. In fine, these pioneers constituted a pure
democracy, where law was the simple rule of honesty, friendship, mutual
help, and good will, where "duty was love and love was law."

One must not imagine that life was wholly devoid of pleasures in those
days. The young of both sexes always rode horseback, whether to church
in the grove, or going the round of parties, candy pullings, or kissing
bees. O, how in my young days I did dote on the candy pulling and the
kissing bee. To my young and unsophisticated mind they were divine
institutions; and, even now, after the lapse of so many years when the
"heydey in the blood is tame," how I look back upon those few days with
unalloyed pleasure.

Among the early pioneers, I mean the great masses, there was a stern
code of morals little understood at the present time. Exceptions there
were, to be sure, but I refer to the people as a whole. One instance
will serve as an illustration. The beaux and belles, in linsey-woolsey
and buckskins, were assembled from the country around and about. My
father had sent me along with brothers and sisters to bring back the
saddle horses, as there was not stable room for all. Other neighbor boys
were there on a like errand. We were sitting on our horses and ready to
start, when several of the young ladies, among them my sisters, came out
of the house and told us to wait. Presently, practically all of the
girls came out with hats and riding habits and a consultation was held
in the front yard. While they all stood there a man and a woman came
out, mounted their horses and rode away. We were then told to go on home
with the horses. I afterwards learned that the whole trouble originated
in the fact that the lady who had ridden away was a divorced woman. To
present-day readers, this may appear absurd, prudish, but not so to the
men and women of that day. This is not repeated here to "point a moral,"
but merely to "adorn a tale" of pioneer days.

For excitement, the frequent Indian uprisings, and more frequent Indian
scares, afforded abundant material upon which the young enterprising and
adventurous spirits of the day could work off their surplus energies.
Hunting, too, afforded a pleasurable and profitable pastime to the young
when not engaged in the work of building houses, barns, and fences, and
the boy of ten who could not pick off the head of a grouse or pheasant
at thirty or forty yards was only fit to be "tied to mama's apron
string." In times o