The evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race.  In the morning of the world man was innocent and free; but when self-consciousness crept in and he possessed himself of that disturbing motto, “Know Thyself,” he took a fall.

Yet knowledge usually comes to us with a shock, just as the mixture crystallizes when the chemist gives the jar a tap.  We grow by throes.

I well remember the day when I was put out of my Eden.

My father and mother had gone away in the one-horse wagon, taking the baby with them, leaving me in care of my elder sister.  It was a stormy day and the air was full of fog and mist.  It did not rain very much, only in gusts, but great leaden clouds chased each other angrily across the sky.  It was very quiet there in the little house on the prairie, except when the wind came and shook the windows and rattled at the doors.  The morning seemed to drag and wouldn’t pass, just out of contrariness; and I wanted it to go fast because in the afternoon my sister was to take me somewhere, but where I did not know, but that we should go somewhere was promised again and again.

As the day wore on we went up into the little garret and strained our eyes across the stretching prairie to see if some one was coming.  There had been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little.  It was either drought or flood.  Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough cranes danced a solemn minuet.

Again and again we looked for the coming something, and I began to cry, fearing we had been left there, forgotten of Fate.

At last we went out by the barn and, with much boosting, I climbed to the top of the haystack and my sister followed.  And still we watched.

“There they come!” exclaimed my sister.

“There they come!” I echoed, and clapped two red, chapped hands for joy.

Away across the prairie, miles and miles away, was a winding string of wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right behind another.  We watched until we could make out our own white horse, Bob, and then we slid down the hickory pole that leaned against the stack, and made our way across the spongy sod to the burying-ground that stood on a knoll half a mile away.

We got there before the procession, and saw a great hole, with square corners, dug in the ground.  It was half-full of water, and a man in bare feet, with trousers rolled to his knees, was working industriously to bail it out.

The wagons drove up and stopped.  And out of one of them four men lifted a long box and set it down beside the hole where the man still bailed and dipped.  The box was opened and in it was Si Johnson.  Si lay very still, and his face was very blue, and his clothes were very black, save for his shirt, which was very white, and his hands were folded across his breast, just so, and held awkwardly in the stiff fingers was a little New Testament.  We all looked at the blue face, and the women cried softly.  The men took off their hats while the preacher prayed, and then we sang, “There’ll be no more parting there.”