from
the floor. But it was no laughing matter to me. Alas! what a
prospect--to have mice running over one all night. But there was no
escape. The sisters did not offer to make any explorations, and, in my
fatigue costume, I could not light a candle and make any on my own
account. The house did not afford an armchair in which I could sit up. I
could not lie on the floor, and the other bed was occupied. Fortunately,
I was very tired and soon fell asleep. What the mice did the remainder
of the night I never knew, so deep were my slumbers. But, as my features
were intact, and my facial expression as benign as usual next morning, I
inferred that their gambols had been most innocently and decorously
conducted. These are samples of many similar experiences which we
encountered during the three months of those eventful travels.

Heretofore my idea had been that pioneer life was a period of romantic
freedom. When the long, white-covered wagons, bound for the far West,
passed by, I thought of the novelty of a six-months' journey through
the bright spring and summer days in a house on wheels, meals under
shady trees and beside babbling brooks, sleeping in the open air, and
finding a home, at last, where land was cheap, the soil rich and deep,
and where the grains, vegetables, fruit, and flowers grew bountifully
with but little toil. But a few months of pioneer life permanently
darkened my rosy ideal of the white-covered wagon, the charming picnics
by the way, and the paradise at last. I found many of these adventurers
in unfinished houses and racked with malaria; in one case I saw a family
of eight, all ill with chills and fever. The house was half a mile from
the spring water on which they depended and from which those best able,
from day to day, carried the needed elixir to others suffering with the
usual thirst. Their narrations of all the trials of the long journey
were indeed heartrending.

In one case a family of twelve left their comfortable farm in Illinois,
much against the earnest protests of the mother; she having ten
children, the youngest a baby then in her arms. All their earthly
possessions were stored in three wagons, and the farm which the mother
owned was sold before they commenced their long and perilous journey.
There was no reason for going except that the husband had the Western
fever. They were doing well in Illinois, on a large farm within two
miles of a village, but he had visions of a bonanza near the se