the Mississippi to the Ohio, and
visit Kaskaskia, and thence along the Ohio to the Wabash, and to the
home where the boy lives who defended the turtles. It will be a long
journey, and I expect to stop at many places, and preach and teach and
form schools. I want you to go with me and guide my canoe. All these
rivers are beautiful in summer. They are shaded by trees, and run
through prairies of flowers. The waters are calm, and the skies are
bright, and the birds sing continually. O Waubeno, this is a beautiful
world to those who use it rightly--a beautiful, beautiful world!"

"Me will go," said Waubeno. "Me would see that boy. I want to see a
story boy, as you say."

The attempt to establish an Indian school on the Chicago was not wholly
successful. The pupils did not remain long enough to receive the
intended influence. They came from encampments that were never stable.
The Indian village was there one season, and gone the next. The Indians
who came in canoes to the agency soon went away again. Jasper, in the
spring of 1825, resolved to carry out the journey that he had described
to Waubeno, and with the first warm winds he and the Indian boy set out
for Kaskaskia by the way of the Illinois to the Mississippi, and by the
Mississippi to the Kaskaskia.

It was a long journey. Jasper stopped often at the Indian encampments
and the new settlements. Waubeno was a faithful friend, and he came to
love him for true-heartedness, sympathy, and native worth of soul. He
often tried to teach him by stories, but as often as he said, "Now,
Waubeno, we will talk," he would say, "Tell me the one with broken
shell"--meaning the story. There was some meaning behind this story of
the turtle with the broken shell that had completely won the heart of
Waubeno. The boy Abraham Lincoln was his hero. Again and again, after he
had listened to the simple narrative, he asked:

"Is the story boy alive?"

"Yes, Waubeno."

"And we will meet him?"

"Yes."

"That is good. I feel for him here," and he would lay his hand on his
heart. "I love the story boy."

They traveled slowly. After a long journey down the Illinois, the
Mississippi rolled before them in the full tides of early spring. They
passed St. Louis, and one late April evening found them before the once
royal town of Kaskaskia.

The bell was ringing as they landed, the bell that had been cast in fair
Rochelle, and that was the first bell to ring between the Alleghanies
and the M