entertainment passed off with some degree of merriment.

After an hour's rest we resumed our journey, and, although our
conveyance was an open wagon, so crowded as to be very uncomfortable,
especially for the children, yet we did the best we could, and the
little emigrants bore the journey bravely for some hours longer. But
when within six miles of our destination, just beside a deserted
Indian encampment, our horses fairly gave out and would not pull
another inch. So a large camp-fire was made; a sort of shelter
constructed of branches of trees; a Buffalo robe laid on the ground,
and the weary travelers found a temporary resting place, while our
young friend, above alluded to, started with the used-up team to bring
us help, if he could reach the prairie. I had chosen to pass the hours
of waiting in the wagon, feeling that I could better protect my dear
little baby in this way. So when all the tired ones were still, and
the silence only broken by the crackling of the burning fagots, the
occasional falling of a dry twig or branch from the bare, ghostly
looking trees about us, the hooting of an owl, the dismal howlings of
the wolves in the forest, I sat there looking at the weary forms so
illy protected from the cold, thinking of the little white beds in
which my dear ones were wont to slumber peacefully and comfortably,
the friends whom we had left, who might even now be dreaming of us, of
some of the farewell tea drinkings by cheerful firesides in dear old
Ann Arbor, where tender words had been spoken, and our prospects in a
far western home been discussed over delicate, tempting viands,
prepared by loving hands; and these thoughts kept my _heart_ warmed
and comforted, albeit I shivered with external cold; but hugging my
baby closer, and committing all to the care of Him who never slumbers
nor sleeps, I was just sinking into unconsciousness when a voice, not
heard for a year and a half, broke the deep stillness with: "How!
Nitchie!" and there by the flickering light of the fire, I saw our
eldest son, who had left us, for a trip with his uncle to the Rocky
Mountains a mere boy, and now stood before us in size a man. As his
father rose to his feet, he exclaimed in an agony of joy: "Oh! father,
is it you?" and he fell upon his father's neck and wept, and his
father wept upon his neck. Then, as in a dream, I heard, "Where's
mother?" in an instant he stood beside me, and I was sobbing in the
arms of my first-born, my well-