PROEM 
TO FIRST EDITION 
the Indian Reserve, out of which Howard County, 
Indiana, was carved, the author first saw the light 
of day. His first vision of the world was through the 
six by six glass windows out across the door yard and 
public highway into the “ clearin’.”” His father, a sturdy 
pioneer, had settled in this wilderness abounding in gi- 
gantic walnut, poplar and oak trees, interspersed with 
the smaller varieties of timber and underbrush, and by 
strength of muscle alone, was subduing the forests and 
making the land to blossom with the fruits of the hus- 
bandman. 
The pioneer father is sleeping now. He sleeps beside 
the faithful wife who gave him companionship in the 
days of his toil. He sleeps in the beautiful land made 
so by the strength, toil and endurance of the pioneer. 
To the memory of that pioneer father, who loved the 
soil, this book is dedicated; and as the pioneer fathers 
subdued the land from the wilderness and gave it to their 
children, rich in the fertility that Nature gave it, may the 
children so farm and treat it that that fertility may in- 
crease and not decrease as the years go by. 
The author loves the soil or else this book would have 
ne’er been born. 
|: a little frame farmhouse on a pioneer’s farm, in 
? 
