100 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 



flower; next come the roses; in July and 

 August it is pink with the ' prairie pink, ' 

 dotted with scarlet lilies; as autumn comes on 

 it is vivid with orange- colored flowers. I 

 never knew their names; they have woody 

 stalks; one kind that grows about a foot high 

 has a feathery spray of little blossoms [golden- 

 rod?]. There are several kinds of tall ones; 

 the blossom has yellow leaves and brown vel- 

 vety centres [cone-flower, or rudbeckia, prob- 

 ably, now common in the East]. We young- 

 sters used to gather the gum that exuded from 

 the stalk. Every one was poor in those days, 

 and no one was ashamed of it. Plenty to eat, 

 such as it was. We introduced some innova- 

 tions in that line that shocked the people here. 

 We used corn meal ; they said it was only fit 

 for hogs. Worse than that, we ate ' greens ' 

 — weeds, they called them. It does not seem 

 possible, but it is a fact, that with all those 

 fertile acres around them waiting for cultiva- 

 tion, and to be had almost for the asking, those 

 people (they were mainly Hoosiers) lived on 

 fried salt pork, swimming in fat, and hot bis- 

 cuit all the year round; no variety, no vegeta- 

 bles, no. butter saved for winter use, no milk 

 after cold weather began, for it was too much 

 trouble to milk the cows — such a shiftless set! 

 And the hogs they raised — you should have 

 seen them ! ' Prairie sharks ' and ' razor- 

 backs were the local names for them, and 

 either name fitted them ; long noses, long legs, 

 bodies about five inches thick, and no amount 



