| OCR Text |
251 beginning to heal but there is an epidemic of measles which they fear may invade the family. Ellis needs $50 and will give a note to Murphy if he will arrange with someone for a loan until April. She wants it "right away" and urges them to "do it now," (her own emphasis) then softens her request by asking if it is too much to ask, then pours on a healing balm of love. A week later there is a house full of measles in Churchill, and "Olea's time coming up." In another ten days the new baby girl has a light case of measles and Ellis is "just as busy as [she] can be" affording her daughter some bed rest. Olea has been plagued for months with stomach trouble and she entered her confinement "completely worn out with work and anxiety." When they built their home, Olea and her husband had boys old enough to bale straw, but now in this new section of the family there are "four babies under five!" and Ellis says, with reference to her own duties, "It is not like concentrating on one object here." The leap in time from late February to mid May of 1921 has Ellis in Richfield pleading for letters. Her own are effusive with love, full of comments about information she has received relative to their own condition, and punctuated by reports on how her classes are going. Her stay of several months in Richfield will bridge the final illness and death (on July 23) of her beloved sister wife, Lizzie. There are half a dozen other letters in the next several months, and then the letter-writing saga ends with a short undated note |
