e him, I, with a significant wink to the judges, suggested that
he should get into my wagon and go down to the post (where I knew the
sutler had a copy of the statutes), and we could readily settle the
controversy. He consented willingly to this proposition, and we started
for the post. When we arrived, I gave my team to the quartermaster's
sergeant, and we looked up the law in the sutler's store. I then began a
game of billiards with some of the officers, and accepted an invitation
to lunch. As noon approached, Lynd began to show signs of impatience,
and he asked me when I proposed to take him back to the polls. I quietly
informed him that my route lay in the opposite direction, and that I
would not go back at all. Instantly it flashed upon him that I had taken
him away from the polls for a purpose, and he fled like a scared deer
over the road we had just travelled, leaving me to pursue my journey
alone in the other direction. I afterwards learned that in the interval
between Lynd's departure and return, all the soldiers had voted the
Democratic ticket without challenge or obstruction. Whether my friend
Lynd walked back to Henderson or not, I never certainly ascertained. I
was sufficiently satisfied with the success of my ruse not to desire to
inflict any discomfort on my dear enemy.

This was the only political trick I remember of having perpetrated on
the enemy during my long participation in active politics, and I don't
believe any of my readers will regard it as transgressing the proverb
that "all is fair in love or war."

My friend Lynd was, like most of the characters in my frontier
experience, killed by the Indians in the outbreak of 1862.

THE HARDSHIPS OF EARLY LAW PRACTICE.

Prior to 1855 the public lands of Minnesota were unsurveyed, and no
title could be acquired to them. About that time, however, four United
States land districts were established, with a land office in each of
them. The districts were straight tracts of country extending from the
Mississippi due west to the Missouri, the exterior lines of which were
parallel to each other. The offices were at Brownsville, Winona, Red
Wing and Minneapolis. I was then living in Traverse des Sioux, which
place, together with Mankato, fell within the Winona district, so that
any land business we had in our region of the country compelled a trip
to Winona, a distance of nearly three hundred miles by water, or one
hundred and fifty by land. After the