RURAL LIVING CONDITIONS 323 



they coursed down your back, until you felt like 

 'a, harp of a thousand strings/ played on by the icy 

 fingers of old Hiems, who increased the cold chills 

 until his victim shook like an aspen-leaf, and his 

 teeth chattered in his jaws. There you laid shaking 

 in the frigid ague region for an hour or so until you 

 gradually stole back to a temperate zone. Then com- 

 menced the warm flashes over your system, which 

 increased with heat as the former did with cold, 

 until you reached the torrid region, where you lay 

 in burning heat, racked with pain in your head and 

 along your back, for an hour or so, when you began 

 by degrees to feel less heat and pain, until your 

 hands grew moist, and you were relieved by a copious 

 perspiration all over your body, and you got to your 

 natural feeling again. Getting back to your normal 

 condition, you felt relieved and happy, and as you 

 went out doors everything about you was pleasant 

 and smiling, and you seemed to be walking in a 

 brighter and happier world. . . . The first question 

 asked a settler, after he had been here a short time, 

 was: 'Have you had the ague yet?' If answered in 

 the negative, the reply would be, 'Well, you will have 

 It; everybody has it before they have been here long.' 

 ... No one was ever supposed to die with the ague. 

 It was not considered a sickness. 'He ain't sick; 

 he's only got the ager,' was a common expression 

 among the settlers.^ It was many years before the 

 relation between the mosquito-propagating swamps 

 * "Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," V, 300. 



