our way before the violent shower obliged us to take refuge in a solitary house upon the prairie.  In this country it is as pleasant to stop as to go on, to lose your way as to find it, for the variety in the population gives you a chance for fresh entertainment in every hut, and the luxuriant beauty makes every path attractive.  In this house we found a family “quite above the common,” but, I grieve to say, not above false pride, for the father, ashamed of being caught barefoot, told us a story of a man, one of the richest men, he said, in one of the eastern cities, who went barefoot, from choice and taste.

Near the door grew a Provence rose, then in blossom.  Other families we saw had brought with them and planted the locust.  It was pleasant to see their old home loves, brought into connection with their new splendors.  Wherever there were traces of this tenderness of feeling, only too rare among Americans, other things bore signs also of prosperity and intelligence, as if the ordering mind of man had some idea of home beyond a mere shelter, beneath which to eat and sleep.

No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did this afternoon, after the clearing up of the shower.  We traversed the blooming plain, unmarked by any road, only the friendly track of wheels which tracked, not broke the grass.  Our stations were not from town to town, but from grove to grove.  These groves first floated like blue islands in the distance.  As we drew nearer, they seemed fair parks, and the little log houses on the edge, with their curling smokes, harmonized beautifully with them.

One of these groves, Ross’s grove, we reached just at sunset.  It was of the noblest trees I saw during this journey, for the trees generally were not large or lofty, but only of fair proportions.  Here they were large enough to form with their clear stems pillars for grand cathedral aisles.  There was space enough for crimson light to stream through upon the floor of water which the shower had left.  As we slowly plashed through, I thought I was never in a better place for vespers.

That night we rested, or rather tarried at a grove some miles beyond, and there partook of the miseries so often jocosely portrayed, of bedchambers for twelve, a milk dish for universal handbasin, and expectations that you would use and lend your “hankercher” for a towel.  But this was the only night, thanks to the hospitality of private families, that we passed thus, and it was well that we had this bit of experience, else might we have pronounced all Trollopian records of the kind to be inventions of pure malice.