each, a twenty-eight, and so on down to a single pound. Also a lot of
iron wedges, carpenter's tools, and so forth, and at Buffalo, as if on
the very edge of the wilderness, he gladly added to his burden a big
cast-iron stove with pots and pans, provisions enough for a long
siege, and a scythe and cumbersome cradle for cutting wheat, all of
which he succeeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin woods.

A land-agent at Kingston gave father a note to a farmer by the name of
Alexander Gray, who lived on the border of the settled part of the
country, knew the section-lines, and would probably help him to find a
good place for a farm. So father went away to spy out the land, and
in the mean time left us children in Kingston in a rented room. It
took us less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the boys in
the village; we challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees,
etc., and in a day or two we felt at home, carefree and happy,
notwithstanding our family was so widely divided. When father returned
he told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods
on the side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen with a
big wagon was coming to haul us to Mr. Gray's place.

We enjoyed the strange ten-mile ride through the woods very much,
wondering how the great oxen could be so strong and wise and tame as
to pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a
crooked piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so
obediently to right and left past roadside trees and stumps when the
driver said _haw_ and _gee_. At Mr. Gray's house, father again left us
for a few days to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had
selected four or five miles to the westward. In the mean while we
enjoyed our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows,
looking at the trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With