's head. When we came in sight of our home, I loved it
at once and so did the children. It was in the bend of a little stream
with stepping stones across. I knew at once that I had always wanted
stepping stones on my place. About two feet from the floor a beam had
been set in the whole length of the room. It was roped across and a
rough board separated it into two sections. These were our beds and with
feather beds and boughs, made a fine sleeping place. Wolves used to howl
all around at night but with the stock secure and the home closed up
tightly, we were happy. Our walls were plastered with mud and then
papered by me with paper that was six cents a roll back east. We made a
barrel chair and all kinds of home-made furniture out of packing boxes.
Our rooms looked so cozy. Father was a natural furniture maker, though
we never knew it before we came here.

Game was very plentiful and as we never had enough back home, we did not
soon tire of it. My husband once killed a goose and eleven young ones
with one shot.

The first year our garden was looking fine when the grasshoppers came in
such swarms that they obscured the sun. They swooped on everything in
the garden. There was no grain as the squirrels, black birds and gophers
had never tasted this delicacy before and followed the sower, taking it
as fast as it fell. We planted it three times and we had absolutely no
crop of any kind that first year.

We bought four horses later and had them for the summer's work. They
came from Illinois and were not used to the excessive cold of Minnesota.
That winter it was forty degrees below zero for many successive days. It
seems to me we have not had as much cold all this winter as we had in a
week then. Christmas time it was very cold. We wanted our mail so one of
the men rode one of the horses twelve miles to get it. When he arrived
there the horse was very sick. He was dosed up and was seemingly all
right. When the man wanted to start for home, he was warned that it
would be fatal to take a horse which had been dosed with all kinds of
hot stuff out in the terrible cold. He took the risk but the horse fell
dead just as he entered the yard. We lost two others in much the same
way that winter.

We then bought a yoke of young steers. They were very little broken and
the strongest animals I ever saw. Their names were Bright and Bill. Once
the whole family was going to a party at New Auburn, a kind of a city.
My husband had made an