pace planted thickly with trees, which have
now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd
that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate
the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays
and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the
Square, are so full of teams--generally two-horse farm-wagons--that
there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square
and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the
business-houses--stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables,
post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and
lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories
high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general effect is marred by
the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and
meat-markets.

Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded,
the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises
from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the
same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor
forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this
wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence,
and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a
destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings
like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends
over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of
early spring.

Nearly every day, and often many times a day, farm-wagons drawn by two
horses pass along the highway in front of my window. The wagon-bed is
filled with sacks of wheat or piled high with yellow corn, and on the
high spring-seat in front sits the farmer driving, and by him his wife,
her head invariably wrapped in a white woollen nubia or a little shawl,
worn as a protection against the catarrh-producing prairie winds.
Cuddled in the hay at their feet, but keeping a bright lookout with
round eager eyes, are two or three stout, rosy children, and often there
is a baby in the mother's arms. When "paw" has sold his wheat or corn
the whole family will walk around the Square several times, looking in
at the shop-windows and staring at the people on the sidewalk. When they
have decided in which store they can get the best bargains, they will go
in and buy groce