which was the last bit of civilization we saw. Early the next morning we were off again, making the slow progress due to the rough roads and our heavy load. At night we stopped at a place called Thomas's Inn, only to be told by the woman who kept it that there was nothing in the house to eat. Her husband, she said, had gone "outside" (to Grand Rapids) to get some flour, and had not returned; but she added that we could spend the night if we chose, and enjoy shelter, if not food. We had provisions in our wagon, so we wearily entered, after my brother had got out some of our pork and opened a barrel of flour. With this help the woman made some biscuits, which were so green that my poor mother could not eat them. She had admitted to us that the one thing she had in the house was saleratus, and she had used this ingredient with an unsparing hand. When the meal was eaten she broke the further news that there were no beds.

"The old woman can sleep with me," she suggested, "and the girls can sleep on the floor. The boys will have to go to the barn."

She and her bed were not especially attractive, and mother decided to lie on the floor with us. We had taken our bedding from the wagon, and we slept very well; but though she was usually superior to small annoyances, I think my mother resented being called an "old woman." She must have felt like one that night, but she was only about forty-eight years of age.

At dawn the next morning we resumed our journey, and every day after that we were able to cover the

distance demanded by the schedule arranged before we started. This meant that some sort of shelter usually awaited us at night. But one day we knew there would be no houses between the place we left in the morning and that where we were to sleep. The distance was about twenty miles, and when twilight fell we had not made it. In the back of the wagon my mother had a box of little pigs, and during the afternoon these had broken loose and escaped into the woods. We had lost much time in finding them, and we were so exhausted that when we came to a hut made of twigs and boughs we decided to camp in it for the night, though we knew nothing about it. My brother had unharnessed the horses, and my mother and sister were cooking dough-god a mixture of flour, water, and soda, fried in a pan when two men rode up on horseback and called my brother to one side. Immediately after the talk which followed James harnessed his horses again and forced us to go on, though by that time darkness had fallen. He told mother, but did not tell us children until long afterward, that a man had been murdered in the hut only the night before. The murderer was still at large in the woods, and the newcomers were members of a posse who were searching for him. My brother needed no urging to put as many miles as he could between us and the sinister spot.

The next morning we made the last stage of our journey, our hearts filled with the joy of nearing our new home. We all had an idea that we were going to a farm, and we expected some resemblance at

least to the prosperous farms we had seen in New England. My mother's mental picture was, naturally, of an English farm. Possibly she had visions of red barns and deep meadows, sunny skies and daisies. What we found awaiting us were the four walls and the roof of a good-sized log-house, standing in a small cleared strip of the wilderness, its doors and windows represented by square holes, its floor also a thing of the future, its whole effect achingly forlorn and desolate. It was late in the afternoon when we drove up to the opening that was its front entrance, and I shall never forget the look my mother turned upon the place. Without a word she crossed its threshold, and, standing very still, looked slowly around her. Then something within her seemed to give way, and she sank upon the ground. She could not realize even then, I think, that this was really the place father had prepared for us; that here he expected us to live. When she finally took it in she buried her face in her hands, and in that way she sat for hours without moving or speaking. For the first time in her life she had forgotten us; for our part, dared not speak to her. We stood around her in a frightened group, talking to one another in whispers. Our little world had crumpled under our feet. Never before had we seen mother give way to despair.

and we,

our

Night began to fall. The woods became alive with night creatures, and the most harmless made the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and soon we heard a wildcat, whose cry - a screech like that of a

lost and panicstricken child-is one of the most appalling sounds of the forest. Later the wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though darkness came and we children whimpered around her, our mother still sat in her strange lethargy.

At last my brother brought the horses close to the cabin and built fires to protect them and us. He was only twenty, but he showed himself a man during those early pioneer days. While he was picketing the horses and building his protecting fires my mother came to herself, but her face when she raised it was worse than her silence had been. She seemed to have died and to have returned to us from the grave, and I am sure she felt that she had done so. From that moment she took up again the burden of her life, a burden she did not lay down until she passed away; but her face never lost the deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life had cut upon it.

That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth inside the cabin walls, and we put blankets before the holes which represented our doors and windows, and kept our watchfires burning. Soon the other children fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me. I was only twelve years old, but my mind was full of fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the night wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoulders of animals and heard their padded footfalls. Later years brought familiarity with wild things, and with worse than they. But to-night that which I most feared was within, not outside of,

the cabin. In some way which I did not understand the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay near me, tossing from side to side and staring into the darkness; I felt that we had lost our mother. ANNA HOWARD SHAW

(From The Story of a Pioneer)

A HIGH-MINDED AMERICAN

[PEOPLE in the various sections of our country do not yet know the other sections so well as they should. East and West, North and South, are somewhat different in their ways of looking at life. Each will profit from knowing the best in the others. The following selection gives a picture of Robert E. Lee. Howsoever Northerners and Southerners may disagree about his conduct in standing by his own state of Virginia in 1861, there can be no divided opinion about the man's deep sincerity and his freedom from all self-seeking ambitions. His character is seen strikingly in these passages describing his conduct when the Civil War was over. His putting-by of many tempting commercial offers in order to take the presidency of what was then a little, run-down college is one of many answers to the statement that Americans care chiefly for money.]

GENERAL LEE accepted the presidency of Washington College, in the first place, from a profound and deliberate sense of duty. The same high principle of action that had characterized his conduct in the gravest crisis of public affairs marked his decision here; and here, as ever, duty alone determined his choice. There was absolutely nothing in this position that could have tempted him. Not