SOLON ROBINSON, 1842 341 



full expectation of being again by his own fireside on 

 the evening of the next day — the distance being upwards 

 of 40 miles. 



He was a stout robust man, in the prime of life, inured 

 to fatigue, and so fearless of cold, and so deceived by the 

 appearance of the weather, that he left home thinly clad, 

 and totally unprepared to resist the rigor of the storm 

 that came on next day. 



On the next afternoon he started back with the inten- 

 tion of driving home that night. Just at sundown, he 

 stopped to warm at a house, from which to the next, it 

 was 8 or 10 miles across a bleak prairie, without a bush 

 to shelter or tree to guide. His course was east. Here 

 a most furious southwest snow storm came upon him. 

 Who can picture the horrors of that night? Little did 

 the wife and children of the doomed emigrant think, as 

 they gathered around their warm hearth, what the hus- 

 band and father was then suffering. During all the next 

 day, the storm raged with unabated violence. The cold 

 was intense, and the snow filled the air so as to veil 

 all objects in obscurity. 



But they did not look for "the return from mill" on 

 this day, but towards the close of the next, eyes were 

 anxiously strained in that direction ; yet the night passed, 

 and he came not. The next was the sabbath — usually a 

 day of rest and thanksgiving in that household. Doubt 

 not, many an anxious prayer went up for the safe return 

 of their best and absent friend. 



Night closed upon saddened hearts, full of fearful 

 forebodings. Can you fancy the horrors that haunted 

 the pillow of the good wife all that night. See how she 

 starts at every sound. Do you remember I told you in 

 the article I have before alluded to, how remarkably 

 quick my ear had become. Fancy the same of hers. How 

 anxiously she listened for the cheering sound of that well 

 known voice — how the childlike inquiry of the early 

 morning, grated upon her ear — "has father come yet — 

 why, what has become of him?" 



