And so a year passed away; and it was not until last evening, when Tom surprised my sad meditations over the dying fire, that I took courage to speak of other plans. It was dear little Harry's birthday eve, and his face even in sleep was flushed with the excitement of hope, and in his dreams he muttered something about a pony and Uncle Tom. So the maid told me, smiling, and I told Tom when he came in, making him laugh at the thought of the eager little fellow's pleasure.

"Yes, Helen, a big rocking-horse will be here by the time he is up to-morrow. In mercy to you I forebore when tempted by such a little Shetland pony; but next year he will be quite big enough, and then you must not say a word if I begin his equestrian education."

"But I must say a word now," I began, with a quaking heart. "Dear Tom, thank you, but you must not waste your money upon little Harry, or teach him luxurious tastes which he can never gratify. You know he has his own way to make in the world by-and-by. And now, thanks to your care and petting, I am beginning to feel strong enough to take up life again, with more gratitude than I can express to you and mother, who sheltered me in the worst time." Tom stared at me in unaffected surprise. “What can you mean ?” he said. "I thought it was all understood between us. I look upon you as my charge; upon Harry as my own boy. All that is mine is equally yours; all will be his when we are gone. Why not use it now for his good?"

"Oh, Tom-”

"Hush, Helen; I see how it is; you are afraid of me. I fear I seem dictatorial, and interfering, and intrusive; but do not think so; I will be very careful. You and you only have authority and control over the boy; but there are many times when a man's advice and watchfulness are of more avail even than the mother's. Let me be a help to you; never a rival. And remember always that whatever I have of time, or strength, or mind, or money, is entirely devoted to you and yours."

I could not keep back my tears. "Oh, Tom, I can not! it would not be right. Let me go now, before I grow any closer into this home; it will be harder by-and-by."

Tom came to the other side of the fire, and stood leaning against the mantle-piece. "Helen," he said, "it is as well to say it now, and have all clear between us. You and I are alone in the world. Mother is here now, but oh, Hel

ing? gradually melting away, as it seems to me. No outward sign of suffering or disease; but the sword pierced to her own heart also! You and I are young; we can live on through even this loss; but it was mother's death-blow. He was the dearest thing on earth to her. Yes, dear, how could it be otherwise? so noble and lovable; so much more open and sympathizing than I could ever let myself be. It was right that she should love him best. But think, Helen, when she is gone, will it not make my life almost too desolate if you and Harry are gone too? Why will you not stay? No sister could be dearer than you are to me. I love you as if you had been born my sister; and I love you better for being Will's true, sweet wife. And then I have a debt of love and gratitude to you, which I can never repay, for the kindness which has forgiven my long injustice to you. You have pardoned, but I shall never forgive myself for having deprived your young hearts of two years of happiness in so short a life."

"But, dear brother," I said, "I have learned, and so did he, to think that it was all for the best. Absence fixed our love and proved it, and what might have been open to the suspicion of being a girl and boy fancy attained full life and maturity through the little trial you gave it."

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"So I should perhaps think," he answered, 'were you destined to the ordinary course of married life, growing old together. But, in so brief a time, every day was a priceless treasure!"

"True," I said; "and every day would have been, had we lived to a green old age; but, as to the time being short, this is only a little interruption, dear Tom, to the Future of perfect love. It will seem there as but a day when it is past-there remaineth a rest together—" I stopped, for I could say no more. "You are blessed, indeed," he answered, "if you can look at it in such a way. I too have the faith, at times."

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There followed a long silence, and then I roused myself to say, 'If you wish it, brother, we will stay for the present-as long as either you or mother need me. I need not say no place is now as dear to me as this. But don't talk about yourself as if life were over for you. It is not so. You are young; you must marry.' He stood still, with a rigid look of suffering on his face. 'Never, now," he said, and drew a miniature from his breast. 'Listen, Helen, I am going to show you the face that should have been my wife's face; and when I tell you that she left me, and that losing her-and through her, all faith in women-almost ruined my soul and killed my body; and then, when I tell you that she looked like you, had your type of face and form, even your trick of manner, you will understand why I tried to warn and shield Will, lest he should be wrecked on the same quicksands where I went down."

I opened the case. "Like me! never!" Such a brilliant, flashing, glorious beauty as met

But dreams and imagination can not last long in this intensely practical country, as it is to-day. You have only to cast your eye across the prairie, and you see farms yellow with the golden grain which forms the wealth of this rapidly-growing young State. The illusion fades away; civilized life, with all its rush and bustle, comes before you, and you see the farmer guiding his reaper through the standing wheat, followed by his "hands," stooping over and binding their bosomfuls of swaths. And who, although poetry suffers, can regret the change?

When one recalls the distress and poverty of the last two years, owing to disastrous seasons and blighted crops, and remembers how anxiously our Northwestern farmers have all this summer been hoping for a "fair average yield" that would place them in funds, and enable them to pay off their twelve-months' indebtedness, the sight of a broad and bountiful harvest in these fields of Minnesota comes like a vision of heaven, and every quarter-section thus ripening to the reaper is welcomed with as much joy by the spectator as the oasis in the desert, with its palm-trees and wells of water, are hailed by the thirsty, foot-sore traveler.

Like all new countries Minnesota is much subject to changes of climate, aberrations in the distribution of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, every few years apart, and these necessarily have their effect on the crops. To give an example: The writer came here in the spring of 1863. Shortly after his arrival, in April, it rained for two days-an inconstant, fine drizzle. After that it cleared off cool and bracing; and no more rain fell from that time forward till late in the fall. It absolutely did not rain one single day. Some said a few showers fell in the night; but if so, most people, and the writer among them, never saw it: Men grew at last anxious about their crops-that is, their wheat. Day after day, week after week, month after month, slipped by—and still no rain. The sky appeared to be literally of brass, so far as moisture was concerned. Meanwhile the soil got dryer and dryer; there was a sensible diminution in the quantity and luxuriance of the herbs and weeds of the valleys and prairies; many of the smaller streams became exhausted, and left hollow and arid channels, with disconsolate-looking white stones in their beds, to mark the courses they once had taken in their race to the Great River and the sea. The

numerous, and more than one new-born island awoke to an unexpected existence in his blue bosom. Never before, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, had the stage of water in the Mississippi been so low. The larger boats were withdrawn, and their places supplied with smaller ones of light draught. But these sternwheels, small as they were, could hardly do bet-. ter; and, what with stranding on partially concealed sand-bars, and being pushed off by long oars, and other obstacles, they made sad and perilous voyages up to the "head of navigation," as St. Paul in those days was called. Of course, any thing like regularity in making trips was out of the question. Whole days would intervene, and the arrival of a steamer was like that of a message from China or the dead. St. Paul felt nervous that horrible summer; she was isolated and solitary; she sat indeed like a queen, gayly attired, and shining with youth, beauty, and wealth, but she sat widow-like, alone. Her lovers were in Milwaukie, Chicago, and St. Louis; and the terrible river which ought to have connected her by a true marriage-tie to these, although not broken, separated her almost as effectually as if it had not been there at all.

Men began to prognosticate all manner of evils; the country was slowly drying up; it was merely following in this a fixed tendency of the region. Parallels began to be drawn between the Northwest and other sections on this point. Some had read Humboldt, who declared that when the forests of a country are proportionately cut down the rivers and streams dry up and rain ceases to fall in the usual quantity. I recall a gentleman who happened that summer to stumble over an article in a back volume of Harper's Magazine on this very subject, proving the same thing by historical facts connected with the Madeira Islands and the city of Mexico.

At this period, and for a long time previous, immense quantities of lumber had been annually sawn on the head-waters of the Chippewa and St. Croix rivers, and the other tributaries of the Mississippi, which was now grown so sick, and weak, and attenuated. As men looked on the wasted countenance of the Father of Waters and noticed his ribs of sand protruding out of his breast, which in the rotundity of plump health are always concealed, and felt his faltering pulse, the enfeebled little ripples, whose pulsations crept languidly up to the shore; and as they witnessed in many instances the festering green scum which bordered his coves and retired reaches of beach, like the diseased froth and foam of one who is weary of life and wandering in his frenzied mind—they felt a strange pity for the patient, and heaved sighs of sorrow and condolence.

Such was the summer of 1863, and that of 1864 was not much better; and yet, notwithstanding all these discouraging prospects, the crop turned out a good average both years.

Where were these emigrants going? To the far western counties of Minnesota, and they will take Rochester and Owatonna on their way. It is the region of low lands and partial inundations. In a few hours they were gone. No one expected to see them again, when suddenly, a few weeks later, back they came, the same long, straggling procession of wagons, horses, and cattle, wending their way to their old homes in the South. They had got mired up near Owatonna, and the wet weather continuing, and no one having a ghost of an idea when it would cease, the dampness settled down upon their spirits, when they considered how the year was slipping by and their funds were oozing away, and they grew disheartened and returned.

Such was the character of the first half of 1867 in our State; and if the visitor of four years ago had been inclined to pronounce it an intolerably dry country, he who came here this year would have been as strongly disposed to say it was intolerably wet.

acre.

Wheat is planted in Minnesota as early as the weather and ground will permit. In April the plow is put to the soil and the seed sown, or earlier if possible; they plow deep, and allow one and a half to two bushels of seed to the Wheat requires a dry soil and cool temperature. A good average yield is sixteen or twenty bushels to the acre, although many acres yield twenty-five or thirty bushels. By sowing early the grain has full opportunity to ripen slowly and surely; by sowing late the berry is "in the milk" when the hot, scorching days of August come, and the excessive heat blights it, drying and withering it up. In the best quality the berries are large, plump, and full.

As one goes over the country in the fall of the year he sees vast tracts of "new breaking,” where the virgin soil, black as ink, and rich almost to glutinousness, has been broken by the plow, and the soil turned bottom upward in long, dark bands or layers as far as the eye can reach. Here it is exposed for months to the wind and weather till it decomposes and becomes fit for agricultural purposes. Every year vast tracts of prairie are thus turned over, or "broken," and with the next the loam is leveled and the seed is cast in; and thus large additions are annually made to the aggregate amount of acres of wheat.

Take your stand on one of these "new breaking-pieces," and look perhaps in any di

Farms are generally 160 acres in extent-a " quarter section" being usually the quantity bought and worked. Under the Homestead Law lands are constantly taken up, the cost being a mere trifle for fees, etc. The settler is required to locate on it, put up a small house, do some fencing and "breaking," and pass a night on it at least once every six months.

Many amusing stories are told how persons of ingenious habits of mind and India-rubber consciences manage to conform to the letter, while they evade the more burdensome intents of the law. The merest apology for a house, and the least possible amount of residence and "improvements" are done. Still this dodging of the law works no serious violation of its contemplated objects. Lands are opened, destitute families are provided with a farm and means of attaining independence and prosperity, and the State is settled up. Sometimes a family is so constituted as to be able to take four quarters, or a full square mile of land. No single applicant can take out papers for more than one quarter section, and a man and his wife and young children are viewed as one party. But if he has a widowed mother and two unmarried sisters grown up living with him, each is regarded as a legal applicant; and they arrange it often thus: They select four quarter sections lying contiguous to each other, and put up a house right upon the centre where the four quarter sections touch, so that each quarter of the building stands on a different quarter section. Partitions divide the interior into rooms to correspond; and each party then fulfills his obligations to the law at one-fourth the expense he or she would otherwise incur. They are supposed to form four distinct families, dwelling apart, although practically they still form but one household as before.

These wild lands thus entered are worth about $5 per acre, and when "improved" rise to $15 or $25 according to circumstances. At the end of five years' residence Government gives a clean deed of the property. Many, however, having the means, prefer to buy the land outright at the start, paying the Government price, $1 25 per acre.

Wheat matures from about the beginning to the middle of August. The whole country then awakens from its long slothfulness. Business revives. Interest, energy, and happiness every where appear. No one who has never witnessed the dullness pervading all departments of business during the winter and spring