he woods, he was almost as much
woodsman as soldier in his talk, and the heroic life he had led made him
very wonderful in my eyes. According to his account (and I have no
reason to doubt it) he had been exceedingly expert in running a raft and
could ride a canoe like a Chippewa. I remember hearing him very
forcefully remark, "God forgot to make the man I could not follow."

He was deft with an axe, keen of perception, sure of hand and foot, and
entirely capable of holding his own with any man of his weight. Amid
much drinking he remained temperate, and strange to say never used
tobacco in any form. While not a large man he was nearly six feet in
height, deep-chested and sinewy, and of dauntless courage. The quality
which defended him from attack was the spirit which flamed from his
eagle-gray eyes. Terrifying eyes they were, at times, as I had many
occasions to note.

As he gathered us all around his knee at night before the fire, he loved
to tell us of riding the whirlpools of Big Bull Falls, or of how he
lived for weeks on a raft with the water up to his knees (sleeping at
night in his wet working clothes), sustained by the blood of youth and
the spirit of adventure. His endurance even after his return from the
war, was marvellous, although he walked a little bent and with a
peculiar measured swinging stride--the stride of Sherman's veterans.

As I was born in the first smoke of the great conflict, so all of my
early memories of Green's coulee are permeated with the haze of the
passing war-cloud. My soldier dad taught me the manual of arms, and for
a year Harriet and I carried broom-sticks, flourished lath sabers, and
hammered on dishpans in imitation of officers and drummers. Canteens
made excellent water-bottles for the men in the harvest fields, and the
long blue overcoats which the soldiers brought back with them from the
south lent many a vivid spot of color to that far-off landscape.

All the children of our valley inhaled with every breath this mingled
air of romance and sorrow, history and song, and through those epic days
runs a deep-laid consciousness of maternal pain. My mother's side of
those long months of waiting was never fully delineated, for she was
natively reticent and shy of expression. But piece by piece in later
years I drew from her the tale of her long vigil, and obtained some hint
of the bitter anguish of her suspense after each great battle.

It is very strange, but I cannot define her f