out for the time being.) A fat woman sat under the
dangerous place that evening, and made a great outcry if we came near to
enjoy the desirable outlook--stout people always seem fearful that
something will fall on them. I remember also that her little girl, a
pretty creature in curls and a pink dress, spoke "Mary had a little
lamb," by having it "lined out" to her.

Our schoolhouse was so set in a noble grove of oaks, elms and maples
with a heavy undergrowth, that we could not be seen from the road.
Nearly every day droves of cattle went by, and we used to run up through
the thicket to see them. It must have been an odd sight to the drovers
to see a dozen or more little half-scared faces peering out of the
brush, and no building in sight. They would often give us a noisy
salute, whereupon we would scamper back, telling of our narrow escape
from dangerous beasts and men.

The presidential election in the fall of 1848 aroused a good deal of
interest, for Wisconsin had now become a state, and citizens could vote
for national candidates. I was in Jonathan Piper's store one evening,
with my father, when about a dozen men were present. A political
discussion sprang up and grew hot, and finally a division was called
for. Two or three voted for Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate; one for
Lewis Cass, the Democrat; and the rest for Martin Van Buren, Free
Soiler. The State went with the lone voter, for Cass carried it by a
small plurality.

Good health was the rule among the hardworking, plain-living pioneers,
but plowing up the soil released the poison which nature seemed to have
put there on guard, and every one at one time or another came down with
the "shakes." However, the potent influence of sunshine, quinine, and
cholagogue speedily won their way, and in a few years malaria had become
a mere reminiscence.

In November, 1848, my parents moved to Beaver Dam, and thus our life in
the Rock River country came to an end. The splendid primeval forest has
now gone, and even before we left much of it had been converted into log
heaps and burned. Every night scores of fires would gleam out where the
finest hardwood logs, worth now a king's ransom, were turned into smoke
and ashes. Even the mills which that grand pioneer, Andrew Hardgrave,
had built in 1844, to the great rejoicing of all the people, are gone,
and the river flows on over its smooth limestone floor, unvexed as of
old. But fine brick buildings have taken the place of