ng their bulbous orange-colored neck
ornaments while the hens flutter and squawk in silly delight. All the
charm and mystery of that prairie world comes back to me, and I ache
with an illogical desire to recover it and hold it, and preserve it in
some form for my children.--It seems an injustice that they should miss
it, and yet it is probable that they are getting an equal joy of life,
an equal exaltation from the opening flowers of the single lilac bush in
our city back-yard or from an occasional visit to the lake in Central
Park.

Dragging is even more wearisome than plowing, in some respects, for you
have no handles to assist you and your heels sinking deep into the soft
loam bring such unwonted strain upon the tendons of your legs that you
can scarcely limp home to supper, and it seems that you cannot possibly
go on another day,--but you do--at least I did.

There was something relentless as the weather in the way my soldier
father ruled his sons, and yet he was neither hard-hearted nor
unsympathetic. The fact is easily explained. His own boyhood had been
task-filled and he saw nothing unnatural in the regular employment of
his children. Having had little play-time himself, he considered that we
were having a very comfortable boyhood. Furthermore the country was new
and labor scarce. Every hand and foot must count under such conditions.

There are certain ameliorations to child-labor on a farm. Air and
sunshine and food are plentiful. I never lacked for meat or clothing,
and mingled with my records of toil are exquisite memories of the joy I
took in following the changes in the landscape, in the notes of birds,
and in the play of small animals on the sunny soil.

There were no pigeons on the prairie but enormous flocks of ducks came
sweeping northward, alighting at sunset to feed in the fields of
stubble. They came in countless myriads and often when they settled to
earth they covered acres of meadow like some prodigious cataract from
the sky. When alarmed they rose with a sound like the rumbling of
thunder.

At times the lines of their cloud-like flocks were so unending that
those in the front rank were lost in the northern sky, while those in
the rear were but dim bands beneath the southern sun.--I tried many
times to shoot some of them, but never succeeded, so wary were they.
Brant and geese in formal flocks followed and to watch these noble birds
pushing their arrowy lines straight into the north always ga