o the room through the cracks in the
walls, and the howling of wolves made night hideous around them. The
children were taught in log schoolhouses, and the people worshipped in
log churches.

Savage Indians kept the settlers in a state of continual fear.
Sometimes they would suddenly surround a solitary house, kill all the
inmates, and set fire to the dwelling. Again and again have the
children been aroused from their sleep by the fearful Indian war-whoop,
which was more dreaded than the howling of the wolves. Even women
learned to use guns and other weapons, that they might be able to
defend their homes from these savage assaults.

The log house villages grew into populous places, and the descendants
of the "Pilgrims" were not always satisfied to remain in the cities
founded by their forefathers. Wonderful stories were told in the towns
of the amazing fruitfulness of the forest and prairie land out West,
which induced large numbers to sell their property and set out on the
tedious and adventurous journey.

Before the great lines of railway were constructed, which now stretch
across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
there was a constant stream of emigration from the East to the West.
Large waggons carried the women and children, and the stores of
necessary articles, which must be conveyed at all cost, for they could
not be obtained in the localities to which the pioneers bent their
steps.

Slowly the emigrant trains made their way through roadless regions.
They had to ford rivers, wade through swamps, and cut paths through
thick forests. Weeks, and even months, were spent on journeys which
are now accomplished in less than twenty-four hours.

Numerous difficulties and manifold dangers beset the wanderers' path;
yet, regardless of both, they pushed on with infinite courage and
patience. Nor was the journey through the wilds without a tinge of
romance to the younger and more adventurous spirits, who enjoyed the
freedom they could not have in the towns and cities.

About eighty years ago, a widow and her family--a son and a
daughter--packed up all their worldly possessions in an emigrant
waggon, and started for the West. Widow Ballou made her home in the
State of Ohio, which at that time was only peopled by a few scattered
settlers. Five years afterwards, a young man named Abram Garfield
started on the same journey. It is said that he was more anxious to
renew his acquaintance