splendid successes and dramatic career made it
to him the most fascinating spot, the most dearly loved, this side of
heaven.

In due time these Chicago sufferers were landed at Montrose, a
miserable little village in Iowa, at the head of the Keokuk Rapids.
Just across the wonderful river lay the historical Nauvoo, fair and
beautiful as a poet's dream, though the wooded slopes retained but
shreds of their autumn-dyed raiment. Mrs. Lively was pleased, the
doctor was enthusiastic. They forgot that "over the river" is always
beautiful. They crossed in a skiff at a rapturous rate, but when they
had made the landing the disenchantment began. A two-horse wagon was
waiting for passengers, and in this our friends embarked. The driver
had heard they were coming, and knew the house that had been engaged
for them--the Woodruff house, built by one of the old Mormon elders.
The streets through which they drove were silent, with scarcely a
sound or sight of human life. It all looked strange and queer, unlike
anything they had ever seen. It was neither city nor village. The
houses, city-like, all opened on the street, or had little front
yards of city proportions, and to almost every one was attached the
inevitable vineyard. It was indeed a city, with nineteen out of every
twenty houses lifted out of it, and vineyards established in their
places; and all the houses had an old-fashioned look, for almost
without exception they antedated the Mormon exodus.

The Livelies were set down in a street where the sand was over the
instep, before a stiff, graceless brick building, standing close up in
one corner of an acre lot. On one side, in view from the front gate,
was a dilapidated hen-house--on the other, a more unsightly stable
with a pig-sty attached. All the space between the house and
vineyard, in every direction, was strewn with corncobs and remnants
of haystacks, while straw and manure were banked against the house to
keep the cellar warm. In front was a walled sewer, through which the
town on the hill was drained, for the Livelies' new home was on "the
Flat," as the lower town is called. The view from the front took in
only a dreary hillside covered with decaying cornstalks.

The doctor moved a barrel-hoop which fastened the gate, and it
tottered over, and clung by one hinge to the worm-eaten post, from
which the decaying fence had fallen away. A hall ran through the
house, and on either side were two rooms. The second floor was a