the wilderness slowly receded.

But the years rolled away and prosperity came,
Wealth and ease on frugality founded:
Now the husband and wife tread the down hill of life
By brave sons and fair daughters surrounded

And the young pioneer has grown stooping and gray,
And he marvels his limbs are no stronger:
And the cheek of the bride is now sallow and thin.
And her eye beams with brightness no longer.

All honor and praise to the old pioneers:
You never may know all their story:
What they found but a desert a garden became,
And their toil, and success is their glory.

THE TRANSPLANTING OF A BOY.

BY J. H. BATES.

Read by Addison M. Brown.

When I was a few weeks turned of eleven years old, my father, then forty-four years of age, became infected with the western fever then well on its way of depopulating New England, and, selling his rough Vermont farm at a better price than it would fetch now in the same extent and condition, entered upon what at the time was thought not unfairly to be the serious journey to the wilds of Michigan. Accordingly early in September, 1837, we set forth, making altogether an emigration of nineteen persons, one being Miss Julia Hatch, who became Mrs. Hamilton Scott a little later on. Following advice, we took with us our entire household effects, including a large cook-stove of the Woolson patent, one of the very earliest to succeed the huge fire-places over which our mothers and grandmothers back to the Mayflower in unbroken line roasted, baked and stewed themselves along with the meals they prepared. There must have been a Puritan toughness of texture in this stove, for it served right on unremittingly for not less than thirty years, as valiant, irascible and friendly a creature as ever woman had at need. All effects were packed in boxes, and the ingenuity of the Twenty-mile Stream valley was sorely taxed to fit boxes to the furniture, or, more properly, the furniture to the boxes, since there must be a limit to the dimensions of the latter. This difficulty was met by sawing off any contumacious limb or projection from articles of unreasonable size, such as tables and bedsteads,—a rough surgery from which no subsequent care ever quite restored the afflicted members, leavingchanged from leav1ng in original them rickety and rheumatic ever after.

Conveyance through New England was then by wheel, and so we moved over the Green Mountains to Troy, my uncle Zaccheus Bates driving the wagon wherein jolted my three brothers and myself, a cargo of youngsters irrepressible and volatile to such a degree that when he handed us back to the parental care after two trying days, my uncle must have thanked God and breathed freer.

The passage from Troy to Buffalo was by the Erie Canal, then the great thoroughfare from tide-water to the lakes. It swarmed with two kinds of boats, distinguished as line and packet, the latter drawn by three horses moving at a trot and conveying passengers exclusively, with light luggage. These were for the more exalted and wealthy travelers, who desired speedier transit and better accommodations, while boats of the line, moved by two horses at a walking pace, were suitable for emigrants like ourselves, and crowded to an over fullness with a miscellany of men, women, children and household freight. My recollections of this portion of the journey are of exceeding roughness and discomfort. The youngsters were not greatly regarded in the general disarray and scramble. I remember the coarse, scanty fare of the second table, to which the children were relegated, wherein vile smelling boiled cabbage figured as a steady quantity, and oppressive nights in a stifling berth at the very end of the crowded cabin, the horror of it augmented to my sensitive olfactories by the foul broom which the cabin-maid persistently kept hanging on the partition at the head of my bunk. Among the seniors there was more disregard of annoyances, an heroic determination to make the best of everything, a spirit of good fellowship and kindly mutual helpfulness, and a hearty open air freedom of speech and action. Songs were sung and stories told which infringed the delicacy of the politest circles but were not really offensive to healthy minds, inconveniences were ignored and pleasant trifles magnified, a small joke created large merriment, and the hearty and robust expansiveness of frontier life, in which resides a peculiar charm unceasingly felt by all who have ever fairly come under it, was beginning at the very entrance of a new world of nature and of man. Absurdly prominent stands out my wonder at being called Bub for the first time, followed by conjecture what the word could mean and where it came from. But all light, momentary afflictions passed like distempered dreams when once we were afloat on the blue waters of Lake Erie, in the steamboat Daniel Webster, bound for Toledo. I had not thought there could be anything so grand in all the world as this little, fussy, splashing side-wheeler, to me a veritable floating palace. An event of moment occurred on the passage. On the wide divan under the cabin windows of the stern I noticed a delicate man of refined features, much in contrast with the body of the voyagers. He had several books lying beside him, and, as I approached in shy curiosity, asked me in kindly wise, would I like a book, and tossed apart on the divan a copy of Irving's Sketch Book. I lay there stretched at length, absorbed and lost, until the waning light dulled the bright page of this delightful author. Who can explain why the generation succeeding his own so neglects him?

The red-painted warehouse at the steamboat wharf in Toledo was also a terminal station of a strip of steam railway to Adrian, now a part of the Michigan Southern system. We were transferred directly to the cars, and, while this magical sort of locomotion must have impressed my boyish fancy, I am unable to recall a single incident until we were undergoing the discomfort of crowded and wretched quarters in Adrian, waiting to engage wagons to transport our party and its effects the remaining distance.

I recall being taken into a room to see a stalwart man undergoing an ague fit. He was fully dressed and seated in an arm-chair, convulsively shivering and writhing. The door of the room stood open, and people came and stared and commented, and went away to make room for fresh arrivals. The scene was so grotesque, and the spectators seemed so amused, that I was not certain the victim was not acting a part for the general entertainment, until he informed us with clattering teeth that we saw what we were all coming to, when a kind of mysterious dread possessed me of what lay in wait in the terra incognita before us.

At length, after much searching and haggling, an insufficient caravan was provided, the household goods bestowed, and, the women folk sitting on them as did Rachel in the Old Testament story, we set forth through the oak openings, over the unvarying level, to the music of two or three rifles in the hands of the adventurers attached to our party, who found good and unaccustomed sport in the small game frequent among the glades of the vast continuous forest. We moved slowly, and on the second day were overtaken by Mr. Edwin H. Lathrop, riding alone in a buggy drawn by a pair of free-going horses, on his return from Adrian, where he had left his wife so far on her way to visit eastern friends. Our numerous colony naturally drew his attention, and after much exchange of speech he urged me to ride with him and