When Jennie Took to Bed

Abstract

When Jennie took to bed years ago, Uncle Bill and Aunt Jennie were living comfortably in their South Dakota homestead farm home. Bill and Jennie were brother and sister. Bill was a farmer and gentleman. Neither was married. Their parents had emigrated from an area near Prague in eastern Europe to Dakota territory, where, through sheer willpower and common sense, sickness and injuries were accepted and treated with patience and prayer. Jennie accepted with no obvious reservations the responsibility of raising the orphaned children of her sister, who died while being operated on for what was apparently a ruptured appendix. One of the girls she raised was my mother. Jennie was a beautiful woman of quiet dignity. All who knew her instinctively accepted her as a person of authority. She had the ability to analyze problems and make correct decisions in a straightforward way. I suppose she could be referred