THE LADY OF THE SNOWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3181, 29 March 1911, Page 2

THE LADY OF THE SNOWS.

PEXALIES OF PRAIRIE LIFE. The prospective brides who rushed the agencies in, London when it was announced that 50.000 brides were waited .for Canadian farmers had probaby read the glowing literature published in such voluminous quantities about the Dominion ; but that there is a- tragic side to the picture is shown by a story related by Mr. John Lemmone who recently travelled through the country with Madame Melba’s concert party. At Brandon, in Manitoba, the visitors, driving out sight-seeing one day, were shown a handsome building, which had failed for its original purpose, a bays’ college, since the fanners so urgently needed the labor of their slc-ns on the land that- they could not send (them, to finish their education. The Government, taking over the college, devoted it to the purposes of a mental hospital, “and now,” continued Mr. Lemmone, “it is-filled with patients—none other than farmers’ wives who have become insane through the loneliness of the prairie life. While their husbands are away the poor women must remain at home. The nearest neighbors are miles distant, and for six months the place is a wilderness of snow and nothing is more terrible in its desolation than the prairie under snow. No wonder they go out of their minds-. Such is the tragedy of life out west in Canada. Far better ibr the immigrants to have ccine to Australia (says the “Sydney Daily Telegraph”),. even to take up domestic service! The Never Never country itself isn’t in it- with the horror of those snow-covered silences.