your name or care whether you live or die? We used
to have neighbors in the west, but when our baby died in New York, not a
person came near us, and we went alone to the cemetery. We thought we
would come back home." How very many have had nearly the same
experience. In the congested districts it seems to be everyone for
himself. On the frontier a settler becomes ill, and his grain is sown,
planted and harvested. Who by? Neighbors. A widow buries her husband and
again the neighbors come. It is no light thing for one to leave his own
harvest and go miles to save the crop of another, but it is and has been
done times without number by those who are tried and true neighbors and
the sentiment which prompts such kindly acts counts for something some
time, and it means something in making up the sum total of happiness in
this short life of ours.

What did we have to eat that first year? Potatoes and corn. No flour, no
meat, some milk. I doubt whether there was a barrel of flour within
three miles of our home. No wheat had been raised, no hogs had been
fattened; corn and potatoes were the only food.

Mr. M. R. Van Schaick--1860.

I cast my vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 in New York and immediately
after, with my family, started for Minnesota, arriving in Rochester late
in the season. Our household goods were lost for some time, but were
recovered at La Crosse and hauled by oxen to Rochester.

One night a man rode into Rochester bearing the news that a thousand
Indians were on their way to massacre all the people west of the
Mississippi river. Great excitement prevailed and most of the farmers
and their families rushed into town. I sent my family into town, but my
brother and I decided to stay in our homes.

After barricading the doors and windows and loading our muskets, we went
to bed. About midnight, we heard a stealthy step outside and a moment
later someone entered the loft overhead. We sat the rest of the night
watching the stairs, but the Indian did not appear. Just at daylight, I
saw him drop silently down by the side of the house and glide away in
the shrubbery. The reason of his visit was never known.

Another time, my near neighbor, Mr. Jaffeney, who was living alone in a
log house was visited by twelve Indians on a cold stormy night. At first
he saw a dusky face appear at his window, then the form of an Indian who
silently raised the sash and crept in. He was wet to the skin and his
clothes were frozen to