Miss Ring: part 4

by Betty Jane Wilson, Valley Falls Historical Society President
Information source: Yesteryears and the Valley Falls New Era

“It came upon us ‘like a thing in the night,’ and ‘twas then we enjoyed our first shake! Though we were getting more than our share of the agreeables of Kansas life,” Miss Ring continued to write in her column her 1858 Kansas recollections for the 1878 Valley Falls New Era.

“We would shake for at least three hours, and the remainder of the day, lay unconscious with a burning fever. And this thing continued, with but short intervals, until sometime in November, when the plague disease, the ague, was forced to ‘vacate the premises’ by King Quinine. It was not a pleasant sovereign, for he erected in our brain his wonderful machinery, setting in motion all manner of disagreeable roaring, buzzing, and rasping sounds (and to this day we have not been able to expel from our ears some kind of a humming machine).

“Nearly every family in town were (sic) shaking or had been shaken, and it was incomprehensible to me how people could speak of it with so much levity and indifference. They would exclaim with all the sang-froid imaginable — ‘Oh, it is nothing but the ague, you will be better when you stop shaking, or be quite ‘shut’ of it tomorrow!’ These, or similar remarks would often cause much merriment, but we could not see where the fun came in. We were truly thankful when we could have an interval of rest. One, having had a good lively old-fashioned shake, can appreciate all that can be said of it.

“Well do we recollect at one time in the month of September, when there could not be found enough well persons to care for the sick. All our own family were down with it. Our help succumbed and was taken home, leaving us dependent on our neighbor, a kind good woman,  . . . who became a victim and we were left alone for a day, with no one to give us a glass of water.

“Our sympathy was with the children. Little Willie would come up to our lounge, lay his little golden curly head and pale face by us, saying as plainly as his little chattering teeth would permit, ‘Oh, auntie, I’se sho shick.’ His dear little sister, Ida, was laying beside her mother, both suffering intensely, while the good man of the house, in his room above, was shaking fearfully. His audible breathing was  dreadful to hear, yet we thought perhaps is was right and just for him to suffer a little, for his many jokes and teasing propensities at our expense. We are sure he could not make sport of us for that day at least.
But, as we have said before, all things must have an end, so did the ague.

“We have given very minutely the facts in detail, as they occurred to us and for the reason that we would like to have people coming to this country at the present time, 1878, to just realize and understand the great change twenty years has produced. The hardships and privations then endured, 1858, by energetic and unflinching pioneers, can never be known or experienced by the emigrants now coming to Kansas for homes.”

Next, Miss Ring reviews outstanding events of 1858 and her solicitation to open a select school for the children of the village.

Dodie Bolz and Dee Bayless will be museum hosts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 17.