72 HOESE POETKAITUKE. 



proportion, as the track will be made and the exercise he 

 will get there will be more likely to benefit his speed than 

 all work on the road. 



I find I am talking just as if this farm and stock were 

 no longer an imaginary one, and until I made the pause, 

 was so much carried away describing it, that it was as 

 vivid as if real. 



PBECEPTOK. There must be some magical properties in 

 this cigar, akin to the wonderful eastern plant that made 

 captive the senses of those who inhaled it. I have been 

 completely transported to the land of plenty where your 

 colts are frolicking. That grand country has been opened 

 since my active days have passed, or rather its capabilities 

 were not understood till a comparatively recent period. 

 I always associate the Mississippi with the bark canoe of 

 the Indian, and the prairie as a marshy plain almost lim- 

 itless, where tall grass and flowers conceal the rattle- 

 snake and venomous Massassagua, with the buffaloes, in 

 countless myriads, roaming over a waste reeking with 

 malaria that totally unfitted it for the abode of civilized 

 man. Of course, these crude ideas may be far from the 

 truth, but I find it difficult to replace them with others, 

 and cannot but think you might more advantageously 

 have located it nearer some of the great horse marts of 

 the country. 



PUPIL. Those prairies that are to you flat, marshy 

 grounds unfit for anything save reptile life, are one of 

 the grandest sights God has vouchsafed to us poor mis- 

 erable sinners. But you will have to go still further west 

 than the right shore of the mighty river, to see them in 

 their glory at this late day. Man has spoiled their beauty 

 in one sense, in cutting them up into farms, and disfigur- 

 ing them with fences and plowed fields. 



Fancy yourself on an eminence overlooking miles of 

 waving billowy verdure. Near you the deep green of the 



