o new to us. On the uplands the
herbage was short and dry and the plants stiff and woody, but in the
swales the wild oat shook its quivers of barbed and twisted arrows, and
the crow's foot, tall and sere, bowed softly under the feet of the wind,
while everywhere, in the lowlands as well as on the ridges, the
bleaching white antlers of by-gone herbivora lay scattered, testifying
to "the herds of deer and buffalo" which once fed there. We were just a
few years too late to see them.

To the south the sections were nearly all settled upon, for in that
direction lay the county town, but to the north and on into Minnesota
rolled the unplowed sod, the feeding ground of the cattle, the home of
foxes and wolves, and to the west, just beyond the highest ridges, we
loved to think the bison might still be seen.

The cabin on this rented farm was a mere shanty, a shell of pine boards,
which needed re-enforcing to make it habitable and one day my father
said, "Well, Hamlin, I guess you'll have to run the plow-team this
fall. I must help neighbor Button wall up the house and I can't afford
to hire another man."

This seemed a fine commission for a lad of ten, and I drove my horses
into the field that first morning with a manly pride which added an inch
to my stature. I took my initial "round" at a "land" which stretched
from one side of the quarter section to the other, in confident mood. I
was grown up!

But alas! my sense of elation did not last long. To guide a team for a
few minutes as an experiment was one thing--to plow all day like a hired
hand was another. It was not a chore, it was a job. It meant moving to
and fro hour after hour, day after day, with no one to talk to but the
horses. It meant trudging eight or nine miles in the forenoon and as
many more in the afternoon, with less than an hour off at noon. It meant
dragging the heavy implement around the corners, and it meant also many
ship-wrecks, for the thick, wet stubble matted with wild buckwheat often
rolled up between the coulter and the standard and threw the share
completely out of the ground, making it necessary for me to halt the
team and jerk the heavy plow backward for a new start.

Although strong and active I was rather short, even for a ten-year-old,
and to reach the plow handles I was obliged to lift my hands above my
shoulders; and so with the guiding lines crossed over my back and my
worn straw hat bobbing just above the cross-brace I must have made a