ays when the land was new and
they were young. "You must come home with me," each man insisted, "the
women folks all want to see you."

Twenty years had wrought great changes in the men as well as in the
county, and my father was bewildered and saddened by the tale. One by
one he called the names of those who had been his one-time friends and
neighbors. Some were dead, others had moved away--only one or two
remained where he had left them, and it was in the hope of seeing these
men and at the same time to visit the farm and school-house on Dry Run,
and the church at Burr Oak, that I hired a carriage and drove my father
out along the well-remembered lane to the north and east--I say
"well-remembered" although the growth of the trees and the presence of
new buildings made its appeal mixed and unsatisfactory to us both.

We found our house almost hid in the trees which we had planted on the
bare prairie thirty years before. As we stood in the yard I spoke of the
silver wedding which took place there. The yard was attractive but the
house (infested by the family of a poor renter) was repulsive. The
upstairs chamber in which I had slept for so many years presented a
filthy clutter of chicken feathers, cast-off furniture and musty
clothing. Our stay was short.

Strangers were in all of the other houses along the way--we found but
two of our former neighbors at home, and the farther we drove the more
melancholy we both became.

One of the places which I wished especially to revisit was the
school-house at Burr Oak, the room which had been our social center in
the early eighties. In it we had listened to church service in summer,
and there in winter our Grange Suppers and Friday Lyceums had been held.
It was there, too, that I had worshiped at the shrine of Hattie's
girlish beauty, when as a shock-haired lad I forgot, for a day, the
loneliness of my prairie home.

Alas! the tall oaks which in those days had given dignity and charm to
the yard had all been cut down, and the building, once glorified by the
waving shadows of the leaves, now stood bare as a bone beside the road.
An alien lived where Betty once reigned, and the white cottage from
which Agnes was wont to issue in her exquisite Sunday frock, was
untenanted and falling into decay.

How lovely those girls had seemed to me as I watched them approach,
walking so daintily the path beside the fence! What rich, alluring color
flamed in Bettie's cheek, what fire flashe