74 TOM’S EXPERIENCE 
that it looked like a garden. I confess I was proud 
of it. 
BACK TO THE OLD HOME. 
We had decided to make a visit to the old [llinois 
home this winter, and so the week before the holi- 
days we packed the necessary trunks and started. 
We had come out in the fall of 1879, and neither of 
us had been back in the three years that had elapsed. 
This, you will remember, was in December, 1882. It 
seemed really only a few months since, on that bright 
October afternoon, we drove up to the plain little 
house I had built during the summer, and for the 
first time went together into our own home. Then 
the nearest railroad was twenty-three miles distant, 
and on all this broad stretch of prairie there were 
only three houses in sight, and two of these were 
more than three miles away. Now there are neigh- 
bors all around us, and as good ones, too, as you will 
find anywhere, a good school house near by, a pros- 
perous village with two neat churches within less 
than three miles, and every few hours during the day 
we can see from our door the railroad trains rushing 
into the village and out again. In the progress that 
had been made it seemed a generation since we came 
instead of only three short years. But so our great 
west grows. | 
The children were particularly delighted with the 
prospect of so longa journey, and enjoyed it to the 
utmost. They could hardly realize it when we arrived 
at our journey’s end, for they had thought that it 
