The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: Old Kaskaskia

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18423]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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OLD KASKASKIA

BY

MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD," ETC.

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893

Copyright, 1893,

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., and
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

CONTENTS.

PART FIRST: PAGE

The Bonfire of St. John 1

PART SECOND:

A Field Day 55

PART THIRD:

The Rising 106

PART FOURTH:

The Flood 160

OLD KASKASKIA.

PART FIRST.

THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.

Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one
who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into
the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished.
Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the nature
that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his sweetheart. It
tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had to turn the clods
of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia stood, between the
Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in the glory of sunset.
Southward to the point spread lands owned by th