My Boyhood and Youth 



century, while the tops, which would naturally 

 have become tall broad-headed trees, were only 

 mere sprouts seldom more than two years old. 

 Thus the ground was kept open like a prairie, 

 with only five or six trees to the acre, which 

 had escaped the fire by having the good fortune 

 to grow on a bare spot at the door of a fox or 

 badger den, or between straggling grass-tufts 

 wide apart on the poorest sandy soil. 



The uniformly rich soil of the Illinois and 

 Wisconsin prairies produced so close and tall a 

 growth of grasses for fires that no tree could 

 live on it. Had there been no fires, these fine 

 prairies, so marked a feature of the country, 

 would have been covered by the heaviest for- 

 ests. As soon as the oak openings in our neigh- 

 borhood were settled, and the farmers had 

 prevented running grass-fires, the grubs grew 

 up into trees and formed tall thickets so 

 dense that it was difficult to walk through 

 them and every trace of the sunny "openings" 

 vanished. 



We called our second farm Hickory Hill, from 

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