The Land of Lasses Few: A Tale of the Canadian Prairies

# "The Land of Lasses Few": A Tale of the Canadian Prairies

By Charles Fox. This serial opens in industrial Yorkshire, where schoolmistress Ruth Evans, despite her competence, security, and respectable position teaching infants at Ragington Church schools, feels stifled by monotony. Her friend Topsy, a milliner's assistant, has just lost employment for honest criticism of a customer's fashion choices, leaving her destitute. Ruth proposes an audacious escape: a year-long adventure abroad as traveling companions. Ruth's sister Jennie will assume her school post; her Uncle Jack in Canada's North-West Territories has invited them to his farm. Ruth persuades the reluctant Topsy to accept, planning departure from Liverpool within three weeks. The narrative establishes their journey's destination as the Canadian prairies, promising escape from grinding provincial English labor into adventure.