at any moment, were conditions quite as
satisfactory as we had any right to expect. Also we slept later, for my
father was less disposed to get us out of bed at dawn and this in itself
was an enormous gain, especially to my mother.

Osage, a small town, hardly more than a village, was situated on the
edge of a belt of hardwood timber through which the Cedar River ran, and
was quite commonplace to most people but to me it was both mysterious
and dangerous, for it was the home of an alien tribe, hostile and
pitiless--"The Town Boys."

Up to this time I had both hated and feared them, knowing that they
hated and despised me, and now, suddenly I was thrust among them and put
on my own defenses. For a few weeks I felt like a young rooster in a
strange barn-yard,--knowing that I would be called upon to prove my
quality. In fact it took but a week or two to establish my place in the
tribe for one of the leaders of the gang was Mitchell Scott, a powerful
lad of about my own age, and to his friendship I owe a large part of my
freedom from persecution.

Uncle David came to see us several times during the spring and his talk
was all about "going west." He was restless under the conditions of his
life on a farm. I don't know why this was so, but a growing bitterness
clouded his voice. Once I heard him say, "I don't know what use I am in
the world. I am a failure." This was the first note of doubt, of
discouragement that I had heard from any member of my family and it made
a deep impression on me. Disillusionment had begun.

During the early part of the summer my brother and I worked in the
garden with frequent days off for fishing, swimming and berrying, and we
were entirely content with life. No doubts assailed us. We swam in the
pond at Rice's Mill and we cast our hooks in the sunny ripples below it.
We saw the circus come to town and go into camp on a vacant lot, and we
attended every movement of it with a delicious sense of leisure. We
could go at night with no long ride to take after it was over.--The
fourth of July came to seek us this year and we had but to step across
the way to see a ball-game. We were at last in the center of our world.

In June my father called me to help in the elevator and this turned out
to be a most informing experience. "The Street," as it was called, was
merely a wagon road which ran along in front of a row of wheat
ware-houses of various shapes and sizes, from which the buyers emerged
to mee