STEP-MOTHER.

_After photograph taken in 1865._]

Afar stretched the prairies. The larks quivered in the air, happy in the
May-time, and gurgling with song. In the sunny outlines were seen a
train of prairie schooners winding over the plain.

These were rude times, when all things were new. Men were purchasing the
future by hardship and toil. But the two religious enthusiasts presented
a happy picture as they sat under the cherry-trees and talked of
camp-meetings, and the inner light, and all they had experienced, and
ate their frugal meal. Odd though their views and beliefs and habits may
seem in some respects, each had a definite purpose of good; each lived
in the horizon of bright prospects here and hereafter, and each was
happy.

CHAPTER XXI.

PRAIRIE ISLAND.

The beautiful country between Lake Michigan, or old Fort Dearborn, and
the Mississippi, or Rock Island, was once a broad prairie, a sea of
flowers, birds, and bright insects. The buffaloes roamed over it in
great herds, and the buffalo-birds followed them. The sun rose over it
as over a sea, and the arched aurora rose red above it like some far
gate of a land of fire. Here the Sacs and Foxes roamed free; the Iowas
and the tribes of the North. It was one vast sunland, a breeze-swept
brightness, almost without a dot or shadow.

Almost, but not quite. Here and there, like islands in a summer sea,
rose dark groves of oak and vines. These spots of refreshment were
called prairie islands, and in one of these islands, now gone, a pioneer
colony made their homes, and built a meeting-house, which was also to be
used as a school-house. Six or more of these families were from
Germantown, Pennsylvania, and were Tunkers. The other families were from
the New England States.

To this nameless village, long ago swept away by the prairie fires, went
Jasper the Parable, with his cobbling-tools, his stories, and his gospel
of universal love and good-will. The Tunkers welcomed him with delight,
and the emigrants from New England looked upon him kindly as a good and
well-meaning man. There were some fifteen or twenty children in the
settlement, and here the peaceful disciple of Pestalozzi, and friend of
Froebel, applied for a place to teach, and the school was by unanimous
consent assigned to him.

So began the school at Prairie Island--a school where the first
principles of education were perceived and taught, and that might
furnish a model for many an ambitio