ries, calico and flannel, shoes for the children, and
perhaps a high chair for the baby. Later in the day they rattle by
again, the farmer sitting alone on the spring-seat, the wife and
children, as a better protection against the wind, on some hay in the
now empty wagon-bed behind. So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen
road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with
their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again
the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.

Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a
woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon,
bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with
large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving
or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. The great
crystal cubes look, as they flash in the sunshine, like
building-material for Aladdin's palace quarried from some mine of
jewels, but they are only brought from the Skunk River, three miles
distant, to the ice-houses in town, and there packed away in sawdust
for summer use. On two days of the week--shipping days for
live-stock--farm-wagons with a high railing round the beds go by, and
inside the railing, crowded as thickly as they can stand, are fat black
or black-and-white hogs, which thrust their short noses between the
boards and squeal to get out. They are unloaded at the cattle-pens near
the railroad, and thence shipped to pork-packers at Chicago.

And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West,
dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue
blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and
Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's
ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the
average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter
section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of
money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring
towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity
or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in
appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either
side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never
cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain
amount of gravity,