Comparatively few of the first settlers suffered from serious accidents.  One of our neighbors had a finger shot off, and on a bitter, frosty night had to be taken to a surgeon in Portage, in a sled drawn by slow, plodding oxen, to have the shattered stump dressed.  Another fell from his wagon and was killed by the wheel passing over his body.  An acre of ground was reserved and fenced for graves, and soon consumption came to fill it.  One of the saddest instances was that of a Scotch family from Edinburgh, consisting of a father, son, and daughter, who settled on eighty acres of land within half a mile of our place.  The daughter died of consumption the third year after their arrival, the son one or two years later, and at last the father followed his two children.  Thus sadly ended bright hopes and dreams of a happy home in rich and free America.

Another neighbor, I remember, after a lingering illness died of the same disease in midwinter, and his funeral was attended by the neighbors in sleighs during a driving snowstorm when the thermometer was fifteen or twenty degrees below zero.  The great white plague carried off another of our near neighbors, a fine Scotchman, the father of eight promising boys, when he was only about forty-five years of age.  Most of those who suffered from this disease seemed hopeful and cheerful up to a very short time before their death, but Mr. Reid, I remember, on one of his last visits to our house, said with brave resignation:  “I know that never more in this world can I be well, but I must just submit.  I must just submit.”

One of the saddest deaths from other causes than consumption was that of a poor feeble-minded man whose brother, a sturdy, devout, severe puritan, was a very hard taskmaster.  Poor half-witted Charlie was kept steadily at work,—­although he was not able to do much, for his body was about as feeble as his mind.  He never could be taught the right use of an axe, and when he was set to chopping down trees for firewood he feebly hacked and chipped round and round them, sometimes spending several days in nibbling down a tree that a beaver might have gnawed down in half the time.  Occasionally when he had an extra large tree to chop, he would go home and report that the tree was too tough and strong for him and that he could never make it fall.  Then his brother, calling him a useless creature, would fell it with a few well-directed strokes, and leave Charlie to nibble away at it for weeks trying to make it into stove-wood.

His guardian brother, delighting in hard work and able for anything, was as remarkable for strength of body and mind as poor Charlie for childishness.  All the neighbors pitied Charlie, especially the women, who never missed an opportunity to give him kind words, cookies, and pie; above all, they bestowed natural sympathy on the poor imbecile as if he were an unfortunate motherless child.  In particular, his nearest neighbors, Scotch Highlanders, warmly welcomed him