rence men decided to go West, and amid great public
excitement they departed in a body for Kansas, where they founded the
town of Lawrence in that state. I recall distinctly the public interest
which attended their going, and the feeling every one seemed to have
that they were passing forever out of the civilized world. Their
farewells to their friends were eternal; no one expected to see them
again, and my small brain grew dizzy as I tried to imagine a place so
remote as their destination. It was, I finally decided, at the
uttermost ends of the earth, and it seemed quite possible that the brave
adventurers who reached it might then drop off into space. Fifty years
later I was talking to a California girl who complained lightly of the
monotony of a climate where the sun shone and the flowers bloomed all
the year around. "But I had a delightful change last year," she added,
with animation. "I went East for the winter."

"To New York?" I asked.

"No," corrected the California girl, easily, "to Lawrence, Kansas."

Nothing, I think, has ever made me feel quite so old as that remark.
That in my life, not yet, to me at least, a long one, I should see such
an arc described seemed actually oppressive until I realized that,
after all, the arc was merely a rainbow of time showing how gloriously
realized were the hopes of the Lawrence pioneers.

The move to Michigan meant a complete upheaval in our lives. In Lawrence
we had around us the fine flower of New England civilization. We
children went to school; our parents, though they were in very humble
circumstances, were associated with the leading spirits and the
big movements of the day. When we went to Michigan we went to the
wilderness, to the wild pioneer life of those times, and we were all old
enough to keenly feel the change.

My father was one of a number of Englishmen who took up tracts in the
northern forests of Michigan, with the old dream of establishing a
colony there. None of these men had the least practical knowledge
of farming. They were city men or followers of trades which had
no connection with farm life. They went straight into the thick
timber-land, instead of going to the rich and waiting prairies, and they
crowned this initial mistake by cutting down the splendid timber instead
of letting it stand. Thus bird's-eye maple and other beautiful woods
were used as fire-wood and in the construction of rude cabins, and the
greatest asset of the pioneers was ign