farm-wagons to visit cousins, taking the whole family and
staying two nights and a day; when books were things to be read; when the
beaver and the buffalo were not extinct; when wild pigeons came in clouds
that shadowed the sun; when steamboats ran on the Sangamon; when Bishop
Simpson preached; when Hell was a place, not a theory, and Heaven a
locality whose fortunate inhabitants had no work to do; when Chicago
newspapers were ten cents each; when cotton cloth was fifty cents a yard,
and my shirt was made from a flour-sack, with the legend, "Extra XXX,"
across my proud bosom, and just below the words in flaming red, "Warranted
Fifty Pounds!"

The mornings usually opened with smothered protests against getting up,
for country folks then were extremists in the matter of "early to bed,
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." We hadn't much
wealth, nor were we very wise, but we had health to burn. But aside from
the unpleasantness of early morning, the day was full of possibilities of
curious things to be found in the barn and under spreading
gooseberry-bushes, or if it rained, the garret was an Alsatia unexplored.

The evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race. In the
morning of the world man was innocent and free; but when
self-consciousness crept in and he possessed himself of that disturbing
motto, "Know Thyself," he took a fall.

Yet knowledge usually comes to us with a shock, just as the mixture
crystallizes when the chemist gives the jar a tap. We grow by throes.

I well remember the day when I was put out of my Eden.

My father and mother had gone away in the one-horse wagon, taking the baby
with them, leaving me in care of my elder sister. It was a stormy day and
the air was full of fog and mist. It did not rain very much, only in
gusts, but great leaden clouds chased each other angrily across the sky.
It was very quiet there in the little house on the prairie, except when
the wind came and shook the windows and rattled at the doors. The morning
seemed to drag and wouldn't pass, just out of contrariness; and I wanted
it to go fast because in the afternoon my sister was to take me somewhere,
but where I did not know, but that we should go somewhere was promised
again and again.

As the day wore on we went up into the little garret and strained our eyes
across the stretching prairie to see if some one was coming. There had
been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too