and the prismatic colors added to the scene. The roaring
could be heard a long way off.

We raised a short eared corn, that was very good and grew abundantly. I
have never seen any like it since. Our flour was sent to us from way
down the Mississippi. When we got it, it had been wet and was so mouldy
that we had to chop it out with an ax. It took so much saleratus to make
anything of it. We learned to like wild rice. It grew in the shallow
lakes. An Indian would take a canoe and pass along through the rice when
it was ripe shaking it into the boat until he had a boat full--then,
take it to the shore to dry.

I was out to dinner with Mr. Scofield and his wife who came in '49. It
was dark and stormy. Mrs. Scofield was first taken home and then Mr.
Scofield started for our home. We soon found we were lost and drove
aimlessly around for some time. We came to a rail fence. I said "Perhaps
I can find the way". I examined this fence carefully and saw that one of
the posts was broken, then said to Mr. Scofield, "I know just where we
are now. I noticed this broken post when I was going to meeting Sunday."
I soon piloted the expedition home.

In '43 when I was Mrs. Hopkins I was standing with Mrs. Riggs and Mrs.
Huggins on the steps of the St. Louis house. The Gideon Ponds were then
living in vacant rooms that anyone could occupy in this old hotel.
Little three year old Edward Pond was standing with us. He and the
little Riggs boy had new straw hats that we had bought of the sutler at
the Fort. The wind blew his hat off suddenly. We did not see where it
went but we did hear him cry. We could not find it in the tall grass.
Mrs. Riggs took her little boy and stood him in the same place and we
all watched. When the wind blew his hat off we went where it had blown
and sure enough, there lay the other little hat too. The Indians
standing around laughed long and loud at this strategy.

Captain Stephen Hanks--1844, Ninety-four years old.

Captain Hanks, now in his ninety-fifth year, hale, hearty, a great joker
and droll storyteller, as an own cousin of Abraham Lincoln should be,
says: In the spring of 1840, when a youth, I came north from Albany,
Illinois, with some cattle buyers and a drove of eighty cattle, for the
lumberjacks in the woods north of St. Croix Falls. We came up the east
bank of the river following roads already made. In the thick woods near
the Chippewa Falls, I found an elk's antlers that were the finest I ever