ng" was pleasantly diverting, but when one raw
winter day I saw the faithful clock stuffed with rags and laid on its
back in a box, and the chairs and dishes being loaded into a big sleigh,
I began to experience something very disturbing and very uncomfortable.
"O'er the hills in legions, boys," did not sound so inspiring to me
then. "The woods and prairie lands" of Iowa became of less account to me
than the little cabin in which I had lived all my short life.

Harriet and I wandered around, whining and shivering, our own misery
augmented by the worried look on mother's face. It was February, and she
very properly resented leaving her home for a long, cold ride into an
unknown world, but as a dutiful wife she worked hard and silently in
packing away her treasures, and clothing her children for the journey.

At last the great sleigh-load of bedding and furniture stood ready at
the door, the stove, still warm with cheerful service, was lifted in,
and the time for saying good-bye to our coulee home had come.

"Forward march!" shouted father and led the way with the big bob-sled,
followed by cousin Jim and our little herd of kine, while mother and the
children brought up the rear in a "pung" drawn by old Josh, a flea-bit
gray.--It is probable that at the moment the master himself was slightly
regretful.

A couple of hours' march brought us to LaCrosse, the great city whose
wonders I had longed to confront. It stood on the bank of a wide river
and had all the value of a sea-port to me for in summertime great
hoarsely bellowing steamboats came and went from its quay, and all about
it rose high wooded hills. Halting there, we overlooked a wide expanse
of snow-covered ice in the midst of which a dark, swift, threatening
current of open water ran. Across this chasm stretching from one
ice-field to another lay a flexible narrow bridge over which my father
led the way toward hills of the western shore. There was something
especially terrifying in the boiling heave of that black flood, and I
shivered with terror as I passed it, having vividly in my mind certain
grim stories of men whose teams had broken through and been swept
beneath the ice never to reappear.

It was a long ride to my mother, for she too was in terror of the ice,
but at last the Minnesota bank was reached, La Crescent was passed, and
our guide entering a narrow valley began to climb the snowy hills. All
that was familiar was put behind; all that was strange an