLE OF BRAVE GIRLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 572, 21 March 1870, Page 3

A COUPLE OF BRAVE GIRLS.

The following is from an American paper : — In our rambles "up the Chippewa," a few days ago, we chanced upon a dusky, brownfaced girl ploughing out in a twenty-acre cornfield. She was " rigged "in a snuffcoloured "bloomer," with straw hat aad good number seren boots. There was no sham about her. She was evidently all girl, and working with a will. She had been in the field since early morning, taking long strides behind a spirited horse, with the line thrown across her shoulder, and both hands firmly at the plough. It was just " good fun," she said, to take care of twenty acres, and away she strode through the long rows •—turning corners, kicking over sods, and never a thought of rest or " whoa" till the dinner horn sounded across the field. On enquiry, we learned that our cornfield heroine was one of the two New Hampshire girls who emigrated with their parents to Eau Claire some dozen years ago. They had little means, but were of good working stock. They bargained for a quarter section of wild hind, and set about making a farm. There were no boys in the family. The girls were young, bright, healthy, and full of pluck and vigour. Their mother .dressed them in bloomers, and gave them their choice, indoor or out. From the start they took the place of boys ; they were not afraid of dust or sunshine ; they never complained; they never tired out ; they seldom missed a day from the earliest spring to the autumn. As they grew older, they grew tough and wiry, and were alike ready at handling teams, breaking in colts, making bridges, opening roads, fording creeks, clearing meadows, loading hay, binding grain, or mounting a straw stack. In good seasons they cut eighty tons of hay and eighty acrei of grain. In rainy seasons they had to bring out their hay by hand, carrying It on poles knee-deep, through sloughs and marshes. In winter they attended school, and took care of sixty head of cattle, drawing hay from the swamps in the coldest weather. They did their own trading and marketing, and could never be outwitted by any of the store chaps at Eau Claire. The girls are now eighteen and twenty years of age, and have done more farm work than any $wo boys in the country. j Their father, beginning with nothing, is now rich, with broad fields and thousands of ready stamps, mostly achieved through the grit and energy of his daughters. Daring the present season the girls have " let up " a little on their outdoor accomplishments, and

are^only cultivating twenty acres of corn for their own amusement. They have built them a spacious residence. They attend balls and" parties, go a trouting, drive their owa teams, and' occasionally give the boys a chance to show their pluck and gallantry. Of course guch girls are objects of excitement and interest in their neighbourhood. They are now right in their freshest bloom, with thoughts of love and romance beginning to steal about the back of neck and brains; and, what may seem as strange, they are neither coarse nor masculine in appearance, they are simply round, trim, sprightly, fullbreasted girls, with resolution in their eye, and plenty of good sense in their heads. It may be interesting to female politicians to know that these Chippewa valley girls never whine or declaim about their " rights " or "position." They saw rough work to be done— work most needed in our western country — and asking odds of nobody, they went in on their muscle and did it. They have not cackled at conventions. They have never sat with Miss Anthony or Lucy Stone Blackwell. They have fairly won a much higher seat among the queens of American industry. t