The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1895-01-10

stitute for Ca-nute Nelson, known and
beloved here in the northwest as the
Little Short Necked Norwegian, once
the dusky warrior had his home. and.in
the crisp spring weather his fiancee
strained the golden maple strip through
her blanket, yet warm from her bronze
shoulders.
"What changes have came here" as
one of my Pop friends said last evening
Forty-two years ago came to this coun-
try and found it in the very slough of
barbarism. Indians without suitable un-
derclothing for this rigorous climate
roamed up and down the St. 'Croix and
violated the game law with IMMUNITY
No white mans life was safe. 1t has
taken me over 40 of the best years Of
my life to bring about change, but in
that same valley there are now thou
sand schoolhouses, one nominal school
in this congregational district, as my
Pop friend says, and $50 churches that
are almost self supporting.
One can hardly believe that here
where now we sit surrounded by all that
can go to exalt and embellish life, a
few brief years ago the nasty Indian
camped out and lived joyous and jag
less. He did not know that by sin death
came into the world. He knows it now;
also that pneumonia comes with log
houses and steam heat, late hours and a
crock full of Saltwater wassai].
Since then we have come through all
the various periods and strata that 60
to build the geological abutments upon
which rest civilization and appended
It's. No one had appendicitis when I
came here on the stern deck of horse
in 1852. We had no comforts, no pare
sis, no esoteric research, no acute gas
tritis, no erotio poetry outside the lum-
Der camps, and was baptized by the
same man who shod my steers. Those
were grand old days, and no one hesitat-
ed about being immersed by man who
could stagger stag with one blow or
hold the hind leg Of a clay bank mule
till the ornery brute ruptured himself
with suppressed wrath.
I tell you these pioneer expounders of
the Scriptures never drowned anybody.
I've seen 800 pound man immersed in
the Kinnic Kinnick, and after playing
him few moments the preacher landed
him on the bank, jumped up out of the
water, cracked his heels together and
called for another. 1t was March, and
ever and anon a Is pound cake of ice
would hit the parson in the back. but
the rosy old apostle liked it. and we Of
ten had to go into the river and pull
him out by force, he liked it so WELL
Then came the vast appetite for real
estate, when every one was excited, and
even the preacher said one day in an
absentminded way as he opened the BIZ
BILE. Brothers and sisters, today you
will find my text in the N. W. ID Of
the S. W. II Of section 8, township 38,
range 18, west.''
The little upper Mississippi steam
boats came up the river after the ice
went out, and one long foot of the whis-
tie would empty church in eight min
utes. Some of these little boats were
like the Georgia steamer with the one
horsepower engine and IL horse whis-
tie. remember little boat with a
pocket engine and a calliope, and every
time the calliope played the boat stop
ped. Sam Jones says there are too many
Christians like that When they "hol-
Ter" amen, they stop.
It was near this spot where I am
writing that my brother, now persecut-
Ing attorney of Minneapolis, once invited
me to come with him and participate in
a cyclone. It did not last long, but the
tailors now make one Of my trousers
legs three eighths of an inch shorter