as Committee of Arrangements for the transfer of the
company's baggage, excused himself, and turning to me, added: "Here,
sir, is a lady who can give you the information you desire--Mrs.
Nichols, editor of the _Windham County Democrat_." In accepting the
introduction, I caught the surprised and quizzical survey of a pair of
keen, black eyes, culminating in an unmistakable expression of
humorous anticipation; and, certain that my interviewer was
intelligent and a gentleman, I resolved to follow his lead in kind.
"Madam," he inquired, "can you tell me where all these people are
from, and where they are going?" They are from the New England States,
and are going to Kansas. "And what are they going to do in Kansas?"
Make homes and surround themselves with the institutions, social and
political, to which they are accustomed. "But, madam, they can't make
homes on the Kansas prairies with free labor; it is impossible!"

Why, sir, our ancestors felled the primitive forests and cleared the
ground to grow their bread, but Kansas prairies are ready for the
plow; their rank grasses invite the flocks and herds. Do you know what
a country we come from? did you never hear how in New Hampshire and
Vermont the sheeps' noses have to be sharpened, so that they can pluck
the spires of grass from between the rocks?

With a humorous, give-it-up sort of laugh, he remarked, abruptly: "You
are an editor; do you ever lecture?" Sometimes I do. "On what
subjects?" Education, Temperance, Woman's Rights--"Oh, woman's rights!
Will you go to St. Joseph and lecture on woman's rights? Our people
are all anxious to hear on that subject." Why, sir, I am an
Abolitionist, and they would tar and feather me! "You don't say
anything about slavery in your woman's rights' lectures, do you?" No,
sir; I never mix things.

After a sharp, but good natured tilt on the slavery question, the
Colonel returned to the lecture, about which he was so evidently in
earnest--guaranteeing "a fine audience, courteous treatment, and ample
compensation"; that I gave a promise to visit St. Joseph on my return
if there should be time before the closing of navigation, a promise I
was prevented from fulfilling. And now after three years, in which the
emigrants had made homes and secured them against the aggressions of
the slave power, I wrote him that if the people of St. Joseph still
wished to hear, and it pleased him to renew his guarantees of aid and
protection, I was at leisur