seams. It was the funniest sight--just a skeleton. Not a smitch of white
rags left on the trees, either.

We people who lived in Minnesota thought there was only one kind of wild
grape. A man by the name of Seeger who had been in Russia and was
connected with a wine house in Moscow came to St. Peter. In the
Minnesota valley were immense wild grape vines covering the tallest
trees. Here he found five distinct varieties of grapes and said one kind
would make a fine red wine--Burgundy. He told me how to make this wine
from grapes growing wild on my own farm. I made about ten gallons. When
it was a year old it was very heady.

Edward Eggleston belonged to a debating society in St. Peter and was on
the successful side in a debate, "Has Love a Language not Articulate."
He was a Methodist preacher here, but later had charge of a
Congregational church in Brooklyn, N. Y. He said when the Methodists
abolished itinerancy and mission work, he thought the most useful part
of the church was gone.

In my boyhood days at home, a little boy in the neighborhood had the
misfortune to drink some lye. Fortunately the doctor was near and using
a stomach pump saved his life for the time being. However, the child's
stomach could retain nothing. In a short time he was a skeleton indeed.
One day his father who carried him around constantly, happened to be by
the cow when she was being milked. The child asked for some milk and was
given it directly from the cow. Great was the father's astonishment when
the little lad retained it. Milk given him two minutes after milking was
at once ejected. The father had a pen made just outside his son's
bedroom window and the cow kept there, and here many times a day the cow
was milked and the milk instantly given. After several months the child
was restored to health.

One night in Minnesota just as I was going to sit down to supper my wife
told me that a man who had just passed told her that a child that lived
ten miles back in the country had drank lye some days before and was
expected to die, as he could retain nothing. Without waiting to eat my
supper I jumped on a horse and made the trip there in record speed. This
child followed the same formula and was saved.

It was easy for youngsters to get at lye for every house had a leach for
the making of soap. This lye was made by letting water drip over hard
wood ashes in a barrel. A cupful would be taken out and its strength
tried. If it would hold up an