had once
viewed it from the top of the tall bluff which stood like a warder at
the gate of our valley, and when one bright morning my father said,
"Belle, get ready, and we'll drive over to Grandad's," we all became
greatly excited.

In those days people did not "call," they went "visitin'." The women
took their knitting and stayed all the afternoon and sometimes all
night. No one owned a carriage. Each family journeyed in a heavy farm
wagon with the father and mother riding high on the wooden spring seat
while the children jounced up and down on the hay in the bottom of the
box or clung desperately to the side-boards to keep from being jolted
out. In such wise we started on our trip to the McClintocks'.

The road ran to the south and east around the base of Sugar Loaf Bluff,
thence across a lovely valley and over a high wooded ridge which was so
steep that at times we rode above the tree tops. As father stopped the
horses to let them rest, we children gazed about us with wondering eyes.
Far behind us lay the LaCrosse valley through which a slender river ran,
while before us towered wind-worn cliffs of stone. It was an exploring
expedition for us.

The top of the divide gave a grand view of wooded hills to the
northeast, but father did not wait for us to enjoy that. He started the
team on the perilous downward road without regard to our wishes, and so
we bumped and clattered to the bottom, all joy of the scenery swallowed
up in fear of being thrown from the wagon.

The roar of a rapid, the gleam of a long curving stream, a sharp turn
through a pair of bars, and we found ourselves approaching a low
unpainted house which stood on a level bench overlooking a river and its
meadows.

"There it is. That's Grandad's house," said mother, and peering over her
shoulder I perceived a group of people standing about the open door, and
heard their shouts of welcome.

My father laughed. "Looks as if the whole McClintock clan was on
parade," he said.

It was Sunday and all my aunts and uncles were in holiday dress and a
merry, hearty, handsome group they were. One of the men helped my mother
out and another, a roguish young fellow with a pock-marked face,
snatched me from the wagon and carried me under his arm to the threshold
where a short, gray-haired smiling woman was standing. "Mother, here's
another grandson for you," he said as he put me at her feet.

She greeted me kindly and led me into the house, in which a huge old