not
tender. With eyes turned inward, with a mind filled with visions of
angel messengers with trumpets at their lips announcing "The Day of
Wrath," how could he concern himself with the ordinary affairs of human
life?

Too old to bind grain in the harvest field, he was occasionally
intrusted with the task of driving the reaper or the mower--and
generally forgot to oil the bearings. His absent-mindedness was a source
of laughter among his sons and sons-in-law. I've heard Frank say: "Dad
would stop in the midst of a swath to announce the end of the world." He
seldom remembered to put on a hat even in the blazing sun of July and
his daughters had to keep an eye on him to be sure he had his vest on
right-side out.

Grandmother was cheerful in the midst of her toil and discomfort, for
what other mother had such a family of noble boys and handsome girls?
They all loved her, that she knew, and she was perfectly willing to
sacrifice her comfort to promote theirs. Occasionally Samantha or Rachel
remonstrated with her for working so hard, but she only put their
protests aside and sent them back to their callers, for when the
McClintock girls were at home, the horses of their suitors tied before
the gate would have mounted a small troop of cavalry.

It was well that this pioneer wife was rich in children, for she had
little else. I do not suppose she ever knew what it was to have a
comfortable well-aired bedroom, even in childbirth. She was practical
and a good manager, and she needed to be, for her husband was as weirdly
unworldly as a farmer could be. He was indeed a sad husbandman. Only the
splendid abundance of the soil and the manual skill of his sons, united
to the good management of his wife, kept his family fed and clothed.
"What is the use of laying up a store of goods against the early
destruction of the world?" he argued.

He was bitterly opposed to secret societies, for some reason which I
never fully understood, and the only fury I ever knew him to express was
directed against these "dens of iniquity."

Nearly all his neighbors, like those in our coulee, were native American
as their names indicated. The Dudleys, Elwells, and Griswolds came from
Connecticut, the McIldowneys and McKinleys from New York and Ohio, the
Baileys and Garlands from Maine. Buoyant, vital, confident, these sons
of the border bent to the work of breaking sod and building fence quite
in the spirit of sportsmen.

They were always racing i