I composed
their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and
harmony was restored each night by song.

The school-house was a one-storey frame building on the second
plateau in West Joliet, and was attended by about one hundred
scholars. In the rear was a shallow lagoon, fenced on one side by a
wall of loose rocks, infested with snakes. The track to the cemetery
was near, and it soon began to be in very frequent use. One day
during recess the boys had a snake hunt, and they tied their game in
one bunch by the heads with string, and suspended them by the
wayside. I counted them, and there were twenty-seven snakes in the
bunch.

The year '49 was the 'annus mirabilis' of the great rush for gold
across the plains, and it was also an 'annus miserabilis' on account
of the cholera. In three weeks fourteen hundred waggons bound for
California crossed one of the bridges over the canal. I was desirous
of joining the rush, but was, as usual, short of cash, and I had to
stay at Joliet to earn my salary. I met the editor of the 'True
Democrat' nearly every day carrying home a bucket of water from the
Aux Plaines river. He did his own chores. He sent two young men who
wished to become teachers to my school to graduate. One was named
O'Reilly, lately from Ireland; I gave him his degree in a few weeks,
and he kept school somewhere out on the prairie. The other did not
graduate before the cholera came. He was a native of Vermont, and he
played the clarionet in our church choir. The instrumental music
came from the clarionet, from a violin, and a flute. The choir came
from France and Germany, Old England and New England, Ireland,
Alsace, and Belgium. It was divided into two hostile camps, and the
party which first took possession of the gallery took precedence in
the music for that day only. There was a want of harmony. One
morning when the priest was chanting the first words of the Gloria,
the head of a little French bugler appeared at the top of the gallery
stairs, and at once started a plaint chant, Gloria, we had never
rehearsed or heard before. He sang his solo to the end. He was
thirsting for glory, and he took a full draught.

I don't think there was ever a choir like ours but one, and that was
conducted by a butcher from Dolphinholm in the Anglican Church at
Garstang. One Sunday he started a hymn with a new tune. Three times
his men broke down, and three times they were heard by the whole
co