wind and
sharp lightning and a shower of longed-for rain. A yellow-gray cloud with
no deeper nor shallower tints to it, rising steadily, moving swiftly, shut
off the noonday glare. The shadows deepened below this strange
un-cloud-like cloud, not dark, but dense. The few chickens in the
settlement mistook the clock and went to roost. At every settler's house,
wondering eyes watched the unheard-of phenomenon, so like, yet utterly
unlike, the sun's eclipse.

"Listen, Asher," Virginia exclaimed, as the two stood on the low swell
behind the house. "Listen to the roar, but there's no wind nor thunder."

"Hear that rasping edge to the rumble. It isn't like anything I ever
knew," Asher said, watching the coming cloud intently.

From their height they could see it sweeping far across the land, not high
in the air, but beclouding the prairie like a fog. Only this thing was dry
and carried no cool breath with it. Nearer it came, and the sun above
looked wanly through it, as surging, whipping, shimmering with silver
splinters of light, roaring with the whir of grating wings, countless
millions of grasshoppers filled the earth below and the air above.

"The plague of Egypt," Asher cried, and he and Virginia retreated hastily
before its force.

But they were not swift enough. The mosquito netting across the open
windows was eaten through and the hopping, wriggling, flying pest surged
inside. They smeared greasily on the floor; they gnawed ravenously at
every bit of linen or cotton fabric; they fell into every open vessel.

Truly, life may be made miserable in many ways, but in the Kansas homes in
that memorable grasshopper year of 1874 life was wretchedly uncomfortable.
Out of doors the cloud was a disaster. Nor flood, nor raging wind nor
prairie fire, nor unbroken drouth could claim greater measure of havoc in
its wake than this billion-footed, billion-winged creature, an appetite
grown measureless, a hunger vitalized, and individualized, and endowed
with power of motion. No living shred of grass, or weed, or stalk of corn,
or straw of stubble or tiniest garden growth; no leaf or bit of tender
bark of tree, or shrub, escaped this many-mouthed monster.

In the little peach orchard where there were a few half-ripe peaches, the
very first fruits of the orchards in this untamed land, the hard peach
stones, from which the meat was eaten away, hung on their stems among the
leafless branches. The weed-grown bed of Grass River was sw