As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes, as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,—our people are filled with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer. And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from the most thrifty of the poor.

I have in mind now a family, who once lived in a large city. It took all the strength of husband and wife to make both ends meet; but by dint of rigid economy, they saved enough to take them across the water in the steerage of a great[319] ship. This couple, with their little ones, found themselves at the end of their journey on a homestead, but with scarcely a cent left. The people around them were very poor, some of them living the first winter on potatoes and salt, not having either bread or milk. But in some way they managed to live, cheered by the hope that any move must be upward, and in the near future comfort, and farther on affluence. The same economy that saved the passage-money kept a little for a rainy day, no matter how hard the times were.

When I became acquainted with them they owned a large farm, a small log house and stable, several cows, horses, pigs, and poultry. Around the house was a neat picket-fence, every picket being cut out and made with axe and jack-knife during the long winter months. The vegetable garden was well-stocked; but what appealed to me most was the richness and the variety of the flower-garden,—roses, pansies, wallflowers, sweet-pease, hollyhocks, and mignonette. It was truly a[320] feast for the eyes. The little house and the milk-room, the latter made of lilliputian logs, were dazzling white by the repeated coats of whitewash. The whole formed a pretty picture; and for so new a country it was more than a picture,—it was an education for every settler near them.

I tried to fancy my host\'s feelings as he thought of the sharp struggle in the old land, and as he looked over his broad acres now, richer than the farmers he once envied as they drove in on their stout cobs to market.

Near by was another home. Here, too, were fine gardens, and another old couple out of the grip of poverty, which well-nigh killed them in the struggle. This good lady was once the only white woman on a large island, which to-day is laid out in sections, has towns, villages, schoolhouses, and churches, and every farm occupied. The old couple had an unmarried son left; and he, too, was about to quit the parent nest, and start a home[321] for himself. And now I must tell about the wedding.

But first a word about the climate, soil, and conditions, in order to understand what follows. The whole country had once been forest, the home of the Hurons, Chippewas, and other tribes of Indians. The Jesuit had roamed here, suffered, and often become a martyr. Some time in the past, either from Indian fires or carelessness, the forest caught fire, and tens of thousands of acres of choice maples and birch were burnt down to the very roots. The soil is clay, but so charged with lime that you can plough while the water follows the horses in the furrows in rivulets that dash against their fetlocks. This in clay, as a rule, would mean utter ruin until frost came, and the ground thawed again. But not so here. As the ground becomes dry, it pulverizes easily under the harrow.

This section was subject to storms that filled the narrow streams until they became dangerous torrents, sweeping all before them, and sometimes making a[322] jam of logs twenty miles long. One spring I noticed that all the bridges were new, and that they had all been built some four feet higher than before. I was told that the spring freshets had swept everything before them, and had been so unusually high that the change of level became necessary.

It was the night before the wedding, and I was preaching in a little schoolhouse that held about twenty people. It was a very hot night for that latitude, and every one was depressed with the heat. A great black cloud covered the heavens, except an ugly streak of dirty yellow in the west. It was n............