cal plans of the Western men of 1830 were ambitious and
far-reaching, the lives of the shrewd pioneers were simple, hard, and
narrow. The men wore coats when the weather was cold, and found shoes
more of a nuisance than a comfort during half the year; and the women
rejoiced if they received a "store" bonnet once in two years. Wants were
few and the annual _per capita_ expense beyond what was produced at home
was seldom as great as $10. Peter Cartwright counted himself rich when
he learned that the Methodist annual conference to which he belonged had
added $12 to his regular stipend of $100 a year.

Most men, including the clergy, owned or rented farms and followed the
plow in season, while wives and children did outdoor work from morning
till night. Houses were built by the aid of neighbors in a single day,
and extra rooms were improvised by the judicious hanging of quilts and
curtains. A door in front and another in the rear allowed plenty of
fresh air, though the large crevices between the logs usually rendered
this superfluous. Floors were made of logs split in halves and laid
"with backs downward." Beds and chairs were home-made and especially
intended for the use of the older members of the family, boys and girls
accommodating themselves with stools or blocks of wood sawed for the
purpose. Meals were prepared in a few moments at the broad fireside,
where a huge crane aided the mother in swinging her kettles on or off
the blazing fire. In every pretentious home there was a loom for the
weaving of cotton and woolen cloth for family or neighborhood
consumption; and late at night the steady thump of the beam proclaimed
the industry of the busy housewife as she put in the last threads of her
"fifth" or "sixth yard." Few were so wealthy that they could afford the
broadcloth which came up the rivers from New Orleans or over the Erie
Canal from New York; and when some migrating Virginia squire or Kentucky
colonel, master of a thousand acres of land, did so disport himself on
Sundays or at the races, he appeared in his glossy suit, made by the
hand of his devoted spouse, wrinkled and fretted in a hundred places,
not unlike Lincoln when he first spoke at Cooper Institute, New York.

Life was simple on the Western farm or distant frontier, but pleasure,
too, had its place, English sports of Angevin times serving the place of
baseball or golf of to-day. In the older West, Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Missouri, the race-course was