As soon as father was able to travel we finished our journey in safety.  We visited our old friends in Illinois, and father preached on Sundays.  While we were at Mt.  Sterling, he lectured on temperance one night, and the bad fellows made a little disturbance.  The previous afternoon I had visited a little girl in the village, and we had found and thrown away a nest full of rotten eggs.  The next time I saw her she said that her big brother was mad at us, for he was saving those eggs, and he and some other big boys had intended to throw them at Pardee Butler while he was making that temperance speech; but when they went to the barn, their eggs were gone.  The truth was, that her big brother was one of many boys who were fast being made drunkards by the village saloons.

Mother went to Ohio on a visit, and father went to Iowa to attend to some business.  On his return he met one of the State Republican Committee, who insisted on making arrangements for him to stay in Illinois until the presidential election, and speak for Fremont.

It was raw November weather when we started back to Kansas, with a one-horse wagon, drawn by Copper, and a heavily loaded mule team, driven by a boy named Henry Whitaker, who is now one of the merchants of Atchison.  Mother was sick, and we had to stop a week.  Then the mud became so deep that father had to buy a yoke of oxen and hitch on behind the mules.  Then it froze up, rough and hard, and we stopped for a blacksmith to make shoes for the oxen, and were directed to stay with a widow who had an empty house.  She had built a new house of hewed logs, with a window in it, and we were allowed to stay in the old cabin.  She could not keep from talking about that window.

“I’ve lived all my days without ary winder, an’ got along mighty well,” said she.  “For my part, I don’t like winders; they make a house look so glarin’, like.  We uns never had ary one where I had my raisin’.  But the childern is gettin’ a heap o’ stuck up notions these days, an’ they jes’ set up that we had to have a winder in our new house.”

The weather was very cold the rest of the way, and father suffered severely from a felon on his hand.  When we reached St. Joseph the Missouri River was frozen, and our teams were the first to cross on the ice.  Father took the teams to the top of the icy banks, and hitched them to the ends of the wagon-tongues by means of long chains.  We traveled all day over unsettled prairie, hoping to reach Mr. Wymer’s house, on Independence Creek.  We reached the place at nine o’clock, but no house; it had been burned.  It was very dark, and bitter cold, but we traveled on.  At eleven o’clock we found Mr. Snyder’s cabin, where Lancaster is now built.  A little later and we should have seen no light.  A party of belated surveyors had found the house before the family went to bed; and they were just lying down when we drove up.  In those days no one thought of refusing a traveler lodging.  The cabin was