“The wondrous, beautiful prairies,
Billowy bays of grass, ever rolling in shadow and sunshine,
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas;
And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven,
Like the protecting hands of God inverted above them.”
Evangeline.

It looked quite homelike; the house shaded by tall trees, the garden, the hedge of Osage orange shutting out the wide expanse of prairie. The house was in the corner of Tazewell county; the barn in McLean, and the greater part of the farm in a third county. Norman found two new aunts to know and love, and a tall cousin of six feet three.

It was not long before he became acquainted with two little girls of ten and 191twelve, cousins, who lived on a farm near, with whom he had many pleasant hours of play. They had, too, a great deal to talk over of their journings in the West, for these little girls had always before lived in a New England home. They had seen a great many Indians, painted in all their bravery, in Wisconsin. They had seen a squaw, with her papoose strapped on her back, riding on a small Indian pony, with a child before and a child behind.

“This, mother,” said Norman, “is pleasanter than all; one day on a prairie is worth ten days in town.” He was up early in the morning to see the horses watered before they were sent off to the field. There were more then twenty of them, and Norman’s cousin, Justin, selected the handsomest colt on the farm, and gave it to Norman for his own. Norman was enchanted. He took an ear of corn, and Prince followed him about, eating it 192from his hand. Even after Prince had gone down into the field, he followed Norman and the ear of corn home.

“Mother, look at my colt,” said Norman in triumph; “how am I to get him home?” There were various plans discussed, as the one idea took possession of his mind, but no satisfactory conclusions were arrived at. The glow of delight somewhat faded away. “I really do not know what good my colt is going to do me,” said Norman, despondingly; “I cannot ride him here, and I cannot take him home.”

His face brightened, however, when David brought up a horse for him to ride. He had never rode before but once, when the pony threw him over his head; but he said this was the sort of riding he would like, to charge over the prairies.

He did ride off several miles over the prairies by himself, and then he rode four miles with his Aunt Clara.

193It was the time of harvest, and Norman loved to watch the mowing machine as it so rapidly cut down the tall grass, and the hay-making, and the tossing it into the great hay-stack. But what most interested him was to watch the progress of the great header, with its three attendant wagons, as it loomed up so grandly in the harvest field. Three horses urged onward the machine, which cut off the heads of the wheat and threw it on a platform, whence it was taken up in an elevator and received into a wagon, which accompanied the gigantic machine till it was loaded, and then, giving place to another, drove to the great stack with its burden. This machine requires three attendant wagons and six men, who thus cut down as much wheat as fifteen men can do in the ordinary way, and stack it to boot. These mowing and reaping machines seem especially intended for the extensive level grain fields of Illinois, 194which would look in vain for reapers and mowers with the old sickle and scythe. Something is lost however in picturesque effect, as was most manifest in the field next to that which the great header was so rapidly despoiling of its riches. This field was dotted over with the graceful sheaves of wheat, while a number of men were engaged in the work of binding and stacking them together.

Norman had watched too the ploughman, who, with a cultivator passing between the shining corn, did the work more laboriously done at the East by hoeing.

He liked to watch the herds of cattle and sheep feeding on the prairies; great herds, for everything was on a great scale on these western farms.

But better even than this were the stories his cousin Justin told him about his boyish days. He was twenty-three years old, and he had lived on the prairie sixteen 195years. It used to be the custom, he said, to plant a flagstaff in some central position, and invite horsemen to leave the groves all around and ride to this point at a certain hour. As the hour approached horsemen would be seen issuing from all the groves, riding rapidly onward, driving before them wolves, and the timid deer, till a dense ring of three or four hundred horsemen inclosing the frightened animals who were then dispatched by the clubs with which the men were armed. Sometimes the desperate wolves broke through the ring where it was weakest, and then there was waving of hats, and cheering, and galloping after the animals, and all was wild uproar. “I can remember” said he “the charm these wolf-hunts had for me when I was a boy of twelve; how I armed myself with my club, mounted my spirited horse, and galloped off to the stirring scene.”

196“My cousin Walter,” cont............