qually hidden from Abraham, it is hard to estimate the vistas of
hope and ambition that this long journey opened to him. It was his first
look into the wide, wide world.

419

Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) was national
lecturer for the National American Woman
Suffrage Association from 1886 to 1904, and was
president of that association from 1904 to
1915. She was known as a lecturer rather than
as an author, but her autobiography, entitled
_The Story of a Pioneer_, is a charming book
that will help us realize some of the tragedy
and humor of pioneer days and some of the
difficulties that had to be overcome by a woman
who was determined to follow a career
practically closed to women. (The selection
below is from the early part of _The Story of a
Pioneer_, and is used here by permission of the
publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York.)

IN THE WESTERN WILDERNESS

ANNA HOWARD SHAW

My father was one of a number of Englishmen who took up tracts in the
northern forests of Michigan, with the old dream of establishing a
colony there. None of these men had the least practical knowledge of
farming. They were city men or followers of trades which had no
connection with farm life. They went straight into the thick
timber-land, instead of going to the rich and waiting prairies, and they
crowned this initial mistake by cutting down the splendid timber instead
of letting it stand. Thus bird's-eye maple and other beautiful woods
were used as fire-wood and in the construction of rude cabins, and the
greatest asset of the pioneer was ignored.

Father preceded us to the Michigan woods, and there, with his oldest
son, James, took up a claim. They cleared a space in the wilderness just
large enough for a log cabin, and put up the bare walls of the cabin
itself. Then father returned to Lawrence and his work, leaving James
behind. A few months later (this was in 1859), my mother, my two
sisters, Eleanor and Mary, my youngest brother, Henry, eight years of
age, and I, then twelve, went to Michigan to work on and hold down the
claim while father, for eighteen months longer, stayed on in Lawrence,
sending us such remittances as he could. His second and third sons, John
and Thomas, remained in the East with him.

Every detail of our journey through the wilderness is clear in my mind.
At that time the railroad ter