Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1875-06-17

very hard to do. was not modest and diff
dent then as now. Finding / was red hot
from college, over which DIR. Edward Beech
er presided, and that my mission was to in
struct the offspring of "Old lack" as the Col
onel was called, and Indian agent Street, in
Kirkham and Christianity. Lieut.. Stockton,
who afterward learned was bitter enemy
of his superior, pursuaded me / would starve
to death in Col Taylor's family. "Why,
young man, unless you have jaws like Mark
Anthony; unless you can craunch lard-tack
for breakfast, and stubb and twist bacon Ii.
e. sowbelly in modern nomenulature), for din
ner, and turtle eggs boiled as hard as grape
shot for supper, you had better keep out of
that mess. | want clerk 10 my department"
was persuaded, Topped over, summersaulted
into the Quartermasters office No wonder;
got salary from Uncle Sans bounty of forty
hard silver dollars per month, just warm from
the United States mint, increased to 500 as
my arduous labors became less. Since some
of you will imagine it, I will confess at once
that then and there got my first taste of gov
eminent pay, and am hardly weaned from it
yet.
But what was the appearance OF the Great
West in 1884 as seen and imagined from the
father, and yet the child of many waters.
Illinois, above Rock river, with slight excep>
ton, was wholly vacant. The State of Iowa
had not even been ehristened. The owl boot
ed from the forests that covered its bottoms
or crowned its headlands.
"The VOLTS long no vi from 0ualaska's shore
Was heard above the troubled waters roar"
If Thomas Campbell could make poetry out
of this "long howl" his muse would have
been rampant, bad he tried this voyage These
devil>eyed, whiteteethed denzens of the
forest amused US with their nightly serenade,
whether we Kissed or applauded.
And still the wide prairies on either hand
seems opening to receive the immense and
teeming population destined to supplant ma
lures husbandry by that of civilized man.
The very soil, the streams and the woods that
skirted them seemed conscious, setting up of
nights and watching by day for the coming
'events that cast their shadows before" The
singing fly, as Longfellow calls the bee, had
appeared, began the manufacture of its nectar
and laying it up in hollow trees, anticipating
the needs of the white man. The bear the
elk, and the deer heard all too frequently the
crack of the backwoodsman's rifle He was
trespassing on the domain of the Winnebago,
Sac and Sioux. The Great Spirit had packed
up his airy wigwam, converted it into balloon,
and sailed westward, reckoning to his
children to follow. Hardisted miners
men of "mighty bone and bold enterprise" had
built their tenementso of sod, palisades and mud
at Dubuque, Peru and elsewhere. Galena
Neptunelike, had reared her awful head above
the mud, in which she foundered and was visible
at a considerable distance. Patches of corn
and potatoes showed that race of men were
pressing into this region who could work the
surface of mother earth as we'll as gopher in
her bowels. These were the scattering drops,
the earnest of that human flood that has swollen
into millions. rolled westward on foot, on
horses, on wheels, till the locomotive and
| laundering train behind commands the high-
way to California, has launched its keels in the
Pacific, changed the frontage of continents so
that we look westward on Asia, and China and
Japan eastward on us; has completed the
American section of the thoroughfare that en-
circles the globe and reversed the dreetion
of commerce between the Old World and the
New. All this since 1884.