you remember what John McClure wrote home, six months after he
crossed the ocean?"

"Yes, I remember all that, Thomas; but John McClure was never a very
truthful body at home and I've always thought that if we knew every
thing, we would find that he wrote with his magnifying glasses on.
John, you know, was very apt to see things through magnifying
glasses."

"But the testimony doesn't come alone from John. We hear it every
day and from every quarter, that America is a perfect paradise for
the poor, compared to England."

"I don't know how that can be, Thomas. They say that it is full of
wild beast poisonous serpents, and savage Indians, and that the
people are in constant fear of their lives. I'm sure England is a
better place than that, even if we do have to work hard and get but
little for it."

"All that used to be, Lizzy," replied Thomas. "But they've killed
the wild beasts and serpents, and tamed the savage Indians. And
there are great cities there, the same as in England."

But Lizzy could not be convinced. From her earliest childhood she
had never had but one idea of America, and that was as a great
wilderness filled with Indians and wild beasts. Of the former, she
had heard tales that made her blood curdle in her veins. It was in
vain, therefore, for Thomas Ward to argue with his wife about going
to America. She was not to be convinced that a waste, howling
wilderness was at all comparable with happy old England, even if the