to their home and never wearied in doing everything that tender sympathy could suggest.  To those friends he ran gladly at every opportunity.  But after years of suffering from overwork and illness his feeble health failed, and he told his Scotch friends one day that he was not able to work any more or do anything that his brother wanted him to do, that he was tired of life, and that he had come to thank them for their kindness and to bid them good-bye, for he was going to drown himself in Muir’s lake.  “Oh, Charlie!  Charlie!” they cried, “you mustn’t talk that way.  Cheer up!  You will soon be stronger.  We all love you.  Cheer up!  Cheer up!  And always come here whenever you need anything.”

“Oh, no! my friends,” he pathetically replied, “I know you love me, but I can’t cheer up any more.  My heart’s gone, and I want to die.”

Next day, when Mr. Anderson, a carpenter whose house was on the west shore of our lake, was going to a spring he saw a man wade out through the rushes and lily-pads and throw himself forward into deep water.  This was poor Charlie.  Fortunately, Mr. Anderson had a skiff close by, and as the distance was not great he reached the broken-hearted imbecile in time to save his life, and after trying to cheer him took him home to his brother.  But even this terrible proof of despair failed to soften his brother.  He seemed to regard the attempt at suicide simply as a crime calculated to bring harm to religion.  Though snatched from the lake to his bed, poor Charlie lived only a few days longer.  A physician who was called when his health first became seriously impaired reported that he was suffering from Bright’s disease.  After all was over, the stoical brother walked over to the neighbor who had saved Charlie from drowning, and, after talking on ordinary affairs, crops, the weather, etc., said in a careless tone:  “I have a little job of carpenter work for you, Mr. Anderson.”  “What is it, Mr. ——?” “I want you to make a coffin.”  “A coffin!” said the startled carpenter.  “Who is dead?” “Charlie,” he coolly replied.  All the neighbors were in tears over the poor child man’s fate.  But, strange to say, the brother who had faithfully cared for him controlled and concealed all his natural affection as incompatible with sound faith.

The mixed lot of settlers around us offered a favorable field for observation of the different kinds of people of our own race.  We were swift to note the way they behaved, the differences in their religion and morals, and in their ways of drawing a living from the same kind of soil under the same general conditions; how they protected themselves from the weather; how they were influenced by new doctrines and old ones seen in new lights in preaching, lecturing, debating, bringing up their children, etc., and how they regarded the Indians, those first settlers and owners of the ground that was being made into farms.