by our artist; the guests preferred the venison,
but the host showed a fidelity to his invention that proved him to be
indeed a dweller in an ideal world.

Another path that comes back to memory is the bare trail that we
followed over the prairies of Nebraska, in 1856, when the Missouri
River was held by roving bands from the Slave States, and Freedom had
to seek an overland route into Kansas. All day and all night we rode
between distant prairie-fires, pillars of evening light and of morning
cloud, while sometimes the low grass would burn to the very edge of the
trail, so that we had to hold our breath as we galloped through.
Parties of armed Missourians were sometimes seen over the prairie
swells, so that we had to mount guard at nightfall; Free-State
emigrants, fleeing from persecution, continually met us; and we
sometimes saw parties of wandering Sioux, or passed their great
irregular huts and houses of worship. I remember one desolate prairie
summit on which an Indian boy sat motionless on horseback; his bare red
legs clung closely to the white sides of his horse; a gorgeous sunset
was unrolled behind him, and he might have seemed the last of his race,
just departing for the hunting-grounds of the blest. More often the
horizon showed no human outline, and the sun set cloudless, and
elongated into pear-shaped outlines, as behind ocean-waves. But I
remember best the excitement that filled our breasts when we approached
spots where the contest for a free soil had already been sealed with
blood. In those days, as one went to Pennsylvania to study coal
formations, or to Lake Superior for copper, so one went to Kansas for
men. "Every footpath on this planet," said a rare thinker, "may lead to
the door of a hero," and that trail into Kansas ended rightly at the
tent-door of John Brown.

And later, who that knew them can forget the picket-paths that were
worn throughout the Sea Islands of South Carolina,--paths that wound
along the shores of creeks or through the depths of woods, where the
great wild roses tossed their airy festoons above your head, and the
brilliant lizards glanced across your track, and your horse's ears
suddenly pointed forward and his pace grew uneasy as he snuffed the
presence of something you could not see. At night you had often to ride
from picket to picket in dense darkness, trusting to the horse to find
his way, or sometimes dismounting to feel with your hands for the
track, while the great So