ts upon the level prairies. At about
three o'clock in the morning the storm seemed to lull a little. My
companion crept out from underneath the cart; I followed. The plug, who
had managed to improve the occasion by stuffing himself with grass, was
soon in the shafts again, and just as dawn began to streak the dense
low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion. Still for
a couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the
lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten
flat by the rain-torrent. What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us
when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low
upon the dank prairie.

Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was
I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty
for Food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name
of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the
bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.'
Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general
should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted
the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrangements of
limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfelds in particular.
While the Herr was thus engaged in illuminating our minds, the Frau was
much more agreeably employed in preparing something for our bodily
comfort. I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the
future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the
Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satisfactorily. Many youthful
Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a
continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion
of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future.
It is more than probable that Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just
at that moment, when the sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds
over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen
were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special
furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind-it is most probable, I
say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no
ways lessened.

Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night storm on the
prairie, and it was midday on the 18th when we reached th