CHAPTER III.

ON THE FARM

The when and the how of our leaving Osceola to go back to the farm are blank in my memory. It must have been when I was about 12 or 13 years of age. My father did not like the criminal law practice, which then was the only practice there was any money in. He did like politics. The northern or prairie portion of St. Clair County was rapidly increasing in population and in wealth and was becoming dominant in political and financial power. He wanted to get settled and identified with this section. He did not give up his law firm or business, but he was nearer the most desirable clients on the farm than he was in Osceola. His health, I think, was a consideration, and also his love of his mother, who lived on Uncle Charles’ place. His desire to be near her was a factor.

My father bought the farm my Uncle Scott had first owned and reclaimed by his own hands mostly from the wild state of a prairie growth. Uncle Scott had sold it to my grandmother’s brother, H. A. Coffin, who came out from Pittsburgh to find the health-giving elements of air or water or food which my grandmother felt had made her family all well.

Harry A. Coffin had three sons, Atwood, Walter E., and Nathan. He had been a successful business man in Pittsburgh, and came with some real means. After a few years, because of the schools chiefly, he sold his farm and moved to Appleton City. Later he went to Des Moines, Iowa, and formed the Iowa Loan and Trust Company of that city, which became a strong and flourishing institution. Walter went into the barbed-wire manufacture, when the need of fencing the vast west became acute, and made a fortune. Nathan became a prominent attorney and is a wealthy and cultured man. He alone is living today.

My mother’s sister, Stella Sayles, a widow with two sons, Edward Dwight and William, had moved out from Summit County, Ohio, and had a farm in what was now known all over the county as the "Ohio neighborhood." Samuel Craig, Aunt Lizzie’s brother, also came.

So the Nesbit family must have been pleased with the country and must have sent back glowing accounts to induce these three families to join them.

The house on our farm was near the southeastern corner of the place and Uncle Charles Nesbit’s house was near the southwestern corner of his farm. Grandfather and Grandmother Nesbit had a house in the same yard as Uncle Charles, so we were neighbors. A road ran north and south between the farms, the two houses were not over a quarter of a mile apart, which was considered a short distance. My father had a tenant farmer for most of his land, but farmed some himself. He went in for stock raising, thinking it more profitable; he and Uncle Charles used to say: "Better let the corn walk to market—it brings more." So we had cattle and hogs and sheep. All the land for miles to the west and north of us was open range or prairie. Here, after a few more years’ growth, from early spring until late fall my job was to "herd the cattle."

I had an Indian pony named "Wink," and I used to go out early in the morning with the cattle, carrying my lunch bucket and some water. I did not get back until about sundown.

The days when herding cattle did not seem very long, or else I have no memory of such seeming. My pony would stand quietly for hours if I threw the reins over his head onto the ground. Sometimes he would nibble the grass. I would lie down in the shade of his body, and then I was, for perhaps two hours at a time, with Ivanhoe at the "Tournament," or with Daniel Boone preparing Boonesboro against attack by the redskins, or with Robinson Crusoe on his lonely island.

Then the marvelous clouds of those western skies—the vast thunderheads, the summer cumulus so swiftly changing shape, forming castles and mountains and palaces in the sky. It was easy to imagine many wonderful things.

The sunsets in that section are often marvelously beautiful and colorful— The storms, which at times could be seen sweeping across the prairie miles away, were fascinating. I did not know of Thoreau then, but I love him for saying, when he saw men felling beautiful trees, "Thank God, men can’t cut down the clouds."

The great numbers of meadowlarks, doves and other birds were entertaining, as was the drumming of the prairie chickens or grouse—often have I seen the cocks strutting and capering, proud as peacocks, before their demure mates. We used to call it "doing the Indian Dance." By lying low on the pony then the cattle drifted by a hillock where the prairie chickens were congregated, I could get very near them. These prairie chickens or painted grouse were in vast numbers over all the western states. From a book by a noted naturalist I quote:

"The prairie chicken has large patches of yellow skin on each side of the neck, ordinarily concealed by a tuft of feathers which can be raised. Beneath this patch is an air-sac connected with the respiratory system which can be inflated until the skin is distended to the size and form of half an orange.

"In the Spring, parties of the males congregate at dawn on knolls, perform various antics, and from time to time inflate and empty the air-sacs, thus producing a loud booming noise, audible for a mile in a quiet time.

"In a few days the females gather, when the cocks engage in fierce battles for the possession of mates, before whom they strut and swell with drooping wings and spreading tail, with their cupid’s wings elevated and air-sacs inflated almost to bursting until the conquest is complete. They are monogamous and nest in sheltered places. In 25 days the eggs hatch, and the young from 12 to 20, run at birth."

We used to set eggs found when mowing, under bantam hens and often hatched them out, but the young always got away when a few days old. The mother would not return to a disturbed nest.

The ants interested me long before I read "The Ant Peoples," by Ewers, and the burly bumblebees long before I read Maeterlink’s "Life of the Bee." So the day would pass in a varied entertainment by Nature.

Finally, the cattle would have their fill of grass, and I would drive them to water and then home to the yards or pens, as we called them. ^"Corral" is the literary name.

My pony "Wink" was not a sleepy pony. He was alert and intelligent. If, when lying on my back looking at God’s picture book in the sky, or away in high adventure through the windows of the printed page, I heard him stamp a forefoot or suddenly lift his head and shake his bridle, I knew just what was going on. A steer most likely was getting ready to make a break. Every steer went through the same motions and procedure. While grazing quietly along with the herd, he would stop and look up and off at some other herd, two or three miles away. Down would go his head and he would eat grass but move, step by step, out toward the edge of the herd, and toward the distant one. When he was well on the edge, he would stop eating and begin to walk away, slowly but steadily. This my pony would always notice. I would see the steer moving away, mount the pony and take after him, but by the time I got on the pony’s back, Mr. Steer would be trotting away. When he heard us coming he would break into a run, and then the chase began. It always angered the pony. He would lay back his ears and race across the prairie at his best clip. Two things I had learned to look out for: the pony putting his foot into a gopher hole and stumbling as he galloped, or when we had caught up with the steer and were on his flank—-at the instant the steer gave up he would turn abruptly and start back to the herd, often doing so before I had laid the long cattle whip on him, and as he turned or suddenly stopped, the pony would turn or stop with almost equal suddenness, and if not careful, I would go over his head, and land on the ground. I learned that a steer could stop when running his fastest more quickly than a horse. A horse can outrun any steer, a slow horse can outrun easily the fastest steer.

Another sport which used to come now and then was great fun, and that was when I scared up a rabbit, to take after it and run it down (if I could). The rabbits could outrun my pony for a short distance, say something less than a quarter of a mile, but they gave out long before the horse. By running the pony over them sometimes his hoof would strike Mr. Cottontail, or I could hit him with my long leather whip. I still have one of these cattle whips from St. Clair County as a souvenir. It has a short wooden handle, 10 to 12 inches long, and a braided leather lash 26 feet long, with a big buckskin cracker in the end which I could make pop like a pistol shot. Racing jack rabbits on really fast horses was a most thrilling sport—one that neither I nor my pony was up to, but the men who had fast horses often did it. A jack rabbit will give the best of horses all he wants in the way of a race. We measured the tracks of a jack rabbit in a dusty road once and found that he leaped over 14 feet each jump. The horse that can leap 20 feet is unusual, and the rabbit can make more leaps in a minute.

With heavy gloves we caught two of the baby rattlers and put them in a tin can and took them to the house. My mother insisted that the snakes be killed after a day or so. Rattlesnakes were plentiful but not popular in that section of the country.

I did not tell this story until some time after I was in Washington. It was considered by those to whom I told it something of a "stretcher." One friend told me he was sure snakes paid no attention whatever to their eggs or young after the eggs were laid, and that I ought to go and see one of the scientists at the Smithsonian Institution about it before I told such stories. Well, my answer to all this is that it happened just as I told it, and if science does not know that such things occur, it’s so much the worse for science.

I wrote to my brother, Walter, who was then out west, asking him if he recalled the incident, which had happened years before, and he said that he did remember it exactly the same as I did.

However, recently I came across a scientific paper which says there are several varieties of fish that are known to provide "an asylum or refuge for their young in their mouth," while they are still so small as to be very liable to be eaten by other fish.

Now, this is as much confirmation as I want, but I will not ask any scientist whether we found these little snakes in the belly of the big snake, for I know we did.

THE SEASONS

The majestic processions of the seasons was the most impressive thing about life on the farm.

"The Bread Basket of the Nation," as the great Mississippi Valley is very appropriately called, has a continental climate, great variations and great extremes in temperature. From 110^o in the shade in summer to 20^o below zero in winter. And often in a single day there will be a variation of 30 and even 40 and 50 degrees or more.

We lived in a shell of a house, as good or better than most of the houses, but built when material was high and when there was a great hurry to get any house at all. So we knew definitely when the weather changed without looking at a thermometer or reading about it in the papers.

Then, living far from town, we lived on the foods in season. We had green peas and beans and corn in summer. We had fresh beef or pork only in winter. The seasons thus brought definite changes in every respect and particular. The work and activities of the farm life were entirely different each season. The clothing we wore and the food we ate were all different. Spring had its special work, the plowing and planting. Summer the cultivating of the crops (chiefly corn), the haying, the reveling in green vegetables, watermelons, green corn, etc. The autumn meant corn cutting, fall plowing, threshing, hog-killing, hunting, and starting to school. Then everything was made snug for the coming of winter. We could not fly south like the great armies of wild geese and ducks we saw by day and heard by night, "honk-honking" as they flew south. Then came old Jack Frost, and after Christmas, as old Aunt Sally, our negro cook, used to say—

We did see old winter raid down over the prairies in high anger.

I recall one day at school in "Ohio No. 6." There had been a snow on the ground for some days, but when we started off in a group, as the Nesbit youngsters always did—Tressie, Sade, Clark, Walter and myself—to walk the mile and a quarter, carrying our lunch buckets, it wasn’t unpleasantly cold. At the noon recess it was much colder, and after school took up," the big stove in the middle of the schoolhouse seemed hungry for coal, but it was soon red-hot and we were all comfortable enough, when suddenly Uncle Charles Nesbit and another man came stamping in, all bundled up. They told the teacher "a Norther" was coming and she had better send the children home at once, those who lived near or to the southward, but that anyone who had to go northward in the face of the storm had better wait or stay with some neighbors. He had come in a big sled, with plenty of hay in the wagon bed, which was put on the runners. He piled all the children in who lived up our way, covered us with big blankets, and started. He had seen the gray-green light in the sky and heard the peculiar whistle of the north wind when a blizzard is bearing down, and had feared we would have a hard time getting back.

The wind was howling now, and the air was getting colder and colder moment by moment. The snow cut like tiny knife blades. The horses, though going home, hated to go, but put their heads down and plodded on.

When we got home the air was white as a thick fog with tiny particles of snow flying in every direction, east and west, north, south, up and down, and sideways, driven by a fury of wind unlike anything I had ever seen. The end of Uncle Charles’ nose was white as a piece of paper. He had muffled up his face, but had to see out, and the nose end was frozen. A vigorous rubbing with snow soon fixed it, though. The cattle herded in about the haystacks.

We did the chores and then sat indoors "feeding the fire" and listening to the fury of the wind as it shook the house and rattled every blind and loose piece. It got to 20^o below zero that night. Just five months from that day it was 110^o above zero in the shade, and about 125~ in the fields where we were cultivating corn and sweating like there never had been a piece of ice in the whole world.

These, and similar experiences, made winter, summer, spring and autumn names to me with very definite meanings. Undoubtedly modern refrigeration insulation and transportation bring us many luxuries. We have green vegetables from California, Florida, or Mexico all winter, but they also rob us of some things.

I recall how early we planted the garden, how carefully we tended it. With what relish we ate the first green vegetables, after having lived for five or six months on dried ones. And the hottest summer day was relieved by a cooled watermelon drawn up from the deep well where it had been cooling since it was picked before sun-up, with the cool night dew still on its bright green rind.

Then the very appearance of the whole world changed with each season. The fresh green of spring spread for miles about us, almost as we looked. Then came the wonderful prairie flowers and deeper green of summer, with the wheat turning to gold and the bare fields of April now deep green with the luxuriant growth of the most beautiful food plant in the world—modamin—Indian corn. Then the rich coloring of autumn—the deep brown spreading over the landscape as the green had six months before. Then the white mantle of winter.

The clouds, too, and the winds were all different. The vast piled-up cumulus or thunderheads of summer; the puff balls filling the sky in the autumn; the gray, low-hanging uniform winter clouds. Each season different.

It was a tornado section, or a cyclone section, as people then said, for they are not the same. We heard of them near us, mostly in Kansas, but I was never out in but one, and shall never forget it.

Grandfather Nesbit had taken me along on a trip in the two-horse wagon to Appleton City, ten miles away. It was a hot spring day. As we left Appleton after the buying of supplies was done, we remarked the heavy clouds in the southeast. Driving along home, the clouds spread over the sky, obscuring the sun. It was deathly still, not the faintest breath of air stirring. It was sultry—hot.

As he drove along smoking, I saw grandfather look now and again at the clouds. They were in great commotion, although there was no breath of air on the ground. Then the clouds seemed to separate just east of us and become lighter, a greenish color. Grandfather was urging the horses along, but the deathlike stillness and an oppressive, stifling atmosphere disturbed and frightened me. Suddenly, with a roar, we were enveloped in rain and mist and clouds and flying particles of grass and hay. The horses refused to go on, and put their heads down low, trying to turn their backs to the storm. It was a perfect fury. We were blinded by wind and water and deafened by noise. In a few, seconds it was gone, and the rain fell in a steady downpour. We started on, grand-father saying:

"That was a bad storm, Charles."

In half an hour the sun was out, but as we went on we found barns and fences scattered about, rails across the road, and in one place a large part of a haystack in the road, blown several hundred feet from what remained in the field. The track of the tornado was not very wide. We had been on the edge of it. When we got home they had had no rain or storm at all, but had seen the wicked-looking clouds to the west. Many people built cyclone cellars, but we never did, and none of our homes or buildings were ever in the path of a cyclone, though we saw them several times not many miles away.

Each season had its surprises and its peculiar beauties. I shall never forget a sleet storm. One winter, when a snow had lain on the ground some days, there began a fine, mistlike rain, which froze as it touched the ground. Soon every tree-twig, every dry blade of grass, every hedgerow and board and wire was a mass of clear ice. The snow had a coating of ice. The entire surface of the earth was ice. This icy crust was terrible on the horses’ feet, so all of us walked to a meeting at the church that night. As we came away the moon, Just past full, was rising, apparently at the end of our road home.

The road was lined on either side with Osage orange hedges. These long limbs had bent down towards each other with the icy weight. They all glittered like millions of diamonds and the snow reflected the moonlight so it was almost light as day. The air was cold and clear, and stretching away for miles was the moonlight-flooded blanket of snow and ice, glistening in the frosty air. As we walked along, Uncle Charles said "Stop." We did and all listened. Away to the north we heard the howl of a coyote or two—not another sound.

The beauty of that scene has always stayed vividly in my memory.

Children who do not live in the country are cheated. During the formative years of life they should be brought near to nature, not only for their better health and growth, but for a certain intellectual and moral vigor and basis. The English nation has been one of great ability and achievement, and I think no small part of it has been due to their country life. Riding and hunting and sports have kept her men strong and sane.

Sir Rider Haggard, the novelist, told me once that a careful study of 70,000 families who had left rural sections for the cities of England showed that 90 per cent were wiped out in four generations of city life. He put it this way:

"A young countryman gets some work in Manchester, Liverpool, or London. He and his wife move to the city. Their children look smarter, appear better, are better dressed, have city ways. Their children are lazy. The boys thin, narrow chested, pale; the girls without hips or breasts. Their children are slum dwellers, ineffective, generally diseased. They rarely reproduce. This is the history of our best Anglo-Saxon stock from rural England who go into the cities. Those who stay on the farms retain the old English vigor and stamina."

That was in 1897, when he was in Washington. City life from a health standpoint has vastly improved since then. But aside from mere physical vigor, there is so much one should know which the country life alone can impart.

DOMESTIC ANIMALS

Next to knowing the seasons, knowing about the domestic animals in an intimate and genuine way seems to me very important. The horse, the dog, the cow, the sheep, the pig, chickens, turkeys, geese, the cat, and the bee—does not Civilization owe to them more than to the machine?

On the farm I came to know these animals. The horse is of all my favorite. What an aid and benefit to man! We still measure our modern machines in horsepower. The horse is the unit and standard. The horse does not seem so affectionate or intimate, nor do some think him so intelligent as the dog, but he is vastly more useful. It is my opinion that horses are in mind and character superior to all other domestic animals. In Arabia, where they live in the tents with thefamilies, they are very affectionate and intelligent.

They seemed to me to know they were doing their share in making a new country. The "Pony Express" was the most ambitious development of horse transport. I think the horses understood and enjoyed their part in rushing the mails across a continent as much as the riders.

The Pony Express was started in 1860 to expedite the mail service to California. They were not ponies but race horses, or very fast horses. They ran ten to fourteen miles and a ridersuccessively rode three horses, covering 33 miles.

They reduced the time from St. Joseph, Missouri, to California twenty-four days. Their record trip from St. Joseph, Missouri, across the prairies, the desert, the Rocky Mountains and to California was 7 days and 17 hours. This was the delivery of President Lincoln’s Inaugural address.

On the farm when I was a boy the horse was our only source of power, except oxen, and they were too slow. Every person, every house, every plow, every wagon, every rail or board fence, in fact, everything except the land and the grass had been brought to that country by the patient power of the horse. In cold and in heat, in sunshine or rain, overloaded often, and underfed generally, working from daylight to dark, and often most of the night, the horse pulled man and his civilization westward across a continent. Beaten and jerked and whipped and spurred to the very limit of endurance, the horse served man, reproduced its kind, and got nothing but enough to live on. Without the horse man could not have made much progress. The West should build a monument to the horse.

Anthropologists are pretty generally agreed that the chief reason civilization and human progress developed so much faster in Asia and Europe was because the horse, the cow, and the chicken were native to these countries. Their domestication was a great step forward. They were aids and incentives to man’s progress, the importance of which ranks with the discovery of fire. Africa and the Americas lagged in human development far behind Asia and Europe. All horses in America were from European importations.

We had three pet horses on the farm and we all were fond of them. They did faithful work, but they were well cared for. "Selim" and "Bill", a team of big bays, my father bought from Uncle Scott, and "Wink", an Indian pony, Uncle Charles bought for my father. Selim was almost pure Morgan. Bill was part Kentucky racing stock. He always resented being harnessed to a wagon or a plow. He worked well but made up his mind that if he was to be harnessed he would not be ridden. No one ever rode Bill more than a moment or two at a time. He was docile and patient in plow or wagon or buggy work, but when anyone tried to ride him, Hell broke loose right then and there. Selim loved to be ridden by one, two, three, or four children. He had a better disposition than Bill, not so high strung, but just as clever. Selim could open our gates with his nose. He would sometimes tumble us children off when he thought we were riding him too much and then stop and turn his head and look at us and then let us lead him to a fence so we could climb on again. But we learned it was then time to go home or to the barn.

The ever-westward-moving covered wagon, with the dog always under it, and often a cow led behind it, was constantly to be seen along the roads.

An incident of a funeral comes to my mind. A wife had died in a thinly settled part of the prairie west of us. The neighbors stopped work to attend the funeral. There was no preacher to be had. She was buried late one afternoon on a hill near the little shack where they lived. When they were all ready a rough-looking older man among the neighbors stepped forward and said:

"Friends, it don’t seem right to me we should put this woman under the ground forever and no one say anything. They ain’t no preacher man and no lawyer and I ain’t no good at speaking, but~ it jest seems to me something ought to be said. We all knowed her and we all know her husband. We sure is sorry fer him, and his two little children. She was a good woman. She did right by all, and folks—she was just as faithful as a yaller dog under a wagon. You all know that’s God’s truth. I think that’s all. I just wanted to say how we all knowed her and what we thought of her. Now the buryin’ will go on."

There was real eloquence in that brief eulogy to those assembled neighbors. "As faithful as a yaller dog under a wagon!" Nobody in that country could think of anything more faithful. In storm and cold and heat, by day and by night, with little to eat or nothing, the dog was always faithful.

In intelligence I would rate the animals as follows: The horse, the dog, the pig, the cat, the cow, the sheep. Chickens haven’t any brains at all—not any—but they are very useful and on the farm were a source of fresh food all summer long.

We had no ice, no way of keeping fresh beef or pork during spring and summer and fall, but fried chicken, with some ham on the side, was good enough for anyone.

The pig, contrary to what many people think, is a very smart animal. I recall one big Berkshire brood sow we had on the farm. We named her "The Hairless Queen," for, like many pure-bred Berkshires, her hair was very scanty. She was most prolific, giving birth to nine or eleven pigs at a time; a good mother, taking excellent care of them; and evidently a good milk producer, for her pigs were always fat and healthy.

When suckling her big litters she would get very thin, for a brood of eleven consumed a lot of milk. So she was a voracious feeder. We fed her well. She was, as my father said, "a real money maker." Well, the ducks and chickens began to disappear one spring. My mother said a weasel must be about, but one day a lot of fresh feathers in the old pig’s pen told where one had gone. Then one day we saw her catch a duck and eat it. My mother indicted her, but father thought the ducks and chickens should keep away from her and found for the defendant. The men were set to making the pen tight. But this old pig would stand still beside her food until a chicken would fly over the fence to get it, and then when the chicken was busy eating, make a rush with open jaws, and the chicken was soon devoured. She got so cute at this game that a couple of years later she ate 36 ducks, the whole flock. Then my mother declared her outlaw and father gave in reluctantly, but mother said she must go or she would not set another hen, and that was that. So she was fattened up for her trip to the Chicago stockyards. She got very fat. Finally, as hogs were high, over 6 cents a pound liveweight, it was decided to haul the old girl off to Appleton City. She was put into a pen with a walk up to the wagon bed. She simply knew what was coming. She snorted and refused to eat, and tried to break the fence down. Getting her into the wagon was a fight and it took three or four of us to prod and whip and push her in. Then there was a great guessing as to what she would weigh. My grandfather said 480 pounds, my Uncle Charles 460, my father thought 450.

I went with him to Appleton City, Selim and Bill hitched to the wagon. When we got in town the stock buyers came out. Old Tom Nichols, with whom my father usually dealt, said, "Give you $6.60 a hundred, Frank. Hogs is sky high."

"All right," said my father.

"Well, let’s guess her off and save the scales fee," said Tom.

"I don’t know about that," said my father, "but you make a guess, and maybe I’ll take it."

"‘Well, she’s your hog," said my father.

Nichols was taken aback and said, "Frank, you know what she weighs."

"No," said my father, "I do not, but that guess suits me. Then Nichols, thinking he had stuck himself by guessing too much, paid the 50-cent fee and had her weighed. The stock scales weighed oniy in 5-pound notches. At 495 the beam went up, at 505 it went down, but at 500 pounds it vibrated up and down. It was a close guess.

So the "Hairless Queen" went on her way to swell the country’s output of lard, bacon, and hams.

One of our special pets was a lamb—"Bristo" we called him. He was an orphan and his coming to us had a history. Some man was driving about 3,000 sheep across into Kansas. It was early spring but it turned warm and the heavy fleece of the sheep made their going hard. Also, lambs were being born at the rate of as many as 100 a day. The man decided to stop somewhere and shear the sheep and let the wee lambs have a better chance. He had been told my father’s pens, yards, and outbuildings were the most available, and he had come galloping up to the house one morning. Arrangements were made, and that afternoon the great flock, raising a cloud of dust, came up the road. The young lambs couldn’t keep up and so all drifted to the rear. The very small ones were lifted into the wagons which followed the herd. He had two well—trained Scotch collie dogs and some men on horseback, three wagons carrying tents and supplies, and one fitted up as a cook’s outfit with a kitchen stove in the covered wagon and a stove pipe sticking out the canvas top. This was a novelty and greatly interested us.

As the sheep turned into our yards, there were several hundred leg-weary little lambs bleating plaintively, and a lot of very small ones in the wagons; they were too tired to walk at all. Then, what a running about and bleating as the anxious mothers were hunting their lost lambs! How a sheep could pick out her own from among hundreds of lambs which all looked just alike and just the same size was a mystery to us. They seemed to depend on the sense of smell. The lambs were all hungry and as they found their mothers all began suckling, butting the mothers’ udders furiously, and wagging their long tails in glee. It was all a most interesting sight to us.

Then they began shearing the sheep. The man had rented our empty corn cribs and barns to store the wool in until he could sell it and haul it away. He rode about the country, hiring all the men and boys he could to shear the sheep. Few of them knew how, but they were given lessons by his men, and trusting to "main strength and awkwardness," which proved a poor substitute for skill₃ they set to work. Many a sheep lost variously sized pieces of skin along with the wool, and a few lost their lives. On the third morning of the shearing, when I went out early to look at the sheep, I saw a lamb lying on top of its mother. She was stretched out on her side. I went closer and found she was dead. One of the green shearers had stuck the sharp blade of the shears into her guts. She had given up the struggle during the night and the lamb had climbed onto her and lay there.

It was, I suppose, a "humane death," for the people who talk about "humane warfare" and want to outlaw poison gas, do not think of outlawing the sticking of a bayonet into your enemy’s abdomen. It is assumed to be humane. But the mother ewe was dead, all right, and the lamb bleating for breakfast.

I went to the owner and told him, and he said so many ewes had two lambs to suckle that he didn’t know how to care for another one, and if I wanted the lamb to take it. I got some warm milk from a cow and he showed me how to put my little finger in the lamb’s mouth and then submerge its mouth in a pan of milk. The lamb, sucking on the finger by instinct, soon began to get the milk and in a few days learned to drink by itself.

The lamb grew rapidly. We kept him in the woodshed, and he became a great pet, very frisky and playful, and never seemed to miss the thousands of sheep when they moved on.

He used to race after us every time we went out of doors. One of our constant jobs was going to the barn for corncobs to burn in the stove. They made a hot, quick fire, but they were
soon consumed, and the call for another basket of cobs from the kitchen seemed to us very frequent. It was quite a ways to the barn, which had been put far enough away to prevent
both it and the house burning if one got on fire. Bristo would race after us. It was great fun to outrun him, as we could for a few weeks; but as he grew he could soon outrun us.

When he would see us come out the door with a basket he would start on the run for the barn, and when we got there he would be standing in the barn door facing us, and I am sure he was smiling and laughing that he could outrun us. He was always anxious to get into the house and often managed to dodge in when a door was open. Then he would race through the lower floor, into my mother’s bedroom, and jump up on the bed, where he would stand serenely and supremely happy till carried out.

Besides the domestic animals we became familiar with the wild life of the section, especially birds. The quail, or "Bob-white," were plentiful. Prairie chickens or grouse were abundant, but did not come as near our houses as the quail. The yellow-breasted meadowlarks were in vast numbers. Doves were plentiful. Bluejays soon came to the planted orchards and hedgerows. The cat bird, the brown thrush and, most admired of all, the mocking bird, that matchless songster. I have seen them on bright moonlight nights sitting on the tiptop of a tree singing with all possible enthusiasm, leap up and fly into the air fifty or a hundred feet in sheer ecstacy, singing all the while, and return to perch on the identical spot.

In the fall we saw the vast flocks of wild geese and ducks flying southward, the geese always in a flying formation like a V pointed south. They stopped to refresh themselves in the ponds and in our corn fields, and we took toll of enough to eat. I recall going duck hunting one frosty fall day with my cousin, Will Sayles, who was the most successful and the most persistent hunter of the neighborhood. We started about 3 p. m., and walked down a creek or swale, with its series of ponds or waterholes. In several of them he found ducks. I carried a gun and he one, but I was not old enough then to shoot. I would creep up with him slowly and cautiously till near the pond. We could hear the ducks quacking and splashing. He would fire the two barrels of his gun almost simultaneously, then reach for the gun I carried and generally get two more before the flock could all get out of range. We brought home sixteen fine Mallards that evening and got home for supper, but I was one very tired lad, for the ducks made a heavy load and seemed to grow heavier every step of the three miles or more we had to walk, after the excitement of the shooting was over.

Crows were abundant but very wary and gun shy, and the open prairie country gave them great protection. Then the landscape was never without its soaring buzzards. To me as a boy they were always interesting. They seemed to fly for hours and hours without effort. They still seem to me to be the most perfect fliers of all, unless it be seagulls.

With so many cattle and other animals on the range, the buzzards were always well fed by those dying from accident or disease, and they performed a useful service as scavengers. They are birds, however, appearing to best advantage at a distance, exceedingly unlovely when seen close at hand. I have seen them standing about a sick or stricken animal waiting until it could not defend itself to attack, and have dashed into a circle of them standing so about a stricken steer or cow way out on the range, and slashed at them with my long cattle whip, but their great wings saved them from any serious chastisement. They begin picking at the eyes of dying animals before they are really dead. They are a cruel, dirty lot.

Rabbits were abundant and made fine food in winter.

But life had its worries and hardships, hard even for the enthusiasm of young and happy people to endure.

The vast plains west of the Mississippi had lain for centuries and centuries undisturbed. They seemed to resent the violation of their repose by the railroad, the plow, the harrow, and the reaper. All kinds of plagues seemed to be loosed on the invading settlers. Chills and fever, malaria, plagues of grasshoppers, and plagues of chinch bugs, black flies, horse flies, gnats and ticks—how these and others tortured the white settlers newly come into the land.

The Indians had roamed the plans as natives and as much a part of them as the quail or rabbits or the buffalo or plover. The centuries-old sod was not disturbed.

The same vast arching sky, the lazy floating summer clouds, the northern storms in winter, the fresh green of early spring, the brilliant wild flowers of early summer, the panorama of the seasons, the brilliant sparkling stars of winter’s frosty nights, the white mantle of snow—these had passed over this vast landscape century after century with no shock or change other than their natural variety.

Then came the white man. He dug for coal. He sank wells and he drove his iron plowshares into the very skin and flesh of the smiling, friendly land. He introduced strange new plants and planted unknown trees. The old familiar animals, which for generation after generation had been born, lived and returned again to the bosom of this earth, he ruthlessly slaughtered, and he introduced new and strange animals which followed his will and did his bidding instead of living in their own happy fashion.

The earth resented it. In her own way she struck back at the intruder. The great plague of grasshoppers or locusts I well remember. One mid-summer day I was visiting Grandmother and Grandfather Nesbit. We were talking of a strange event of a few days before when a prairie hen chased by a hawk, flying low and fast, had driven head-on into the side of their little house. It made a terrible resounding noise and they found it with nearly all its bones broken—killed instantly.

I liked visiting Grandmother Nesbit much better than working in the garden, and my father’s love for his mother, I had learned, made a statement that I had been "at grandmother’s" a valid excuse for any neglect of the potato patch or the garden.

We saw some chickens resting in the shade of some plum bushes suddenly dart out and pick up something to eat. Then they ran on out, picking at something, until all the chickens were in a kind of frenzy of foraging over the grass of the yard. Going out to investigate, grandfather found that grasshoppers were falling out of the sky. They were exhausted and an easy prey for the fat, waddling hens. Then some fell on the very doorstep, and looking up, we could see a vast cloud of them flying south and east. By standing in the shadow of the house and looking up into the sunlit sky, they could be seen by the millions. They began to fall or light by the hundreds of thousands, and they began to eat every green, growing plant in the whole country. The corn, the gardens, the fruit trees were stripped bare of every vestige of green leaf in a comparatively few hours. Yet on they came—millions and millions of them, the flights of them so multitudinous as to appear like a cloud, the sun being darkened as though a fog were overspreading it. They stripped everything green except the native prairie grass. This they did not touch, so our cattle and horses did not suffer much during the summer. But the people all went on "dry feed."

Many years later, telling of this grasshopper visitation in the Cosmos Club at Washington, Doctor L. O. Howard, the great Entomologist of the Agriculture Department, was among the group.

"I am just writing about those grasshoppers," said he, "and about a similar plague of Algerian locusts which devastated southern France, flying clear across the Mediterranean Sea, and a very curious thing was discovered in France. The chickens and turkeys devoured great quantities of the locusts. The French Government, in trying to destroy the pests, sent some of the army with flame-throwing devices. In the morning, when cold, the hoppers were loggy and slow and great numbers were killed by the flame-throwers. The chickens and turkeys ate the roasted carcasses and after that would not eat the live ones. They liked the cooked ones better."

Dr. Howard I remember from the year 1886; he was a young scientist in the Department then, and my father was a great friend of his and an admirer of both him and Doctor Wiley, the man who later became famous as a pure food expert.

Another plague the disturbed earth let loose on the newcomers was that of literally billions of chinch bugs. They were a tiny bug, not much larger than the head of a pin, almost red in color when young, later black and white. They swarmed over the ground in incredible numbers and attacked the growing wheat, corn, and oats. They simply destroyed its vitality. They moved on the ground only and made a mile or two a day. How they could travel that far was a mystery.

The farmers tried in all kinds of ways to fight them but no success attended their efforts. Ditches were dug along our fields on the side from which the invasion was coming, and then, as these little bugs fell into it and could not get up the sides easily, with two horses a big log was drawn back and forth along the half-mile ditch. It killed and crushed millions but made no impression on the billions that were always marching on. When crushed they gave out a stinking smell out of all proportion to their size, and the smell was exactly that of a crushed bedbug. This, I fancy, accounted for the name "chinch bug," which was the only name I ever heard them called, "chinch" being the usual name for a bedbug in the southwestern part of Missouri, anyway.

Looking up these same little bugs in the Encyclopedia I find:

"Chinch bug, the popular name of certain fetid American insects of the family Lygaeidae Genus Pahyparochromus, resembling the bedbug, very destructive to wheat, maize, etc. In Southern and Western States.

Another plague the violated sod visited on the pioneers was chills and fever, or the ague, or malaria. It was universal. Whiskey and quinine was a dose taken almost as regularly as meals at certain seasons. It was blamed on turning the sod. There may have been mosquitoes, but I do not remember any.

I have seen strong, hardy, healthy farm hands come in from the field, go to bed with a raging fever, and later shake so the bed would rattle and actually move on the casters, and in a few weeks they would be pale and washed-out looking and "peaked," as they said.

But these afflictions were met with courage and were not of such long duration. The earth was on the whole kindly, big crops were the rule, and good health predominated.

It was a wonderful place and time to live. The Nesbits in St. Clair enjoyed life—it was sweet to them. They were part of a mighty movement. They were building; they were "subduing the earth." They were honest and had ideals, and these two qualities make life sweet and worth while. "Duty done is the soul’s fireside." By its radiant glow they rested in the deepening twilight of each day; and they had love and its companionship.

Each of the three boys was in love with his wife, and the wives did their full share of work, if not more. The supreme ‘bliss of this life, Emerson says, is realized by "four feet on the fender." Each man shared the trials and triumphs of life with a woman he loved.

There is in history no known record of any migration of human beings in any wise comparable to that which carried the Americans from the seaboard over the Allegheny Mountains, across the wide expanse of the alluvial plains of the Mississippi Valley, across the Rocky Mountains, and to the Pacific Coast. The migrations westward of the Greeks and their colonization about the Mediterranean Sea took centuries. All other migrations of the human race have moved slowly. By comparison the migration of the Americans across this great continent was practically instantaneous.

The fundamental economic changes involved in this movement were practically without significance to contemporary observers, but they were destined to give an entirely new direction to American political life.

In these great western states, as Beard points out, there "existed a type of economic society such as had never before appeared in the history of the world, and can never exist again, at least on a large scale." They were settled by hardy and restless pioneers, who crossed the mountains, cut down the forests, built their log cabins, and founded homes. In the possession of this world’s goods they were for the most part substantially equal. It was easy to acquire land, and any thrifty and industrious pioneer with his family could readily secure the comforts of a rude but healthful and independent life. In the cabins of these pioneers were developed political ideas fundamentally different from those entertained by the rich merchants of the East, or the aristocratic landlords in their manors along the Hudson. Here in the West there existed substantial economic equality, and it seemed at last that the leveling theories of Jefferson were being realized on a large scale.

They were individualists but they were at heart and fundamentally democratic to the last degree. The West has not yet evolved beyond that spirit of fraternity.

This aspiring attitude, universal throughout our land, has stimulated invention, manufacture and transportation. In no country at any time in the world’s history have so many people enjoyed the comforts, conveniences and luxuries of life as in America. The great contribution the United States has made to civilization has been the multiplication of needful or useful things, the production of creature comforts, and this followed as a natural outgrowth the elevated and enthusiastic democratic sentiment. The American pioneers and revolutionists escaping from the overlords carried the dream of the Jewish people oppressed in Egypt several degrees further. The Old Testament ideal was "Every man under his own vine and fig tree, with none to molest or make him afraid." The American ideal was "Every man in his palace," and it was therefore natural that in the developing of American law every man’s house was considered his castle.

American democracy never proposed to level down, it had no such thought. Its dream was of a universal elevation of all men to their true and rightful place as human beings, equality of opportunity and fair and full rewards for thrift, industry, and intelligence.

If this great nation fails of fulfilling the dream of its founders and of the mass of plain, honest citizens, it will not be because the farmers failed. We hear nowadays of Empire Builders, but the greater men have meant to build a great Democracy.

If America becomes an Empire instead of a Republic, let it not be the fault of any of our family.

When a boy has a dream come true or experiences the realization of an ideal, it is a great event in his life. Well, less than a year after we moved on to the farm, that was my good fortune.

I knew in my heart of hearts that somewhere in the world was a man who really appreciated the wonders of a circus, who realized the vast entertainment characteristic of a circus, and who also understood the very great educational value and the moral and intellectual strength which a proper approach and faithful attendance on the circus could and would impart.

Circuses came to Osceola, but they must have been shabby and poor, for it was a long, hard road from anywhere. Yet they drew a big crowd. I did not hold it against my father that he never seemed to want to go or to have me go. I just thought of it as if he were deaf to good music or colorblind. He was always busy, for Circus Day brought everyone to town, and he had clients in his office all day. Also, my mother was busy getting meals for the clients and friends he invited to dinner and to supper, so I just couldn’t go. But I had long studied the billboards. I knew that in the circus one could see "the blood-sweating Behemoth of Holy Writ" and other wonders. I always saw the parade, the golden wagons, the clowns all painted up, and the cages, but I do not recall that I ever got inside a tent in Osceola except once when Grandfather Nesbit took Tressie and me and then took us home before the show had hardly started, when a fight broke out and "shooting irons were drawn. Later a man was shot, though not fatally, before the fight ended.

But one May morning about 3 :30, my mother woke up my brother and myself and said that Mr. Dole wanted us to go with them to Appleton City to see Barnum’s Circus. I think we failed to get all our clothes on in our haste, and we started running for Mr. Dole’s house a quarter of a mile away with some bread and meat sandwiches in our hands.

It seems Mr. Dole, who was a tenant, working most of the farm on shares, had come down about 9 o’clock the night before to ask us, but we were asleep and our parents had said we would go. I shrewdly suspect Dole thought asking us might prevent any feeling on my father’s part that such a fine day should be used in cultivating the corn, sadly enough in need of it, rather than in going to a circus. But it was one of the red-letter days in my life, never to be forgotten, and my admiration for Mr. Dole remains fresh yet.

The Doles were all ready and we were off by daybreak. The horses were urged along at their best, and just as the great red sun rose above the horizon, we were driving into the outskirts of Appleton City.

Mr. Dole found a hitching place behind our grocer’s store, the horses were put to their feed box on the rear of the wagon, the baskets of food carefully covered up so dogs couldn’t disturb them (there was no fear people would touch anything), and we were off and just in time to see the first horses and wagons unloaded from the special train of "Barnum’s World Renowned Menagerie, Circus and Hippodrome."

We saw the tents put up, laid out on the ground first, and the pegs driven, the poles put up, and the vast canvas stretched. Then we saw the cooks getting breakfast and then all the horses being fed. The farmers inspected the horses carefully with due deliberation. It was a lesson to me. From the great Clydesdales and Percherons to the Shetland ponies, the race horses, the Morgans, the Pintos, those of Kentucky and those of Virginia strain were examined, and the calico horses and trick mules. The men discussed their points and qualities.

We saw the genuine Arabian steeds, fresh from the Arabian desert, white as milk, even their nostrils white.

Well, at length it was time to go and get something to eat, after three hours or more intensive study of the circus horses, and to get ready for the street parade. We got some fried chicken and corn bread, but this was just a morning "snack." About 11:30 the street parade took place. As the town had only 700 or 800 population it did not take very long. But about 2,000 people were in town that day and the parade covered all the streets of the city, some of them twice, bands playing, golden wagons, a cavalcade of knights in shining armor and ladies in gorgeous gowns, the like of which I had never seen before, nor ever will again. The big band wagon was drawn by 16 horses—8 teams—and the proudest man in the world, I reckon, was that driver. Certainly he was the most envied. The reins made a sheaf apparently as big as a bundle of wheat, but how he could handle them! He swung around corners like the greatest of artists in his line.

Then we went for dinner. Hot coffee was furnished free by the grocery store—Arbuckle’s ‘Sarasota.’ He made it in a big boiler on an open fire just back of his store. We had fried chicken, roast chicken, roast ham, white bread and butter, cornbread and jelly, three or four kinds of pie—plenty of each. Some neighbors joined in, bringing their baskets over, a table of boards was set up and the women kept urging everyone to "eat hearty," which, in the case of my brother and myself, was an unnecessary admonition.

One of the heroes of that dinner was a young man who had seen the show two days before, at Sedalia, Missouri. He had ridden the 60 miles there and 60 back. He told us about a lot of things we were to see by all means. He said to watch the ticket seller, that he was the fastest man making change in the world, that he could count out the exact change for any sized bill so quick you couldn’t see him do it, and said, "By cracky, I watched him a whole half hour and he never once made a mistake." Counting money or making change was not a frequent operation with a farmer and it took time and care.

We soon saw the famous ticket seller in action. He was a fat man and baldheaded. We got close to the ticket wagon, a gorgeous affair in red and blue and gold, before it opened. He came deliberately, with a satchel in his hand, smoking a fragrant cigar with a gold band around it, unlocked the door and got in, raised the top half of the end of the wagon, laid a shining silverplated revolver within easy reach beside him, took off his hat and coat, rolled up his sleeves, and was ready to go. And how he could sell tickets—and make change! About all he said was "How many ?" and "Drop your money, for the purchasers held on to their bills. We watched him some time and then passed into the Big Tent. I then for the first time saw lions, tigers, elephants, kangaroos, ostriches, camels, monkeys, and all kinds of animals. We spent a full hour going the rounds of the menagerie, and then passed into the circus tent, where we saw the unbelievable feats of daring and skill, the trained elephants and seals, the Roman chariot races, etc., etc.

We stayed to the concert, and then took in some of the sideshows. The snake charmer, the Russian giant, and a man who was an indigo-blue color made the greatest impression on me.

As the sun was getting low, we had some more food and started home. It was a glorious day. Tired but happy, we got to bed and slept like logs for the next eleven or twelve hours.

The circus had its after-results. We explained it all to Tress and Sade and Clark. Clark, being a boy, was more appreciative and enthusiastic, so we staged a circus over at our barn. My father had bought a thoroughbred Durham bull calf, and he seemed to us to just naturally want to perform. So, after we had tried some bareback riding on old Selim and on Wink, my pony, we brought the calf into it. We had a rope lariat and finally got it over his head, but he jumped through its large noose and it tightened between his forelegs and his hind legs about his body. As we pulled and he ran, it drew tight about his loin, and he let out a bellow which showed that in voice, at least, he was a descendant of the Bulls of Bashan. Then the rope got caught in the boards of the fence and he became frantic as the rope cut into his belly.

My father came running out at the furious bawling and bellowing he heard. He cut the rope and released the bull, and he seemed to think it was time for him to join the circus. He at once assumed the position of Ring Master. He sent Clark home, and, finding a nice apple tree sprout handy, he had my brother and myself do a song and dance we hadn’t really thought of as being on the program.

That ended our circus performance for that day.

GOING VISITING

Modern people can have no conception of what it meant to "go visiting" in the pioneer days of the West, especially on the vast prairies of the Mississippi Valley.

All about the isolated homes brooded the vast lonesomeness of sky and air and earth, where there seems to be more of each than in any other part of the world, unless it be the similar vast plains or steppes of Russia. There were only two visiting seasons—in mid-summer, after the wheat and oats were cut and in stack and after the corn had been "laid by," that is, after it had been cultivated for the last time and was to be left now to the good fortune of the weather, for if enough rain fell a big crop was certain. But this was the hot season and you only visited intimate friends and expected only a family dinner. It was too hot for the women to cook much or make any real preparations for company. But armed with a palm leaf or turkey-feather fan to keep the flies away, you could sit for hours in the shade and talk to your more intimate friends, driving home in the cooling evening and scanning the sunset to see if there were any promise of the inestimable boon of rain.

But the real visiting season was in the fall. The corn in the shock; the apples hung red on the trees, the autumn browns and silver tones lit up here and there with yellow or scarlet had replaced the uniform green of the landscape. The great stacks of hay and oats and straw gave to every homestead that appearance of ample supplies for the winter. As one old farmer neighbor said:

"I like the fall; some way everything looks so full and plenty."

The long season of autumn was a season of joy and recreation after six months’ hard work.

I recall a typical "visit." The Sunday before, at church the Van Buskirks had invited both our families over to dinner the following Thursday. There were no telephones, no rural mail delivery or radio, no automobiles, no theatres, no movies-nothing but nature and ourselves. So it was a week of anticipation and preparation on theirs.

Wednesday evening the feed for the cattle and stock on Thursday was drawn near the pens. We men all industriously shined our boots and cleaned up generally. Thursday morning, after the feeding, the milking and the other "chores" were done, the horses were hitched up to the big wagon. The wagon had been washed and cleaned, the harness oiled, and the buckles and metal parts polished. It would not do to "go visiting" looking below our best. Then everyone put on their "very best clothes."

We all got in the wagon, we youngsters sitting on hay which filled the bed, the older people sitting on the spring seats, for we had the latest model in Studebaker wagons. Then came the drive of several miles in the crisp fall air and glorious sunshine.

About 11 o’clock we came to Van Buskirk’s generous farm. He was a thrifty and successful farmer, about one-half the size of his wife, but strong and active.

We are greeted, as we drive up, by Mr. and Mrs. Van Buskirk with all the children standing shyly in the background. We are introduced:

And we meet Sally and Jane and Edward and William. We all go into the house and the party is on.

The men go to the barn and put the teams up, inspect the hay and grain stacks, examine the corn as to its quality, etc., look at the cattle and horses, examine the latest plow or mower or patented harrow or cultivator. The children are very shy. They do not know what to say or what to do, but the elders wisely let them alone. The women all insist on helping get things ready for dinner, but the woman of the house declares there is no need. They do all get out to the dining-room and kitchen. The men have to be called. They always must seem more interested in the machinery and the stock than in eating. This is etiquette. But laggingly they come, wash their hands and all are invited to the dining-room. Each is assigned a place, sixteen in all.

Before being seated the Blessing is asked. Uncle Charles Nesbit is generally called on for this. His prayers are the best of any layman. They were from an old Presbyterian Book of Prayers. When he got to "and bless these evidences of Thy care and bounty to the use of our bodies and us to Thy Service," I knew the Amen was next.

As the company was getting seated, Van Buskirk, looking over the long table literally groaning under the abundance of food, would say:

"Well, Mary, seein’ we have company today, I do think you might have had something a little extra for them to eat."

In front of the host was a 20-pound turkey, brown and hot, in front of Uncle Charles a big roast ham, covered with brown sugar and stuck full of cloves, in front of my father a big cold roast of beef. Then there was head cheese, souse, pressed chicken, six or eight kinds of jelly and preserves, peach and plum butter, etc., pickles and pickled watermelon rind, mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, boiled cabbage, corn pudding, cold bread, hot biscuit, coffee. The plates were passed to and fro, for everyone was seated at the table, even the neighbor’s daughter, who had been hired to help. The western democracy of that day and section would not have understood anyone "waiting on table." This passing plates for a little of this or that kept us from eating too fast. We all had plenty of time to eat. When the table of food had been attacked time and again, the dessert was served from a side-table. Custard pies, apples pies, pumpkin pies, and mince pie. With many protests that they "couldn’t eat a bite more," nevertheless many of the pies did disappear under the pleadings of Mrs. Van Buskirk.

Then they all went into the sitting room and sat about and talked for half an hour or so. The younger children were put on beds upstairs for a nap.

There were many compliments to Mrs. Van Buskirk on her wonderful cooking. By 3 or 3:30 p.m., the wagon was brought out and we loaded up to drive home. Then there were "goodbyes." The children "must come over soon."

What a day! Next week we would go visiting to some other family or some family would come to visit us. These visits made and cemented friendships, they knit the community together. They were great fun—a splendid recreation. The food was home-grown, plentiful, and well cooked. We had no celery, cranberries, or olives, nor in the winter any fresh fruit but apples, but we lived well.

No soup. Real food was put on the table. At no feast or meal did soup appear, although sometimes there was a stew for the family only. Once the wife of a neighbor had gone back East for a six-months visit. When she returned, she brought some new ideas, and on our first "visit" there she had soup.

"Putting on the agony" was a common slang phrase, which was spread over the country by a popular song, the refrain of which ran:

It was the same western training in a cowboy which made him balk at soup when a wealthy man brought him East with him on a trip. The eastern man had gone onto a ranch for his health, became interested in the young fellow, and insisted on his returning East with him for a visit and to see New York City. This eastern man was fond of soup and on the way back ordered it for luncheon and dinner every day. He pressed the cowboy to eat it, but he didn’t like it at all, so the cowboy got to asking when it was served:

"Oxtail soup," said his host.

Dropping his spoon, the cowboy said in his drawl:

"Goin’ back a good ways for soup, ain’t it?"

The western pioneers wanted food, good food, plenty of it. I recall years later being on a business trip to Arkansas and stopping in a small town. A bright young woman asked my wishes, and I said:

"What have you today that’s good to eat?"

She said: "Fried fresh catfish, corn bread, buttermilk, strawberries and cream, and cake."

And they were good, all of them, and native to the locality.

Plain, honest American names. No Frenchified menus went out West.

On one of these visiting trips a tragedy occurred. It was not so serious as some tragedies, but it was bad enough at the time, certainly for one member of the family.

We youngsters were all crowded in the hay-filled wagon bed. The sun shone brightly after a rain, the air was clear, and all were in fine humor. There were almost no bridges or culverts in that country, and where a road crossed a creek or swale and any water stood, the wagons wore a deeper and deeper hole in the soft soil. This was circumvented by changing the road from time to time above or below this deepened hole. Well, we came to one of these mud holes. The horses had learned from experience that the faster they went down on one side the easier it was to get up on the other, so they started across with a will. The hole was deeper than it appeared, and as the black wheels hit the lowest place, Sade went out over the tail board and landed head down in the mud. Uncle Charles stopped the team in response to a frantic chorus of shrieks from the rest of us, and Sade was rescued, but very much mussed up and exceedingly muddy. As all the handkerchiefs were being used, and some of the hay, in getting the mud out of Sade’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, as soon as she could, speak, with a most woebegone and despairing expression, she asked:

"Did it spoil my new turban?"

The small turban hats were then all the style and it was the first time she had worn hers. She was assured it would be all right, "The mud," Uncle Charles said, "being like the old woman‘s grease, it would rub off better when dry."

BOYS FUN

Nowhere else do I believe it possible for a boy to enjoy life as much as on a farm. There are always so many new and different and interesting things happening. Once a terrific northeast summer storm drove a lot of cattle from the range down to our farm. They crashed the fence and were seen, enjoying themselves hugely, after the rain ceased, in our corn field, but playing havoc with the crop prospect. They were from some ways off, and of a brand we did not know. We drove them to the barnyards, to be held until the owners should come for them. The ground was soaking wet and made a very slippery mud. There were no stones in that soil. So the Dole boys and Clark joined Walter and myself and a colored boy, Wyatt Tolson, and we began having fun with the strange cattle. We would dash into the pen and, as we said, tail a steer." That is, we would run up one by one, to a bunch of steers, seize one by the tail, set our knees stiff, and slide over the soft, slippery ground on our bare feet. The cattle were frightened and milling around, and we were yelling and laughing and having a grand time. There was just enough danger in it to make it thrilling sport. While we did not realize fully the danger—boys never do—we realized that a kick from a steer or a slip might mean getting trampled, or that one of the animals might try his horns. But the game was going fast and furious when we heard a sound like a crash of thunder.

The cattle, in their excitement, had broken down the fine new board fence my father had recently put up at considerable expense, and were out on the road and on their way. In rushing through and over the break three or four panels were splintered by their frantic hoofs.

So a good sound application of "strap oil" by father ended that bit of fun, but it was thrilling while it went on. To have hold of a frantic steer’s tail and slide around the yard with the whole herd galloping along, yelling yourself and the other boys yelling, was a thrilling experience.

PRAIRIE GRASS

The prairie sod furnished material for houses, the tall stems furnished fuel for many a family, and in the early days it was the almost universal feed for cattle and sheep.

The wild game fled before a prairie fire, deer, buffalo, and rabbits on foot, the prairie chickens, quail, and other birds flying. The terror of a great prairie fire to those in it or threatened by it was simply awful. They swept down on our farms several times, but by back-firing the fences were saved, and the houses were always protected by the plowed fields. But the smoke sometimes was thick as a fog and made the eyes and nose smart and water.

TUMBLE WEEDS

The tumbleweeds sometimes on fire bounded along, great balls of flame, setting fire wherever they touched. The turnbleweeds, as we called them, were one of the distinct menaces of the prairies in the early days. Not as a menace to be compared to cyclones or to a "norther," but you always had to watch out for them in the fall. They were a big plant which grew in the shape of a gigantic ball. The outer stems were, when it ripened in the fall, like ivory, and they curved upward and in toward the crown of the plant like the ribs of a carcass of a cow or horse. The ball was made almost solid by many smaller branches inside, all interlaced. The plant when dry was very light. The roots would give way and a high wind would send this great tumbleweed rolling and bouncing over the prairies for miles. If one got onto a road with a wind behind it, it seemed to simply shout in glee as it bounded along. If your horses were going towards it, let me tell you, it was time to put on the brakes and wrap the lines around your hands and brace yourself, for no team could stand it. The fool thing, animated by "the total depravity of inanimate things," was apt to bound and hit one of the horses right in the face.

Maeterlinck, in his "Intelligence of Flowers," insists that all plants have wisdom and ingenuity. Plants, because of the law that chains them to the soil, have to overcome difficulties much greater than those opposed to the increase of animals. Plants or vegetables, which seem so placid and resigned, are, on the contrary, in a revolt against destiny.

The essential organ, the nutrient organ of the plant, its root, attaches it indissolubly to the soil. The plant must devise a way for its seeds to fall far away from itself. To fall near it means they are lost or will sprout only to live and die in wretchedness. So plants have developed a marvelous number of devices and mechanisms for propulsion and travel by the seed; the aerial screw of the maple; the flying machine of the thistle, the dandelion and the salsify; the detonating springs of the spruce; the hooks and needles by which cockleburrs and all kinds of pods fasten themselves on to sheep and other animals, and are thus transplanted—all these must fill us with amazed interest.

But no plant invented a method superior to the tumbleweed. Growing into a large, strong ball, as the seeds ripen its roots let go the ground, so that the wind may roll it miles and miles over the prairie, scattering seeds as it goes.

One day the peace and quiet of farm life was shattered by the Younger Boys. We saw a twin cloud of dust way down the road one hot afternoon, and its size and the rapidity with which it moved showed us it was two horsemen.

They dashed up and into the open gate, and wanted to know where my father was. He was away tending court. They said the Younger Boys had captured the sheriff of the county, Mr. Wykoff, and the men must rescue him.

They went, then, for Uncle Charles, who was at home, and who shouldered his shotgun, mounted a horse, and set out for the meeting place of citizens, the Llewellyn schoolhouse, near Chalk Level. The northern end of the county was mostly Republican, and Wykoff, an Ohio man, had run for sheriff. One of his campaign promises had been that, if he were elected, he would arrest the Youngers if they came into St. Clair County. They had been, with the James Boys, creating a reign of terror among banks and railroads all over the western country, but never caught. It was reported on good authority to the sheriff that the Youngers were at Monegaw Springs, their favorite retreat. He took five deputy sheriffs with him and with a warrant for their arrest started after them.

He and his men were riding through a very thick woods on a narrow road some miles yet from the springs, a lonely spot far from any habitation, when they were surprised to hear:

"You come on down to Monegaw Springs Hotel, and if we find a warrant on you when we get you there, we are going to kill you."

The man who had the warrant, as he rode along, tore it into bits, and chewed it up, along with his tobacco, spitting it out bit by bit. Arrived at the hotel, they were put into rooms and soon given dinner, being escorted down to the dining-room and treated with great courtesy. After dinner they played cards.

Some way the news of their capture got out and was spread by citizens all over the north end of the county. The schoolhouse was appointed for the meeting place; by dusk the schoolhouse began to fill up, and the meeting was organized. Several of the men had seen service in the armies north and south, and soon a captain was appointed and the plan of attack was laid. The men next morning were to form in three parties and surround the hotel and then demand the surrender of the Youngers and their associates and the release of the sheriff.

Meanwhile the Youngers had a fine supper of fried chicken and hoe cakes served to their captives, played more cards, and locked them safely in their rooms for the night.

Next morning, after an early breakfast, the Youngers gave them back their arms, minus any ammunition, had their horses led up, told the sheriff to go on back home and tend to his own business, and they would tend to theirs.

The county sheriff and his deputies met one of the parties about three miles from Monegaw Springs and they all returned to capture the Youngers, but they were not to be found. The forests and hills had swallowed them. They were never captured in St. Clair. The sheriff was jollied and joked a good deal about his capture of the bandits. He was not reelected.

In 1885 my uncles, Charles and Scott, drove over to Lowry City, having practically decided to establish a bank there. I was the third member of the party. They got the necessary cooperation from some merchants in Lowry City and farmers near there, and established the Lowry City Bank, bought a building, fitted it up, and Uncle Charles was made the cashier and put in charge.

These men were all a part of what is known as the "Granger Movement," the first great revolution of the western farmers against the exactions of the railroads. This granger movement led to the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and finally, to the regulation of freight and passenger rates by the Government. As young man, I heard much of this talk. To the eastern conservative capitalists, the farmers who demanded Government regulation of rates on railroads, in those days, were as wild and dangerous as Bolsheviki or Communists seem today. Let any who think the farmers were not right examine the freight rates and practices of the railroads of those days before the Government began to regulate them. It would be impossible for me to describe how hard the work was on those farms. I remember one incident which I will relate.

After having plowed most of the day, or from about sun-up until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, my Uncle Scott drove 10 miles to Appleton City to get some lumber and nails for use in constructing a corn-crib. It was getting late in the Fall and the nights were chilly. Coming home he got cold riding on the wagon and got off to walk. He had a team of young mules which were not sufficiently broken to plow yet, and they had a

FIX HERE

While he was walking along beside them they started to trot. He ran beside the wagon, but the mules kept going faster until finally he saw that he could not keep up with them. He tried to stop them, but, running as he was, he could not exert much force on the lines. He decided that the way to stop them was for him to jump on the wagon, so he ran along close beside the wheels, holding the lines in one hand, and gave a jump to land on top of the lumber, but, just as he landed, the keg of nails, which was by that time bouncing around, lurched over and struck him on the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. As he fell, he threw the lines into the wheel. Fortunately, they caught and jerked the mules, nearly breaking their jaws, but stopping them. He then got the lines undone and drove on home. But the mules had pretty sore mouths for some days.

This was about 9:30 o’clock at night. So that day finished up with a rather strenuous piece of exercise, he having been working hard since 5 o’clock in the morning.

It was impossible for the women to get help for the work about the house, so their work was quite as hard, and certainly they had to put in longer hours than the men did. It was part of my duty to help my mother with the dishes and the house work. The only other regular chore I remember was that I milked six cows each morning and night. In recent times we have heard much of the financial difficulties of the farmers, but as far as I can see, the farmers have always had a hard time in this country.

People today with the radio, telephone, movies and automobiles, not to mention self-playing pianos, phonographs and other modern inventions, think life must have been dull and stupid in the old days. It was not necessarily so. The best, fun is homemade. People of intelligence and taste had as much pleasure in the olden times. We cannot think of life as having been dull to Benjamin Franklin or to Thomas Jefferson, though they knew none of our modern playthings.

On the farm our evenings were never dull. During spring, summer and fall all were so busy and so tired with good, healthful physical exercise that, after the sunset’s glow faded from the sky, the urge to seek repose was strong. Sleep was sweet and refreshing. In the winter we had long evenings indoors, and in our family reading aloud was a custom. My mother, who taught in the Painsville Academy at Painsville, Ohio, before she was married, was an exceptionally good reader.

My mother used to read Dickens and Scott and Thackeray, Hugo and Shakespeare out loud and many poems. We often wanted "John Gilpin’s Ride," "The Pied Piper of Hamlintown," or "Miss Killmansegg and Her Precious Leg," by Hood, which seemed more entertaining each time we heard it. Few today of the family have read Miss Killmansegg, probably, and while the poem is much too long to reproduce, I shall give a bit of it, which may induce those who read this much to go to a library, if they have not a copy of Thomas Hood’s Poems, and read it all.

MISS KILLMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG

A Golden Legend.

"What is here?