emselves against pursuers. All this
unevenness of line, with the varying surface of the lovely Iowa prairie,
threw the fire into separate lines and columns and detachments more and
more like burning armies as they receded from view.

Sometimes a whole mile or so of the line disappeared as the fire burned
down into lower ground; and then with a swirl of flame and smoke, the
smoke luminous in the glare, it moved magnificently up into sight,
rolling like a breaker of fire bursting on a reef of land, buried the
hillside in flame, and then whirled on over the top, its streamers
flapping against the horizon, snapping off shreds of flame into the air,
as triumphantly as a human army taking an enemy fort. Never again, never
again! We went through some hardships, we suffered some ills to be
pioneers in Iowa; but I would rather have my grandsons see what I saw
and feel what I felt in the conquest of these prairies, than to get up
by their radiators, step into their baths, whirl themselves away in
their cars, and go to universities. I am glad I had my share in those
old, sweet, grand, beautiful things--the things which never can
be again.

An old man looks back on things passed through as sufferings, and feels
a thrill when he identifies them as among the splendors of life. Can
anything more clearly prove the vanity of human experiences? But look at
the wonders which have come out of those days. My youth has already
passed into a period as legendary as the days when King Alfred hid in
the swamp and was reproved by the peasant's wife for burning the cakes.
I have lived on my Iowa farm from times of bleak wastes, robber bands,
and savage primitiveness, to this day, when my state is almost as
completely developed as Holland. If I have a pride in it, if I look back
to those days as worthy of record, remember that I have some excuse.
There will be no other generation of human beings with a life so rich in
change and growth. And there never was such a thing in all the history
of the world before.

I knew then, dimly, that what I saw was magnificent; but I was more
pleased with the safety of my farmstead and my stacks than with the grim
glory of the scene; and even as to my own good fortune in coming through
undamaged, I was less concerned than with the tragedy being enacted in
my house. I could not see into the future for Rowena, but I felt that it
would be terrible. The words "lost," "ruined," "outcast," which were
always applied to