w
house, are obscured in my mind by the clouds of smoke which rose from
calamitous fires all over the west. It was an unprecedentedly dry season
so that not merely the prairie, but many weedy cornfields burned. I had
a good deal of time to meditate upon this for I was again the plow-boy.
Every day I drove away from the rented farm to the new land where I was
cross-cutting the breaking, and the thickening haze through which the
sun shone with a hellish red glare, produced in me a growing uneasiness
which became terror when the news came to us that Chicago was on fire.
It seemed to me then that the earth was about to go up in a flaming
cloud just as my grandad had so often prophesied.

This general sense of impending disaster was made keenly personal by the
destruction of uncle David's stable with all his horses. This building
like most of the barns of the region was not only roofed with straw but
banked with straw, and it burned so swiftly that David was trapped in a
stall while trying to save one of his teams. He saved himself by
burrowing like a gigantic mole through the side of the shed, and so,
hatless, covered with dust and chaff, emerged as if from a fiery burial
after he had been given up for dead.

This incident combined with others so filled my childish mind that I
lived in apprehension of similar disaster. I feared the hot wind which
roared up from the south, and I never entered our own stable in the
middle of the day without a sense of danger. Then came the rains--the
blessed rains--and put an end to my fears.

In a week we had forgotten all the "conflagrations" except that in
Chicago. There was something grandiose and unforgettable in the tales
which told of the madly fleeing crowds in the narrow streets. These
accounts pushed back the walls of my universe till its far edge included
the ruined metropolis whose rebuilding was of the highest importance to
us, for it was not only the source of all our supplies, but the great
central market to which we sent our corn and hogs and wheat.

My world was splendidly romantic. It was bounded on the west by THE
PLAINS with their Indians and buffalo; on the north by THE GREAT WOODS,
filled with thieves and counterfeiters; on the south by OSAGE AND CHICAGO;
and on the east by HESPER, ONALASKA and BOSTON. A luminous trail ran from
Dry Run Prairie to Neshonoc--all else was "chaos and black night."

For seventy days I walked behind my plow on the new farm while my father