kerchief too,
in spite of parents, principals, and all the proprieties, and the
ordinary ebb and flow of the life of a stirring provincial town, may be
so considered. Neither is there anything particularly interesting about
Kalamazoo, save its native, quiet beauty. It meets life easily, and,
like a happily-disposed tradesman, takes its full measure of traffic and
enjoyment with undisturbed tranquillity, cultivating neat yards and
streets, the social graces, and occasionally the arts, with a lazy sort
of satisfaction that is pleasant to look upon and contemplate.

Standing at any street-corner of the city, you will see wide avenues of
fine business houses or elegant residences, and, where the latter, a
wealth of neatly-trimmed shrubbery, and long lines of overarching maple
trees merging into pretty vistas which seem to invite you beyond to the
beautiful hills, uplands and valleys, with their murmuring streams,
sloping farms and well-kept homes, where both plenty and contentment
seem to be waiting to give you a right hearty welcome.

About twenty-five years ago, when the country was much newer, and the
sturdy farmers that have made this great West blossom so magically until
it has become the whole world's storehouse, were held closely to their
arduous work by the hard hand of necessity and toil, a few miles up the
river from the then little village of Kalamazoo might have been seen a
comfortable log farm-house which nestled within a pretty ravine sloping
down to the banks of the lazily-flowing stream. It was a plain, homely
sort of a place, but there was an air of thrift and cleanliness about
the locality that told of earnest toil and its sure reward.

The farm was of that character generally described as "openings;" here a
clump of oak, beech, and maple trees, there a rich stretch of
meadow-land; beyond, a series of hills extending to the uplands, the
bases of which were girted with groves, and whose summits were composed
of a warm, rich, stony loam, where the golden seas of ripening grain,
touched by passing zephyrs, waved and shimmered in the glowing summer
sun; while where the river wound along towards the villages below, there
was a dense growth of elm, maple, and beech trees, standing there dark
and sombre, save where the glintings of sunlight pierced their foliaged
armor, like grim sentinels of the centuries.

This was the home of Robert Nettleton, a plain and uneducated farmer,
who had several years before remo