CHAPTER VI 



PIRATES 



The immigrant of to-day, following the rail- 

 road, knows little or nothing of the privations 

 suffered by those of fifty years ago, who preceded 

 the railroad and in a way were swallowed up by 

 the wilderness. Many of the early settlers of 

 Wisconsin found themselves not only a hundred 

 miles away from a market, but what was almost 

 as bad, a hundred miles away from even a weekly 

 newspaper, and in some cases destitute of any- 

 thing to read. Even professional men carried 

 their libraries in saddle-bags and any kind of read- 

 ing was prized like a gift of the gods. The New 

 York Tribune, the New York Weekly, the New 

 York Ledger, came as angelic visitors. As a 

 rule, no family took more than one of them and 

 they were traded about till they were literally 

 read to fragments, and the fragments kept to 

 wad a gun. With regard to the two last-named 

 it would, doubtless, have been better for the ris- 

 ing generation had they been used as gun wads 

 before they were read at all, for what they offered 



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